Angel

by Nicholas Guild

  “Put the gun away, Angel,” he said at last. “You don’t need it and I’m sick of the sight of it. Put it away.”

  She seemed to consider the request for a moment, and then she did something extraordinary. She walked over to her handbag, a leather sack that was lying open in the middle of the floor, and dropped the gun into it. For the moment, at least, she had surrendered her claim to his life.

  It was a wonderfully persuasive gesture. If he hadn’t known about the Billinger family, he would have believed her.

  He looked away for a moment, simply because the sight of her was too painful to bear. He stared at the rain, wishing he could be out there in it, letting it wash his mind blank.

  Then suddenly, when he turned around, Angel was directly behind him, so close that he almost brushed against her.

  She stood there, her shoulders a little hunched, the palms of her hands resting caressingly against her hips. Her eyes were half closed. She had lifted her face, as if she expected him to kiss her.

  He could not deny to himself that he wanted to kiss her.

  “There’s something else we still need to talk about,” he said, perhaps more harshly than he intended. “You have Lisa.”

  She slapped him. It might have been a sudden burst of anger—certainly that was what it was meant to seem—except it wasn’t. It had come just half an instant too soon. She had planned to strike him, to appear hurt and angry and jealous. She had planned it the way she planned everything.

  She walked away a few steps, turning her back on him.

  “You can have her if you love her so much,” she answered, with a tiny throb in her voice.

  “Yes. I do.”

  “As much as you used to love me?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  And, at that moment, he couldn’t. That he had loved her he remembered as an objective fact, the way he remembered his Social Security number, but the memory carried nothing with it. They might as well have been other people. Adam and Eve, Edward and Mrs. Simpson. Anyone. He couldn’t remember what it had felt like.

  It was like being let out of prison.

  “You don’t remember.” She turned around and faced him, her arms folded together as if the cold rain outside had soaked her through. “It wasn’t so very long ago.”

  “I was somebody else then,” he said, and stopped himself just in time from adding, “and so were you.”

  “I want to know what you’ve done with Lisa,” he went on instead. “I want to know that she’s all right.”

  “Do you think I’d hurt her?”

  “You’ve got her—how the hell do I know what you might do with her? This game stops now, Angel.”

  “Whatever you say, Jim.”

  Her handbag was still lying on the floor. With a quick crouch she picked it up and slung the strap across her shoulder. She let her hand drop inside.

  “You can use the phone in my car.”

  “I’ll use the one in mine, thanks.”

  “What’s the matter? Are you afraid of running up my bill?”

  “I’m not getting into your car until I know that Lisa is safe. Then we’ll go and find her, together.”

  She managed the faintest of shrugs, followed by an equally faint smile.

  “Sure.”

  He had parked not fifteen feet from the door, but the wind was so strong it was blowing the rain sideways. All you could do was put your head down and push through it.

  In the car he took out his pocket handkerchief and offered it to Angel. It was just a reflex, something he did without thinking, but as she took it her fingertips brushed against the back of his hand.

  He picked up the phone. “Give me the number,” he said.

  “I can dial it for you . . .”

  “Just give me the number, Angel. I’ll manage.”

  And she did. First three digits, then four. And as he punched them in he repeated them aloud, as if he wanted to make sure he had them right.

  The first ring seemed to go on forever.

  “Hello?”

  Hello. The most conventional answer in the world, but filled with dread. What in God’s name had the last few hours been like for her?

  “Lisa, it’s Jim. I’m coming to get you . . .”

  “Jim, are you with her? Get away from her—she’s fucking crazy . . .”

  “Lisa, it’s going to be all right,” he said, emphasizing each word. “I’m coming to get you.”

  “Oh God, Jim, don’t come here! Get away from her. She’ll kill you! She’s killed three people already to—”

  The line went dead. For a second or two Kinkaid didn’t realize what had happened, then he saw Angel withdrawing her hand from the phone console. She had cut him off.

