Devil's Redhead

by David Corbett

  “This is my property.”

  Abatangelo sank a little in his chair. “That what this is about?” He looked around the small, dim, grimy room. “Just to fill you in, Ed, the last guy I heard extol the virtues of private property was one of the numbnut rednecks out at Shel’s place. He came waving a shotgun, too.”

  “Can you promise me this numbnut, or somebody just like him, won’t be coming through that door?”

  “He’s probably dead.”

  “Probably. Great. You want rich, try that.”

  Abatangelo sensed he was losing and felt a little desperate. Feeling the Sirkis in his pocket, he reached in, grabbed it, and set it down on the desk between them.

  “What the hell is that?” Eddy said.

  “It’s one more weapon, Ed. I don’t want it. This place means so much to you, if it’s worth putting up this kind of a fight, you take it. Feel safe. Go on.”

  Eddy’s mouth dropped open but failed to produce a sound. Gathering his wits, he sat forward, eyes locked with Abatangelo’s. “I told you. Your old lady’s bringing somebody here. I don’t know who, I don’t know how many, and I’m not even real sure why, except she said they needed a car.”

  “So kill them.”

  “Fuck you. Listen up. Ten years went by, Danny. You don’t call the shots anymore.”

  The fluorescent tube overhead cast a sickly light across their skin. It made them both look old.

  “Ed, nobody’s giving orders. I’m asking. I saw—”

  Eddy slammed his hand on the desk.

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you saw or how bad it spooked you. You didn’t hear her voice on the machine. I did. If this thing wasn’t fucked, she would have sounded a hell of a lot different, trust me.”

  He got up, tossed the empty cartridge box into the trash and checked the clock. “You want to talk love and brotherhood, be my guest. But the final say here, inside these walls, is mine.” He picked up the .357, shoved it into one hip pocket, and put the speedloaders in the other. He looked at the Sirkis, too, but left it where it was.

  “Now you can sit there contemplating the horror of it all,” he said, his tone softening a little. “Or you can spend a minute here with me so we can figure out how we’re gonna do this thing.”

  The ferry arrived and disembarked on schedule. Shel and Cesar crossed the bay drinking hot coffee and looking out at the seagulls keening out across the waves, tailing back to land along the rocky, fogbound shore of Alcatraz. Cesar seemed increasingly abstract. He disappeared twice into the men’s room to inspect his arm, returning with a look of grim concern. He’d stare at the clock, rocking in his seat, murmuring to himself. He wasn’t calling her names anymore. He didn’t seem to have the strength.

  Shel sought out a phone booth once they reached the dock in San Francisco and tore out the ad in the Yellow Pages for I-GO-YOU-GO BODY REPAIR. They caught a cab on the Embarcadero, gave the driver the address and, after a reeling drive through the Tenderloin, the Western Addition then the Park, they arrived at Eddy’s green-and-yellow body shop in the Sunset District. Cesar paid the cabby with the last of Hidalgo’s money as Shel got out, gathered her balance on the sidewalk, clutching a street sign. Looking up and down the street, she noticed that no pedestrians were out as yet, but she did notice Danny’s Dart parked halfway down the block, across the street. As she spotted it, she thought she saw someone dive down, out of sight, behind the wheel. As the cab drove off, Cesar grabbed her arm, drew her toward the shop and peered through the window glass into the waiting area. Seeing no one, he nudged her in front of him toward the door, gesturing for her to open it and go in.

  Sitting in Eddy’s office, Abatangelo heard the bell at the body shop’s front door. He had a fresh bandage on his scalded hand, one on his temple as well. Pushing up from his chair, light-headed from fatigue, he mustered the will to move by telling himself, It’s almost over.

  He walked down the long dark hallway to the front and entered the waiting room blinking at the change in light. As his eyes adjusted, he felt startled at what he saw. Shel’s bruising rivaled his own; she looked on the verge of collapse. Breathing through her mouth, eyelids fluttering, she needed the wall to stand up straight and her skin lacked color. For all that, the mere fact she was here, alive, seemed a miracle—a miracle to which he had no claim. The saint in this particular miracle was the little guy with her, who looked even worse than she did.

  “Hey,” Abatangelo said to him in greeting, and offered a nod. Turning to Shel, he added, “You okay?”

