Jack_ Secret Vengeance - F. Paul Wilson [84]
6
He sat a few moments longer, pondering piney blood and thinking about how his collection of secrets was growing: things he’d done that he wasn’t supposed to do, things he knew that he wasn’t supposed to know.
He glanced left and saw a figure approaching. He couldn’t make out the face but no need to: A tall, slim man in a white suit could be only one person.
“Well, well,” Mr. Drexler said, smiling his thin smile as he stopped next to the bench. “Look who’s here, all alone. No friends?”
“All I need. How about you?”
He shook his head. “Friendship is highly overrated. The only difference between a friend and an enemy is that a friend will stab you in the heart rather than the back. The few times I’ve tried friendship I found its attendant duties, social and otherwise, quite burdensome. I much prefer to do without.”
Jack had no idea how to respond to that, so he said nothing.
Mr. Drexler added, “Some people cannot bear being alone. Perhaps because when they are alone there is no one there. You do not appear to mind.”
“Just because I’m alone doesn’t mean I’m lonely.”
He tapped the bench with the tip of his cane. “Excellent response. You’ve got you, and sometimes that’s quite enough.” He waved his cane around. “Quite an entertaining little town you’ve got here, Jack. Murder, suicide, a man named Weird Walt, and you. I shall miss it.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Your powers of deduction are positively Holmesian. I have accomplished my purpose. Time to leave this entertaining little town.”
He kept calling Johnson entertaining. Why?
“Not to worry. Your gardening job is secure until the frost. I came to town merely to reorganize after the sudden departure of a number of members. My work here is done.”
Departure of members? Yeah, departed as in dead. As for work, Jack hadn’t seen him do any work. Hadn’t seen him do much of anything except hang around and have meetings. The card he’d given Jack had said he was an “actuator” for the Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order, but who knew what that meant.
He grinned up at him. “Going to go actuate somewhere else?”
Mr. Drexler’s smile was tight and tolerant. “I suppose one might put it that way. As you can imagine, this Lodge was in severe disarray after the events of August.”
I’ll bet it was, Jack thought.
The mysterious sudden deaths of four local members would tend to disarray things.
“But it’s back on track now. The Order has other tasks for me.”
“Where next?”
“Wherever I am sent.” He twirled his cane. “Good-bye, Jack.”
Jack rose and thrust out his hand. “Nice meeting you. And thanks for the job.”
It hadn’t really been nice meeting him—he was kind of creepy—but he’d treated him well and fairly, despite the fiasco last month, and it seemed like the right thing to say.
Mr. Drexler’s hand was cool and dry as it gripped Jack’s and gave it a firm squeeze.
“Perhaps someday we shall be brothers in the Order.”
“Um, yeah, perhaps.”
Don’t hold your breath.
As Mr. Drexler turned and strolled away, Jack headed home.
He was halfway up Franklin Street when he saw movement to his right and Levi Coffin emerged from the shadows.
Jack hid his surprise. This guy had a habit of seeming to appear out of thin air.
“You following me?”
“Nope,” he said as he fell in step beside Jack.
“Well, you’ve got to be a long way from home.”
“I am.”
“Then how do you get around? Teleport?”
“What’s that?”
Jack couldn’t believe he didn’t know, but explained anyway.
“That’s when you make a thing disappear from one place and appear in another.”
“That’s your talent! You moved those things into Toliver’s locker without openin’ the door!”
“No. Wrong. I don’t have a talent.”
“Then how’d you know about this teleportatin’?”
“Teleporting. And everybody knows.”
“Not everybody. At least not by that word. We call it ‘moving.’”
“‘We’?”
“Yeah, well, never mind that. Came by to tell you some news. I found out whose piney blood Toliver had on his hands.”
“Whose?”
“Marcie Kurek’s.”
“No way. She wasn’t a—”
“Yeah, she was. I