by Davis Bunn
“For a handsome man like you, I can certainly spare longer than that. I’ve been late for chapel before.” Victoria’s gaze was as penetrating as it was sweet. Julio, however, took the time out to gape at the Ferrari. Then back at Wayne. From the car to the guy and back and then over to the cottage. Wayne refrained from telling the kid Tatyana was not there. Julio probably wouldn’t have believed him, and he didn’t want to go down that road just then anyway.
Wayne had mentally worked through a couple of scenarios. As in, how to lead around to the topic without sounding totally bogus. But the day was damp and the wind splattered stray raindrops on Victoria’s dress. Wayne decided this was no time to tango partway. “I was wondering what you could tell me about angels.”
At that point, Julio’s eyes came off the car and the cottage to fasten intently upon him.
“Ah. Is this about the incident with that very nice gentleman, what is his name?”
“Easton Grey. And no, or …well, partly.”
“Partly yes and partly no. Does this mean you have something of a more personal nature that has you wondering about angels?”
The way she said it, the calm nature of her voice, left him able to say, “I sure wish I knew.”
“How remarkable.” Victoria used a gentle nudge on Julio’s arm to start them moving toward the center. “Well, the answer is as simple or as complicated as anything else about the universe of faith.”
“That sounds like the kind of answer I’d get from my sister.”
“Then she is wise beyond her years. Understanding what I have to say about heavenly hosts will depend upon sharing a faith in our Lord. Do you see where I am going with this?”
“If I don’t believe in God, your answers won’t mean a lot.” Wayne felt the dream’s final whisper fall with the rain. Choose.
Victoria’s smile cut through the wet. “Why don’t you start seeking answers from the only One who can give them?”
Wayne left the church alone. Victoria and Julio remained seated in the pew. Julio looked miserable, but something in the way he sat hunched slightly toward the old woman gave Wayne the impression Julio did not want to leave just yet. Wayne exchanged greetings with a number of people, then felt eyes on him. He scouted around until he spotted Holly Reeves watching him. The community director’s expression matched the rain and the grim sky.
The wind had picked up while he was inside. Wayne took the umbrella from an old man’s hands and did his best to shelter the couple, she on the walker and he not much steadier on his pins. Wayne liked how they thanked him quietly and just let him go. Not that he was being taken for granted. Rather, like he was a part of their community. He was a friend. Of course he helped where he could.
When he returned back down the lane he saw Julio holding the umbrella as Victoria used the rail and the doorjamb to climb her own front steps. Julio nodded at something she said and headed back to the center. Wayne followed behind him. Julio used his umbrella to shelter Harry and his wife. Wayne took aim at a pair of ladies, one in a wheelchair and the other on two canes, both of them in dime-store ponchos. He knew they had stood there waiting for him, hoping without saying anything that he would come back again. Holly was at her desk but with the office door open. She watched him come and go that second time without speaking or nodding.
The ladies lived at the community’s far corner. He refused their offer of coffee and a towel, and started back to find Julio waiting for him. The kid held the umbrella shut on one shoulder, ignoring the rain. Wayne agreed. Trying to keep the old people dry had left him too drenched to care.
Julio fell into step beside him but did not speak. Their footsteps squished across the puddles. The rain whooshed through the palms and the live oaks, rustling branches and granting them a stormy isolation. Where the lane ran between the cottages fronting the water and the bay, Julio said, “No temer. You know what that means?”
“No fear.”
“I hear that all the time. Like, you want to be respected, you gotta be hard. Never show no fear. Not to nobody. But inside …”
“Every time I saw action,” Wayne said to the wind and the rain, “I was scared. Sick to my guts scared.”
Julio walked with his head so far forward his dripping hair hid his face. “That old lady, she don’t weigh nothing. You know? She’s so tiny, I could throw her through the wall with one hand. But she ain’t scared of nothing, man. I tell her something, and all she does is …” Julio lifted thick hands and shrugged.
