An Angel On Her Shoulder

by Dan Alatorre

  I looked out the window. Sunny Florida wasn’t so sunny today. The big storm hovering out in the Atlantic had made the weather unpredictable, raining and stopping with abandon. One minute, it was coming down like a fire hose, the next minute, the rain would stop and the sun would pop out. But the wind was getting fiercer all the time, pushing my big SUV around on the road.

  Even so, I was glad Mallory was going out. She needed a distraction, and shopping with Sophie would be a good one.

  The phone pinged again. I love you too.

  About an hour after we hung up the first time, and right when he said he would, Tyree called back.

  “So, Doug, tell me about what kind of problem we are dealing with.” From the background noise, it sounded like he was driving.

  This was it. Time to let it all out. I’d thought about what to say and even jotted down some notes, but it didn’t matter. The words just spilled out. Before I knew it, I’d told him everything.

  He didn’t sound alarmed at all. “The tragedies all took place around the same time of year, too?”

  “Yeah, within a few days of each other, really, almost like they were scheduled.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “I don’t know if we’re unlucky or insane or possessed or what, but my wife and I both believe that it can’t be a coincidence anymore. And then there was a recurring nightmare that we were both having . . .”

  “Well, from what you’re saying, let me tell you up front that I don’t think you’re insane.”

  I shook my head. “God, why not?”

  “I’ve done this before. Crazies sound different. You sound upset, not insane. I believe your story.”

  “No offense, but you kind of have to say that even if you’re scamming me, don’t you?” I hated to antagonize the guy, but it needed to be addressed. I wanted help, but I was a skeptic, too, and not looking to get ripped off or make things worse.

  “I understand your defensiveness, Doug. I’d have my guard up, too, if I were you. Don’t worry about offending me. I’m not going to ask you for money or too much personal information. We don’t work like that.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “Well, ‘we’ is me and my associates. A loose collection of affiliations I’ve built up over the years through the church and law enforcement, that sort of thing. We can get into all that when we meet.”

  I was watching his technique from what I remembered at the marketing firm. He had called me by name, in a friendly and reassuring manner—that’s supposed to build rapport and lower defenses. He’d been calm and reassuring, and seemed to be offering a solution if I agreed to follow his lead. It was all basic sales steps—and basic con man steps—and I didn’t yet know which. Asking for the meeting was the next step in getting my commitment.

  Those stories about an old lady who ends up giving all her money to a con man, they all start this way. He seemed trustworthy. He said he didn’t want any money. Next thing you know, she’s broke and he’s gone.

  Scammers have to model good behavior like legit people do, otherwise it’s too easy to figure out they’re scammers.

  So my guard was up and was staying up. “Mr. Tyree, again, no offense, but do you have some references I can check you out with?”

  “It’s just Tyree, not Mr. Tyree. And Doug, at some point you’re going to have to trust somebody. It doesn’t have to be me, but it’s going to have to be somebody.” His voice was calm and even, not upset at all. Very matter of fact. He could have been talking about the weather. “My guess is, if you were having success doing things your way, you wouldn’t have called me. And you did call me. But that’s a side point. Most do that after they’ve tried talking to their church and their friends. Is that about where we are?”

  The classic blow off. Tell them they can’t have something, and people want it twice as bad. Salespeople used it all the time, like carnival barkers did. And scammers. I’d seen Christian Bale do it in that con man movie, American Hustle.

  But Tyree was right. I didn’t have a lot of options and I’d pretty much already run through them. Ybor City might not pan out, and even if it did, I’d eventually have to trust somebody to help me.

  Meeting him might be a good first step towards deciding if he was a con artist or not.

  “The established churches don’t usually get into this stuff directly,” Tyree said. “Mostly it would be the Catholic Church, and the high ups won’t even do it right now.”

  “Why not?” Over the cell phone, I couldn’t tell if he was implying “we” or “they” tone when he referenced the Church.

