She Talks to Angels

by James D F Hannah

  He’s fine. Not a scratch.

  Which means it’s not his blood.

  Jesus. What the fuck have you done, Deacon?

  He wants to go home. Tell his father. Robert Charles, Master of the Universe. He can fix this. He fixes everything.

  Deacon’s seen enough episodes of Law and Order and CSI to know about fingerprints. He pulls his shirt off and wipes the pipe down and runs to Meadow’s car. He’ll drive home, he’ll explain it all to his father. Solutions will be arrived to.

  Gets to the car. No keys. Panics. Checks the floorboard, passenger seat, underneath the seats. Nothing.

  Looks back at Meadow. Realizes where the keys are.

  Deacon wonders if it’s even right to say this is “Meadow” anymore. That form lying there looks like Meadow. Sort of. What once was Meadow. Hard to tell from all the blood matted in the hair, parts of her skull caved in, her body bent like a rag doll thrown aside.

  Deacon knows this isn’t the little girl who hugs him and calls him “big brother” and makes him peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches and bought him a hit of heroin when he thought for sure he was dying from detox.

  No, Deacon’s killed that person. He’s sure of it. Took a pipe and lifted it into the air and brought it down on top of her skull. Again. And again. And again. Until it’s not Meadow anymore. It’s not anything anymore.

  This is like those feelings Deacon wants so badly to bury. Beat them back until they’re useless and inert. All he wants is the lack of feelings. The nothing.

  Deacon gets out of the car and walks toward the shape of what used to be Meadow.

  It moves.

  The body rustles, rumbles, shakes as though the ground underneath it is trembling. Deacon’s breath catches in his throat. He stares.

  The rat—bigger than a kitten, almost the size of a dog—crawls out from underneath Meadow’s body. Its gray fur shimmers in the fading light of the setting sun. Its tail swats the air as it draws its body upright, onto its hind legs, and looks at Deacon, whiskers twitching, dark eyes drilling holes through Deacon.

  The rat hisses at him, bares its teeth in defiance.

  She’s not yours anymore. Leave her to us.

  That’s when the next rat shows up. Scurries across the shape that Deacon still thought of as Meadow and joins the first. This guy, he’s bigger, angrier looking. Not the size of a dog so much as looking like he’s swallowed a dog. A dog in a rat suit.

  There’s another. And another. And another. And another. They swarm around the body. Chattering and squeaking and making fierce, hostile sounds.

  Then he hears chewing. Gnawing. Biting. He knows what’s happening.

  No. Fuck this. Fuck them.

  Deacon—shirtless, wide-eyed, brain still shrouded in a white chemical fog—rushes the rats, arms in the air, screaming like a wild man.

  One puffs his chest out, stretches himself out wide, hisses. Deacon pauses for a beat, a fraction of a second, wondering if the rat might attack him. Then he runs faster, harder, yelling.

  The ocean of rats parts like water, retreating and disappearing back into the landfill, back to find easier food. Deacon stands next to Meadow’s body, breathing hard. The adrenaline of it all, the surge, washes over him.

  He can’t look at her. August. Hot and humid. She’s ripe already. It takes everything Deacon has to look for the keys, checking her pockets, moving her around, and digging. He twists his head away. Gagging and retching and trying not to vomit. Her body makes noises. Squishing sounds. He can’t see much through the tears, the world through rain-streaked windows. She was so small, but lying there, no resistance, she was awkward, oddly heavy.

  Finally, there they are. On a key chain with a tiny heart and the phrase “Daddy’s Girl.”

  Deacon sees the rats watching him from a safe distance. They wait for their opportunity.

  Even if this isn’t Meadow anymore, if it was just the shape of her, he can’t leave her to them. He finds the paint tarp. A Rorschach-splattered sheet of canvas. He wraps Meadow in it as snuggly as possible.

  Like a cocoon.

  He leaves her there. Heads home. To Daddy.

  He’ll fix it. He always fixes things.

  41

  Charles kept his head low, his voice hushed, hands grasped together.

  “When Deacon came home that night, told me what happened—”

  “You covered his ass,” I said.

