A Time of Torment (10 page)

And Parker would have declined, had it not been for two things. The first was what Burnel had done before all this had come to pass, the act of heroism that had briefly made him famous. The second was a small detail that Burnel’s attorney had been smart enough to raise at his trial, even if it hadn’t yielded much in the way of results. No images of child pornography had been found on Burnel’s laptop, which he routinely took with him when he was out on the road. Instead, the only images discovered were on his desktop computer at home, which was not even password protected. Parker didn’t know a lot about Burnel, but what little he had discovered didn’t lead him to suspect that the man was a fool, and only a fool would store explicit, illegal material on an unsecured home computer when he could easily have kept it on his private laptop.

Angel and Louis arrived while he was still mulling over the problem. They had taken a long-term lease on an apartment in the East End of Portland, overlooking the water, and seemed content to move regularly between the city and their New York base. It was good news for Portland’s better restaurants, once they’d grown used to Angel’s distinctive taste in attire, and concluded that he wasn’t about to steal any of the silverware.

Parker hadn’t seen them since the arrest of Roger Ormsby. Tracking Ormsby had been a time-consuming business, and required calling in some additional manpower. The money funneled to Parker from Ross enabled him to pay reasonably generously for such services. Angel and Louis had tried to decline compensation, but this was a new order that Parker was building, and it also helped that it was the feds’ money, and not his, that was going into their pockets.

‘He here yet?’ asked Louis, for Parker had told them about Burnel’s call.

‘He said five,’ said Parker, ‘and it’s only ten to.’

‘I still don’t understand why you’ve even agreed to speak with him,’ said Angel. When Angel had arrived, Dave Evans had steered clear of him, sensing from his demeanor that there would be no smiles from Angel that afternoon. As a child, Angel had been hurt by men with tastes similar to Burnel’s, and his rage at them had never ebbed.

‘Curiosity,’ said Parker.

‘I don’t like it.’

‘I know.’

Parker didn’t tell Angel that he shouldn’t have come. Angel had wanted to be there, and it wasn’t for Parker to prevent him, even if that had been his wish. Some part of Angel desired to look upon Burnel, as though he could see in his face the ghosts of others like him, now long departed from this world, and feed them to his flames.

And Parker wanted Angel to look at Burnel, and to be present as he told his story.

Because Angel would know if Burnel was telling the truth.

B
urnel arrived one minute early, and Parker guessed that he might have been waiting somewhere nearby, or even just making circuits of the block to pass the time. He recognized Burnel from the pictures he’d found while researching him, although the man had suffered the premature aging of the prisoner, and carried the weight of years of bad food and restricted movement.

There were those who claimed to be able to spot an ex-con by his carriage and appearance, but most of them were liars, and the remainder just unreliable. Had Parker not known about Burnel, he might simply have taken him for a middle-aged man of average height and build, with only a hint of nervousness about his reaction to being in the enclosed space of the Bear. He kept his head low, but his eyes flicked from face to face, just as they would have in the MSP, checking out which inmates to avoid, which ones were neutral, which friendly – and there would not have been many of the latter, not for a man like him. Parker had no illusions about what Burnel would have gone through: beatings, bodily fluids in his food, and worse. Much worse.

‘Is that him?’ asked Angel.

‘Yes,’ said Parker.

Beside him, he felt Angel tense. Would Angel have been one of Burnel’s tormentors, had they found themselves imprisoned behind the same walls? Parker liked to think that he would not, but who could say? It was only at moments like this that something of the rage kept tamped down by Angel found a spark and began to smolder. Louis gave only a single glance at Burnel, and revealed no clue to the direction of his thoughts.

Parker stood and raised his hand in greeting. Burnel spotted him and came over. He kept his distance from the handful of men seated at the bar, following a curve instead of a straight line to reach the booth.

‘Mr Parker?’ he said.

Parker nodded and put out his hand. Burnel’s handshake was tentative initially, but firmed up in response to Parker’s grip.

‘Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,’ said Burnel.

‘It’s no trouble.’

