Angel

by Nicholas Guild

  He had spent some time in this room. Here finger marks were on several items of furniture and near one corner of the bed his footprints were close together, suggesting that he had sat down there. Angel had always regarded her mother as a stupid, shallow woman and the room offered some evidence to support that view, but it was a girl’s room. The canopied bed, the records and the stuffed animals suggested a teenager—like the teenager Angel had been ten years ago, when she had lived in this house. Could Jim have imagined it was her room?

  He had come upstairs alone, driven by memory, seeking some connection with the past. As he sat here, on her mother’s bed, had he whispered her name?

  The idea stirred an unfamiliar emotion in her breast. If Angel had been capable of pity she might have called it that, although it was closer to triumph. Instead, she called it love.

  13

  The next morning, sitting on the bed in her room at the Stamford Marriott, Angel stared at the Yellow Pages that lay open on the pillow. There was a small, three-line ad for “Kinkaid & Kinkaid”.

  She had had some idea about phoning and decoying him away from his office.

  I wonder if I might speak to Mr. Kinkaid. I’d like his advice concerning a personal matter.

  Then, when she had him on neutral ground, possibly in the darkness of some hotel bar, they could have a drink together and she could explain why everything had gone so wrong. After that, anything was possible.

  It was a bad idea. She hadn’t an inkling what she would have said to him. She might even have told him the truth.

  And there were practical considerations. What if he recognized her voice? Ten years was a long time, but he might. He was intelligent and perceptive and had a lawyer’s memory. He might hang up the phone, thinking that something wasn’t quite right, and then it would come to him. What then?

  What she ought to do was drive back to Kennedy and get on a plane to Florida, but she knew she wouldn’t do that. Not yet.

  She couldn’t explain even to herself why all at once it was so important to see Jim. It might be enough just to set eyes on him—then she could walk away and go on with things as she had planned—but she wasn’t sure. A dangerous recklessness had taken hold of her, making her feel as if she had suddenly become two people, the one unable to stop the other from yielding to a whole series of destructive impulses the consequences of which she would have to deal with as best she could.

  But between the two antagonistic sides of her nature there was just enough caution left to realize she couldn’t very well drive up to New Gilead and park in front of Jim’s front door to wait for him to come out. And she couldn’t talk to him on the phone either. It was too risky. She would have to think of something else.

  The problem was Jim had become almost a stranger. Angel would have known how to deal with the college boy, but the man was someone else entirely.

  She didn’t know what he did with his day. She didn’t know his routines. How old was he now? Maybe thirty. At thirty even Jim would have learned to be suspicious.

  And that was the answer. A lawyer learns how to screen himself off. He has a secretary, or at least an answering machine. She wouldn’t have to risk speaking to Jim.

  Had there been a secretary the one time Grandmother had taken her to the offices of Kinkaid & Kinkaid? She couldn’t remember. All she could remember was Jim, and the taste of the lemonade.

  She called the number listed in the Yellow Pages and, yes, there was a secretary. Angel gave one of her names to the woman with a middle-aged voice and explained that she wished to seek advice about obtaining a divorce.

  “Mr. Kinkaid hardly ever takes domestic cases,” the woman answered, with obvious distaste. “But if you’ll leave a number where you can be reached . . .”

  “I can’t do that—I’m sure you understand. My husband and everything . . . I wonder if he couldn’t see me, if only for a few minutes?”

  “I am sorry, but his schedule is particularly heavy just now and he’ll be away for the next several days. However, I’ll raise the matter with him before he leaves and perhaps he’ll see you when he returns to the office. You might phone again tomorrow.”

  “Isn’t there any way I could see him today?” Angel inquired, seeing her chance. “I could be there in twenty minutes.”

  “I’m sorry, but that won’t be possible. His flight leaves at one-fifteen.”

  “Perhaps I could drive him to the airport, and we could talk on the way . . . .”

  “No, I’m sorry,” the woman said, in a tone she probably reserved for naughty children and lunatics. “The limousine has already been booked.”

  “Then I’ll call tomorrow. Thank you.”

  After she had hung up, Angel looked at her watch. There were eleven pages of listings in the Classifieds.

  Actually, it wasn’t that bad. Unless age had corrupted him, Jim was the Basic Transportation type, so companies advertising Mercedes and stretch Lincolns were probably out. And he would probably use someone local. Start in New Gilead and widen the circle.

  She gave them the same story each time, delivered in her best ingenue voice: she was a temp working in Mr. Kinkaid’s office and she wanted to make sure she hadn’t messed up on the time the limo was expected. The first six companies she phoned had never heard of a Mr. Kinkaid, but lucky seven seemed to know all about him.

  “Yeah, sure. Continental out of LaGuardia, right? We’ll be there at a quarter to twelve.”

  “Oh thanks—you’ve saved my life.”

  A call to a travel agent revealed that Continental Flight 710 to Denver, leaving at one fifteen, was booked solid, right up through first class. There was even a waiting list. Okay, every rule has its exception.

  Angel had toyed with the notion of buying a ticket and then casually running into Jim in the passenger lounge, but now that was impossible.

