It took me a while to learn how to defend myself, but I did. My grandfather showed me how to block a punch and how to throw one back in a single controlled movement that would draw blood every time. But when I think back on those first months, I think of that fence, and a circle of young men closing in on me, and Lester Bargus with his freckles and his brown, square-cut hair, sucking spit back into his mouth after he had begun to drool with the joy of striking out at another human being from the security of the pack. Had he been a coyote, Lester Bargus would have been the runt that hangs at the margins of the group, lying down on its back when the stronger ones turned on it yet always ready to fall on the weak and the wounded when the frenzy struck. He tortured and bullied and came close to rape in his senior year. He didn't even bother to take his SATs; a new scale would have been needed to assess the depths of Bargus's ignorance.

I had heard that Bargus now ran a bug store in Gorham but it was believed to be merely a front for his other interest, which was the illegal sale of weapons. If you needed a clean gun quickly, then Lester Bargus was your man, particularly if your political and social views were so right wing they made the Klan look like the ACLU.

“Are there a lot of stores that supply bugs, Mr. Ragle?”

“Not in this state, no, but Bargus is also regarded as a considerable authority nationally. Collectors consult with him on a regular basis.” Ragle shuddered. “Although not, I should add, in person. Mr. Bargus is a particularly unpleasant individual.”

“And you're telling me all this because…?”

Franklin intervened. “Because my client is certain that Mr. Pudd will kill him if someone doesn't stop him first. The gentleman in Boston, who has acted as a conduit for some of my client's more mainstream products, believes that a case with which you are currently involved may impinge upon my client's interests. He suggested that any assistance we might be able to provide could only help our cause.”

“And all you have is Lester Bargus?”

Franklin shrugged unhappily.

“Has Pudd tried to contact you?”

“In a way. My client had been sequestered in a safe house in Standish. The house burned down; somebody threw an incendiary device through the bedroom window. Fortunately, Mr. Ragle was able to escape without injury. It was after that incident that we took Mikey on as security.”

I closed my notebook and stood up to leave. “I can't promise anything,” I said.

Ragle leaned toward me and gripped my arm. “If you find this man, Mr. Parker, squash him,” he hissed. “Squash him like a bug.”

I gently removed my arm from his grasp. “I don't think stiletto heels come that big, Mr. Ragle, but I'll bear it in mind.”

I drove over to Gorham that afternoon. It was only a couple of miles but it was still a wasted trip, as I knew it would be. Bargus was aging badly, his hair and teeth almost gone and his fingers stained yellow with nicotine. He wore a No New World Order T-shirt, depicting a blue United Nations helmet caught in the crosshairs of a sniper's sight. In his dimly lit store, spiders crouched in dirt-filled cases, snakes curled around branches, and the hard exoskeletons of cockroaches clicked as they crawled against one another. On the counter beside him a four-inch-long mantid squatted in a glass case, its spiked front legs raised before it. Bargus fed it a cricket, which skipped across the dirt at the bottom of the case as it tried vainly to evade destruction. The mantid turned its head to watch it, seemingly amused by its presumption, then set off in pursuit.

It took Bargus a few moments to recognize me as I approached the counter.

“Well, well,” he said. “Look what just rose to the lip of the bowl.”

“You're looking well, Lester,” I answered. “How do you stay so young and pretty?”

He scowled at me and picked at something jammed between two of his remaining teeth. “You a fag, Parker? I always thought you was queer.”

“Now, Lester, don't think I'm not flattered, but you're not really my type.”

“Huh.” He didn't sound convinced. “You here to buy something?”

“I'm looking for some information.”

“Out the door, turn right, and keep going till you hit the asshole of hell. Tell 'em I sent you.”

He went back to reading a book, which, judging from the illustrations, appeared to be a guide to making a mortar out of beer cans.

“That's no way to talk to an old high school buddy.”

“You ain't my buddy, and I don't like you being in my store,” he said without looking up from his book.

“Can I ask why?”

“People have a habit of dying around you.”

“You look hard enough, people have a habit of dying around everybody.”

“Maybe, 'cept around you they die a whole lot quicker and a whole lot more regular.”

“Then the sooner I leave, the safer you'll be.”

“I ain't holdin' you.”

I tapped lightly at the glass of the mantid case, directly in the insect's line of vision, and the triangular head drew back as it flinched. A mantid is the most humanlike of insects; it has its eyes arranged so that it can see forward, allowing it depth perception. It can see a certain amount of color, and it can turn its head to look over its “shoulder.” Also, like humans, it will eat just about anything it can subdue, from a hornet to a mouse. As I moved my finger, the mantid's head carefully followed the motion while its jaws chomped at the cricket. The top half of the cricket's body was already gone.

“Quit botherin' it,” said Bargus.

“That's quite a predator.”

“That bitch would eat you, she thought you'd stay still long enough.” He grinned, revealing his rotting teeth.

“I hear they can take a black widow.”

The beer can mortar book now lay forgotten before him. “I seen her do it.” Bargus nodded.

“Maybe she's not so bad after all.”

“You don't like spiders, you just walked into the wrong store.”

I shrugged. “I don't like them as much as some. I don't like them as much as Mr. Pudd.”

Lester's eyes suddenly returned to the page before him, but his attention remained focused on me.

“Never heard of him.”

“Ah, but he's heard of you.”

Lester looked up at me and swallowed. “The fuck you saying?”

“You gave him Harvey Ragle. You think that's going to be enough?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” In the warm, dank-smelling store, Lester Bargus began to sweat.

“My guess is that he'll take care of Ragle, then come back for you.”

“Get out of my store,” hissed Lester. He tried to make it sound menacing, but the tremor in his voice gave him away.

“Are spiders the only things you sold him, Lester? Maybe you helped him with some of his other needs, too. Is he a gun-lovin' man?”

His hands scrambled beneath the counter and I knew he was reaching for a weapon. I tossed my card on the counter and watched as he grabbed it with his left hand, crushed it in his palm, and threw it into the trash can. His right hand came up holding a shotgun sawed off at the stock. I didn't move.

“I've seen him, Lester,” I said. “He's a scary guy.”

Lester's thumb cocked the shotgun. “Like I said, I don't know what you're talking about.”

I sighed and backed away. “Your call, Lester, but I get the feeling that sooner or later, it's going to come back to haunt you.”

I turned my back on him and headed for the door. I had already opened it when he called my name.

“I don't want no trouble. Not from you, not from him, you understand?” he said.

I waited in silence. The struggle between his fear of saying nothing and the consequences of giving too much away was clear on his face.

“I never had no address for him,” he continued, hesitantly. “He'd contact me when he needed something, then pick it up his-self and pay in cash. Last time he came he was asking about Ragle, and I told him what I knew. You see him again, you tell him he's got no call to come bothering me.”