Natural Born Angel

by Speer, Scott

  Sylvester looked at the man squarely.

  “A bomb.”

  Minx didn’t miss a beat. “A bomb, Mr Sylvester? Nasty devices. Liable to do much damage. But why would I know anything about a bomb? I’m a simple watch repairman, running my simple shop.” He smiled innocently again at the detective, his eyes distorted through the lenses.

  Sylvester leaned in quickly towards the fat man, spitting fire, his words sharp and fast. “Yes, a bomb. The one that turned the front wall of the Angel Administration Affairs office into thin air and fire. And killed ninety-two people. Ninety-two counts of murder. I’m not going to waste time going back and forth pretending you aren’t what we all know you are. A bombmaker.” Minx flinched just a little. “And I know your anti-Angel sympathies.”

  Minx opened his mouth in a big yellow-teethed smile. “You have your facts wrong there, Mr Sylvester. It is true, I would weep no tear if the Angels were to disappear from the earth tomorrow. But I also cannot bear the tyranny of human politicians, businessmen, lawyers and the police state. They should all be cleared away.”

  Sylvester studied the man in front of him. “An anarchist.”

  “To use one term.” Minx coughed and placed the watch down on the glass display case. He looked at the detective. “I did not make your bomb, Mr Sylvester. You could investigate for some time and find no trace, I promise you that. There is a man, though. He might be interested in talking with you.”

  “Who?” Sylvester asked.

  “I can’t give you a name. All I can say is that, when the time is right, he may appear.”

  “Do you always talk in riddles?”

  “Not always. Just with policemen.” He grinned again.

  Sylvester placed a card flat on the glass counter. “I’ll give you a couple of days. Then I’m coming back for you. With friends.”

  Minx looked at the card, thumbing it in his hand. “It is funny to meet you this way, Mr Sylvester. At one point you were quite notorious down here, you know.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “True. Does time mean less for you than for the rest of us? Or have you . . . adapted since you lost your wings?”

  Sylvester gritted his teeth, looking at the man standing amid the strewn stacks of clocks and gears. “I’d say it’s about the same. More or less.”

  “Some of us may pity you. Others, not so much. Myself, I still haven’t decided.” Minx looked at Sylvester. “I hope you aren’t neglecting your other investigation.”

  Sylvester raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  Minx raised an eyebrow. “The homeless disappearances are concerning us. It’s not like the Angels to ‘slum’, as they say.”

  “The Angels?” Sylvester said. And who was us? A strange feeling began to spread in Sylvester’s stomach.

  Minx brushed off the question.

  “Dig far enough and you can find some who may have witnessed something. If they can even be made to talk,” Minx said. “A man named Gerald Maze might be a good place to start.”

  “Why are you helping me? I thought you hated police?”

  “There are some things that can be hated more than even the police, Mr Sylvester. As hard as that may be to believe,” Minx said, grinning again. “The police are just the symptom of the larger sickness, Mr Sylvester, the institutions. But cracks are appearing. Demon sightings. The rise of the Godright girl, half-human, half-Angel.”

  “Maddy.” Sylvester blinked at the name. “But how do you know all this, if you’re just a bo— ”

  Just before he said the word bomb, a sudden bolt of realization struck Sylvester. His thoughts raced back and forth over details in his head. Were the bomb and homeless disappearances somehow related? But how?

  “The disappearances, the growing unrest throughout the country, the strange occurrences across the world. The bomb. You yourself have been interested in London, St Pancras, I believe.” The nutty bombmaker smiled through his glasses.

  “You think . . . these are all connected?” the detective said. The startling potential of a link between the events sent his detective mind into overtime. He struggled to comprehend it all, but the meaning still lay flickering just outside his understanding.

  “The time of the Angels may be coming to a close, Mr Sylvester,” Minx said. “But then again, so may the time of the humans. It is foolish to take sides. Let the powerful destroy themselves, and then we can pick up the pieces after clearing away the garbage of this society.”