  “Something like this can get a look when it’s really clear cut. When the host nation is sympathetic, or when it’s a good story. You know, something like a little girl who gets possessed by a demon, stuff like that.”

  I thought about that. “Isn’t that pretty much what this is? A family being inexplicably terrorized?”

  “Wrong country, my friend. The Vatican is a little pissed at the U.S. right now. So it’s a no go. Our media is too crazy, our politics. It’s a lot of things. Too bad you don’t live in Guatemala. I could get you direct access in Guatemala.”

  “Maybe I should move.”

  “Anyway, in places that they feel are less hospitable, they outsource, so they can keep their hands clean.”

  I weighed what he said—then thought of something else. “You’re making all this up, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Could be!” Tyree laughed. “You’re better off not knowing, aren’t you? How does knowing my methods and sources help your cause? Allow me: it doesn’t.”

  I blinked. “But the Church was helpful . . .”

  “Were they? You went out and found me after talking to them, didn’t you?”

  Tired of the verbal volleyball, I gave up. The long night and longer day had worn me down. I had to start trusting somebody.

  “Okay.” I sighed. “What time do we meet?”

  Chapter 22

  Mallory turned the wheel and drove away from the first shop on her list, heading for the second. She sighed, working to suppress the anxiety inside her.

  What a happy day it had been a few days ago. What a difference some time makes.

  A few weeks ago, as she came down the stairs, Mallory quietly observed her husband and daughter at breakfast. As always, Doug had taken the chair with his back to the stairs so Sophie could watch TV. It was a bad habit, but it had started back when they were grasping at straws to get her to eat at all, and a cartoon turned out to be a useful distraction. Baby Sophie would watch TV and open her mouth at the right time, and somebody sitting next to her would hold a spoonful of puree up to her mouth. The system worked for everyone.

  Until now, when she practically wouldn’t eat unless a cartoon was on.

  But there was plenty of time to work through that, Doug always said. Eating was the priority right now, and this got her to eat.

  So he sat across from her at breakfast, lunch and dinner, to supervise and instruct as she fed herself. If he didn’t supervise, she would skip things like vegetables—or try to. If he didn’t instruct, she might not eat at all. After a while, the seating arrangement was pretty much permanent, for all meals: Sophie would sit at the corner, with Mallory next to her, and Doug across from them both. Like all parents of young children learn, meals work best if the kids were surrounded.

  Mallory stopped at a red light, lost in her daydream.

  Doug was strict but playful. From her office upstairs, Mallory could hear their frequent lunch or dinner battles as she took a late conference call. Mostly, it was Doug’s raised voice as Sophie stubbornly refused to eat the vegetable of the day. Shouts of “Your green beans!” echoed up the stairs to her.

  Just as often, though, she would catch them playing at the table while she cooked. Simple things that don’t matter much and wouldn’t be remembered, but in the moment warmed her heart.

  From her vantage point by the stairs, Mallory stood clutching her favorite coffee mug, watching them play at the table,
waiting for her. Every birthday, Christmas, anniversary, or mother’s day, Doug would order a big ceramic coffee mug with a picture of Mallory and Sophie on it. By now she had quite a collection: a photo of them at the zoo, another one by the river, a favorite from when he found them picking flowers in the yard. Each photo became its own big coffee mug. It was a ceramic photo album.

  All the mugs were cute, but the Christmas mug was her favorite. It was an impromptu photo, taken one day when Doug walked in after Mallory had popped a Santa hat onto the baby’s head. Not even a year old, Sophie still had the big eyes and dimples of her grandmother, so the Santa hat looked especially cute. With Mallory holding her, both of Doug’s ladies were in the picture.

  Mallory stood in the dark by the stairs, holding her Christmas mug and watching as her husband played with their young daughter. The battles over green beans were certain to happen later, but at the moment the warring vegetable factions were allies. Sophie watched a cartoon while eating her pancakes, and Doug typed on his computer.

