Desolate Angel

by Chaz McGee

  I felt a flash of frustration from her as she steered the car off the road. Her flashlight was stored in the glove compartment and she got it out before she climbed out into the almost complete darkness to take a look. Overhead, the night sky was filled with clouds, with little ambient light to relieve the gloom.

  As I followed her, I noticed the twin pinpricks of light growing closer, yet not as quickly as I had imagined they might. The car behind us was slowing. Perhaps they had seen Maggie’s brake lights and would stop to help.

  Maggie knelt in the darkness and surveyed the damage. The tire was shredded beyond repair. She sighed and headed for the trunk to retrieve her spare. I stayed behind and examined the tire. We had not hit anything; I would surely have felt the bump. What in the world had caused such damage? I examined the black rubber and saw fine grooves crisscrossing the heavier tread, then spotted a stub of metal driven deep into the rubber: knife marks and a nail. The flat tire was deliberate.

  The headlights behind us grew closer.

  I was overwhelmed with a foreboding of danger so intense I acted without thinking first. Whoever was following Maggie thought she was alone. I would show them otherwise.

  I stepped into the road and stood in the very center of the lane, staring down the oncoming headlights.

  Then I remembered that I was invisible to the living and so my actions were futile.

  I could do nothing but watch as the car crested a dip in the road and slowed as it drew near. The headlights blinded me, but I could make out a solitary figure behind the wheel: someone large, dressed in a heavy overcoat.

  Maggie was in danger.

  I willed myself to be seen. I concentrated with all of my being as I lifted my hands above my head and focused my attention on the unknown driver, twisting my face into a warning, letting him or her know that I would not stand by while harm came to my Maggie.

  It was useless, I knew. But still, I had to try.

  A miracle happened. Just as the car reached us and Maggie lifted her head to see who was approaching, the driver pulled the steering wheel violently to the right. With a screech of rubber, the car veered around me and over into the oncoming lane, then shot past, missing me by inches.

  Maggie stared after the car, puzzled at its behavior.

  I stared, too, even more puzzled. Because the car had veered around me—it had changed its course because of me.

  Whoever was driving had seen me.

  Chapter 20

  I was missing something and it nagged at me. Why had Danny left Maggie so abruptly at dinner? Had that been him in the car behind her? Or had it been Hayes? And if it was Hayes, how had he known where she’d be? Was it someone else entirely, someone I was overlooking? I tried to remember the size of the headlights, to gauge the car’s height, but it had happened too quickly and I had been panicked.

  It all led back to Danny.

  I waited with Maggie while she changed her tire, then I headed back to town with her, trying to figure out what to do next along the way. We passed the Double Deuce, its neon lights blinking out their promise of TEQUILA SHOTS and COYOTE UGLY GIRLS, though the women who danced on the bar of the Double Deuce had more in common with ugly than with girls. A job as a dancer there was one step above being a prostitute, and I mean that pretty much literally. The moment most of them stepped down from the bar, they became one. I knew because I’d visited there often on the job, tracking down murders, busting dealers, and most often, dragging reluctant witnesses to court on time. It was a favorite hangout of recidivists and criminals smart enough not to be caught. So much so that I had avoided it on my days off, on the theory that it was mixing business with pleasure.

  Still, it was just the sort of place where Danny would be, nursing his wounds at Maggie’s rejection, or cooking up some drunken scheme to get what he was after. I needed to find out what it was that he was after.

  When she stopped at the intersection near the Double Deuce, I slipped from Maggie’s car and searched the parking lot of the bar. There was no sign of Danny’s car, and the place was way too far out of town for anyone to be there without one. I stuck my head in the door, just in case, following a blousy bottle blonde in too-tight jeans inside after she was done doing a biker and a couple lines of coke in the backseat of her car. As the double doors opened, I was hit with a wave of bad air, badasses, bad smells, and the sounds of Bad Company over the sound system.

  But no Danny.