  “The homeless aren’t just trash to be taken away,” Sylvester growled.

  “You’re the one implying that, detective.” Minx grinned from behind his weird glasses.

  Detective Sylvester noticed for the first time The Book of Angels sitting off to the side of a pile of old clocks. The apocryphal book with its famous prophecies didn’t seem likely reading for an anarchist who hated Angels. It was the kind of stuff the crackpots read from the corners while people quickly walked by, trying not to pay attention.

  “Violence never solved anything.”

  “I think you’re quite wrong there, Mr Sylvester. Quite wrong.” Minx coughed hard into his hand and wiped it on his apron, grinning again, his wild eyes peering through the lenses and loupes. Sylvester felt like taking a shower.

  “Remember. I’m giving you seventy-two hours,” Sylvester said.

  Putting his jacket on, Sylvester began walking towards the door.

  “Detective,” Minx said.

  Sylvester stopped and turned around to face the bombmaker. Minx was holding the watch in his hand.

  “This may take me some time to adjust. I want to make sure I do a fine job on such a beautiful piece.”

  “That’s fine, take as long as you want,” Sylvester replied. “I just want the job done right.”

  The frosted glass rattled on the door as Sylvester walked out, Minx still peering at the watch through his strange glasses as the detective’s footsteps faded down the hall.

  That evening, Detective Sylvester walked down the hall of his old building, floorboards creaking under his loafers as he made his way to his apartment. He had a plastic bag with a container of green chicken curry from his favourite spot in Thai Town, which was just down Angel Boulevard from all the tourist shops and the Walk of Angels. He was looking forward to eating it. And getting some rest.

  It was eerily quiet, the hallway empty except for a neighbour, an older Mexican woman, walking her Pomeranian. The small dog yipped at Sylvester as they passed.

  “You have a visitor,” she said, nodding down the hallway.

  Sylvester looked up and saw Jackson Godspeed leaning against the door to his apartment. Interesting, Sylvester thought.

  “I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he said.

  “Not too long, detective,” Jacks said. “I would have got your number from my stepfather, but . . . well, I didn’t want him to know I was visiting.”

  The detective opened the door to his apartment and fumbled around in the dark for the light.

  “Please, come in and take a seat.”

  Jacks entered the modest apartment and looked around at the walls that had given him and Maddy refuge almost a year before, after Sylvester had saved them from the demon in the high school. He sank down into the couch. He was holding a small envelope in his hands.

  Sylvester put his keys and the Thai food down on the side table. He pulled a chair over from the kitchen and sat down.

  “What can I do for you, Jackson?” the detective asked.

  Jacks offered him a small manila envelope, placing it on the coffee table.

  “Inside is a zip drive and a DVD. On the drive are all the statements the Angels’ investigating committee has received, and that DVD has video surveillance from outside the Angel Administrations Affair on the evening of the bombing.”

  Sylvester sat up. “I though
t the Angels said there was no surveillance video that survived?”

  Jacks just gave him a look.

  “Thank you, Jackson,” Sylvester said. He opened up the envelope and examined the black thumb drive. “But why are you doing this?”

  “Because, after what you did for Maddy and me last year, I trust you. And I think it doesn’t matter who solves this case. As long as it gets solved. I’m not sure if there’s anything you can use. But you might see something we haven’t.” He took a deep breath. “My stepfather doesn’t know I’m here, like I said. I got a lot of this info from his laptop. He thinks it’s nice for me to have a . . . hobby, I guess.” Jacks’s voice was bitter for a moment. “Since I can’t protect anyone right now. But he sees it as just that, a hobby. He doesn’t understand that I’m looking for a purpose. Or something like that.”

  Sylvester nodded silently, his respect for the young Angel increasing.

  “I’m not even sure myself what it is. But not being able to save, not being able to fly, I feel so helpless – useless, I guess. Like someone who’s not supposed to be there any more. Now just a burden.” Jackson’s eyes grew dark and contemplative.

  “I’m sure that’s not true, Jackson,” Sylvester offered.

