Angel Eyes

by Ace Atkins

  “What now?” Z said.

  “In the Old West they’d smoke him out.”

  “And the New West?”

  “We wait.”

  “Not as much fun,” Z said.

  “Tom Mix would’ve gone in with both guns blasting.”

  “And he’d be dead.”

  “Already is,” I said. “Killed by a stray piece of luggage.”

  We waited all but two minutes before Gabby Leggett appeared in the wide doorway, wearing gray sweatpants and a man’s white undershirt splattered with blood. She was shoeless and wide-eyed, appearing to be wandering as a man screamed her name over and over inside.

  Sarkisov followed, with a shiny new AR-15 at her back. He had blue track pants and what appeared to be a Members Only jacket. His head was even larger than I remembered, and he wore a big grin on his face as he walked toward us. He held the gun expertly in his hands, aimed right at the small of her back.

  “Where’s Haldorn?” I said.

  “Some is here,” Sarkisov said. “Some of him elsewhere.”

  “And her?” I said.

  “Too much, my friend,” he said. “She’s seen too much.”

  “She’s not a part of this,” I said.

  “Oh, yes?” he said. “You think? Joe Haldorn told us she killed the movie man, this Yamashiro. Haldorn wanted the movie man’s money, but she shot him instead. She is crazy in the head. Set things off for all of us. No. No, no, no. You can’t have her. She’s broken. No use to anyone.”

  I was about to argue the point when I heard the crack of a rifle and Sarkisov’s left eye disappeared into a black hole. He fell hard to the ground, the wind picking up, scattering brownish dirt over his body. His mouth moved and made shapes but offered no words.

  Sixkill got to Gabby first, wrapping his leather jacket around her shoulders, as we moved fast for Sunset Boulevard. Chollo was out there somewhere, in the dark, watching our backs.

  Miles away from Hollywood, I dialed Samuelson’s cell.

  54

  Susan and I sat at the bar at Musso & Frank five days later.

  The last few days hadn’t been pleasant. Lots of discussions with LAPD. Lots of yelling from Samuelson. They’d taken the gun I’d borrowed from Chollo in addition to the .38 they’d gotten after the shoot-out at Griffith Park. We were finally headed back to Boston in the morning and Gabby Leggett had been checked into a posh rehab facility in Malibu by her mother. I wasn’t so sure the herbal teas and yoga sessions Susan had told me about would make up for her killing Yamashiro or erase Haldorn’s bloody end from her mind. However, I remained an optimist.

  I knew she’d killed Yamashiro. Susan knew. And so did Samuelson. But making a case and removing the blame from the late Joe Haldorn was something else entirely. The press was all over Haldorn’s shady past, and who was I to correct them? Besides, Haldorn and Riese had mentally manipulated Gabby for financial gain. Yamashiro had manipulated Gabby for pleasure. You didn’t need a Ph.D. from Stanford or Harvard to understand who was the gun, who made it, and who fired it.

  I held a cold martini in my hand while Susan squeezed my knee under the bar.

  “Careful or I might spill a drop.”

  Susan reached for her gimlet with vodka and fresh lime juice. She offered a devilish smile that would’ve been the ruin of a weaker man.

  “Did you go?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “And does it get any easier?”

  I shook my head. I took a drink and recalled slow dancing on a balcony long ago. Earlier I’d left red roses on Candy Sloan’s grave. Susan called it penance.

  “You don’t have to anymore,” she said.

  “It’s more for me.”

  Susan nodded. She understood. There were few things that Susan Silverman didn’t understand, watching me with her enormous black eyes. Without saying a word, she seemed to take everything in, evaluating me and contemplating all that had swirled around us.

  We drank together in the cavernous dining room, surrounded by the ghosts of Billy Wilder, Ernest Hemingway, and Tom Mix. The bartenders were old men with starched white shirts and black ties overlaid with red jackets with black lapels. They knew things. They spoke little and always offered an extra vial of your cocktail on the side.

  “I miss Pearl,” Susan said.

  “She’s up to five hundred followers on Instagram.”

  “God,” she said. “Next thing you know, she’ll get an agent.”

  I nodded. I selected a lovely green olive from a small bowl and popped it into my mouth.

  “I don’t know if Gabby even remembers the shooting.”

  “What did she say?” I said. “If it isn’t patient–doctor privilege.”

  “I would tell you,” Susan said, cutting her eyes over at me. “If it weren’t.”

  “Will she ever be the same?”

  “We’re always the same,” Susan said. “Just with more wear.”

  “Twenty-four is pretty young to screw up your life.”

  Susan looked around at the rich, paneled wood and soft glowing yellow lights. “Youth is wasted on the young.”

  The air seemed to hold space and time like a vacuum inside the doors, as if at any moment Bill Holden might saddle up to the bar for a double Jack Daniel’s, startling no one at all. I looked across the bar to our reflection in the mirror, very glad to see it.

  “It’s an awful thought,” Susan said. “But maybe Jimmy Yamashiro got what was coming to him.”

  “That is an awful thought,” I said. “And very un-shrink-like.”

  “Maybe I hear about too many like him,” she said. “In his world, women are disposable objects. Too many are dismissed or discarded too easily.”

  “I am not like Jimmy Yamashiro.”

  “Or Joe Haldorn.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. “Because they’re both dead.”

  “Let’s drink to that,” Susan said.

  I looked down to see Susan had completely drained her gimlet.

  “Yikes,” I said. “Who are you and what have you done with Susan Silverman?”

  “I’m right here,” she said. Her black eyes grew sexy and sleepy. “And so are you.”

  “Anywhere else you’d like to be?”

  “Nope,” she said. “But if you see that Nancy Sharp again, I just might punch her right in the nose.”

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about Nancy Sharp,” I said.

  “Do you know something I don’t?” she said. “I thought she’d sold out the high priest to become the high priestess.”

  “At a small cost.”

  Susan widened her eyes and tilted her head toward me. I whispered what Samuelson told me about an ongoing federal investigation into HELIOS’s ties with organized crime. He called the case the legal equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.

  “As long as she keeps her hands off you.”

  “Are you calling me a kept man?”

  Susan squeezed my knee again. “Absolutely, sweet cheeks. Now order me another round.”

  “With pleasure.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to pals Alison Quinn, Robert Crais, Steph Cha, and Jeremiah Chechik for their hospitality and guidance in Los Angeles.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Robert B. Parker was the author of seventy books, including the legendary Spenser detective series, the novels featuring police chief Jesse Stone, and the acclaimed Virgil Cole-Everett Hitch westerns, as well as the Sunny Randall novels. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award and long considered the undisputed dean of American crime fiction, he died in January 2010. Ace Atkins is the New York Times bestselling author of the Quinn Colson novels, two of which were nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. In addition, he is the author of several New York Times bestselling novels in the conti
nuation of Robert B. Parker's Spenser series. Before turning to fiction, he was a correspondent for the St. Petersburg Times, a crime reporter for the Tampa Tribune, and, in college, played defensive end for the undefeated Auburn University football team (for which he was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated). He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

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