  “No,” she admitted, leaning toward a vinyl chair and collapsing. “I’m fucked up.”

  “We came for a car,” Cesar said. “She called.”

  “Yeah,” Abatangelo said, still looking at Shel. “I know.”

  It took every ounce of reserve he possessed not to walk across the room to her. A tension flickered between her and the guy, a sort of bickering neediness. Abatangelo guessed it had kept them alive. He saw the birthmark and thought, Cesar, recalling the name from Frank’s description. The guy had jumpy eyes, a wiry frame and a dazed intensity. Abatangelo had seen boxers like that, usually ones at the end of a hammering. There was also something very wrong with his left arm. Blood stained the sleeve above the elbow, front and back. The limb hung there lifeless. The fingers were gray.

  “Ground rules,” he began. “You carrying a piece?”

  Beyond Cesar’s shoulder, he saw Shel gesturing with two fingers. Then she patted her stomach and the small of her back.

  “We came here for a car,” Cesar repeated, squaring off.

  Abatangelo raised his hands. “Steady. You’ll get one,” he said. “Unless you try to strong-arm me. Not a car in this shop you can drive out of here. It’s the weekend. Keys are in a safe. Only Ed knows the combination and he’s not here.”

  “Where the fuck is he?” Cesar’s good hand drifted from his side, hovering near his belt buckle.

  “He’s a phone call away. He left this for me to handle.”

  Through the window Abatangelo could see his Dart parked a little ways down, across the street. Eddy sat behind the wheel, the shotgun across his lap and the .357 in his hand. If he knew Eddy, the engine was running. He was ready to pop the clutch and race in shooting. Having him outside, not in, was the one concession Abatangelo had managed to get.

  Cesar said, “Who are you?”

  “A friend.”

  Cesar made a hissing little laugh and shook his head.

  “I say something funny?”

  Cesar looked at Shel, offering an ugly grin. “Another friend,” he said.

  Abatangelo told him, “Look, I’m serious. I’m unarmed. Think about that. You come in here, I don’t know who you are, what you really want, but I’m willing to work it out. That said, I’m not gonna get muscled for the privilege. You try anything, you leave here on foot.”

  “You’ll be worse off than that,” Cesar murmured. He leaned toward the work bay, peering inside.

  “No one’s in there,” Abatangelo told him. Silently, he calculated how quickly he could jump across the space, pin the limp arm to the wall. The wound’s bad, he thought. The guy might go into shock.

  “Better not be,” Cesar said, righting himself.

  “You know, I don’t think I’m getting through to you.”

  “Where’s our car?”

  “I don’t know where you’ve been,” Abatangelo said, “but something happened last night. Been on the radio, maybe you heard. Your men met Felix Randall’s men. They cut each other to shreds. Men you probably know.”

  Cesar, turning so his bloodied, motionless arm came forward, said, “See that? I got it from men I know.” He grimaced and spat. “Fuck them all.”

  Abatangelo felt helpless, his mind slipping. “My point,” he said finally, “is there’s been plenty of bloodshed already. Look at you. You’re hurt. She’s hurt. You both need care.”

  “Not your problem,” Cesar said, grimacing. “A way outta here, a car. I’m getti
ng tired of asking.”

  “Where are you trying to get to?”

  “None of your business,” Cesar said, voice rising. His hand edged a little closer to the jacket button.

  “Sure it is. Where determines what car. If you don’t want to tell me where, tell me how far.”

  “Give us a car,” Cesar hissed.

  “Us?”

  “Her and me.”

  Abatangelo looked past him again. Shel listed in the chair like it was everything she could do to stay upright. Her face was wet. Her eyes drifted. He doubted she’d stay conscious long.

  “She needs a doctor.”

  “You keep bringing up stuff that’s none of your business.”

  “She stays,” Abatangelo said. “Gets treated. You get a car. That’s not a bad deal.”

  Cesar squinted, as though he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “Deal?”

  “I want her taken care of. I’m a friend. I told you.”

  Cesar bent a little at the waist and whispered, “Yeah? I saved her fucking life.”

  He used the shock of that statement as a distraction and unbuttoned his jacket. The handgrip of his weapon stuck out from under his belt. He rested his hand on it.

  Abatangelo, his eyes locked on Cesar, asked Shel, “That true?”

