Devil's Redhead

by David Corbett

  He’d also learned a lot more about Frank’s friends, who they were and what they were up to, how Frank fit into all of it. Now that Shel seemed well enough to leave alone for a few hours, he intended to step out, make some calls. He had the beginnings of a plan.

  There was something to this story about dead twins, he decided. Shel had been noncommittal when he brought it up. That was as good as a yes. Regardless, an inquiry or two seemed in order. Train a little light on the action, put Frank in the oldest bind of all: the law on one side, revenge from his pals on the other. Turn up the discomfort level. Help Frank find out what scared really feels like.

  The alternative to this plan, of course, was to sit still. Wait and see. Do as Shel asked: nothing. Abatangelo considered this alternative, such as it was, unacceptable. He’d found himself pacing, and soon a feeling of being trapped arose. He’d thought it through all morning, weighing the various strategies, unable to choose the best, fussing over pointless distinctions, until it dawned on him he was doing exactly what he’d been warned against his first day out. How had the cab driver put it: Just because you can think deep thoughts, that don’t mean they ain’t got you right where they want you. Shel lay asleep in the next room, lucky to be alive, and he traveled the confines of a small room, pacing. Thinking. It’s a trap, he realized—the mind, it’s the perfect trap, a brilliant, beguiling, captivating trap. It was prison.

  Get out, a voice said. Do something. Remind yourself what freedom feels like. Because if freedom doesn’t feel like the power to protect the person you love, what good is it? She wouldn’t have come to me for shelter if she didn’t, on some level, want me to make sure shelter meant something real. Frank wasn’t just some hapless loser—maybe once upon a time, but not now. Something had snapped. He was a killer.

  He went back to the bedroom and knocked lightly, pushing open the door. Hearing him enter, Shel drew her covers tight around her head, peering out whale-eyed as he approached the bed.

  “Don’t touch me, Danny.”

  Abatangelo sat on the edge of the bed and settled his hand on her haunch. She squirmed away. “You poke at me one more time, I swear to God.” A frantic plaint pitched her voice, half mocking, half not. “I don’t want to be pissed at you, Danny. I love you, you’re driving me crazy, leave me alone.”

  “Just let me see your eyes,” he said.

  “No way. I mean it, I’m goddamn fine. Just let me sleep.”

  He felt the sheets; they were warm but not too warm. “You don’t have a fever,” he told her. “And you’re pissy. I suppose that’s a good sign.”

  “Damn right.”

  “What if I’m wrong?” he said. “What if I end up having to cart you down to ER?”

  “No hospitals,” she moaned, digging a vent through the blankets.

  “Oh for God’s sake …”

  “People die in hospitals. My aunt went in for an ulcer, got peritonitis. She never came out again.”

  “Every family in the world has a story like that,” he said. “Come on, sit up. It’ll be over in a minute.”

  She shot up. “Danny, so help me God. Please. If you really care, be a doll, run some errands, go to work. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine.” She reached for an alarm clock beside the bed, set it for an hour ahead, said, “There, I’ll do it myself,” then dove back under the covers.

  After another minute of silent watching, Abatangelo withdrew from the room. He made two rounds of the flat, secured the transom from within, dead-bolted the rear door, saw that the windows were locked. In the kitchen he checked his answering machine to see if there’d been any curious calls. Nothing. He went up front to check the street.

  Noon light hazed among gray clouds, with hints of sun and burn-off coming. It had already rained. Chinese groceries, Italian cafés and local bars defiled along the arching pavement, bustling, loud. The bohemian ghetto. He stood there awhile, watching for a lone man waiting in a car, a suspicious loiterer, a window across the way with a man at the curtains.

  When he came back to the bedroom Shel was asleep, facedown in her nest of pillows and snoring in a faint, adenoidal drone. He leaned down, studying her welts and bruises one last time. Gently, he kissed her shoulder, then the hand nearest to him. Her fingers smelled the same as her hair. He still suffered a nagging sense of unreality at her being there, no longer a mere fixation, no longer locked away in dreams. At the same time, an excruciating longing for her seethed through him, nesting in his hands, his groin, but the longing only reminded him that after ten years in prison, his capacity as a lover, as a knower of anyone’s body other than his own, was hideously malformed. And so the longing turned to shame. He couldn’t claim to be her lover, not yet. For now he was just the grim relentless figure who’d emerged from the desert. With business to attend.