Parker introduced Louis and Angel as his ‘associates’. Louis lifted a finger in greeting, while Angel allowed Burnel a flexing of the muscles around his mouth, like a man in the doctor’s chair trying to decide if what he was feeling was pain or merely discomfort.

‘I was under the impression you worked alone,’ said Burnel.

‘That impression is occasionally useful. Please, have a seat.’

Louis rose and slipped into the next booth, taking his glass of red wine with him. Since Parker had occupied the last booth, it meant that their conversation would not be overheard. Angel and Parker were drinking coffee, and the latter asked Burnel if they could offer him the same, or if he’d prefer something stronger.

‘I haven’t had a drink since I got out,’ said Burnel.

‘Really?’ said Parker.

‘I thought it would be the first thing I’d want – well, one of the first,’ Burnel continued. He spoke hesitantly, as though uncertain that he still possessed all the words he might need to express his thoughts. ‘But when it came down to it, it wasn’t.’

‘What was?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Burnel. He appeared genuinely confused.

‘It’s a shock, isn’t it?’ said Parker.

‘Being free?’

‘Yes.’

‘I suppose it is. I had all these plans, all these ways in which I’d spend my first days once I got out of there, but none of them came to pass. I drank some good coffee. Mostly, I just like walking. I like to feed the pigeons, too, although someone told me it’s not allowed. I don’t know if that’s true. I hope it isn’t. I’d like to get a dog, but—’

He stopped, and smiled apologetically.

‘You don’t need to hear this,’ he said. ‘It’s not important. And I’m not free, not truly, because they put all kinds of conditions on my release. For now, I can’t leave the state, and I have to talk to therapists and probation officers. When I stop to sit down, I need to make sure there are no children nearby. I’m not permitted to access the Internet. My name is on the Sex Offender Registry, and that’s bad enough, but then I picked up yesterday’s paper in a coffee shop, and there was an article about my release, with an old picture of me alongside it. I’ve changed, but not so much that someone wouldn’t be able to identify me on the basis of a photograph. Already, people are looking at me differently, or I think they are. I can’t tell if they’ve figured out who I am, or if I’m just imagining it.’

‘It’ll get easier,’ said Parker.

‘No, it won’t,’ said Burnel, ‘but it’s not going to trouble me for long.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because I’ll be dead.’

Burnel examined the fingers of his right hand. The nails were unbitten, but the cuticles were ragged and torn where he’d picked at them. He began doing it again while Parker and Angel watched, working obsessively at the area around the fingernail on his right index finger, tearing off a strip of skin to expose a small triangle of pink flesh.

‘Are you talking about taking your life?’ asked Parker.

‘No.’ Burnel didn’t look up. ‘I’m talking about someone else taking it from me.’

‘Have you been threatened?’

‘No.’

‘Are you afraid of the consequences of your name appearing on the registry, or that picture in the newspaper?’

‘No.’ Burnel relented. ‘A little. I’m careful about walking the streets after dark, and I always check my surroundings when I approach or leave my apartment building. But that would just be a beating, if it came, and I’ve taken beatings. I didn’t care much for them, and I don’t want any more, but that’s not how I’ll go, not at the boots of some thug who believes he’s doing the community a service by kicking out my lights.’

‘Then what do you mean, Mr Burnel?’

Burnel ceased damaging his skin. He had drawn blood, and that seemed to content him. He wiped away the rising red bubble with his left thumb, and stared at Parker.

‘I didn’t do what they claimed I did,’ he said. ‘I didn’t gather child pornography. I didn’t order it. I didn’t look at it. It wasn’t mine. All I did was stop for coffee in the wrong gas station at the wrong time, and that’s why I’m going to die. It’s why all of this has happened. Had I just kept driving, then I wouldn’t be here talking to you now. I might still have a future.’

He smiled.

‘You know, I think I will have a beer, if it’s okay with you.’

‘What kind?’ asked Parker.

‘Just beer. Any beer. It’ll all taste good.’