  And until Frank Rizzo took care of his errand there were still too many dangers involved in a direct approach. A few days would make everything right, but for the time being she had to be careful not to do anything to make Jim conscious of her existence. It might prompt him to ask some awkward questions.

  But she could at least arrange something that would allow her have a look at him, to see if he had changed any in ten years. She could allow herself at least that much.

  In her suitcase was a small, flat automatic pistol, made for her out of a special plastic by a gunsmith in California and hardly larger than the palm of her hand. The equipment used to scan passenger luggage on domestic flights had never detected it, and she didn’t imagine the authorities would have given her much trouble about it even if they had—a woman traveling alone is entitled to feel a trifle insecure and the gun was duly registered under the name on her current driver’s license and credit cards. Probably the worst they would do was to confiscate it.

  She would take it with her tomorrow. She hadn’t made up her mind about Jim and, in any case, if he recognized her it might be necessary to kill him. It would only mean that she would have to find someone else to father the next generation of the Wyman family.

  The following morning she slept late and then took a long shower before breakfast. She wanted to enjoy each separate moment as if it were part of her last day on earth.

  Eleven o’clock found her in New Gilead, driving slowly past Jim’s front door. There was no sign of him, but there wouldn’t be. He would be inside, finishing his packing or going through the contents of his briefcase. The limousine wouldn’t show up for another forty-five minutes.

  She drove back through town and down the Norwalk Road until she reached the Merritt Parkway. Then she turned back. It was eleven thirty-five by the time she passed by Jim’s front door again.

  She parked across the street, about a block away, but she was only teasing herself. It would be stupid to wait. She would only get a glimpse of him as he came down his walkway and got into the limousine. And she wouldn’t dare come any closer and she wanted to be near enough to see the expression on his face, bec
ause then she would know what she wanted from him.

  At twenty-five to twelve she turned the key in the ignition and drove off. Route 106 was only three blocks away, and that would take her straight to Interstate 95. There was no more direct route, so she would have about a ten-minute head start to LaGuardia.

  At that hour there were no delays, at least until she hit the approach to the Whitestone Bridge where traffic narrowed down to one lane because of highway construction. By the time Angel got to the toll booth she figured she had lost almost twenty minutes—if Jim’s driver knew about the bottleneck and decided to go over the Throg’s Neck Bridge it would cut into her lead. They might be in a dead heat for the airport.

  And she had to park. She would lose another five minutes hunting for a space and walking to the terminal.

  As soon as she was on the bridge itself she let her foot sink down on the accelerator until, by the time she reached the Long Island side, the speedometer was clocking at over eighty. She encountered no police along the expressway, which was just as well. It would have gone very hard with any cop who tried to pull her over.

  Even at the off-ramp to the airport there were no sirens wailing behind her. She parked in the short-term lot and ran for the terminal.

  At the Continental information desk she was told that the one fifteen flight for Denver would begin its boarding process in a few minutes.

  She had to see if he was in the passenger lounge. She was perhaps a hundred feet down the terminal corridor, within sight of the security gates, when she remembered the gun in her purse.

  Fortunately there was a ladies’ room just there. She went inside and washed her hands while she waited for the woman who was standing in front of the mirror to finish with her fucking lipstick. Then, when she was alone, she rolled out about two feet of paper towel, dried her hands with one end and then wrapped the automatic in the other. It made no sound when she dropped the parcel in the trash.

  The security guards acted like they meant it. One of them was going over a man with something that looked like a loop of refrigerator tubing—“It’s your belt buckle,” he announced finally, in a tone that suggested this established proof of guilt. Angel dropped her purse on the conveyer belt for the x-ray machine and walked through the metal detector without setting it off.

  No one asked to see her ticket.

  She was cautious in her approach. Although it didn’t amount to much of a disguise, she took a pair of dark glasses out of her purse and put them on. She stayed close to the corridor wall as it began opening out into the passenger waiting area.

  He wasn’t there. She scanned the little clusters of seats carefully, but he wasn’t there. The one-fifteen to Denver was listed over Gate 4, but the door to the boarding ramp was still closed. He wasn’t on the plane. Perhaps he was in the men’s room.

  She went into the ladies’ and, just to give herself something to do, tied a scarf over her hair. She washed her hands, then she took off her sunglasses and checked her lipstick.

  A man can be in and out of the can in two minutes, so she gave herself five and went back outside.

  He still wasn’t there. The purser was just announcing that Flight 710 was now ready for boarding. If she stayed any longer she was bound to arouse suspicion.

  She started back down the corridor toward the main terminal.

  At the security gate passengers coming in were separated by a barrier from those leaving. A plastic screen had been set up beside the right-hand wall, making a passage narrow enough that two people couldn’t have walked through abreast. The upper half was a kind of latticework to admit some light from the overhead fixtures. When Angel looked through it she could see a guard working his portable metal detector up and down between Jim’s legs.

  He appeared embarrassed. He didn’t quite seem to know if he should raise his arms for a full frisk, and he was smiling and talking to the guard, who went about his work as if he were inspecting a block of wood. Angel could just catch the murmur of Jim’s voice, without being able to make out the words. Even wearing a suit, he hardly seemed any older.