  Sophie’s chair was a bit too far away from the table. Food that she dropped would fall onto her dress—it was always a dress these days, even at breakfast—and the frillier, the better. But those princess dresses don’t clean up as easily as a t-shirt and shorts.

  Without looking up from his work, Doug reached under the table with his foot and hooked the bottom of Sophie’s seat, pulling it closer to the table. The wooden chair sounded like a miniature car horn as its legs dragged over the tile.

  Sophie checked around, her mouth hanging open. “Is that you doing that?” She was barely audible over the cartoons.

  “Hmm?” Doug didn’t take his eyes off the computer screen as he put his foot back under his own chair. From the steps, Mallory smiled.

  Sophie leaned over, peering at the legs of the chair. “What is doing that?”

  “What’s doing what, honey?” His tone was exaggerated, almost lyrical.

  “What was making my chair move?”

  He shrugged his shoulders in a cartoonish fashion. “I don’t know.”

  Sophie’s eyes twinkled as a smile crept onto her face. “Is it magic?”

  “Could be!”

  “Daddy!” She pointed her pink plastic fork at him. “It’s you!”

  “I think it’s magic!”

  Sophie leapt off her chair, scurrying under the table and attacking his feet.

  From then on, whenever a chair was spotted moving at meal time without the obvious use of hands, Sophie would ask if it was magic. Doug would always respond, “Could be!”

  As her own legs got longer, Sophie would slide down in her seat and push back an empty chair. The noise always got everyone’s attention, and she would laugh. “Look, it’s magic!”

  It was a nice moment, Mallory thought. Happy times.

  The light turned green and she drove onto the thoroughfare.

  What a difference a week makes. She glanced at the cut on her finger, a result of picking up the broken pieces of her favorite coffee mug.

  After sweeping up the fragments, she’d concluded some magic was needed around her house. Good magic. White magic to fight back some of the black magic that appeared to be gathering. The happy times seemed to get taken away as quickly as the cup had shattered across the kitchen floor.

  But a mug could be replaced. Her family couldn’t. Like a rollercoaster going down a big hill, the dark thoughts hurled at her. Mallory’s breath came in short gasps as she envisioned the winery wreck, the car fire—one horrible memory after another, as they came faster and faster.

  She gripped the steering wheel and squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head to make the terrifying images stop.

  Chapter 23

  Mallory heaved the steering wheel to the right and bounced over the curb into the grocery store parking lot. Sophie’s toys flew up, plopping down around her.

  “Wheee!”

  Screeching to a stop, Mallory forced herself to take several deep breaths before taking her trembling hands off the steering wheel.

  She closed her eyes again, kneading her fingers, trying to ignore the panic gripping her belly.

  Relax. Relax! We’re doing some shopping. Quit being afraid of the boogeyman.

  She wiped her eyes and got out, rushing around to the passenger’s door to help Sophie out of the back seat. Mallory’s convertible was easy to get their daughter in and out of when the roof was down—the child seat harness was easier to reach that way—but today was not a top down day.

  And the feeling of ensuing panic wouldn’t leave her.

  Throwing the passenger seat forward and leaning in past her daughter, Mallory tugged at the buckles and clips. Sophie could do them by herself when she got in and out—albeit very slowly. She had the enthusiasm but not the manual dexterity to do it quickly.

  “I can do it.” Sophie reached for the clasp. “It’s one, two, seat belt undo.”

  Usually that was part of the learning process, to make a game of things and to let the child figure things out.

  Mallory nodded. “Okay, you do it. But hurry, baby.”

  The hairs stood up on the back of Mallory’s neck, as if an icy breeze had found only her. She shivered, raising her shoulders and flinching.

  A man in ratty clothing and dark, sunken eyes emerged from the hedges on the far side of the lot. He stared at her.

  She glanced inside the car, watching her daughter work the clips. When she looked up again, the man was still staring at her, his face an unwavering scowl.

  Mallory’s pulse quickened.