  “You’ve heard enough,” she said calmly, with perhaps just a touch of mocking pleasure. “Next time she can pour out her troubles in person.”

  Kinkaid snatched her wrist, pulling it toward him as if he meant to break her arm. In that moment he didn’t care about the gun. He was almost as angry as he seemed.

  “Get out of the car, Angel.”

  “Absolutely. We’ll take mine. That way we can be together.”

  He let her go, pushing her violently away.

  “I swear, if you’ve hurt her I’ll . . .”

  “What will you do, sweetie? Kill me? Have you got it in you?”

  “I’ll worse than kill you, Angel. Now get out of the car.”

  He was shouting now, seething with rage. To keep himself from striking her, he reached across, opened the door latch, and pushed her hard enough that she had to catch herself to keep from falling out into the mud.

  And for the very first time she seemed genuinely afraid. She scrambled out of the car, slamming the door behind her. For just a moment she stood there in the rain, glancing about as if looking which was to run.

  And that moment was all he needed. He set the phone receiver back on its cradle without pressing it back into place.

  In a few minutes it would begin beeping to let whoever was within earshot know it was off the hook. It would be like a homing device for the car if Pratt and his Bureau friends had just a little imagination.

  He got out and starting towards Angel’s car, not looking back. All he wanted was to get her away from there as quickly as possible.

  She was waiting for him. And her alarm, if that was what it had been, had left her. She threw him a set of keys.

  “I’ll let you drive,” she said. “Men always like that.”

  42

  It took the San Francisco Police Department exactly half an hour to find the Jaguar. They dutifully called in their report to the FBI and then, ten minutes later, rang up again to report further that the vehicle seemed to be deserted. Officers at the scene were awaiting instructions.

  That was about as much as Pratt could stand. After doing everything short of threatening Special Agent Blandford with his service revolver, he managed to get a ride over to the scene, which by the time he arrived was swarming with Bureau technicians who, naturally, had found nothing.

  “We’ve lifted some usable prints from the steering wheel and the telephone handset, Sir, but otherwise the interior’s as clean as a whistle. In this rain there won’t be anything on the outside.”

  Standing on the sidewalk while the wind drove water into his trenchcoat like nails through a board, Pratt could believe it. A hundred yards away the spray from the waves was visible over the beach wall. The ocean looked like it was going crazy.

  The Jaguar had been a setup. Now either Kinkaid was with Angel or she had made him switch cars, so he could be anywhere driving anything.

  The clever girl.

  “You didn’t by any chance find a tape recorder, did you?”

  “A what?”

  “A tape recorder. A little one, about this big.”

  He tried to suggest the size by forming a bracket between his middle finger and thumb, but the Bureau lab donkey shook his head.

  “No, Sir. Nothing like
that.”

  Then Kinkaid had taken it with him, which meant, since he wouldn’t have risked keeping it on his person, that he probably didn’t leave with Angel.

  “How long do you think the car has been here?”

  “Less than half an hour. The engine block was still warm when we arrived.”

  And in this rain it would cool fast.

  “Mr. Pratt?”

  It was the nice young man assigned to him as a driver, leaning out of the window of his perfectly nondescript FBI car, shouting back at him through the storm.

  “Mr. Pratt, there’s news.”

  Oh, it was news all right. One of the toll clerks on the Golden Gate Bridge had spoken to Jim Kinkaid.

  “One of our people had arrived there just five minutes before,” the nice young man told him as with lights flashing they sped toward the Bridge. “But the personnel in the booths hadn’t been briefed. Kinkaid drove through, gave the toll clerk the rental sheet from his car and told him to phone in. The guy claims he told him to wait five minutes before he made the call, but it sounds like he’s providing himself with an excuse. Anyway, all chance of organizing a pursuit was lost.”

  And maybe it was just as well, although Pratt wasn’t going to be crude enough to say so. Odds were the Bureau would have fucked it up.

  He stared down at his feet and decided that his shoes were irretrievably ruined.