  She forced herself upright in the chair, wincing from the effort. “It’s a little more complex than that,” she managed. “Short version, yeah. I’m alive because of him.”

  Cesar grinned. From behind, Shel added, “He greased the fucker who was supposed to do me. To be honest, though, he did it for his own reasons.”

  Cesar spun around, like he’d been mocked. His hand hadn’t moved, poised on his gun. It was the way he looked at her that tipped Abatangelo off. Possessive. Resentful. There’d be no finessing this thing.

  “Thank you,” he said, edging closer. “For saving her life.”

  Cesar turned back laughing. “She comes with me.”

  “Hold on,” Abatangelo said, keeping his voice level and easy. “You saved her life, all right. I’m grateful. So is she.”

  “You talk for her now.”

  “You’re also on the run. Without a car. You steal one, that’s just more heat to deal with. She got you here. That’s a gift. Be grateful. Otherwise you’d be stuck. In your position, stuck means dead.”

  “Be grateful,” Cesar repeated. “A gift.” His voice had grown softer, but the harshness remained, as though the words were hitting his teeth. He looked at Shel one more time, then back at Abatangelo. “You people love to talk.” His face was turning pale and his breath was coming faster. The breaths were shallow. He was starting to wet his lips a lot.

  “What did you think was going to happen?” Abatangelo said, taking the next step closer. “You save the princess, she falls in love? Kinda fairy tale for a guy like you.”

  Cesar tightened his grip on the gun.

  “Problem with that kind of thinking, it assumes you can earn her feelings. But you can’t. She either feels something for you, or she doesn’t.”

  Cesar backed away from him, to preserve the distance he’d need to aim and fire. He seemed uneasy on his feet, and yet his body looked coiled and ready. He stopped less than a yard from the wall, in the corner formed by the Coke machine.

  “Trust me,” Abatangelo went on, “I’ve thought about this long and hard. It’s why we want it so bad. A woman’s love. Best thing going, and there’s not a damn thing we can do to earn it. Am I right?”

  “Get me a car,” Cesar said, tugging the gun from his trousers.

  Abatangelo lunged, caught the hand gripping the weapon and in the same movement crushed Cesar’s wounded arm against the wall. Cesar gasped and uttered the beginning of a scream that died in a rush of spent air. His knees buckled but he didn’t lose his grip on the gun. Abatangelo tried to pin his wrist back. Cesar butted him, catching him right at the bloody gash near his temple. Abatangelo lost his grip on Cesar’s gun hand. Cesar lurched with his shoulder into Abatangelo’s midriff and drove him back, far enough so he could aim.

  Shel shot out of her chair. “Don’t do it,” she screamed.

  The Dart screeched to a stop right out front and the car door flew open. Cesar’s eyes followed the sound, giving Abatangelo the chance to bat the arm away. Shel saw it and dove. As Abatangelo struggled with Cesar again, she found the strength and speed and lurched across the room, grabbed Cesar’s hand and sank her teeth into the flesh of his wrist, down to bone, as Abatangelo pinned that arm against the Coke machine and drilled the other, limp and bloody, over and over against the wall. Cesar found his scream then, dropping the gun with a curse. Shel stumbled away, her mouth bloody, scrambling on the floor for the gun and shouting, “Watch out for the other one. The gun. At his back.”

  Eddy charged through the door, triggering the tinny little bell again. Abatangelo didn’t dare turn. He reached around, trying for the second gun as Cesar, gritting his teeth, flailed with his legs. Cesar caught Abatangelo in the groin, Abatangelo howled, clenched his jaw and kept reaching for the gun. Crouching down, bending at the waist, Cesar got his hand back to the weapon before Abatangelo could. Abatangelo picked him up bodily off the floor, slammed him against the wall, ramming his shoulder over and over into Cesar’s chest, driving the air from his lungs.

  Eddy shouted from behind, “Put your hands out. Now. Let me see ’em.”

  Cesar looked up, his tongue lolling free as he fought for breath. He met Eddy’s stare but kept his hand where it was. Abatangelo leaned his entire weight against him, pressing him against the wall, his hand locked on Cesar’s wrist, pinning it behind his back. Abatangelo’s head spun, he gasped for air, too, fighting an urge to hurl. Shel sat there on the floor, wiping Cesar’s blood away from her mouth and getting a proper hold on his gun.

