The Instruments of Darkness: A Thriller

Chapter LXIII

Angel and Louis arrived in Portland shortly after 7 p.m., having become embroiled in snarls of traffic before and after Boston. They freshened up, and let some sea air into their apartment, but by then it was too late for us to pay a visit to Bobby Ocean at his place of business, and confronting him at his home after dark struck me as unwise. If Bobby was intent on stirring up trouble, he’d take any opportunity offered. I wouldn’t have put it past him to summon the police and claim trespass or intimidation before we’d even managed to ring his doorbell, assuming he didn’t decide to cut out the middleman by shooting us himself.

On the other hand, Antoine Pinette was a regular at a place called the Capital over in Thornton Heights. Due to a reputation for violence, the Capital was known locally as the Murder Capital, and rarely did a weekend go by without someone being carried out feetfirst by paramedics. With the closure of Sangillo’s Tavern back in 2015, the Capital counted as one of the last of Cumberland County’s true dive bars. The Fulcis had wept when Sangillo’s Tavern lost its liquor license—Dave Evans had wept, too, but only because it meant that the Fulcis would be spending more time at the Great Lost Bear—but not even Tony and Paulie were sufficiently nostalgic for mayhem to darken the door of the Capital. Its interior smelled of dust, urine, and drain cleaner, the floor was permanently littered with fragments of shattered glass and broken dreams, and even the furniture had tattoos. In recent years it had also become a clubhouse for Pinette and his people, making it still less desirable as a hostelry for the masses, were such a thing possible.

If getting in Bobby Ocean’s face on his home territory had been rejected as unnecessarily provocative, squaring up to his alpha dog in a bar notorious for its savagery might have been considered foolhardy in the extreme, but Pinette had to be dealt with. Even if we approached Bobby first, his natural reaction would be to summon Pinette soon after, with orders to salve his master’s wounded pride by stirring the pot some more, maybe by taking another run at Colleen Clark’s house. But by making Pinette aware of the consequences of his actions, we might be able to give him pause for thought and potentially defang Bobby along the way.

The Capital occupied the first floor of an old two-story brownstone that looked out of place amid modern warehouse stores and a couple of dilapidated strip malls, like the last surviving structure from an earlier settlement annihilated by aerial bombing. The windows had bars on the outside and wire mesh on the inside, while the main door was a slab of graffitied metal monitored by the kind of meathead who bought his T-shirts too small and his pants too large. This latest version was sitting on a high stool, immersed in his cell phone like a chump, so our shadows had fallen on him before he even registered our approach. From inside the Capital came the sound of raised voices competing with speed metal.

The doorman finally looked up. His eyes drifted over Angel and me before resting on Louis.

“I don’t think this is your kind of place, fellas,” he said, addressing himself to one of us in particular. People of color didn’t frequent the Capital, not unless they were lost, or angling for an insurance settlement.

Angel looked momentarily confused, but then his face cleared.

“Wait a minute,” he said, “this isn’t one of those straight bars, is it? You know, with heterosexuals touching and kissing and all? We’ve heard about those kinds of places. I’d like to visit one myself, seeing as how I’m on vacation. It’ll be something to tell the folks back home.”

“We’re from New York,” added Louis, as though this explained everything, which it possibly did.

“Then get the fuck back there,” said the doorman.

Here’s the thing about stools: they have a tendency toward instability, especially if you’ve unwisely developed the bad habit of shifting your weight back to raise the front legs briefly from the ground, as the doorman had. That was why, seconds after advising Louis to head south for the duration, he found himself lying on his back with the sole of Louis’s right shoe pressed hard against his neck. His eyes were now even duller than before because he’d banged his head hard.

“Like the man told you,” said Louis, “we’re on vacation.”

I picked up what was left of the stool and tossed it between two cars. God forbid we should have created a trip hazard.

“Why don’t you introduce us to everyone inside?” I said to the doorman. He nodded once, before immediately regretting it. He struggled to rise, but if he expected any help, he was out of luck. We let him get vertical at his own pace before giving him time to stop swaying. He managed to get the door open and half fell into the bar, the three of us close behind.

The music was painfully loud. A dozen people were scattered around the room—three at the bar, two in a booth halfway down on the right, and the rest by the pool table at the rear—but the attention of nearly all, the bartender included, was fixed on two young women playing eight ball. One of them was wearing only a bra and denim shorts. She missed her shot, and the men whooped as she began to remove the bra.

