counter.
“Thank you,” said Tallow.
“You haven’t drunk it yet,” said Bat.
“Bat, you have the digestive system of a runty, poisoned squirrel. John is clearly made of stronger stuff. Even if he is quite nuts.”
“Why does everyone call me crazy?”
Talia, at the machine, said, “Has it occurred to you for just one moment that you could have spun this whole thing into promotions for yourself, Scarlatta, and probably even Bat?”
Tallow jolted forward in his chair. “What?”
“You could have easily just said to this assistant chief, Okay, I know what your game is—what’s it worth to you to ensure no one finds out? You could have said, I want to be an inspector, or a lieutenant, and my good friend Scarlatta would like a supervisory role and a big fat raise. And Bat would like to lose his virginity. See to it, and all this goes away. You could have done that. Did you ever think of it, John?”
“No,” he said, sitting back. “Not once.”
“Now that you’ve thought about it,” Talia said, “do you wish you’d done it?”
After some length, Tallow quietly said, “No.”
“Crazy.” Talia smiled. “But okay. You can still sleep over. I tell you, though, I imagine your life as a detective has been unnecessarily difficult over the years.”
“Not really,” Tallow said, mostly to himself. “Not until now.”
His cell phone rang.
THE HUNTER ate a little more, sat within a dark stand of trees in order to gather himself for a short period, and then slept for a while.
He awoke from troubled sleep with a shock, as if a dream had run him through with a spear.
Looking up and quelling some trembling in his hands, the hunter found a few stars and the moon to judge the time by, and he calculated that his appointment was imminent. He took his bag and checked through its contents —even with the gun and some things appropriated from the hardware store, he still felt worriedly undertooled—and then rose and began to walk, shaking the damp cold from his legs with some difficulty. Once his thighs and calves loosened up, he slipped into the deep growth abutting the designated meeting point, shifting to the slow and exaggerated steps of woodcraft training and approaching in silence and invisibility.
There were three people at the meeting point.
The hunter smiled. They still huffed and shuffled like three nervous boys in their early twenties. The meeting was obviously going to be more protracted than he would have liked, but it looked as if it’d make up for it in amusement.
He emerged onto the path, allowing them to see him. Their joint reaction pleased him to an almost guilty extent.
“Hello,” he said. “The gang’s all here, I see.”
They all looked sick to one degree or another.
“It’s been a very long time since we all stood in the same place,” said the hunter. “I wonder why you have all arrived to make me feel so special tonight.”
Westover slowly extended a hand, a slip of paper in his fingers. The hunter, regarding him with condescending humor, took it, slowly.
“That,” Westover said, “is the name and address of the police officer in question.”
“Do we know anything about his habits?” the hunter asked, noting that the location was a good two hours’ walk away.
“No social life,” said Turkel. “He spends his nights reading and listening to music, apparently.”
The hunter pocketed the slip. “Excellent. So, shall I be on my way?”
“I think we have to talk about how this ends,” said Westover.
“How it ends? With the death of the man whose address you just gave me.”
“Really? That ends all this?”
“That depends,” said the hunter, “on what you mean by
“I’m unclear on that,” said Machen.
“If I may,” said Turkel to the hunter. The hunter gave him a broad, mocking smile and bade him continue with a grand sweep of his hand. Turkel swallowed hard and continued. “Tallow
“A dead end?” The hunter chuckled.
“—going to be unproductive,” Turkel said, faint disgust in his face as it turned to the hunter.
“There we have it,” said the hunter. “The death of this man concludes the difficulty in front of us. But I don’t speak of an end to all this. There is work yet to be done.”
“What work?” said Westover.
“My work. It has been undone, and must begin again. My keep has been breached, and my work dismantled and stolen. I strongly doubt that I will ever recover all the pieces, and in any case they may be too tainted to weave back together. I must begin again.”
“If we’re understanding you correctly,” said Machen, “your…collection took the best part of twenty years to put together. But the work is done.”
“Really?” The hunter chuckled again. “Have you all achieved your great ambitions? Dreams all come true? Is there nothing more you aspire to? I doubt that. I don’t think that, for you three, greed was something you could don in your young winters and then shrug off like an overcoat in a warm room. Do you really mean to tell me that there is nothing left that you want? You, Mr. Machen. You could yet be running the great financial mill of this city. In twenty years you could be the mayor. Mr. Turkel here is not yet commissioner, is he? Mr. Westover—well, I shudder to think of what horrors he has still to achieve. Although, if I’m honest, I’m not greatly impressed by the security around his home.”
“You don’t want to stop,” said Machen in a flat voice.
“I don’t want to stop. I have a thing to finish. And since you three also have things to finish, I feel that it works out well for all of us.”
Westover said, “What would it take to make you stop?”
The hunter laughed, surprising even himself.
“It’s a serious question,” said Westover. “It comes with the promise of substantial remuneration and whatever other facilitation you might require.”
“We can begin in the region of half a million dollars in nonconsecutive used bills,” said Machen.
“And, of course, a guarantee of safe passage out of the Five Boroughs, with provision of either a vehicle or a plane ticket,” said Turkel.
“Well, well,” said the hunter. “You’ve been talking among yourselves, haven’t you? Three fat old men huddling in a park in the dark, wondering how to haggle their way out of the lives they chose for themselves. Fearfully hoping to buy off the agent of their success.”
“We hired you, and we can—” Machen began.
“You hired me and so you can fire me? I work for you? Is that what you’re saying? You idiots. You mindless, worthless, laughable slugs. I don’t work for you. You work for me. I found three people so desperate to be somebodies that they gave me money for the work I already fully intended to do. You didn’t give me purpose. You funded my purpose. I took the structure of your needs for my own use. You work for me, and I decide when it ends. All three of you are the same mediocrities you were when I met you. You simply own better shoes now. Look at you. You think I killed at your command to make you great. You’re not great. You are nothing but the things that float to the surface when all obstructions are cut away. You can’t buy me off because this was never about the