  I returned to the parking lot just as a group of bikers staggered out, ready to weave their way home or to the next bar. What the hell. It had been a long day. I’d hitch a ride back to town on a chopper and go from there.

  When a behemoth with forearms the size of hams climbed on a souped-up Harley and revved his engine, I didn’t hesitate. I clambered on behind him, wrapped my arms around his black leather jacket, and admired the death skull embroidered on its back. He pulled out of the parking lot and took off like a rocket. It was a pleasant ride to town, full of lights whooshing past, sudden sounds that would buzz like angry bees and be long gone, far behind us, before I could recognize them, and a cold wind that swept away my worries. I tipped my head back and let the biker’s excessive speed sweep me away. I was filled with wonder at the night.

  I enjoyed my ride so much that I was reluctant to leave my big friend behind by the time we reached the center of town. But all things—both good and bad—must come to an end. I climbed down and patted my oblivious host on his massive shoulders in thanks. He unwittingly belched a rumbling reply. I headed for Shenanigan’s as it was only a few blocks away. If Danny was anywhere, it was probably there. It was his comfort zone, the next best thing to passing out at your own kitchen table.

  Danny was not there among the tired room of regulars, but I discovered his car parked on a side street. The sight of it sitting alone beneath a streetlight gave me a bad feeling. There was only one other place nearby where he’d be.

  It was past midnight, but obsession doesn’t keep regular hours. I fully expected to see Danny hiding beneath the big tree growing partway down the block near my house, spying on Connie and the kids. But I was wrong. Danny had not been content with spying. And I knew it when I was still almost a block away. Connie’s voice carried for miles when she was mad.

  She was standing on the front porch, barefoot and wearing a bathrobe. And she was up in Danny’s grill well and good. I was beside her in seconds. What the hell did Danny think he was doing? Enough was enough.

  But Connie didn’t need my help, which was fortunate since there was nothing I could have done. “Get the hell off my property,” she yelled at Danny. “Get the hell off my porch and don’t come back.”

  “Come on, Connie,” Danny wheedled, too drunk to recognize the warning signs: Connie’s hands were balled up into fists. A wise man stepped back when he saw that. “I just wanted to take a look around.”

  “I’m going to tell you this one more time, you drunken, pathetic piece of Irish-Italian crap,” Connie answered. I knew she was just warming up. I recognized the tone: Danny was going to take the brunt for his own drunken nonsense, plus the heat for all the years Connie had had to put up with mine and, before me, with her father’s.

  “Kevin never brought his work home,” she yelled at him. “He barely did it at the station, for chrissakes, and I’ve never heard of the Hayes case. He never said a word to me about it, which you should know, since you were his partner and he probably never said a damn word to you about anything, either. Number two, I am not about to let you into my house, where my children sleep, either in your current condition or in the unlikely event you are ever sober again. Especially just so you can root around in search of pieces of paper you think you might find. Because those notes do not exist, and you know why else? Because you are never going to be a part of my life again after this moment. I’m done. You’re done. Now go.”

  Danny blinked and took a step back, confused by her fury or cowed by her strength. I’m not sure it mattered which. The point was th
at he was paralyzed.

  “Don’t think I don’t know that you’re up to something,” Connie warned him. “Since when do you give a shit about anything you do? I don’t for a moment believe you give a crap about this Hayes case. I don’t know what you’re looking for, but you’re not going to find it in my house. And if you ever come back—ever, Danny—I will call the commander personally and I will tell him that you are harassing me, and I guarantee you that you will be out on your ass before you can sneeze. You got it?”

  Danny still could not pull it together enough to react, but Connie did not require validation from him. She marched inside the house, slamming the door in Danny’s face.

  That’s my girl, I thought proudly to myself. Or, rather, that was my girl.

  Danny stood on the edge of the porch, teetering precariously backward toward the steps, looking as if he was not quite sure where he was. Man, he was loaded. Danny was off the charts. I was horrified at the thought he might actually get in his car and drive—I’d have company in the afterlife then for sure—but before Danny could reach his car, a black SUV pulled up beside him. The window rolled down. Alan Hayes was waiting behind the wheel.