“I warned you,” said Angel. “It’s a straight joint.”

“Classy too,” said Louis.

Only one man wasn’t taking in the show, and that was Antoine Pinette. He was seated at the end of the bar farthest from the door, with a glass of orange juice in front of him. He barely reacted when I reached across and turned off the music, as though he’d long before tuned it out. Pinette was lean in the way of those who burned off calories at a higher rate than the average, consuming vast quantities of energy even in repose. He got his ash-blond hair cut at the same place in the Old Port frequented by a lot of the local cops, much to their disgust, so it was always short and neat. Unlike everyone else in the Capital, his skin was free of ink, and his white shirt was freshly laundered. Slowly, lazily, he turned toward us, revealing his strange symmetry. Pinette’s features were unsettling in their regularity, resembling an image that had been created by placing a mirror down the center of a face and transplanting the reflection. The absence of imperfection rendered him incongruous, turning what might have been a handsome man into a living mannequin. The effect was rendered more extreme by his eyes, which were a very vivid blue. They suggested a presence trapped behind a mask, like a ghost haunting itself.

Pinette looked after himself. He read books, worked out, ate a lot of protein, didn’t screw around, and forged bonds of discipline among his people based on shared credos. He did not own a cell phone, not even one of the old flips that couldn’t do more than make or receive calls, which, in addition to preserving his sanity and attention span, gave him a layer of deniability should the law come calling. Like Bobby Ocean, he had left conventional politics far behind. Republicans and Democratic elites were one and the same to Pinette, joint conspirators in a “globo-homo” pyramid scheme, a cancerous metastasis whose visible sores took the form of shopping malls, outlet stores, minimum-wage jobs without security, and despoiled nature. I might even have agreed with some of his conclusions, but not his solution: the consolidation of white power through the exploitation of the credulous; the victimization and terrorization of those who did not share his color or beliefs; and a conviction that the strong and powerful had no obligations to the weak and vulnerable, and the only earth destined to be inherited by the meek was the patch of ground in which they were finally interred. Men like Pinette had helped the aged and crippled climb down from the cattle cars at Auschwitz, and offered soft words of reassurance to them as they were led to the gas chambers.

A familiar brute in denim and leather, seated not far from Pinette, eased himself from his stool and waddled in our direction. His name was Noah Morin, and he came from a long line of welfare deadbeats who prided themselves on never having done an honest day’s labor, not unless a prison guard was standing over them with a baton. Cumulatively, his people worked fewer hours each year than the Easter Bunny. If Morin had finished high school, he had no recollection of it, and if he’d ever learned anything, he’d done his best to forget that as well. But compared to the rest of his clan, Noah was quite the go-getter: he picked up jobs here and there, the majority dishonest and the rest actively crooked. His bulk meant he was rarely required to inflict or suffer harm, since his physicality alone was enough to encourage compliance. I wasn’t surprised that he’d fallen in with Pinette and Bobby Ocean. Morin was a bully boy, cannon fodder. He was one of the reasons Bobby was so vehemently antiabortion, because it reduced the stock of foot soldiers for the battles to come. When that fighting was done, Morin’s betters would step over his corpse without a second glance.

“I was listening to the music,” said Morin, to all and none of us.

He showed no sign of recognizing me. Then again, he had the retentive memory of a hamster.

“What music?” Louis replied. “I didn’t hear any music.”

Morin’s head swiveled in Louis’s direction.

“I heard noise, is what I heard,” Louis continued. “We didn’t like it, so we brought it to an end.”

Morin’s brow furrowed so deeply that his face practically collapsed in on itself. He advanced a couple of steps to get in Louis’s face. Flecks of spittle struck Louis’s skin as he spoke again.

“Who the fuck are you to—?”

Louis had slowed up in recent years. In his prime, I wouldn’t have seen the blow before it landed. Now, as he struck Morin in the throat with the rigid, outstretched fingers of his right hand, I caught the blur. Morin dropped to his knees and began to choke. Louis regarded the spectacle with mild interest.

“Who the fuck am I?” he said. “I’m That Guy.”

