Chapter XXX

Sabine Drew reached Portland without incident, apart from a small detour to Easy Aquariums in Gorham, where she permitted herself some purchases for her tanks at home, because she liked to keep the fish stimulated with novelties.

It had been many years since she'd visited Portland, and the changes took her by surprise. Stores and restaurants once familiar to her were either altered beyond easy recognition or had vanished completely; whole blocks of offices and condos looked to have been dropped from space; and she counted enough hotels to make Commercial Street resemble a section of Midtown Manhattan. She parked at a meter, inserted four quarters to cover her until after 6 p.m., and went exploring. Down in the Old Port, she found stores that didn't offer anything she might have wanted to buy, the contents of a couple of bookstores excepted, and the prices on the restaurant menus, allied to the pervasive smell of pot, made her feel faint.

She wandered by the waterfront, enjoying the salt air and the sight of some of the older structures on Custom House Wharf, which reminded her of the Portland she used to know. She would have walked for longer, but she glimpsed a boy emerge naked and dripping from the water to stand by one of the docks. His skin was blue, and the sea creatures had blinded him, but his sightlessness didn't prevent him from glancing left and right, searching in his awful blackness for the signal transmitted by Sabine's gift. She walked quickly back to Exchange Street, trusting in distance and the noise of crowds to hide her from the boy. She suffered an intense burst of sorrow, but she lacked the energy to spare for him. Anyway, he had spent too long in the water. He belonged to the sea now.

She did not have an address for the private investigator, but remembered from an article she had read that he maintained a connection with the Great Lost Bear on Forest Avenue. She thought she might ask after him at the bar. She had a telephone number for him, but didn't want to use it. Whatever she had to say, she needed to communicate in person, but it was also the case that she avoided using phones unless she had no choice. She owned only a primitive cell phone, seldom used, and let an ancient answering machine screen her landline calls. For Sabine, the phrase "ghosts in the wire" had come to possess a literal meaning—specters inhabited the ether—and any conversation conducted by phone inevitably involved some uninvited third party only she could hear. But she was also afraid that if she told Parker who she was in advance, he might find a reason not to meet with her. If necessary, she would spend a night in town and try again the following day. She had researched places to stay and made a list of those she could afford. They wouldn't be anything fancy, but a couple offered premium cable and complimentary breakfast. It would be a treat to her.

She headed back to her car along Fore Street, the bars buzzing with early-evening drinkers. Some of the groups of young men were very loud. They made her nervous, even though she was virtually invisible to them, a plain woman over forty having no place or purpose in their lives. Two police cars were parked in anticipation of potential trouble later, but then this part of town had always enjoyed a reputation for wildness. Back in the day, when she was much younger, a man had come on to her at one of its bars, a rare occurrence even then. He kissed her at the end of the night, smoke and beer on his breath, and she kissed him back. He lived in the West End, and invited her to return with him to his lodgings, but she turned him down. He asked for her number, and she gave it, but he never called. Sometimes she wondered what might have happened had she gone with him—indeed, had she gone with any of the handful of men who had shown a passing sexual interest in her. She might have been married by now, or a mother. Alex Mazur: that was the name of the man who kissed her, the surname a relic of his great-grandparents' emigration from Poland during the nineteenth century. He was dead now, burned to death before he was thirty, lost in a fire in that same West End apartment building, the one to which he had so wanted to bring her. He had come to her in the aftermath because he was single and solitary, an only child estranged from his father, his mother having predeceased him. Sabine had calmed him and sent him onward to his mom, but the smell of his charred flesh had stayed with her for weeks after.

She drove to the Great Lost Bear, the lot so full that she had to park on the street. The bar area was crammed for a beer promotion, so she found a seat in one of the quieter dining sections and ordered a glass of white wine and a portobello mushroom sandwich.

"I'm looking for someone," she told the waitress, "a man who sometimes comes here. His name is Charlie Parker. He's a private detective."

"I don't think he's been in tonight," said the waitress. "I'm sure we have a number for him, if you need to call, or we can make sure he gets a message. He's pretty good about responding fast."

Sabine thanked her, and said she might try the number she had for him after she'd eaten. She needed to reconsider. Of course, he wouldn't have been there when she arrived; that would have been too much of a coincidence. It struck her that she wasn't thinking straight. It might be best if she accepted the waitress's offer and asked her to pass on a message. But what to say without revealing too much, while also revealing just enough?

Her wine arrived. In a bar like this, she should probably have ordered a beer, but beer always smelled better to her than it tasted. Her sandwich followed not long after, along with a massive shadow that cast itself across her table. She looked up to see, standing before her, a man almost as wide as he was tall. He was wearing a golf shirt stretched taut over his arms and torso—she had no idea how he'd managed to get into it, but was convinced he'd have to be cut out—and the sort of tan pants favored by construction workers, the ones with pockets everywhere.

"Pardon me for intruding," he said, and his voice was gentler than she might have expected, "but the server mentioned you were asking after Mr. Parker."

"Yes, I was."

"My name is Paulie Fulci. I'm proud to call myself his friend. Are you in some kind of trouble?"

"No," said Sabine, "but a child is."