  “I couldn’t lose two children in one night. I cleaned him up, burned his clothes, scrubbed down Meadow’s truck, did everything I could. The next morning, when the sheriff came to tell me, I put on the show that was required. But now I’m losing her all over again, and him as well.” Charles lifted his head and looked at me. “Think whatever you want, Malone. What I did, I didn’t do to save myself. I did it to save the child I still had. There’s never a day I don’t think about Meadow, or I don’t look at Deacon and think about what he did. I’d lost a wife, I lost a daughter, and I’d be damned if I’d lose my son, too. He”—Charles wiped at his face with his hands—“Why ever he did it, he . . .”

  I walked away from Charles. Put my back to him. Looking at him just pissed me off more.

  “I’ve talked to the Feds and arranged for you to meet up with them,” I said. “You’re going to sell them on Gillespie and the real estate scam. Tell them everything you know.”

  Charles spoke through hushed breaths. “The fuck you say? I’ll lose my business. They’ll run me out of town on a rail. There won’t be a goddamn thing left.”

  I spun around and punched Robert Charles. He tumbled backward and fell against the wall and slid to the floor, clutching his face the entire time. He gave himself a moment, then tried to charge me.

  He telegraphed his moves, though—they were slow and cumbersome, held back by the booze—and I had my feet solid and set. I took him by the shoulders and used his momentum to throw him across the room. His skull bounced off the wall, leaving a hole in the drywall. He landed on his ass and gave his head a shake.

  I grabbed him by the back of his shirt and jerked him to his feet. He made some awkward effort to swing a fist at me, but I kept him at an arm’s length and listened to the missed blows whiz through the air. In the midst of a swing, I let go of him and watched him plant face-first against the carpet.

  I stepped onto his neck. He screamed, and I pressed my foot down harder on him. He stopped screaming.

  “You weren’t trying to save Deacon; you were trying to save your own ass,” I said. “You calculated the cost of your daughter’s death and knew you could leverage that but not if people knew Deacon did it. Those bargains you made were to keep your life at status quo and nothing else. And now you’ll make one more deal, and the people who should have gone to prison to begin with, are going to take their falls, and you’ll get to experience what it’s like to do the right goddamn thing.” I twisted my foot into his neck. I felt the tendons spin underneath the sole of my shoe. “Do you understand me, Charles? This isn’t fucking negotiable. You’ll do this, or I swear to Christ, they’ll wheel you out of here feet first.”

  “Yes,” he said. It came out as a choked gasp. “Now get the fuck off of me.”

  I pulled my foot back and stepped away. Charles stood up and rubbed his neck.

  “Take a shower, stop smelling like a distillery, and get dressed,” I said. “We’ve got an appointment to make with the FBI.”

  Charles scowled at me and walked out of the room.

  Woody looked at me with raised eyebrows. “Aren’t you the badass?”

  “Correspondence course,” I said. “‘How to Kick Ass in 10 Easy Lessons.’”

  “You looked like you were ready to kill him.”

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t answer. Maybe that was my answer.

  Woody nodded. “All right then.”

  42

  Davies gave me directions to a steel mill the next county over. Once upon a simpler time—when we all sent a bad actor to the White House—promises were m
ade about better days ahead, but the mill still shut down because it was cheaper to buy from China than make it here. The cycle became that every few years, someone showed up and promised they’ll make America great again, and they’d open the mill up again, and there’d be jobs galore, and everything would be incredible—the way it had been once before. It never happens, though, because nothing ever gets to be the way it used to be, if only because it was never that way to begin with. Damned if we don’t want to hear the empty promises, though, like the abused wife who steadies her nerve in the ER and tells herself her husband will change. This time will be different, we repeat like a mantra, still nursing the wounds from the last time. But it never changes. Ever.

  The mill had spent decades taking on various forms of abuse. Kids came on weekends to party, an easy place to drink and get high and break what little glass remained in the windowpanes without the cops bothering them. The parking lot was littered with shattered beer bottles and flattened aluminum empties. I cut the wheel on the Aztek back and forth to avoid jagged shards of glass. I spotted the gleam off a hypodermic syringe and sighed. I hoped the soles of my shoes were thick enough; I was working to avoid a case of hepatitis that week. I worked to avoid it most of the time, if I’m honest.