Around us, the clientele were reacting to this assault on one of their own. I saw pool cues being taken from the rack, and I was sure that blades, and a gun or two, would also be available for selection. The woman in the denim shorts, her bra refastened, picked up the cue ball and hefted it, ready to throw.

Only then did Antoine Pinette intervene, the bodies nearest him parting like the Red Sea before Moses, although that analogy immediately ran aground on the rocks of Pinette’s frequently expressed anti-Semitism.

“I’ll take care of this,” he said. “I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding.” He stared hard at me. “Right, Mr. Parker?”

“No,” I replied, “I think we’ve understood everything so far, what with all the single syllables. But we’d like to use some longer words with you, Antoine.”

Pinette gestured to the empty stools.

“So sit.”

By Louis’s feet, Noah Morin had turned a shade of puce.

“You mind if someone helps Noah?” said Pinette. “Be unfortunate for everyone if he choked to death.”

Louis gave signs of being about to dispute this, before saving his breath.

“If they must,” he conceded.

We stepped back, allowing two men to hoist Morin to his feet and drag him to a chair. He managed to breathe again, which was something; and when he spoke in response to his buddies, he didn’t sound too different, only wheezier. Perhaps Louis had pulled the blow at the last minute to avoid damaging Morin’s carotid artery, since being ignorant shouldn’t carry a death sentence. Eventually, after some consultation, it was decided to take Morin to the ER as a precaution. Given the probable state of his general health, he might have been at risk of a stroke.

“You could just have answered his question,” said Pinette, once Morin had been removed. His voice was very low, and he pronounced with precision every syllable of each word.

“I did,” said Louis.

“Without disabling him, I meant.”

“I doubt it would have been as effective.”

Pinette took in Louis, like one prizefighter sizing up another.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” he said, “but then, introductions are hardly necessary. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know who I was, and I’ve heard all about you from Bobby. You’re Louis, the one who blew up his son’s truck. Bobby thinks that incident might have led to the boy’s death.”

Louis made no comment.

“Between ourselves,” Pinette continued, “I reckon Billy’s stupidity was the main contributary factor, but don’t tell his old man I said that. Can I buy you gentlemen a drink?”

“We won’t be staying,” I said, “so we’ll pass.”

Pinette called for another juice, and settled himself more comfortably. We remained standing. I noticed a pack of cards beside him, and two blackjack hands lying facedown. I took a look at the nearer: a pair of eights. I didn’t see any upcard.

“Your hand?” I asked Pinette.

“Someone else’s. Should I surrender?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“You play?”

“Not me. I promised Mother.”

“Pity, I take Social Security checks. Well, what do you want to talk about?”

“Last night’s attack on a house in Rosemont.”

“First I heard of it.”

It was always difficult to determine Antoine Pinette’s thought processes, because that unsettlingly congruous face gave so little away. When confronted with someone of his genus, it was often best to assume he was being dishonest and act accordingly. But Pinette had a curious code of honor, preferring to stay silent rather than lie, which had resulted in prison terms that perjury might have avoided.

“I expected more of you, Antoine,” I said. “It was a step down from beating up trans college kids or young mothers at Black Lives Matter protests, and that’s saying a lot.”

“You’re speaking a foreign tongue,” said Pinette. “Try English.”

“Last night someone tried to firebomb the home of one of my clients.”

“And?”

“The firebomb was thrown from your vehicle.”

For the first time since our arrival, Pinette looked flustered.

“You must be mistaken,” he said.

“You have a distinctive two-tone car, Antoine. It was spotted fleeing the scene. There’s no mistake.”

Pinette drank some juice before wiping his mouth with a napkin. His teeth were curiously small and gapped, causing his dentition to resemble a child’s.

“Who’s the client?”

“Colleen Clark.”

“The one whose kid disappeared?”

“The same.”

“I got no beef with her, whatever she might have done.”

“I never said you had, but you work for Bobby Ocean, and he has a beef with me. To be fair, Bobby has a beef with virtually everyone.”

“I don’t work for Bobby,” said Pinette. “We share certain perspectives on the world, but I’m strictly self-employed.”

“So either Bobby paid you to attack a woman’s home, or you did it of your own volition. Regardless, we have an issue.”

“I give you my word: This isn’t on me. I don’t even know where she lives. What time did this happen?”

Frustratingly, I was starting to believe him. Like I said, Pinette was many things, but a liar wasn’t among them.