  Jackson didn’t respond. He looked around the apartment. At the printed-out articles. A map. The stacks of books around the living room. Sylvester’s obsessions.

  “Detective. . .” Jacks began slowly. He motioned around. “Why do you do it?”

  The detective’s face was serious. Almost gaunt.

  “Mark mentioned something about your past when we saw each other last time. Was it from when you were an Angel? I know from what you told me last year that you made an unsanctioned save, and lost your wings. And I know” – a look of pain came across Jackson’s face – “what it feels like not to be able to fly. But what happened? Behind the rumours and the discrediting and losing your wings. What really happened?”

  Sylvester let out a long breath. Pulling his glasses off, he polished them with the white dress shirt he wore under his rumpled sports coat.

  “It seems so far away now,” Sylvester said. “Even though I think about it every day. It’s difficult for me to talk about.”

  Jacks looked up at the detective. “Maybe it could do some good.”

  “Maybe.” The detective walked to the kitchen and came back with a glass of Scotch, neat. “I was a Guardian. Around the same time your real father and your stepfather were both also coming up as Guardians. It was a great time for the Angels. Each year more and more Protection policies were coming in, and the NAS wasn’t nearly as controlling of things as it is now. Not as corporate. It was a golden age for Angels in America, in my opinion.

  “I lived in a house up off Laurel Canyon. Not as much a house as a mansion.”

  Jacks involuntarily raised an eyebrow as he glanced around the detective’s current humble apartment.

  “Yes, I too once lived like the Angels, Jacks,” Sylvester said. “My bonuses each year kept getting larger and larger. I was young, only twenty-two, twenty-three. I loved the Angel life and it loved me. I had a girlfriend I was in love with. Sylvia. She was about to be Commissioned.

  “I didn’t have much to do with humans. I generally stuck to Angels and the Angel events. The way my father did, and the way his father had taught him. But then a child changed my life. She was eleven, maybe twelve. This was when I was still a new Guardian. She was the daughter of my housekeeper. Her father had left them, moved to Texas when she was just a baby. She and her mother lived in the side guesthouse on my estate.

  “Penelope – that was the girl’s name – she and I would sometimes play chess. She’d win half the time, and I wasn’t letting her. She was smart. And she would make me laugh. I’d never had any siblings and it was . . . fun . . . to have a laughing kid around. I wasn’t much more than a kid myself, frankly. I often helped her with her schoolwork. After a short while, I started to think of her as a member of my own family. And something about that girl made me start to think, just a bit, mind you, about the selfish Angel life I was living.”

  Sylvester paused to take a drink of his whisky. He stared at his distorted, amber reflection at the bottom of the glass before beginning the next part.

  “It was a beautiful day. The most beautiful day you could ask for in Angel City. Especially in those days, when the pollution was much worse.

  “Penelope and her mother, Maria, were on their way to visit relatives in East Los Angeles. They insisted on taking the bus, even though I offered to drive them. I think Maria would have been embarrassed if I saw where their family lived.” Sylvester shook his head. “That’s what being an Angel causes in other people.”

  “What happened?” Jacks asked.

  “The driver of the bus was on the freeway when she had a diabetic seizure. At sixty miles per hour, the bus began ploughing towards the edge of the overpass they were crossing.

  “I had the vision. Of Penelope and her mother’s death. It was brutal, searing my mind. I saw her frequency instantly. It was of her dying under the crushing weight of the bus as it toppled off the overpass and on to the road below. She was, of course, not a Protection. Maria could have worked and saved for thirty years and never have afforded a Protection policy. I know now this is why my father didn’t want me consorting with humans. Not because he was a snob.

  “Before I knew what I was doing, my wings were out. I blasted through the plate glass window of my home to fly to the speeding bus on the freeway. I was there, Jackson. I had made it in time. In a blur, I was beside the bus, ready to make the save, as the bus smashed through the concrete like it was papier-mâché and plunged straight off towards the streets below.