  So go take care of it, he told himself, turning away from the bed. Make sure there never comes another day you see her standing there in your doorway, battered, an inch away from dead.

  PART II

  CHAPTER

  14

  Frank pulled into the parking garage of the Mayview Hotel. In the ticket stall, the attendant, wearing a hair net and blue coveralls, sang to the radio and beat his logbook with drumstick pencils. Frank collected his ticket, passed through the raised gate, found a parking stall and killed the motor. Waiting a moment, he checked for sounds. Someone started a car on a lower tier. The echoes spread through the vast dark underground, tires squealed on the smooth floor and then headlights appeared. Frank held his breath, watching the car pass and then waiting for the next silence. Finally, feeling safe, he headed from the truck toward the elevator.

  He passed a rust-eaten Datsun laden with bumper stickers: GET A FAITH LIFT. THE CROSS IS BOSS. JESUS LOVES MY YORKIE. The elevator had metal walls, smelled of gasoline, and after a shuddering two-floor journey opened onto a clean, faded lobby.

  The desk clerk, white, early twenties, exuded a bristling tidiness. His skin shone, his hair, his fingernails, his pink ears, everything about him emanated Fear of Imperfection. A text called Food Management lay open before him and he offered Frank the rigid smile of a student driver.

  “Single room, two nights,” Frank told him.

  His only luggage was a paper bag, filled with underwear and socks bought at the Pac’n’Save. He gave the name Justin Case to the clerk who accepted it with merry oblivion, tapping the keys of his computer as though to an inner song.

  “I have one king or two queens,” he chirped.

  Frank, drawing upon a reservoir of crank-fed wit, replied, “I haven’t needed two beds since my last out-of-body experience.”

  The clerk laughed too loudly, head reared back, revealing a mouth gray with fillings. Frank pictured him managing food.

  A bellhop appeared, and he made the desk clerk look normal. He was younger still, with buck teeth and fanning ears set low near his jaw. Tufts of hair shot up on his head like thistle. His hands wiggled beyond his shirt cuffs like little animals.

  “I don’t have any luggage,” Frank told him.

  The bellhop winked and punched the button for the elevator. “I’ll fetcha some ice,” he said.

  “I’ve got it covered.”

  “I turn down the beds.”

  “No thanks.”

  “I show ya how to work the TV.”

  The elevator door opened and the kid slipped in, peering back with a grin and holding the door. Frank realized there’d be no getting rid of him. He got in and they rode up together slowly, floor numbers lighting on, then off, the overhead pulleys squealing. The kid studied Frank shamelessly, rubbing his mouth with his fingers.

  “Got you bad,” the bellhop said eventually.

  Frank had hoped washing up and changing clothes would be enough. He had a knot on his head where Shel had clobbered him with the gun butt, and he walked like he was saddle sore from the groining she’d given him. On top of all that, his hands shook from crank and fear.

  “I’m upset,” he said. “Got into i
t with the missy.”

  The kid laughed and pointed as though to say, Right, right. The doors came open and he launched into the hall. Reaching the room, he unlocked the door and barged inside, fussed with the bed covers, flipped on the lights and the television. Frank closed the door behind.

  “You can check out through the TV,” the bellhop announced. “Hit channel eighty-eight.”

  He turned the selector to the pay channels, Sophisticated Viewing. Shortly two women, both naked, engaged in frottage on a red vinyl sofa. There was a prevalence of head shots. The blonde mouthed Aah, the brunette Ooh. “Come on, come on, we don’t need to see their heads,” the bellhop shouted, hitting the side of the television. Turning to Frank, he added, “You can watch five minutes free.”

  Frank was looking around the room. It had a soothing blank decor, theft-proof coat hangers, a small table, a lamp suspended by a chain. Something in the anonymity of it all made him hopeful he would be harder to find here. The bedcovers fell back immaculately, the kid could do that much. The pillows were as tidy as headstones.