“About one in the morning.”

“I was home in bed,” he said. “My girl was with me.”

Pinette had long been involved with a woman named Jesse Waite, out of Saco. I knew Jesse because I’d gone to school in Scarborough with her and her older sister, Kristine. Their father had an issue with the Saco School Department, which led to an agreement that his kids could attend high school outside the district as long as he paid tuition and transportation. Then he died, rendering the disagreement moot and leaving Jesse and Kristine free to go to school closer to home, after which I fell out of touch with them. I remembered Jesse as being bright and charming, and if she’d ever said anything derogatory about people of color, she had not done so in my presence. She and Pinette might have reached an accomodation about leaving politics and race on the doorstep, but that was about as likely as marrying a preacher and keeping religion for Sundays only. Jesse Waite, therefore, had obviously changed a lot since her schooldays.

“And your car,” I said. “Was that with you, too?”

Pinette’s eyelids flickered. He might not have lobbed the firebomb at the Clark house, but he knew who did. He called out to one of the men by the pool table, addressing him as Olin.

“Where’s Leo?” asked Pinette.

Leo was Antoine’s younger brother. I’d seen him around, always in the company of a couple of wingmen who had mistaken him for an alpha male, or a beta with aspirations, and a bunch of generic young women who were too dim to be able to tell the difference. He was a weak man who coasted on Antoine’s fumes, relying on his older brother’s reputation in the absence of one of his own. It didn’t shock me to learn that he might have been involved in the nighttime attack on the Clark house. It was his style, the only surprise being that he’d come at the place from the front instead of the back.

“He went to get a couple of slices at the market,” said Olin. “He ought to be back any minute.”

“Go find him,” said Pinette. “And Olin?”

“Yes?”

“You say nothing to him about our guests, you hear?”

Olin heard, and left through the rear door.

“Did you give your car to your brother last night?” I asked.

“His is in the shop,” said Pinette. “He dropped me home at ten, and wanted to go watch some MMA shit with his buddies. I didn’t see any harm in letting him use the car, because he only lives a block away from me, but it doesn’t mean he then went on a drive-by. We’ll talk to him, hear what he has to say. If he fucked up, I’ll take care of it, not you and your friends.”

I told him I didn’t have any difficulty with that. In fact, it was a relief to learn that Antoine hadn’t been responsible, as it de-escalated the situation. My priority was to ensure Colleen and her home remained safe. If that meant ceding retribution duties to Antoine, so be it.

Pinette played with a discarded ring pull. Around us conversation resumed, but at a lower level than before. The pool game had been abandoned and the women were now fully dressed. I noticed that Pinette’s jeans were very new and his black boots carefully polished. Even the laces were clean. There was a military precision to him, a discipline, even though he’d never served. When he delivered a beating, it was reputed to be with no more or less intensity than the misdeed required, carried out with the minimum of exertion and without any great alteration in his demeanor. But that wasn’t to say he didn’t enjoy it.

Pinette’s eyes were moving between Angel and Louis, sizing them up.

“Is it true what they say?” he asked.

“And what would that be?” answered Louis.

“That you’re, you know, together.”

Louis’s face remained deadpan.

“We’re here,” he said, “and you can count to two, so yeah, I’d describe that as a fair summation.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes, I know.”

Pinette shook his head at the ways of the world.

“Bobby Ocean really fucking hates you three guys.”

“Bobby has a long list of people he hates,” I replied, “most of whom he’s never met.”

“You’re all right up there with the best of them.”

“And your feelings about us? Just to avoid any confusion.”

Pinette pointed at Angel and Louis.

“I hate those two for what they are”—his finger shifted toward me—“and I hate you for the company you keep, among other things.”

His attention became fixed on Angel.

“You’re very quiet,” he said.

“I’m trying not to breathe too deeply,” said Angel. “This place smells of stale sperm.”