“She’s been through some dark times,” Wayne agreed. “She knows what it can be like.”
“No man, it’s more. A lot more. She, I don’t know …”
Wayne nodded, and when he realized Julio could not see the gesture, said, “I understand.”
Wayne’s kitchen window squeaked. Jerry poked his head out. He gave Julio the cop’s stare, but said to Wayne, “Lunch is on the table.”
Wayne waved acknowledgment. No doubt Julio noticed the exchange but gave no sign. Wayne said, “Why don’t you get into some dry clothes and join us.”
“The cop don’t want me around, man.”
“He’s probably got reasons that he calls good.” Wayne regretted the words before they were completely out. But Julio made no response, and the words fell onto the ground with the rain and washed away. Wayne tried again. “You’re going to be here a while. Jerry is a friend. I’d like you two to make peace.”
Julio stood there staring at the puddle by his shoes, then turned and went into the house. Wayne climbed the stairs and said through the open window, “I’ve asked Julio to join us.”
Jerry snorted. “Right now everything is cool. But there’ll come a time when the lady will run screaming into the yard, saying either her jewelry is gone or he’s after her with a knife. One or the other. You watch.”
“Maybe not.”
“Yeah. Sure. I’ve only arrested that kid about seven hundred times.”
Wayne waited until Jerry had slammed the window shut to say the words, speaking them to the rain, tasting them and hoping they might be true. “People change.”
TWENTY-TWO
The lunch started poorly. They were seated at the old linoleum-topped table in Wayne’s living room. He cut off the AC and opened the front door so they could listen to the sounds of wind and rain. They were cramped seated at Wayne’s table, three grown men and an oversized boy. Jerry filled the place with silent tension. Julio responded with a barrio kid’s professional sullenness. Foster looked from one to the other, and revealed a side to him Wayne had never seen before, that of a confused old man. Wayne decided he didn’t have to take it, and he wouldn’t.
“All right, enough.”
His meal half finished, Wayne pushed back from the table and stood with a military stiffness. He paced and he talked. He started with the eccentric manager of the men’s shop, even bringing out his suit for them to admire since they’d all been in bed when he’d finally made it back the previous evening. Talked them through the Grey headquarters building, how Tatyana went in search of her colleague and vanished for the day. He described his confrontations with the bullish VP and the dark stranger. He left out the drive and Tatyana’s past and the club and the dinner. Just saying they’d ended the day with a meal and a conversation that resolved nothing.
When he finished, Wayne stood in the middle of his bareplank living room. Waiting with a hair-trigger to shoot Jerry down if he started back on Julio.
Instead, the former cop said, “You spent six hours inspecting the company books.”
“About that.”
“And?”
“Forget hunting for a scam or an enemy in those accounts. The answer is not there.”
Foster said, “You’re sure about that?”
“I could spend months in there and come up with nothing.”
Julio said, “That dude who showed up, you think he was an angel?”
“I have no idea.”
Julio looked at the two older men, just to see if th
ey found that as mind-blowing as he did. “Man, that is some serious craziness.”
Jerry said, “I’d say amen.”
Which was enough of a good sign for Wayne to return to the table and his meal. “This food is great.”
Foster said, “Harry’s wife, she fixed the roast. You like, I could heat it up again.”
“It’s fine as it is.”
Julio said, “I heard them talking with Miss Victoria. They’re lining up your meals from now to next year. Man, you got it made.”
“It’s the least they can do,” Foster said, “seeing as how he’s the only reason they’ve still got homes.”
Julio rose from the table and started gathering plates. Jerry said, “I’m gonna count the silverware when you’re done in there.”
“Hard to do, old man, when I done already stole your spectacles.”
Jerry waited until Julio returned for the next load to ask, “Who you calling old?”
“You prefer fat, it’s no problem.”
Jerry raised his voice a notch. “Like you got room to talk.”