Parker called for an ale from the Maine Beer Company. He figured he might as well keep the money local. When it arrived, Burnel took one long mouthful to start, but sipped the rest. By the time he finished telling his story, there was still a little left at the bottom of the glass, and Parker’s coffee had long gone cold. The light in the bar had changed, and the noise level had increased, but none of the four men really noticed, not until the end. By then Louis had joined the group, for Burnel spoke softly, and there was little danger of anyone eavesdropping on them.

A man driving on a dark fall evening, a gas station appearing in the distance: to stop, or to go on. On such decisions were lives saved, lives ended, and lives destroyed …

J
erome Burnel was just five days past his fortieth birthday on the night that changed his life. He worked as a manager for a chain of jewelry stores that kept their connections as low-key as possible, preferring to present themselves as independent family operations while availing of the better terms that bulk-buying brought. In practice, they were owned by a man named Owen Larraby down in Boston, whose good fortune it had been to marry a very beautiful Jewish woman named Ahuva Baer. Ahuva had familial connections to New York’s diamond district, which was how Larraby had met her in the first place, when he was starting out in the trade under Rabinow & Saft over in Queens, one of the few goyim to graduate from their dusty university of gemology.

Rabinow & Saft was now long gone, as was Ahuva Baer, who had died far too young at fifty-three. Owen Larraby was still alive and kicking at seventy-nine, although he had never remarried after his wife’s death, and showed no more interest in women than politeness dictated. This was entirely understandable to anyone who had ever met his wife, including Jerome Burnel’s father, Andreas, who had, for many years, been Larraby’s agent in the Northeast, and Jerome himself, who had taken over his father’s role when back problems prevented the old man from putting in the required miles on the road. But Andreas continued to exert a considerable degree of influence over his former territory through Jerome, who only occasionally chafed at his father’s daily calls, Andreas Burnel clearly being of the belief that cell phones had been invented for no better purpose than to ensure his son didn’t screw up nearly half a century of careful networking.

But the trade was changing. While households were spending more than ever on jewelry and watches, people wanted more for less, which was the same everywhere, from books to beans. Sometimes Jerome would watch the hucksters on the home shopping channels and wonder at the foolishness of those who had not yet realized that, when it came to jewelry, what seemed like a bargain never really was. In the jewelry trade, or the part of it inhabited by men like Owen Larraby and the Burnels, you got what you paid for, and nothing cheap was ever worth its price. That was one of the lessons Andreas Burnel had drummed into his son. The other was an understanding of desire: theirs was an industry driven not by the items themselves, but by those who wished to possess them. That was why the hucksters could make so much money selling tat to rubes: the desire to own what glowed and sparkled was ingrained in everyone, and if you couldn’t afford the best, you’d take whatever imitation of it you could afford, and ignore the voice of doubt that whispered of madness.

Traditionally, that desire was at its height during two periods of people’s lives: from their mid-twenties to mid-thirties, when thoughts turned to marriage; and from fifty-five to sixty-four, when older folk reached the peak of their earning power, and figured there was no harm in treating themselves and their spouses to a few luxuries before the time came to start worrying about hospitals and who’d get the Rolex in the will. The trade had primarily positioned itself with those two groups in mind.

But since the retirement of Jerome’s father, the largest increases in jewelry spending had occurred among the youngest consumers – the under twenty-fives – and the oldest, who were over seventy. The young had more money than before, and the old were living longer. The only thing that hadn’t changed was what most of them spent their money on, and that was diamonds. Loose or mounted, it didn’t matter: the cash gravitated toward diamonds, either from revenue generated in direct sales, or through ancillary services like maintenance, polishing, and repairs.

What this meant was that, more than ever before, Jerome Burnel needed to have diamonds available for his stores, and sometimes at short notice, which, in real terms, translated as ‘right now’. On that particular evening, the one that changed everything, he was carrying $120,000 worth of them in a specially designed pocket in his jacket. He also carried a briefcase, but it was a decoy, and contained only rhinestones and cubic zirconia packed in clear sleeves for show. In the event of a robbery – which, so far, had never arisen, praise Jesus and all the saints – he would simply hand over the case without objection, and hope that the thieves were smart enough not to compound theft with murder.