  “Don’t do it,” Eddy shouted, edging closer, training the Browning shotgun on Cesar’s face. “Your hands, get ’em out. Ain’t gonna say it again.”

  “Come on,” Abatangelo said, straining for a tone of compromise. “Doesn’t have to be this way. Let go.”

  Cesar lifted his chin and smiled. He regarded Abatangelo, eyes darkening. “The problem with stupid people,” he murmured. His good arm jerked and the gun went off. He fired into his own body, arching his back, aiming for Abatangelo, too. The discharge jerked him half around, his side exploded in blood and Abatangelo jumped back unthinking, shielding himself with his arms as Shel screamed, “Danny … Danny …”

  CHAPTER

  25

  In the end, it was the pictures. They appeared with Waxman’s articles, the paper running a series of multipage layouts, the largest since the mass suicides at Jonestown: frames shot from the hilltop above Shel’s house, showing Felix Randall and his henchmen gathering just before the Andrus Island shoot-out; Shel herself, brutalized by Frank; Frank’s remains, smoldering piecemeal amid the smoke and flame and charred debris of the bomb-blown milk shed; Rolando Moreira’s surreal fete for his fifteen-year-old daughter, celebrated only hours before the bloodbath at the marina; the massacre itself, the dead and dying left behind, crowned by the image of a youth named Roberto, offering a death gaze to the camera, snared atop the hurricane fence.

  There was also a shot of Cesar Pazienza from Chalco, sprawled in stillness and his own blood on the waiting room floor of I-GO YOU-GO BODY REPAIR. Abatangelo didn’t take that picture. Someone in the coroner’s unit did. Abatangelo at that point had joined Shel, the two of them wrapped in blankets, dazed, weak, fouled with blood, sitting in Eddy’s small airless office and waiting for the marshals to arrive.

  Abatangelo had called them, using a telephone in the waiting area after watching Cesar’s body convulse, his eyes swimming in their sockets as one hand flailed blindly behind him for his gun, the other pinned at an impossible angle beneath his body. Face to the floor, Cesar had arched his back, trying to regain his feet, then his knees slid back and he lay still. Closing his eyes, he coughed up tangled spumes of blood. Abatangelo, findin
g himself caked in human muck but whole, reached for the small of the dying man’s back and withdrew the gun. It came away lathered in gore. Cesar, white-faced, dull-eyed, gasped for air and moved his lips, trying to draw breath. Eddy dialed 911, but the small feral man with the thumb-sized birthmark was dead before the paramedics arrived.

  It seemed grotesque but apropos—fitting and fair, as Frank would have put it—for Abatangelo to begin haggling for his freedom drenched in the blood of a man lying dead only a few feet away. He told the operator at the marshal’s office who he was, gave his CID number and his P.O.’s name, told her where he was and why he assumed the Bureau of Prisons would insist on his being detained. Now that Shel was safe, he wanted to nip it in the bud, lay the story out himself, what he’d done and why, before somebody on the review committee waxed righteous over having to do it himself. Once the operator confirmed that a detail was en route, he put the phone back down, gathered Shel in his arms and guided her back to Eddy’s office to wait.

  The marshals arrived as the coroner’s people were bagging up Cesar’s body and homicide inspectors were grilling Eddy, trying to find out how anyone but a contortionist could shoot himself in the back. Evidence techs scoured the waiting room for trace evidence, while the street outside was logjammed with patrol cars, uniformed officers milling about, knocking on the doors of neighboring businesses and walk-ups, canvassing everyone and anyone who had something to say. Abatangelo and Shel deferred answering questions till Tony Cohn arrived, and though he’d been called he wouldn’t get there before the marshals did. Abatangelo murmured good-bye into Shel’s ear, kissed her brow, her hands, her cheek, then left, one marshal on each side. An hour later they delivered him in come-alongs to the detention center in San Bruno.

  Tony Cohn did the legal work for his parole review, Waxman worked the press angle. The double-team paid off. Once his pictures hit the papers, and Waxman told the story of the price paid to get them, an outcry arose on Abatangelo’s behalf. And it came not just from Waxman’s usual readership. Average citizens wrote letters. Editors of the major local dailies chimed in. Assembly members and Congressmen, keen for a sound bite, put themselves on record. This man, they said, deserves our thanks, not punishment.