“Miss Victoria, she says a growing boy like me needs extra padding. What’s your excuse?”
Foster told Jerry, “You’d best quit while you’ve still got fingers and toes.”
Jerry stared at the kitchen doorway. But when he spoke again, it was to tell Wayne, “I’m still trying to get my head around the idea that you think you spoke to an angel.”
Wayne started to deny it, then decided there was no need. “All I can say for certain is, he was identical to the guy Easton Grey described. Something about him spooked me so bad I couldn’t talk.”
Julio poked his head through the doorway. “You didn’t say nothing?”
“Not even good-bye.”
“What about, you know, the brave soldier in Iraq and everything?”
“You were in Iraq?” Foster asked.
Wayne shook his head, said to Julio, “I’d almost prefer another firefight. Least I’d know what was coming at me.”
“Not me,” Jerry said. “Give me a fake angel any day.”
Foster said, “You don’t know the guy was faking it.”
Jerry gave his friend a look. “Are you even listening to what you just said?”
Foster carefully folded his napkin. “It’s something to consider.”
“No it’s not,” Jerry said. “Julio.”
“Yo.”
“Punch the button on the coffee machine.” He noticed how Wayne was watching him. “What.”
“Nice to hear you talk civil with the kid.”
“Hey. I’m nice to prisoners too. Don’t mean nothing.”
Foster said, “I expect you stand in front of the mirror every morning, practicing how to be a misery.”
From inside the kitchen, Julio said, “Talking about angels, you got company.”
Footsteps climbed the stairs and crossed the front porch. Wayne found it necessary to drop his gaze to the table. He did his best not to allow his peripheral vision to take her in. He had been waiting for her arrival since before he had climbed out of bed. Even so, he wasn’t ready.
He studied a pair of hands that knew years of gun oil and fierce living. The table stood on a floor older than anybody in the room, streaked where the sander had not taken up all the old paint. The air tasted of reheated food and brewing coffee and sawdust and age.
There was nothing, not in the house or in his person, that made for a natural fit with the woman standing in the doorway.
Foster and Jerry vied for the pleasure of playing host. Wayne had no choice but to rise with them and force his gaze to meet hers.
Gone was the lady in pinstriped armor. Gone were the spike heels and the expression carved from Siberian ice. Instead, she wore linen trousers of a grey to match the sky and a sweater one shade darker. Gold watch. Single strand of small pearls. Diamond stud earrings. He knew that because she snagged the right-hand side of her hair and slipped it behind her ear. The gesture was new as well. As easy and natural as the look she gave him.
Wayne tried to tell himself that it was only a matter of time before the lady returned to a world where guys arrived in Ferraris to sweep her away. But all he could think to say was, “You look great.”
“They are clothes from …”
“Before.”
She nodded, grateful for his gift of understanding. “A different time, a different me.”
“You’re still who you are, Tatyana.”
“Am I?”
“He didn’t own you, he didn’t shape you, he didn’t steal who you are.”
Wayne had never been good with either words or women. He had no idea where that came from, and right then he didn’t care. All he knew was, the words fit, especially because of the look she gave him.
Jerry asked, “How about a coffee, Tatyana?”
“I would like it, but we must be going. Easton Grey wishes to speak with you.”
Wayne said, “I’ll go change.”
“Easton doesn’t care what you wear.”
But he wasn’t going anywhere in cutoffs, slaps, and a knit shirt so worn not even he could remember its original color. He kept the door to his bedroom ajar as he slipped into the same outfit he had worn the day before, minus the tie. Which was why he heard Jerry say, “Mind if I ask you a professional question?”
“No.”
“I understand if you don’t want to discuss this problem of yours with a stranger.”
“You’re not a stranger, Mr. Barnes.”
“Call me Jerry.”
“You’re a retired police officer. Being retired doesn’t make you suddenly become ignorant.”
Foster said, “That’s right, honey. It sure doesn’t.”