  The bellhop clapped his hands to his head. “Ice, ice,” he shouted.

  “Hey,” Frank told him. He held out his hand, a twenty folded between his fingers. Time to regain control. “You really want to help out?”

  The kid looked from the money to Frank’s face. The grin reappeared.

  “I need gin, a fifth. Do what you can do.”

  The kid took the bill and affectedly checked it front and back. “Tell you what, skipper. Time me.”

  Once he was gone Frank sat down on the bed. He removed the rest of his money from his pockets and spread it out across the covers, counting it twice. He had enough for two days, if that. Bending over, he put his hands to his head and uttered a small and miserable laugh.

  There would be no further deals, he realized. No come on in, all’s forgiven, let’s talk about it. Lyle was dead. Hack was due to be dead. Seven Mexicans, dead. And if they’d had their way, Frank thought, I’d be dead, too. Left lying in the mud inside a junkyard. If they found him now, they’d make him pay, pay just for making them work this hard. And they wouldn’t just kill him. They’d tune him first, drag it out, make sure he squirmed and begged and pissed himself because killers like a show.

  And then there was Shel. To think she’d had a hand in all that, his shiny white nurse. He realized he was hard to live with at times, nobody’s idea of a prince, but even so. He’d gotten even, he supposed. But so had she. His crotch still throbbed, his head throbbed, too. He winced, thinking about it, but at the same time he felt grateful she’d gotten away. At the time he would have killed her, yes, but now, thinking back, that wasn’t what he’d wanted at all. He wanted her to see how he felt. See me for who I am, he thought. The whole number. That so much to ask?

  A fast hard knocking came at the door. It sent Frank down to his knees beside the bed. He began to retch, thinking: They found me, the fuckers, they’re here.

  Through the door, the bellhop called out, “Skip, Skip, it’s me. Got the fifth. Hey, Skip?”

  Frank knelt there, blinking. Street noise filtered in quietly through the window. He rubbed his face, got up one leg at a time and sat on the bed for a second to get his breath, trying to swallow. He collected his money, pocketed it, then worked his way along the wall, chained the door and cracked it open.

  “You nod off or what?” the bellhop snapped. His face bristled with Hey Hey Hey. He held up the bottle of gin like it was a chicken.

  “Righteous,” Frank murmured. “We’re even.” He took the bottle and closed the door.

  Within ten minutes he’d drained half the bottle. He patrolled the room, checking under the bed, inside the closet, paranoia ticking in his head. He put his ear to one wall, then the other, detecting sounds. The clarity he’d felt earlier abandoned him. He clutched the gin bottle to his chest. You’re lucky to be alive, he told himself. That’s why you’re scared.

  Life is luck and the lucky are scared.

  He indulged in a little more crank. Surfaces bristled. Lamplight made sounds. I’m sorry, he thought. There, I said it, I’m sorry. He got up and went to the bathroom. We must, he thought, get a grip on our drugs. He turned on the hot water spigots to warm his hands, found a towel, drank from the gin bottle. Overhead, the fluorescent ceiling light hovered like a little spaceship. He ran his hands down his arms. Shards of glass nestled in each pore. His hair felt tired.

  He found his way back to the bed and turned on the television, craving sound, any sound. It had to be better than listening to his own head. The twenty-four-hour news channel rebroadcast a speech the president had made earlier that morning on the East Coast. The president’s face, in the constant eruption of a camera flash, looked twitchy and false. Nice suit, Frank thought, drinking. The man in the nice suit sounded the old familiar call: Get tough. Get tough on crime. From a piece of paper in front of him, he recited: “We will not rest until this menace is crushed.”

  Abatangelo drove across town to a photomat near the Opera House. The morning rain had created a bristling winter clarity. Buildings shimmered. Windshields flared. Outside the photomat, two secretaries leaned against the brick facade, one enjoying a quick smoke, the other a frozen yogurt, both lifting their faces to the sun. A panhandler stood in the doorway, one hand shading his eyes as the other moved in a constant gimme motion. Abatangelo brushed past him through the door.

