I shrugged. She was right.

“So how did that second visit go?” she asked.

“Could have gone better,” I said.

“In what way?”

“Not punching him in the stomach would have been a start.”

“Oh, Charlie.” She seemed genuinely disappointed, and I felt even more ashamed of my actions earlier that day. In an effort to make up for my failings, I recounted my conversation with Wallace in as much detail as I could remember, leaving out any mention of the woman and child that he claimed to have glimpsed.

“You’re telling me that your friend Jackie threatened Wallace too?” she said.

“I didn’t ask him to. He probably thought that he was doing me a favor.”

“At least he exhibited more restraint than you did. Wallace could have you charged with assault, but my guess is that he probably won’t. Clearly he wants to write this book, and that may over-ride any other concerns as long as you didn’t do him any lasting damage.”

“He walked away under his own steam,” I said.

“Well, if he knows anything about you at all, he can probably consider himself lucky.”

I took the hit. I wasn’t in any position to argue.

“So where does that leave us?”

“You can’t stop him writing the book,” she said simply. “As he said himself, a lot of the relevant material is a matter of public record. What we can do is request, or otherwise obtain, a copy of the manuscript, and go through it with a fine-tooth comb looking for instances of libel, or egregious invasion of privacy. We could then apply to the courts for an injunction preventing publication, but I have to warn you that the courts are generally reluctant to permit injunctions of this kind in deference to the First Amendment. The best we could hope for would be monetary damages. The publisher has probably had a warranty and indemnity clause inserted into Wallace’s contract, assuming the contract has been formally agreed upon. Also, if the whole thing has been handled right, there will be a media-perils insurance policy in place to cover the work. In other words, not only will we not be able to stop this horse from bo Jd tf tlting, but we probably won’t even be able to do more than close the door halfway once it’s gone.”

I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes.

“You sure you don’t want some of this wine?” said Aimee.

“I’m sure. If I start, I may not stop.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll talk to some more people and see if there are any other avenues open to us, but I don’t hold out much hope. And, Charlie?”

I opened my eyes.

“Don’t threaten him again. Just keep your distance. If he approaches you, walk away. Don’t get drawn into confrontations. That goes for your friends too, regardless of their good intentions.”

Which brought us to another problem.

“Yeah, well, that could be an issue,” I said.

“How?”

“Angel and Louis.”

I had told Aimee enough about them for her to be under no illusions.

“If Wallace starts digging, then their names may come up,” I said. “I don’t think they have any good intentions.”

“They don’t sound like the kind of men who leave too many traces.”

“It doesn’t matter. They won’t like it, Louis especially.”

“Then warn them.”

I thought about it. “No,” I said. “Let’s see what happens.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Not really, but Louis believes in preventive measures. If I tell him that Wallace may start asking questions about him, he could decide that it might be better if Wallace didn’t ask any questions at all.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Aimee. She finished her wine in a single gulp, and appeared to be debating whether or not to have more in the hope that it might destroy any memory of what I’d just said. “Jesus, how did you end up with friends like that?”

“I’m not sure,” I replied, “but I don’t think that Jesus had anything to do with it.”

MICKEY WALLACE LEFT PORTLAND early the next day. He was simmering with resentment and a barely containable anger that was unfamiliar to him, for Mickey rarely got truly angry, but his encounter with Parker, combined with the efforts of Parker’s Neanderthal friend to scare him off, had transformed him utterly. He was used to lawyers trying to intimidate him, and had been pushed up against walls and parked cars, and threatened with more serious damage at least twice, but nobody had punched him the way Parker had in K Pa´[1] ut many years. In fact, the last time Mickey had been in anything approaching a serious fight was when he was still in high school, and on that occasion he had landed a lucky punch that had knocked one of his opponent’s teeth out. He wished now that he had managed to strike a similar blow at Parker, and as he boarded the shuttle at Logan he played out alternative scenarios in his mind, ones in which it was he who had brought Parker to his knees, he who had humiliated the detective and not vice versa. He entertained them for a couple of minutes, and then dispensed with them. There would be other ways to make Parker regret what he had done, principal among them the completion of the book project on which Mickey had set his heart and, he felt, his reputation.

But he was still troubled by his experience at the Parker house on that mist-shrouded night. He had expected the intensity of his responses to it, his fear and confusion, to diminish, but they had not. Instead, he continued to sleep uneasily, and had woken on the first night after the encounter at precisely 4:03 A.M., convinced that he was not alone in his motel room. On that occasion, he had turned on the lamp by his bed, and the eco-friendly bulb had glowed slowly into life, gradually spreading illumination through most of the room but leaving the corners in shadow, which gave Mickey the uncomfortable sensation that the darkness around him had receded reluctantly from the light, taking whatever presence he had sensed with it and hiding it in the places where the lamp could not reach. He remembered the woman crouched behind the kitchen door, and the child moving her small finger across the window of his car. He should have been able to glimpse their faces, but he had not, and something told him that he should be grateful for that small mercy at least. Their faces had been concealed from him for a reason.

Because the Traveling Man had torn them apart, that’s why, because he left nothing there but blood and bone and empty sockets. And you didn’t want to see that, no sir, because that sight would stay with you until your eyes closed for the last time and they pulled the sheet over your own face. Nobody could look upon that degree of hurt, of savagery, and not be damaged by it forever.

And if those were people whom you loved, your wife and your child, well…

A friend and her daughter; two visitors: that was how Parker had described them to Mickey, but Mickey didn’t accept that explanation for one moment. Oh, they were visitors all right, but not the kind who slept in the spare room and played board games on winter evenings. Mickey didn’t understand their nature, not yet, and he hadn’t decided whether or not to include his encounter in the book that he would present to his publishers. He suspected that he would not. After all, who would believe him? By including a ghost story in his narrative, he risked undermining the factual basis of his work. And yet this woman and child, and what they had endured, represented the heart of the book. Mickey had always thought of Parker as a man haunted by what had happened to his wife and child, but not literally so. Was that the answer? Was what Mickey had witnessed evidence of an actual haunting?

And all of these thoughts and reflections he added to his notes.

Mickey checked into a hotel over by Penn Station, a typical tourist trap with a warren of tiny rooms occupied by noisy but polite Asians, and families of rubes trying to see New York on the cheap. By late that afternoon, he was sitting in what was, by his standards, and the standar J A the stands of most other people who weren’t bums, a dive bar, and considering what he could order without endangering his health. He wanted coffee, but this looked like the kind of place where ordering coffee for any reason unconnected with a hangover would be frowned upon at the very least, if not considered actual evidence of homosexual leanings. In fact, thought Mickey, even washing one’s hands after visiting the restroom might be viewed as suspect in a hole like this.