Falling Angel

by William Hjortsberg

  I jammed the extra clip in my pocket and hurried to the outer door. With my ear to the glass, I listened for the sounds of the elevator closing. The moment I heard it, I slid back the pistol’s receiver, cocking the piece and introducing a round into the chamber. I saw the top of the elevator car slide past the circular glass window in the door as I ran for the fire stairs.

  I took the stairs four at a time, clinging to the railing for balance, and set a new elevator-racing record. Gasping in the stairwell, I held the fire door open with my foot, the automatic braced against the jamb with both hands. My percussive heartbeat crashed in my ears.

  I prayed that Cyphre would still have my gun in his hand when the door slid open. That would make it self-defense. Let’s see how good his magic was against Colonel Colt’s. I imagined the heavy slugs slamming into him, lifting him off his feet, his dark blood staining the lace-front evening shirt. Posing as the devil might con voodoo piano players and middle-aged lady astrologers, but it didn’t wash with me. He picked the wrong man to play the patsy.

  The circular window in the outer door filled with light as the elevator clanked to a stop. I steadied my aim and held my breath. Louis Cyphre’s satanic charade had come to an end. The red metal door slid open. The car was empty.

  I staggered forward like a sleepwalker, not believing what I saw. He couldn’t be gone. There was no way. I had watched the indicator above the door and seen the numbers light up as the car descended without stopping. He couldn’t get off it the car didn’t stop.

  I got in and pushed the button for the top floor. As the car started up, I climbed onto the brass handrails, one foot braced against either wall, and pushed open the emergency trap on the ceiling.

  I stuck my head through the opening and looked around. Cyphre was not on the roof of the car. Greased cables and spinning flywheels left no place to hide.

  From the fourth floor, I climbed the fire stairs to the roof. I searched behind chimneys and air vents, the blistered tar-paper buckling underfoot. He was not on the roof. I leaned over the cornice ledge and looked down at the street, first up Seventh Avenue; then, from the corner, along 42nd Street. The Sunday night crowds were sparse. Only whores, male and female, lingered on the sidewalks. Louis Cyphre’s distinguished form was nowhere in sight.

  I tried to combat my confusion with logic. If he was not on the street or the roof and didn’t get off the elevator, he must still be somewhere in the building. It was the only possible explanation. He was hiding somewhere. He had to be.

  During the next half-hour, I went over the entire building. I looked in all the restrooms and broom closets. Using my skeleton keys, I let myself into every dark and empty office. I searched Ira Kipnis’ place and Olga’s Electrolysis without luck. I poked through the shabby waiting rooms of three cut-rate dentists and the closet-sized establishment of a rare-coin-and-stamp dealer. There was no one there.

  I returned to my office feeling lost. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. No one can vanish into thin air. It had to be a trick. I sank back into the swivel chair, still holding the Colt Commander. Across the street, the unremitting march of the day’s news continued: … FALLOUT OF STRONTIUM-90 IS FOUND HIGHEST IN U.S… . INDIANS WORRIED OVER DALAI LAMA … By the time I thought to call Epiphany, it was too late. Tricked again by the greatest Trickster of them all.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  The endless ringing struck the same note of despair as the lonely voice of the Spanish sailor in Dr. Cipher’s bottle. Another lost soul like me. I sat for a long time with my ear to the receiver, surrounded by the desolate, trash-heap wreckage in my office. My mouth was dry and tasted of ashes. All hope was gone, abandoned. I had crossed the threshold of doom.

  After a while, I got up and stumbled down the stairs to the street. I stood on the corner of the Crossroads of the World and wondered which way to go. It didn’t matter anymore. I had run long and far enough. I was all through running.

  I spotted a cruising cab heading east on 42nd and flagged it down.

  “Any special address?” The driver’s sarcasm broke a long and moody silence.

  My words sounded far away, like someone else speaking. “Hotel Chelsea on 23rd Street.”

  We turned downtown on Seventh, and I slouched in the corner and stared out at a world gone dead. In the distance, fire trucks howled like raging demons. We passed the hulking columns of Penn Station, gray and somber in the lamplight. The driver didn’t speak. Under my breath, I hummed a Johnny Favorite tune popular during the war. It was one of my biggest hits.

