The Black Angel

by John Connolly

  We gave him a five-minute start, then left.

  “So what now?” asked Walter, as we tried to avoid getting run over by a bus.

  “I need to talk to some people. You think you can find out who owns that warehouse in Williamsburg?”

  “Shouldn’t be too hard. The Nine-Six is probably on top of it already, but I’ll see what I can get from the city assessor’s office.”

  “The cops at the Nine-Six have a name on the man I killed. I don’t imagine they’re going to share much information with me, so keep your ear to the ground, see what filters through.”

  “No problem. You planning on staying at the Meridien for another night?”

  I thought of Rachel.

  “Maybe one more. After that, I need to go home.”

  “You talk to her?”

  “This morning.”

  “Did you tell her what happened?”

  “Most of it.”

  “That sound you hear in the back of your mind? That’s thin ice cracking. You need to be with her now. Hormones, everything gets screwed up. You know that. Even little things can seem like the end of the world, and big things, well, they just really might be the end.”

  I shook his hand.

  “Thanks.”

  “For the advice?”

  “No, the advice sucked. ‘Thanks’ is for stepping up to the plate on this one.”

  “Hey, once a cop,” he said. “I miss it sometimes, but this helps. It reminds me of why I’m better off out of it.”

  My next call was to Louis. I met him at a coffee shop on Broadway, up in the Gay Nineties. He didn’t look like he’d slept much, and although he was clean-shaven, and his shirt was neatly pressed, he appeared uncomfortable in his clothes.

  “Martha’s cousin is flying up today,” he said. “She’s bringing dental records, medical stuff, anything she can find. Martha was staying in some shit hole in Harlem. I made her move, so they’re both booked into the Pierre now.”

  “How is she?”

  “She hasn’t given up hope. Says it may not be Alice. The locket doesn’t mean nothing, except that the guy took it from her.”

  “And you? What do you think?”

  “It’s her. Like you, I just knew. I felt it as soon as I saw the locket.”

  “The cops should have a positive ID by tomorrow, then. They’ll probably release her in a day or two, once the ME has made his report. Will you go back with the remains?”

  Louis shook his head.

  “I don’t think so. I won’t be welcome. Anyway, there’s history down there. Better to let it rest. I got other things to be doing.”

  “Like?”

  “Like finding the ones who killed her.”

  I sipped my coffee. It was already going cold. I raised the cup to the waitress, then watched quietly as she warmed it up.

  “You should have told me what you did to G-Mack,” I said, as soon as she was out of earshot.

  “I had other things on my mind.”

  “Well, in future, if we’re going to do this, you’ll have to share your thoughts some. Two detectives down over in the Nine-Six liked me for the shooting. The fact that I’d left another man dead on their patch didn’t help my case.”

  “They say how that pimp asshole is doing?”

  “He was still woozy when I was at the Nine-Six, but since then he’s come around. He told the cops that he didn’t see a thing.”

  “He won’t talk. He knows better than to say anything.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Look,” said Louis. “I ain’t asking you to get involved in this. I didn’t ask you to begin with.”

  I waited for him to say something more. He didn’t.

  “You finished?” I said.

  “Yeah, I’m done.” He raised his right hand in apology. “I’m sorry.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry for. If you shoot someone, just let me know, that’s all. I want to be sure I can say I was somewhere else. Especially if, for once, I was somewhere else.”

  “The men who killed Alice are gonna find out that the pimp talked,” said Louis. “The man’s dead.”

  “Well, when they come he won’t be able to run away, that’s for sure.”

  “So what now?”

  I told him about the death of Alice’s friend Sereta near Yuma, and the body found in the car with her.

  “He wasn’t shot in the car,” I said. “Mackey told me that the cops followed a blood trail from outside the room to the door of the Buick. This guy walked to the car, then he sat in the driver’s seat with the door wide-open while he burned alive.”

  “Could be someone was holding a gun on him.”

  “It would have to be a pretty big gun. Even then, getting shot would be a whole lot more attractive than burning. Plus he wasn’t one of the guests registered. They’re all accounted for.”

  “One of Sereta’s johns?”

  “If he was, he left no trace in her room. Even if that were true, what was he doing outside the Mexican’s hotel room getting shot through the door?”

  “So he was one of the killers?”

  “It looks that way. He screws up, gets shot, then instead of taking him with them, his buddies leave him in the car and set him on fire.”

  “And he doesn’t object.”

  “He doesn’t even get up from his seat.”

  “So someone found out where Sereta was and came looking for her.”

  “And killed her when she was found.”