“Don’t call her honey,” Jerry said.
“I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“We’re trying to talk on a professional level here.”
“I took no offense,” Tatyana said.
“There, see?”
Tatyana went on, “You are both friends of Eilene. She has only good things to say about you. She trusts you. Wayne trusts you. How could I do otherwise?”
Wayne stopped in the process of buttoning his shirt. He just stood there in his bare feet and fancy slacks that the lady had bought for him. Staring at his fingers. Wondering why those calmly spoken words made it necessary for him to clench his gut up so tight.
There was the sound of a chair scraping across the floor. Jerry said, “Have a seat, why don’t you. Yo, Julio. Café negro.”
“What am I, your butler?” But there was the sound of a kitchen cupboard squeaking open, then footsteps crossed the plank floor.
“Gracias.” Jerry took a noisy sip. “Wayne told us about him studying the company books and about meeting the guy.”
Tatyana said, “The angel.”
“Now you’re sounding like Foster. Let’s say for the moment that we’re looking at a scam. An inside-outside job. With a real pro. Just for argument’s sake, you understand. Not that I’d ever question your ability to class the dude as an angel, even without anybody laying eyes on him.”
Wayne said loud enough to carry, “I saw him.”
“And have you called him that? No, you have not. What you said was, you don’t know who he was. Which is all I’m saying. So let’s keep our feet on the earth here. For this scam to work, somebody on the inside has got to be hooked in solid.”
Foster said, “If it was a scam.”
“Man, you are about to get me seriously worried.”
Tatyana repeated, “You are suggesting the man was hooked into our company.”
“Men, plural,” Jerry said. “One, you got either security or somebody watching the front doors, knowing when you entered.”
“We came in through the garage.”
“Same thing. You got security cameras, you got a watchman on the garage gates, somebody.” There was a slight pause. “Two, there’s the man who confronted Wayne. Three, there’s the exec high enough in the food
chain to tie you up with this bogus threat to your job.”
Wayne added, “What about the assistant you intended to walk me through the accounts?”
“He’s in Iowa,” Tatyana said. “At a training course. Lastminute shift. His director was supposed to go, then decided it would do him more good.”
Jerry asked, “You believe that?”
Wayne slipped into his jacket and rejoined his friends. Tatyana stood in the middle of the room, staring out at the rain. Yet even now she carried none of her customary tension.
“That’s what I thought.” Jerry glanced over, gave Wayne a pair of raised eyebrows. “Looking good, my man.”
Wayne said, “You forgot to count the angel.”
Jerry sipped from his cup. “Now don’t you start.”
The rain stopped by the time they crossed the Intracoastal Waterway and turned north. The barrier island was as wet as the mainland, but held up far better. The shoulder along both sides of A1A was as wide as the road itself and bordered with carefully tended banks of flowers and other indigenous plants. Wayne said, “Did you know palms don’t grow straight up?”
Tatyana drove a pearl-white PT Cruiser with a caramel convertible top. A plastic Hertz tag dangled from the keys. She had appeared almost shy as she had beeped open the doors and watched him slip into the passenger seat, clearly waiting for his response. But Wayne had not spoken until now. She looked over and said, “Excuse me?”
“Palms. Go for a walk down a hammock line. Hammock, by the way, is Seminole for dry land surrounded by marshes. There are more than twenty-six hundred types of palms. Most grow long and low, like rail ties. They only rise at the end, where the leaves search for sunlight. The palms you see here have to be trained to grow straight. Sometimes for years.”
She slowed enough to give him a longer look. “Is everything all right?”
“Fine.” Which was the first lie he had ever told her, but still better than the truth. He kept staring out his rain-streaked side window. “Everything’s fine.”
She put on her blinker and turned into the John’s Island entrance. She rolled down her window, waved to the guard, drove through the raised barrier, and turned west on the avenue fronting the golf course. There she pulled to one side and stopped. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