  He was such a nice guy. Always polite, always ready to be human with anyone in the world, even some stupid son-of-a-bitch trying to goose him with a cattle prod. All you had to do was look at Jim to know he was a sweetie, without a bad thought for a living soul. He just made you love him. If she had had her gun along, Angel wouldn’t have been able to help herself. She would have blown the guard’s head off.

  The search had come to an end and, yet once more, it seemed to be a belt buckle that was causing the problem. Jim was collecting the contents of his pockets from a small plastic tray and retrieving his briefcase. He was busy and preoccupied, but they were only about fifteen feet apart and if she didn’t start moving in the next few seconds he was sure to notice her, even through the latticework—people don’t stand still in airport corridors without becoming conspicuous.

  She took one step and then another, and then it got a little easier as she settled into something like a quick march. She didn’t allow herself to look back.

  She had already pulled abreast of the ladies’ room door when she remembered the pistol. No one was inside. She pulled the lid off the trash barrel, reached down inside and felt around for anything more substantial than paper towels. It didn’t take much of a search.

  As she slipped the gun back into her purse she went all over cold again, as if coming awake to find her pleasant dream was only that. Jim was not her lover because she could love no one. Even if they got back together somehow, she would always be staring hungrily at him through a screen, always afraid he would suddenly turn his head and see her, really see her. For her life was just this, walking through an airport terminal with nowhere to go. She felt cheated.

  She should have stayed away. She should have waited for the plan to come to its fruition and then come back. Whatever she had expected to find here had eluded her.

  And now Jim was on a plane to Denver.

  Outside, the sun was a painful glare. Her head ached and she hated the very air she breathed. She knew she was in a dangerous mood.

  “Hi, honey!”

  In the parking lot, in a wilderness of empty cars, a salesman type, a little under average height, about forty and wearing a snappy light gray suit, with a grin as big as Christmas—the sort of jerk who gets a thrill out of making a nuisance of himself.

  What the hell. He had it coming.

  Angel stopped and favored him with a coy smile. The guy obviously couldn’t believe his luck.

  “Have you got your car with you?” she asked.

  “Right here, sweetheart.”

  “Then get in.”

  Which he did, with almost indecent haste. But Angel surprised him by coming around to the driver’s side.

  She opened the door and took her pistol out of her purse.

  “Lie down on the floor, sweetheart.”

  “Now wait a minute, just . . .”

  “Do it.”

  He did it. He really scrambled. Angel straightened her arm and took careful aim.

  “Please . . .”

  She shot him four times, very carefully. In the enclosed space of the car each one sounded amazingly loud, but thirty feet away they were just ambient noise.

  Angel crawled over the seat to have a look at his face. Good—he was still alive. But the slow, random movements of the arms and legs indicated he was a goner. One of the bullets had probably got him in the spine. She hoped so.

  He just stared at her with astonished, uncomprehending eyes. She reached down and patted him on the cheek.

  “Take your time dying,” she said. “I’m not in a hurry.”

  14

  Denver was easy. It was that rare instance in which the lawyer had both the law and the facts on his side and which should never have gone to litigation at all except that Mr. Adrian Winslow was used to bullying his partner and thought he could continue doing so right up through the end of the relationship. He was one of those beautif
ully groomed tough guys, all ego and insecurity, who are common enough in the upper echelons of business. Kinkaid only had to look at him to know there was nothing inside the thousand-dollar suit. Mr. Winslow will fold, he thought to himself as he shook that well-manicured hand. The negotiations were over in two hours.

  So he went back to the hotel where he had checked his luggage, cancelled his reservation and took a cab back to the airport, where he caught the noon flight to Columbus, Ohio. It was a two and a half hour flight but it crossed a time zone, so by the time he hired a car and drove to Akron it was late afternoon.

  He parked across the street from the downtown police station, went to the front desk and asked for Lieutenant Warren Pratt.

  “You cut it pretty fine,” the duty sergeant told him. “His retirement party ’s tomorrow night. You want to give me your name?”

  “My name is James Kinkaid. I’m an attorney and I’m here about the Billinger homicide.”

  The sergeant, who was probably used to fielding kooks, picked up a telephone and spoke a few sentences in a murmur that was almost drowned out by the air conditioning.

  “You’re lucky,” he said, putting the phone down. “He’s in the building. Why don’t you have a seat over there.”

  Five minutes later a small, spare, middle-aged man in a gray suit came out through the frosted glass doors that had Official Personnel Only stenciled across them. He stopped in the precise center of the reception area.

  “You Kinkaid?” he asked, without smiling.

  By way of answer, Kinkaid stood up.

  “Lieutenant Pratt?” He received the barest trace of a nod.

  “Come along this way.”

  Pratt’s office was a trifle cramped. There was room for a desk, three chairs and a couple of filing cabinets. That was it. One didn’t get the impression he spent a lot of time there.

  “You the one who phoned me from Connecticut last month?” he asked, in a way that implied he had already confirmed this information for himself. “Your dad had some kind of list with Billinger’s name on it?”