“I figure you’d know,” said Pinette, as the front door opened and Olin returned, trailed by two younger men. They were both eating greasy pizza from paper plates, but the first of them stopped chewing as soon as he saw me. Leo Pinette resembled a failed laboratory effort to replicate his older brother. The same looks were present, but clouded by physical indolence and intellectual sloth. He wore box-fresh white Nikes, a black Lonsdale tracksuit, and a UFC baseball cap with the holographic sticker still on the visor, which was nature’s way of communicating that here, incontestably, was a dick. Leo was gym-heavy from hours spent in a mixed-martial-arts dump over by the Jetport, but a halfway decent boxer could have put him on the floor in minutes, if not seconds, because he lacked application and skill. The tougher competitors, those who could take the hits, might have hoped to make some money from MMA, but most of the meatheads who gravitated to it did so because they wanted to learn how to hurt someone weaker than themselves and got their kicks from watching others being hurt in turn. The sight of blood gave them a hard-on, as long as the blood wasn’t their own. Leo Pinette would never set foot inside a ring for a fair fight and would never throw a punch outside one before first checking that his boys had his back. He was, I imagined, a grave disappointment to his brother, someday destined to land himself in a mess from which Antoine wouldn’t be able to extricate him.

Leo was also an object lesson for those who didn’t actively resist the encroachments of the far right. When the dust cleared, the local gauleiter would be someone like Leo: a petty tyrant, an abuser of men and women, and therefore the last person to whom authority should ever be ceded.

“I think you know Mr. Parker,” said Antoine, as Olin leaned against the door, more to prevent anyone from entering than leaving. Leo might have been a coward, but he wouldn’t want to lose face in front of his brother and his buddies, and calculated he was safe while they were nearby.

Behind Leo, the kid who’d entered with him was doing his best to make like a snowflake and melt, drifting toward the pool table as a prelude to vanishing.

“Did I tell you to go anywhere?” said Antoine.

The kid paused, a half-eaten slice still in his hand. He was afraid to set it down so it sat congealing in his hand, excess grease dripping to the floor. In another bar, or another life, I might have felt sorry for him.

“You borrowed my car last night,” said Antoine to Leo. “Where did you go?”

His voice was mellow, even bored, like a father feigning curiosity in the activities of one of the more tedious of his teenage offspring.

“Around,” replied Leo.

“Around where?”

“Just around.”

“You told me you were going to Sonny’s to watch TV.” Antoine’s eyes flicked to Leo’s associate. “Is that what you did, Sonny?”

To his credit, Sonny was shrewd enough to know when he was screwed. We could see him assessing the risks involved in lying and the chances of being successful, before deciding that honesty was, if not the best policy, then marginally better than the alternative.

“We went back to my place after,” he said.

“After?”

Sonny looked to Leo, hoping he wouldn’t have to commit to this path alone, but Leo, I guessed, had also run the odds and come up with a different outcome, which only proved he didn’t have a future as a gambler.

“Don’t look at him, Sonny,” said Antoine, “look at me.”

“We took a ride by a house. Maybe we threw something at it.”

“Like what?”

“We were just trying to—”

“Like what?” Antoine repeated.

“A bottle, with gasoline in it, and some sugar.”

Sonny bowed his head.

“And why’d you do that?”

Again, Sonny’s eyes flicked to Leo, but this time with more hostility: Sonny had been doing whatever Leo told him to do. Antoine had come to the same conclusion, likely long before the two men had returned to the bar, and was now focused on Leo. The show was for our benefit, but Antoine would also grasp the opportunity to teach his brother a lesson by making his humiliation lengthy and public. I doubted it was the first such lesson Antoine had tried to teach him. If nothing else, one had to admire Antoine’s perseverance, because Leo wasn’t the learning type.

“Well,” said Antoine, “you want to tell me?”

“We did it for Bobby O.”

Bobby O? I’d never heard Bobby Ocean called that before. Perhaps he was trying to be down with the kids.

“Bobby asked you to burn a woman’s house?” said Antoine, not even trying to conceal his incredulity.

“Not in so many words,” said Leo.

“Not in so many words, huh? Then how about you tell me the words he did use, unless he sent the message by fucking Morse code.”

Leo licked his lips.

“He said someone ought to teach the bitch a lesson.”

“What ‘bitch’?”

“The Clark woman, the one who killed her kid.”

“When did he say this?”

“Yesterday. And not just her.” Leo jerked his chin in my direction. “Him, too, and his kike lawyer.”

Moxie wasn’t Jewish, not that it mattered, but Antoine saw me react to the slur. He raised his hand.

“You do anything to my brother and this will become about us, not him.”

“He needs to modify his language,” I said. “If he doesn’t, I’ll take my chances.”