  The little parking lot outside the Bridge’s headquarters building was so crammed with official-looking cars that Pratt’s driver had to park fifty feet away. Thank God they were sheltered a little from the wind, which was blowing in from the ocean, but the walk to the door didn’t improve his disposition.

  Inside, someone handed him a styrofoam cup of coffee. It was Blandford.

  “We have a SWAT team on the way,” he said. “And we notified the Highway Patrol in Marin County to be on the lookout for a gray Ford Taurus.”

  “Then let’s hope he isn’t obliged to double back on us. I notice there aren’t any toll booths in the other direction, so he won’t be able to drop us any more love notes.”

  “We have the Bridge covered. He won’t get past us.”

  As if to prove his point, Blandford handed him a pink sheet of paper, apparently the one Kinkaid had passed to the toll clerk, and, sure enough, the words “Taurus” and “gray” were spelled out in block letters in the upper right-hand corner. There was even a license plate number.

  The signature at the bottom was a woman’s. Agnes Wycott. The “suits” were probably already busy chasing it down, but Angel Wyman was too smart to get caught that way.

  “Do you suppose I might be allowed to talk to the toll clerk?”

  The poor guy was sitting on a wooden chair in the center of a room filled with policemen who stood around ignoring him. He didn’t look comfortable. He was probably around thirty, a latter-day flower child with a drooping moustache and a ponytail. Maybe he had been through scenes like this before.

  “How are you?”

  Pratt found another wooden chair and reversed it so he could sit with his arms crossed over the backrest. It was easier that way to push his face into the other man’s, and it was astonishing how intimidated people got when you crowded into their air space.

  “You a cop too?”

  “No, I’m a tourist. Tell me about your friend in the car.”

  The toll clerk shrugged. His uniform looked a trifle small on him, as if it belonged to another life. Maybe it did.

  “What’s to tell? He comes through, he hands me a piece of paper and tells me to call the FBI. Says his name is ‘Kinkaid.’”

  “Did he pay his toll?”

  “Sure he did.”

  “How? Exact change?”

  “Sure. Three bucks.”

  “Three singles?”

  “Yeah.” The toll clerk smiled, which meant he was starting to worry.

  “I bet he gave you a ten-spot and you kept it.”

  “No—no he didn’t.”

  “Yes he did. I know him, and he’s the type. Maybe it was even a fifty.”

  “No it wasn’t.”

  “Then how much was it? Listen, nobody gives a shit. I just want to know.”

  “He told me to keep the change . . . .”

  “Fine. Then it’s yours. How much was it?”

  “It was a twenty.”

  “That’s my pal Jim.”

  Pratt smiled. Now the barriers were down. Now the poor slob wouldn’t lie on reflex.

  “So what did he tell you?”

  “What I said.” The clerk seemed almost angry. “That I should wait five minutes and phone the FBI, and that his name was ‘Kinkaid.’ He said it wasn’t a joke.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Oh yeah, and something about how he’d stay on the line.”

  “One more thing. What kind of car was he driving?”

  “You kiddin’ me?” The clerk reached back and smoothed down his ponytail, as if to be reassured it was still there. “You know how many cars I see in a day? In this job, a car is a car.”

  “You remember the color?”

  “I don’t know . . . Blue, green—something like that.”

  “Gray?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Hey, anyway, who was the guy?”

  “Just another tourist.”

  Outside, Pratt looked at his watch. It had been at least half an hour since Kinkaid had stopped at the toll plaza. He could be anywhere.

  But he said he’d stay on the line.

  “Get on to Ma Bell,” he told Blandford. “Tell them to listen for anything unusual, particularly anything involving mobile phones.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like how the hell should I know? Anything. Kinkaid will have to use his imagination.

  “One other thing—don’t put at lot of faith in that gray Ford Taurus.”

  . . . . .