  “She wouldn’t let me in,” Danny slurred miserably. “I couldn’t find out a thing.”

  “It’s okay, buddy,” Hayes said soothingly. He opened the passenger door. “There was probably nothing to find anyway. Get in. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee and some breakfast.”

  Now, technically, the invitation wasn’t for me. But I was damned if I’d leave them now. I wanted to know how long they’d been buddies. I climbed into the backseat and it was as clean as the day it had rolled off the assembly line, though the effect was marred somewhat by the reek that came from Danny, a mixture of alcohol, sweat, and cheap aftershave.

  “What happened?” Hayes asked Danny as he headed for a busy franchise-lined road a few blocks away near the highway. That made me happy. I loved coffee shops and that strip was full of them. With any luck, they would order coffee and doughnuts and I could at least sit there and smell the combination.

  Danny had not answered Hayes and seemed to have forgotten there had even been a question. He was even farther gone than I’d thought.

  But Hayes was as determined as Connie. If he had to sober Danny up first, so be it, but he’d get what he wanted before the night was through. He pulled into the parking lot of a Denny’s and led Danny inside to a booth, where he left him slumped in drunken contentment before leaving to wash his hands. I can’t say I blamed him. Danny pulled the ambience of the joint way down, and that was tough to do without breaking the law.

  I glanced around at the weary patrons scattered around the dining room. At this hour, in this block, it was mostly filled with hookers taking a break, highway drivers fueling up on coffee, an occasional trucker overloading on cheap eats, and college kids trying to find the right combination of food and caffeine to keep them going all night.

  There was usually a cop or two among the mix, but tonight there were just two detectives: one drunk and one dead. We made quite the pair.

  I had to choose where to sit. I could either endure Danny’s reek, or I could sit next to Hayes and be bathed in the despair that had started to overwhelm me whenever I was near him. I decided to take a seat in the empty booth adjacent to theirs, where we’d be separated by little more than a half-wall divider. When Hayes returned from the washroom, he stood for a moment staring down at a near-slumbering Danny. Hayes was wearing a gray golf shirt and a pair of charcoal gray pants, both so precisely ironed they looked fresh from the rack. He had no expression on his face, nor could I discern a trace of his emotions. He simply stared, his unnaturally dark eyes taking in every detail of Danny, noting his rumpled clothes and stained shirt, the unwashed hair lying in limp strands across his ruddy skull, the unmatched socks, the class ring where a wedding band would be worn. His eyes flickered over Danny’s greasy all-weather coat, folded haphazardly beside my old partner, and then he shook his head lightly, as if to wake himself from a trance, and pulled a handkerchief from a pants pocket. Wiping the seat down with it, he sat across from Danny and said loudly, “Detective Bonaventura.”

  Danny sat up straight, startled, recognized Hayes, and pretended to have been alert the entire time. It was a sad ritual and fooled no one but Danny. But he needed to do it anyway. “Yes?” Danny asked. “How was the restroom?”

  Hayes hesitated, peering at Danny over the menu. “Fine, thank you.”

  The waitress arrived and it was clear she had seen Hayes wipe down the booth. It had offended her. She was a black woman with an elaborate ringlet hairdo and she gave Hayes a contemptuous look. I was surprised. I felt a flare of anger in Hayes so swift and so strong it was as if he had raised a hot poker and was preparing to swing. He reeled his fury back in and ignored the woman as she produced a grimy bar cloth, then insisted on scrubbing the tabletop vigorously while Danny stared on, befuddled.

  Hayes lowered the menu so that only his black eyes showed above it. He stared at the waitress and she froze, having seen something in his eyes she recognized. “That will be fine, thank you,” Hayes said in a clipped voice. The waitress, in a hurry now to get away, slipped the cloth into her apron pocket and pulled out a pad and pen. She did not look at Hayes again.