  Woody opted to hang back. “Me and the Feds, we like to keep a respectable distance from one another. We have some unresolved issues.”

  “Like?”

  “Things. We’ll get around to fixing them sooner or later.”

  I could have pushed, but he wouldn’t have answered. Not in any real way. That’s how Woody rolled. He loved the mystery.

  Charles was slumped in the passenger seat like a child forced to visit relatives he hated. He’d cleaned up and combed his hair and dressed in a polo shirt and creased slacks and enough aftershave to mask the stink of booze seeping out of his pores. The inside of my car smelled like an Elks Lodge meeting.

  The Feds were there when we pulled into the mill parking lot. The black SUV with the tinted windows was a huge giveaway. Two guys got out from the front, and Davies from the back. The dude from behind the wheel looked like Buddy Holly, with close-cropped hair and horn-rimmed glasses. He wore a dark gray suit that looked swiped from Don Draper’s closet, with a bleached-white shirt and skinny black tie. His jacket was buttoned and probably stayed that way. I wondered if he realized Hoover wasn’t the boss anymore.

  The other guy was older, with the look of an aging surfer dude, his shaggy blond hair and beard going gray, dressed in an untucked shirt and blue jeans and flip-flops. He chewed gum like it was his job.

  Davies kept away from both guys. She looked as if she’d lost weight, her dark hair longer, with fine threads of white that put age on her she didn’t deserve. The bottom of her washed-out Mountain Dew T-shirt did a shitty job covering the pistol clipped to her waist.

  I parked, and Charles and I got out. Surfer Dude smiled and shook my hand.

  “I’m Special Agent Chuck Miller.” He gestured toward Buddy Holly. “That’s Special Agent Wentworth Hall. And you already know Agent Davies.” Miller kept his smile big. He looked like he could either sell me a car or a kilo of hash. “You and Agent Davies have a storied history, don’t you?”

  “There was that time with a thing,” I said and smiled back. I almost felt like I had to.

  Charles rested against the hood of my Aztek. Miller reached out to shake Charles’s hand. Charles stared at it.

  “Play nice, Bobby, and we’ll stop for ice cream on the way home,” I said.

  Charles spat on the ground. “Fuck you, Malone.”

  “Remember your neck, Bobby,” I said. To Miller, I said, “We’re having him tested for distemper next week.”

  Miller looked back at Davies. “You were right,” he said. “He tries hard to be funny.”

  “His success-failure rate is getting better,” she said.

  Special Agent Hall stepped forward with a sense of hurried impatience. You could tell he was the guy who spent his life ordering everything on the side at restaurants. “The singular reason we showed up today was because Agent Davies vouched for you and said you could help us bring down several sets of criminal activities we’re monitoring. Your attempts at being funny weren’t part of the deal.”

  “I hand that out free of charge,” I said. “Offering a bit of extra value.”

  Hall looked at Miller. “I’m ready to go. Come on.”

  Miller cocked an eyebrow at me and turned a gaze over at Hall. “Cool your jets a minute. I’m sure Mr. Malone is nervous and excited, dealing with federal authorities.” He turned that smile on me again. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Malone?”

  “I’m shivering with anticipation,” I said.

  Miller dug his hands into his pockets, keeping the thumbs hooked out. Ever the cool kid. “Based on what Agent Davies told us, and I’m sure it’s only a fraction of the story, you’re fucked beyond belief, Mr. Charles. Or is it Bobby? They call you Bobby?” Miller gave a dismissive wave. “Doesn’t matter, because I’m calling you Bobby. I like Bobby. Bobby’s casual. Bobby’s cool. We all in for Bobby?”

  “I’m in,” I said.

  “Whatever,” Hall said.

  Davies smirked. “I’m just gonna stand over here and make sure the car doesn’t tip over.”

  Miller smiled more. Until meeting Special Agent Chuck Miller, it hadn’t seemed possible to quantify an amount of smile. This guy made it possible.

  “Great,” Miller said. “So Bobby, tell us what you know about Mitchell Gillespie.”