  There was nothing to do except to wait. The Highway Patrol had already found fifteen gray Ford Tauruses, but none of them had the right license plates and none of them turned out to be rental cars. It was close to an hour since anyone had heard from Jim Kinkaid.

  “If she’s got him, he’s probably dead by now,” Blandford announced with a certain dismal satisfaction. “Or he probably wishes he was.”

  Pratt only glared at him.

  “Sir, the phone company thinks they may have something.” The agent who took the call put his hand over the receiver’s mouthpiece as he spoke. “They have a phone off the hook and they’re hearing it as a radio frequency, which means it’s either a cellular or a car phone.”

  “Can they find the source?” Pratt asked.

  Blandford’s boy glanced first at his boss, who nodded, before he answered. “Yes, Sir. They can triangulate on the signal. They want to know whether they should send their trucks out.”

  Stupid question.

  Everybody was in the parking lot within fifteen seconds. This time Blandford invited Pratt to come along with him. His driver knew the area.

  Within ten minutes the phone company reported an approximate location, and within fifteen a fleet of Bureau cars had converged on the spot—a wide place in the road featuring a derelict building.

  And it was a Chevy, not a Ford. And dark blue, not gray.

  “I want our explosives people to check it out first,” Blandford said, as soon as they had come to a stop. “We don’t even know if it’s the right one, but if it is she may have booby-trapped it.”

  “There’s no time for that.”

  Pratt didn’t wait to debate the point. In an instant he was out in the slanting rain, running across the muddy ground toward what he knew by instinct was Kinkaid’s abandoned car. He threw the driver’s side door open. There was no bang.

  The phone was making an awful racket. He began searching under the seat, and almost immediately his hand touched the pocket tape recorder.

  “Good man,” he whispered to himself. “You delivered the mail.”

  . . . .
.

  They could only hear Kinkaid’s side of his telephone conversations with Angel Wyman, and the overlay of engine noises rendered those difficult to understand. Then the car stopped and there was a long pause, long enough to raise the suspicion that perhaps they had transferred to another car and driven away.

  Then there was the sound of a door slamming, and then another.

  “She’s in the car with him,” Blandford pointed out, quite unnecessarily.

  “Give me the number.”

  “I can dial it for you.”

  It was the first time Pratt had ever heard her voice—his first real trace of her as a person. She didn’t sound like a monster.

  “Just give me the number, Angel. I’ll manage.”

  “Eight-Four-Eight, Seven-Three-Five- One.”

  Then Kinkaid’s voice, repeating it. “Eight-Four-Eight, Seven-Three-Five-One.”

  “Have you got that?” Blandford asked, stabbing a finger at his driver. In the closed car he seemed to be shouting. “Get on the horn to the phone people. Tell them I want an address twenty minutes ago.”

  The driver scuttled off through the rain toward one of the Bell Pacific trucks that was parked a few yards away, and they went on listening to the tape.

  Even though they could only hear Kinkaid’s voice, the brief conversation with Lisa Milano was harrowing. Apparently Angel didn’t like it either.

  “You’ve heard enough. Next time she can pour out her troubles in person.”

  “Get out of the car, Angel.”

  “Absolutely. We’ll take mine. That way we can be together.”

  “I swear, if you’ve hurt her I’ll . . .”

  “What will you do, sweetie? Kill me? Have you got it in you?”

  That was when Kinkaid seemed to go ballistic. He was shouting like a maniac. And then the indistinct sounds of a struggle as a car door opened and closed. Then nothing.

  A few minutes later the tape ran out.

  “Sounds like he really lost it,” Blandford said. “Doesn’t he know what he’s dealing with? His lady friend might have offed him right there.”

  “He knows what he’s dealing with—he probably knows better than anybody. And he didn’t lose it. He had to get her out of that car to set the phone signal, so that’s what he did.”

  They waited through a few minutes of silence, listening to the rain on the car roof. Outside, Bureau agents were combing the area, looking for clues, ruining their shoes in the mud. It was standard procedure, useless but probably necessary.