  “But I— ” Sylvester’s voice broke for a moment with years of emotion. “I hesitated. Just for a moment.”

  Jackson shivered.

  “I thought about the consequences. Of making the unsanctioned save. Of losing my wings. I hesitated. Instead – instead of just saving her. I was thinking of my miserable self. Instead of that beautiful girl. It was just a moment. But it was enough.

  “The bus began collapsing on to itself with force against the tarmac, like an accordion. I shot down and used my time-bending to freeze the accident. It took everything I had in me. Chunks of concrete hung in mid-air, enormous sparks were flying up from the crumpling front of the bus on the street, frozen in space. The terrified expressions of those on the street below were fixed on their faces. I still remember everything as clear as yesterday. I smashed in through the bus window and found Penelope and her mother there. They were frozen. Her hair was floating up towards the back of the bus. Shrapnel and purses and eyeglasses and blood were floating back up there, too. All frozen like a snapshot. And I was too late. Penelope’s bottom half was already crushed. But she had a strangely peaceful look on her face. I just looked down at her legs and lower torso mangled in the metal, and I started to weep. The bus began to slightly shift as my grip on the time-bending began to slip. I ripped open the metal, reached down, and pulled Penelope and her mother from the wreckage just as the bus smashed fully down and toppled over.

  “I kneeled on the pavement and had Penelope over my knees. Her eyes opened for a second. She was conscious and saw me. And you know what that little girl said to me? ‘It doesn’t hurt.’ She died in my arms.”

  Jacks looked at the detective, his blue eyes wet. He didn’t speak.

  “Maria survived her injuries but was never the same. She was heartbroken. She got a settlement from the city and the bus administration and moved back to El Salvador. Every Christmas I get a postcard.

  “The NAS was able to conceal from the public the fact that an unsanctioned save had been made. But I was punished immediately. The ADC took me that night. Not that I cared. Pulled me out of a bar downtown, where I was hoping to obliterate myself. After how I’d failed to save Penelope . . . I didn’t
even want to live any more. My girlfriend, Sylvia, begged me to fight, but I knew it was useless. She ended up getting Commissioned as a Guardian in Rio de Janeiro. I’ve never seen her since. They’ve made sure of that. And they took my wings.

  “I joined the ACPD. Changed my last name to what was then my middle name: Sylvester. I tried to start a new life to cover my guilt and shame. Thought I could bury myself in the department. A rumour circulated at ACPD that I’d missed the save of a Protection and that that’s why I was disgraced, all washed up. If they’d only known how much worse it was than that.”

  “I’m . . . sorry,” Jacks said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up. I— ”

  “There’s no way to have known, Jacks,” Sylvester said. “That is why I do what I do. Not because any of it could ever bring an innocent child back, or erase what I did when I didn’t save Penelope in time because I was thinking of myself. But somehow, some way, I can at least make the account slightly more even.” He knocked back the rest of his drink before putting the glass down with a clink. “Jackson, you’ve saved someone you loved and almost paid the ultimate price. But you saved her. Never forget that.”

  Jackson’s thoughts streamed back to Maddy. His voice was studied. “I won’t.”

  “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to eat my dinner before it gets too cold.”

  Sylvester and Jacks stood up.

  “Thank you for this,” the detective said, motioning to the manila envelope sitting on his coffee table.

  “I just want to help. Even though it feels like no one else believes I have anything to offer any more. I at least need to try, I guess.” He dropped his eyes again. “Anyway. Thank you, and have a good night,” Jacks said, walking out of the door. Sylvester closed it behind him.

  Sylvester sat down on the couch and opened the container of Thai food, which was still satisfactorily warm. He started digging in with a plastic spoon, his mind swirling with the history he’d just told Jackson. Drawing in a deep breath between bites of curry, the detective tried to shake it off. Reaching into his bag with his free hand, Sylvester opened up his laptop to start watching an episode from one of his favourite TV shows – he had a weakness for a couple of BBC series. Even though he was mostly a traditionalist, he had to admit that being able to stream was pretty nice.