  Poor old Harry Angel, fed to the dogs like table scraps. I killed him and ate his heart, but it was me who died all the same. Not even magic and power can change that. I was living on borrowed time and another man’s memories; a corrupt hybrid creature trying to escape the past. I should have known it was impossible. No matter how cleverly you sneak up on a mirror your reflection always looks you straight in the eye.

  “Been some excitement around here tonight.” The driver pulled to a stop across from the Chelsea where three squad cars and a police ambulance were double-parked. He flipped up the flag on his meter. “One-sixty, please.”

  I paid with my emergency fifty and told him to keep the change.

  “This ain’t no five, mister. You made a mistake.”

  “Many mistakes,” I said and hurried across pavement the color of gravestones.

  A patrolman was talking on the desk phone in the lobby but he let me pass without a glance. “… three black, five regular, one tea with lemon,” he said as the elevator door slid closed.

  I got off at my floor. A wheeled stretcher sat in the hall. Two attendants slouched against the wall. “Why all the rush?” one of them complained. “They knew they had a stiff on their hands the whole time.”

  My apartment door stood wide open. A flashbulb popped inside. The smell of cheap cigars filled the air. I strolled in without a word. Three uniformed cops paced around with nothing to do. Sergeant Deimos sat at the table with his back to me, giving my description to someone on the telephone. Another flashbulb went off in the bedroom.

  I had a look inside. One was enough. Epiphany lay face up on the bed, wearing only my dogtags and tied by her wrists and ankles to the frame with four ugly neckties. My hammerless Smith & Wesson protruded from between her outspread legs, the snub barrel inserted like a lover. Her womb’s blood glistened on her open thighs, bold as roses.

  Lieutenant Sterne was one of five plainclothes detectives watching with his hands in his overcoat pockets as the photographer knelt for a closeup. “Who the hell are you?” a patrolman asked behind me.

  “I live here.”

  Sterne looked in my direction. His sleepy eyes widened. “Angel?” Disbelief cracked his voice. “That’s the guy. Collar him!”

  The cop behind me pinned my arms. I didn’t resist “Save the heroics,” I said.

  “See if he’s heeled,” Sterne barked. The other cops looked at me like I was an animal in the zoo.

  A pair of cuffs bit into my wrists. The cop frisked me down and pulled the Colt Commander from the waistband of my pants. “Heavy artillery,” he said, handing it to Sterne.

  Sterne glanced at the gun, checked the safety, and set it on the bedside table. “Why’d you come back?”

  “No place else to go.”

  “Who is she?” Sterne jerked his thumb at Epiphany’s body.

  “My daughter.”

  “Bullshit!”

  Sergeant Deimos sauntered into the bedroom. “Well, well, what have we here?”

  “Deimos, call downtown and tell ‘em we’ve got the suspect in custody.”

  “Right away,” the sergeant said, strolling from the room in no particular hurry.

  “Give it to me again, Angel. Who’s the girl?”

  “Epiphany Proudfoot. She runs an herb shop on 123rd and Lenox.”

  One of the other detectives wrote it down. Sterne shoved me back into the living room. I sat on the couch. “How long you been shacking up
with her?”

  “Couple days.”

  “Just long enough to kill her, right? Look what we found in the fireplace.” Sterne picked up my charred horoscope by the remaining unburned corner. “Want to tell us about it?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ve got all we need, unless that’s not your .38 stuck up her snatch.”

  “It’s mine.”

  “You’ll burn for this, Angel.”

  “I’ll burn in hell.”

  “Maybe. We’ll be sure and give you a head start upstate.” Sterne’s shark-slit mouth widened into an evil smile. I stared at his yellow teeth and remembered the laughing face painted on Steeplechase Park, a joker’s grin expanding with malice. There was only one other smile like it: the evil leer of Lucifer. I could almost hear His laughter fill the room. This time, the joke was on me.

  A native New Yorker, William Hjortsberg has lived in the mountains of Montana for the past twenty-five years. He is the author of seven works of fiction, including Nevermore, Alp, and Gray Matters. Among his screen credits are Legend, directed by Ridley Scott, and Angel Heart, based on this novel. He is currently at work on his next novel.