  After ordering black coffee for himself, Hayes waited, not speaking, while Danny wolfed down a huge platter of hash browns, eggs, and sausages, then drained two cups of coffee. I guess walking out on dinner with Maggie had put a crimp in his eating schedule. I couldn’t imagine what his guts were like these days. It was a wonder he was still walking around. His body was poisoned hourly by what he put into it. “That hit the spot,” he said when he was done. He patted his belly, gulped down a quart-sized glass of cola, and announced he needed to drain his lizard.

  Hayes did not so much as twitch a face muscle during the entire spectacle. I thought of a spider, sitting immobile in its web, watching the death struggle of a fly, neither curious nor triumphant, just existing until it was time to feed.

  Still, the low-class nature of the entire scene irritated Hayes. That’s the downside of getting other people to do your dirty work, I thought to myself. Good help is so hard to find. While he waited for Danny to come back from the bathroom, Hayes stacked Danny’s dirty dishes in a pile and slid them as far away as he could. The waitress swooped down from nowhere, collected the dishes without a word, and was gone within seconds. Hayes did not say anything, but the vein near the corner of his right eye began to pulse. That waitress was getting to him. I knew why. He could not control her.

  I wondered what time the waitress got off work.

  I wondered if she would make it home.

  “Hello, young man.” A creaky voice interrupted my thoughts.

  I looked up and was both startled and horrified to find an old lady wrapped in a ragged purple sweater talking directly to me. I was too stunned to answer.

  “You just getting off your shift? Catch any bad guys tonight?” Her laugh was wheezy from disuse as she cackled at her joke.

  I looked around wildly, wondering if other people could see me. Hayes was staring at the old woman in disgust, the vein in his temple throbbing.

  The waitress was bearing down on the old lady. “Now, now, Mrs. Palermo. Go back to your table. The man doesn’t want to be bothered.”

  “I’m not talking to the one in the fancy clothes,” the old lady announced indignantly, disdaining Hayes. “I’m talking to him.” She pointed right to me and I fought the urge to slide beneath the table.

  Danny had returned and was staring at the old lady. “She’s nuts,” he said to the waitress. “She’s pointing at an empty table.”

  “I can see that,” the waitress snapped at him.

  “This young man deserves coffee and doughnuts, Elvira,” the old lady insisted, tapping my tabletop with her cane. “He’s had a hard night. I can tell just by looking at him. You bring him some coffee and doughnuts.” The old lady smiled at me. “I understand
. I was married to a police officer once. He worked this very neighborhood.”

  “Yeah?” Danny asked automatically. “What was his name? Maybe I knew him.”

  “Sit down,” Hayes ordered abruptly. Danny sat.

  “I’ll bring him a cup of coffee and a doughnut,” the waitress promised. “if you go back to your table and leave these nice men alone.”

  The old lady looked Alan Hayes and Danny over. “Nice men?” she said. “I don’t think so.” She swiveled on her cane and hobbled away, but allowed the waitress to install her in a small booth near the front door.

  To my surprise, the waitress returned with a cup of coffee and two jelly doughnuts. She sat them down on the table right in front of me. When I breathed in the heavenly aromas, I could remember exactly what they tasted like after a long shift, that first sip of fresh coffee, both bitter and smooth at the same time, that first bite of jelly doughnut when the powdery dough would split open in my mouth and the jelly inside would spill out over my taste buds.

  Hayes and Danny were gaping at the waitress.

  “You want her coming over here all night?” the waitress demanded. “Or do you want your privacy? Because if you want your privacy, a cup of coffee and two doughnuts sitting on an empty tabletop will not bother you.” She stood, hands on her hips, daring them to argue.

  “Fine,” Hayes said, his voice as cold and stiff as steel. “Put it on my tab.”

  I laughed while the waitress, almost gloating from her triumph, refilled their coffee and departed. But I stopped laughing at what Hayes said as soon as he and Danny were alone.

  “Detective Bonaventura,” Hayes began, as if to remind Danny who he was. “You understand my viewpoint, I presume?”