  Some sort of derelict from the drug houses. Part of the messaging of the low-priced grocery chain was their no-frills approach. Here, it had resulted in a location near a run-down neighborhood frequented with homeless drug addicts and alcoholics. Most were harmless, but some could be intimidating, saying and doing scary things while strung out. That wasn’t an encounter she wished to have with her daughter present.

  “Let’s go, baby.” She eyed the man again as she bent over to help her daughter. “Come on.”

  Sophie pressed the seat belt button. “It’s stuck.”

  “Okay.” Mallory slid her hands past her daughter’s, jerking on the seat belt. It jammed.

  She twisted to look over her shoulder for the hollow eyed stranger. He stood near the hedges, glaring at her.

  “Watch out.” A big push freed the jammed fastener and the seat belt unclipped. Mallory hoisted Sophie out of the seat, snatching the purse from the passenger seat and shutting the door with her hip.

  “Hold my hand, honey.” Mallory tried to keep her strained voice from frightening her daughter, but she felt vulnerable outside now. She grasped Sophie’s hand, moving in short, fast strides. “Let’s hurry.”

  Sophie trotted alongside her mother to keep up.

  As she weaved her way between the parked cars, Mallory peered over her shoulder at the man. He kept staring right back at her like a zombie.

  She walked faster, her heart pounding.

  Why is he watching me?

  Images of the tragedies rushed forward again. She ran a hand across her forehead.

  Is this the next one? Does a demon take over a drug addict and stab us with a broken bottle?

  “Mommy!”

  “Hurry, sweetie.” Mallory tugged her daughter’s hand as she rushed across the parking lot. “Let’s hurry.”

  Mallory felt his eyes on her. Tears welled in her eyes.

  “Mommy, I can’t walk this fast!”

  “Sophie, hurry!”

  Her heart racing, she stepped out from between the parked cars and into the driving lane in front of the store.

  Sophie screamed. A car screeched to a stop next to them. Mallory flinched, yanking her daughter’s arm and jumping back.

  The driver yelled through the window at them as he passed. Gasping, Mallory waved absently and hurried into the store.

  She grabbed a shopping cart. The bright lights of the store and the other customers calmed her. She tried to get he
r breathing to return to normal. Then they began to make the rounds.

  “Peanut butter!” Sophie pointed at the shelves. Mallory picked up a jar and lowered it into the cart, unable to focus. At the end of the aisle, they turned. The store’s big windows allowed her to see the sky dimming with the sunset. The jitters returned, her stomach tightening.

  How will we get back to my car with that guy out there?

  The store had no clerks to help take groceries to customers’ vehicles. That was also part of their no frills, low prices image. She swallowed hard. She’d given him time to get to her car now. He’d seen it, knew which one was hers. Now he could be waiting, hiding behind another car to grab her—or Sophie.

  Mallory’s hand trembled.

  It was a mistake to come in.

  “Grapes!” Sophie stood on the frame of the cart, holding on with one hand and plucking the bag up with the other. Leaning over into the basket as far as she could, she dropped the grapes in.

  Mallory took no notice, pushing along. As they neared the front of the aisle, she peered past her reflection in the store window and observed the parking lot.

  Her stomach was a knot. She scanned the cars for the man. Nothing.

  Glancing at her white knuckles, she realized she’d been gripping the cart handle. She opened her hands and gazed at the deep row of red crescents her fingernails had dug into her palms.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw something move in the parking lot. A shadow disappeared behind a white van. Her heart raised to her throat. Was it him? Was he hiding, waiting for her to come out of the store to attack?

  As she watched, an elderly man emerged from the side of the van. Inside, his wife pulled her seat belt as he stacked their groceries into the back seat.

  Mallory exhaled, wiping her forehead with her hand.

  “Mommy, can we get some of these?” Sophie held up potato chips.

  She nodded. Her eyes stayed on the parking lot. The crackle of cellophane reached her ears as the bag hit the bottom of the cart.