  With a little financial encouragement he got the girl at the counter to run his prints at once. The girl had the face of a ten-year-old, part of her head was shaved, and she breathed through her mouth. A button on her smock read: WHY COMPLAIN? THE WORST IS YET TO COME.

  Abatangelo moved to the glass wall dividing the waiting room from the developing area to watch the process. He’d shot his frames of Shel in color, and the darkroom he’d rigged up in his apartment was set up only for black and white. Within a minute the color prints emerged on the vertical conveyor, rising one by one. Shel with her back exposed, revealing the bloody gashes, the bruises and welts. A close-up of her battered face. The bloodred eyes. Another close-up, this one of her neck. Now the girl was looking, too. She closed her mouth.

  “I wasn’t the one who did it,” Abatangelo told her when he paid.

  His next stop was within walking distance. Across the street from the 1-80 skyway, the words ANTHONY J. COHN, ESQ., ATTORNEY-AT-LAW appeared in black Doric lettering upon the frosted glass door pane of a renovated Victorian.

  Except for car keys and cash, the only thing in Abatangelo’s pocket at the time of his arrest in Oregon ten years earlier had been a slip of paper with Tony Cohn’s phone number on it. Cohn, though expensive, earned his fee. For three days at the preliminary hearing, the lawyer badgered the arresting agents into a squall of contradictions. They claimed an Anonymous Tipster had led them to Abatangelo and the others, when in fact one of the mutts on the beach crew had been their informant. The reason for the deceit was that an Anonymous Tipster, if he’s not a coconspirator, can remain anonymous forever. They didn’t want their snitch burned since he was working another grand jury out of Portland. The more they lied, the more Cohn hounded them. The government fished around for a good excuse, then just pointed fingers down the chain of command. Cohn, arguing fruit of the poisonous tree, managed to quash most of the informant’s testimony. But not all. Cohn explained the arbitrary nature of the ruling made for a good appeal issue, but at trial they stood to get hammered. This was, after all, rural Oregon, and rumors of the liberal northwest were greatly exaggerated. The jury pool was righteous and inbred. Worse, the defendants were Californian. Abatangelo didn’t need it explained twice. For the sake of reducing the heat on everyone else, he told Cohn to plead out, and Cohn got the best deal he could: a ten-and-five—ten years in prison, with five years probation tagged on because the U.S. Attorney deemed the defendant Of Malignant Character. As bad as it was, it beat risking the twenty-five-year stint he faced at trial, and gave everyone else the break he wanted. Especially Shel.
Despite her limited involvement in the Company, the prosecutors were making her out as a full conspirator, using this as leverage against Abatangelo. Through Cohn, he tried to get her a single year, meaning with time served a few more months in prison at best. The feds would hear none of it. She gets three and a half like everybody else, they said, or we go to trial.

  Cohn’s receptionist did not look up as Abatangelo entered the law office. The woman’s name was Joanna, an obese, compulsive woman who’d been fresh from community college when he’d seen her last, accompanying Cohn to hearings. She was adrift in her thirties now, and looking older still. As he recalled, she talked to herself. Conversing With The One Who Ought To Know, she called it.

  He stood there several moments until finally, still looking down at her desktop, she said: “If you don’t state your business soon, I’m going to ask you to leave.” Her work area reeked of talcum powder. Abatangelo foresaw her developing a passion for cats, cutting her hair just a little bit shorter every year.

  “It’s Dan,” he said. “Dan Abatangelo. I stopped by to tell Tony hello.”

  Joanna jumped back in from her seat as though bitten. “Good God.” She tried to compose herself, but an awkward, wincing smile lingered as she eyed him up and down. “Why didn’t you call first?” She made a fluttering upward gesture with her hand. The stairs. “Go on up. Tony will want to see you, I’m sure.”

  Climbing the stairs, Abatangelo detected a new severity to the decor. The rugs were Persian. Tapestries lined the corridor. The track lighting was soft, discreet. Cohn had disclosed in his last few bits of legal correspondence that he was through with drug cases. The counterculture overtones were gone. No aging hippie élan, no Politics of the Mind, no laughs. Now spooks and professional paranoids were involved, only the small-fry got popped, thugs prevailed. There was a lot of death going around.