Louis, meanwhile, was grinning at Leo. It wasn’t a friendly grin, but resembled what a mouse might see moments before a cat got tired of watching it squirm beneath its paw.

“We have company, Leo,” said Antoine, “so watch your mouth.”

Leo did some eye-rolling, but only for form’s sake.

“And was Bobby pointing at you when he said this?” Antoine persisted. “Did he suggest that you ought to be the one to do it, and direct you toward the matches and gasoline?”

But it was Sonny who answered.

“He wanted us to do something to her. He didn’t tell us directly, but we knew. We got it.”

Antoine studied Sonny.

“I can believe that,” he said, before striking Sonny full in the face with the heel of his right hand. Sonny’s nose crumpled under the impact, and he toppled backward as Antoine advanced, the steel toe of his booted right foot catching the boy in the side. Sonny curled up on the floor to protect himself, so the next kick struck the base of his spine. By the door, Olin opened his jacket to reveal the butt of the gun tucked into his belt, on the off chance that we, or anyone else, felt the urge to intervene. Leo didn’t do anything except drop his pizza.

Eventually, Olin said “Antoine” and the kicking ended so abruptly that a switch might have been thrown in Pinette’s brain. He stepped back, ran his hands through his hair, and turned to his brother.

“Take Sonny to the emergency room,” he said. “Get him seen to. You can pay the bill. Then I want you to put a thousand dollars—no, two thousand dollars—in an envelope and drop it off at his place. After that, I never want to see him around here again. The next time you feel the urge to show some initiative, you talk to me first, understand?”

Leo swallowed hard.

“Yes,” he said, but behind his eyes a dark shape scuttled, like a spider stalking the inside of his head, seeking an outlet for its venom. The atmosphere roiled with Leo’s suppressed rage, the sediment disturbed from his depths dimming the very air around us.

“Sara,” said Antoine, “give them a ride to the ER.”

The girl with the cue ball, who had kept it in her right hand throughout, tossed it on the pool table, buttoned her shirt, and dug her car keys from her shorts. The ER would be doing good business that night thanks to the Murder Capital, even by the usual standards. Leo and another man picked up Sonny and carried him out, Sara trailing behind. Puddles of blood marked Sonny’s path.

“We good?” said Antoine to me.

“That’s not the word I’d have used. I didn’t like the performance.”

“Says the guy who leaves bodies in his wake. You want to be a judge, get some robes. We’re done.”

“I’m going to have to talk to Bobby Ocean as well,” I said.

“You and me both. I prefer afternoons. You might want to bear that in mind for your diary, so our paths don’t cross again. Now get the fuck out of here.”

We left without saying anything more. After all, what would have been the point? Olin held the door so it didn’t hit our asses on the way out.

“Well?” I said, as we walked to my car.

“Antoine’s a step up from the norm in intellect,” observed Louis, “but a step down in every other way.”

“What makes him dangerous,” I said, “is that he knows exactly who he is, and has chosen his path after due reflection. He’s not deluded, or crazy, but he’s definitely malign.”

“The way he dealt with that Sonny kid was impressively methodical,” said Louis. “I’d be surprised if Pinette’s heart rate went above sixty during the whole beating.”

Olin emerged from the Capital, watching us while he smoked a cigarette and spoke on his cell phone. We got in my car and I started the engine.

“I wonder who Olin’s calling,” I said.

“Bobby Ocean?” suggested Angel.

“If it’s Bobby, he’s getting in touch with him at Antoine’s instigation. Olin is Antoine’s creature through and through.”

“As opposed to Leo,” said Angel. “For a moment back there, Leo wanted to kill his brother.”

“Antoine does cast a big shadow for someone with no light around him,” I said. “Leo worships him, but that’s not the same as liking.”

We drove off. I had hoped that, as the Capital receded in the distance, I might sense its miasma lifting from me, but I did not. Antoine Pinette and Bobby Ocean were part of a new ascendancy, but if you caught their reflection in a glass, they would appear dressed in an older raiment, one adorned with death’s heads. They would have to be faced down and crushed because there could be no negotiation with them. If they were given free rein, they would trample goodness and morality into the dirt, and burn truth and decency to ash.

“What are you thinking?” asked Louis.

“That it never ends.”

“If so,” said Louis, “it’s not for want of us trying.”