  There was a moment when I wondered if Charles would make a run for it. His eyes focused out into the distance. His tongue slashed along his lips, and he blinked several times, and, finally, he talked. He told them everything. Hall clipped a mic to Charles’s shirt and recorded it all and took notes at the same time. Whenever it seemed as if Charles might hold something back, I nudged him in the shoulder, and he’d tap dance backward and fill in the holes.

  When Charles finished, Miller said, “Goddamn, Bobby, but I did not realize how fucked so fully encompassed your set of circumstances. You are royally SBT, baby.”

  Charles turned to me. “What the fuck is he talking about?”

  “SBT,” I said. “Screwed, blued, and tattooed.”

  Hall unhooked Charles’s mic and tucked the recorder and his notepad away in a coat pocket. “We need to bring Mr. Charles in for a more formal interrogation, and we can move with a course of action against Mr. Gillespie.”

  “For what?” I said. “There’s a string of federal charges you can weave into a noose to hang him with. We’ve got the fucking paperwork that ties him to it. This is practically a fucking Christmas gift to you people.”

  Hall took his glasses off and cleaned the lens with the whitest handkerchief I’d ever seen in my life. “Mr. Malone, you’re here because you committed a felony by breaking into Mitchell Gillespie’s office, which is the only reason you possess knowledge about these crimes. Because you stole it, that paperwork is worthless. We need Gillespie to have possession of it so officially, Mr. Charles can come forward, we can get a court order, move in, obtain the paperwork legally, and pursue the case.”

  Miller said, “Special Agent Hall’s greater point here is, what you’re talking about is something that requires care, patience, and planning. We can’t do this and be done in time for you to make dinner reservations, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “Come on,” I said to Charles. “We’ll handle this ourselves.”

  Hall moved forward. “Wait one minute,” he said. “You assholes have evidence of federal crimes. You drag us out into the middle of Bumfuck, Egypt. You’re obligated to—”

  Miller extended his arm, catching Hall in the chest. Hall gave him a slow, baleful stare that would have weakened lesser men. Or maybe Miller was just on good meds. Miller smiled and popped his gum.

  “Go sit in the car for a few minutes,” Miller said. “Turn the air conditioner on. Play with the satellite radio.”

&nbs
p; Hall pushed Miller’s arm away and got closer to Miller’s face. Miller didn’t budge.

  “Don’t fucking talk to me like I’m a goddamn child,” he said. “I’m the fucking senior agent in charge—”

  “Go,” Miller said. He said it the same way that I had heard Woody say things, and Hall responded how people responded to Woody, with an almost imperceptible nod, a drop of the shoulders, and reluctant obedience. He got into the SUV from the passenger side and reached across to start the engine.

  Miller blew a large pink bubble and let it pop. “I like you, Malone,” he said. “You’ve got a nut sack on you. Most people just roll up like a pill bug when they deal with us.”

  “I told you how he was,” Davies said. She had watched everything with the faintest of smiles.

  “I suppose I didn’t appreciate Mr. Malone’s . . . tenacity.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m tenacious all the live-long day.”

  “Let’s say you and Bobby get back in this deathtrap you call a car, and you drive away,” Miller said. “Technically we can’t stop you. We’ve got nothing that we can arrest you on. You could go off and do whatever it is you think you can do about Gillespie, but let’s be honest with ourselves here, that I don’t think Bobby here wants to be living out the rest of his life in indentured servitude to Mitchell Gillespie, and you”—Miller winked and pointed at me—“you’re fucking dead. There’s no goddamn way he’s gonna let you keep on breathing fresh air. You know too much, and you’re not worth anything to him alive, so I have to wonder what you imagine your next step is.”

  “Haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  “Thinking might not be your strong point.”

  “Your partner would likely agree with you.”

  “Special Agent Hall’s not my ‘partner,’” Miller said. “He’s spent a lot of time in an office figuring out databases and theoretical strategies, but it’s obvious by how he dresses that he’s not out in the field much.”

  “And you are?”

  “I’ve done things that weren’t necessarily street legal in the interest of putting away bad guys. Sometimes you stretch the rules to get the job done. Why don’t you tell me what you’re thinking and let’s see what we can make work.”