  He made the connections, just as I had earlier. “Alice told them.”

  “Maybe. If she did, they forced it from her.”

  He thought about it some more. “It’s hard for me to say this, but if I was Sereta, I wouldn’t have told Alice more than she needed to know. Maybe general things, a safe number to contact her at, but no more. That way, if they came for Alice, there wouldn’t be too much she could give away.”

  “So somebody down there ratted her out, probably based on whatever Alice’s killers got out of her.”

  “Which means somebody down there knows somebody up here.”

  “Garcia might have been the contact. Given how close the Spyhole was to the border, the Mexican connection would make sense. It could be worth finding out some more.”

  “This wouldn’t just be a way of getting me out of the city so you can pursue a, uh, more diplomatic line of inquiry?”

  “That would assume that I’m cleverer than I am.”

  “Not cleverer, just slicker.”

  “Like I said, someone down there may have information that could help us. Whoever it is, he or she is unlikely to give it up easily. If I were you, I’d be looking to strike out at someone right about now. I’m just giving you a focus for your anger.”

  Louis raised his spoon and pointed it at me. He managed to rustle up what might almost have been a smile.

  “You been spending too long sleeping with psychologists.”

  “Not lately, but thanks for the thought.”

  Louis was right, though: I wanted him gone for a couple of days. It would save me having to keep my movements from him. I was afraid that if I gave him too much information, he would take it upon himself to try to force answers from the people involved. I wanted the first shot at the bail bondsman. I wanted to speak to whoever had rented the warehouse space to Garcia. And I wanted to track down the FBI agent, Bosworth. After all, I thought, I could always set Louis on them later.

  I went back to my hotel, but with one extra item in my trunk. I had entrusted the bone sculpture to Angel before he left the warehouse, and now Louis had returned it to me. If the cops found out that I had withheld it, I would be in serious trouble, but the sight of it had allowed me to gain access to Neddo, and I had a feeling that it would open other doors if necessary. Waving a photograph or a Crayola drawing wouldn’t have quite the same impact.

  Angel and Louis were due to fly down to Tucson that evening, via Houston. In the meantime, Walter got back to me with a name: the
warehouse was part of an estate that had become tied up in some endless legal squabble, and the only contact the cops could find was a lawyer named David Sekula with an office on Riverside Drive. The telephone number on the banner at the warehouse went straight to an automatic answering service for a leasing company called Ambassade Realty, except Ambassade Realty appeared to be a dead end. Its CEO was deceased, and all callers were directed to contact the lawyer’s office. I took down Sekula’s address and telephone number. I would call him in the morning, when I was fresh and alert.

  I left three messages for Tager, the bail bondsman, but he didn’t return my calls. His office was up in the Bronx, close by Yankee Stadium. Tager, too, would be tomorrow’s work. Someone had asked him to post bail for Alice. If I found out who that person was, I would be one step closer to discovering those responsible for her death.

  As Angel and Louis made their way to the Delta terminal at JFK, a man who might have been able to answer some of their most pressing questions passed through immigration, collected his baggage, and entered the arrivals hall.

  The cleric had arrived in New York on a BA flight from London. He was tall and in his late forties, with the build of a man who enjoyed his food. His unruly beard was lighter and redder than his head hair and gave him a vaguely piratical aspect, as though he had only recently ceased tying firecrackers to its ends in order to frighten his enemies. He carried a small black suitcase in one hand and a copy of that day’s Guardian in the other.

  A second man, slightly younger than the visitor, was waiting for him as the doors hissed closed behind him. He shook the cleric’s hand and offered to carry his case, but the offer was declined. Instead, the visitor handed the newspaper to the younger man.

  “I brought you a Guardian and Le Monde,” he said. “I know you like European newspapers, and they’re expensive over here.”

  “You couldn’t have brought a Telegraph instead?”

  The younger man spoke with a faint Eastern European accent.

  “It’s a little conservative for my liking. I’d only be encouraging them.”

  His companion took the Guardian and examined the front page as he walked. What he saw there seemed to disappoint him.

  “We’re not all as liberal as you are, you know.”

  “I don’t know what happened to you, Paul. You used to be on the side of the good guys. They’ll have you buying shares in Halliburton next.”

  “This is no longer a country for heedless liberals, Martin. It’s changed since last we were here.”

  “I can tell that. There was a chap back there in immigration who just stopped short of bending me over a table and poking me in the arse with his finger.”

  “He would be a braver man than I. Still, it’s good to have you here.”

  They walked to the parking lot and didn’t speak of the matters that concerned them until they were out of the airport.

  “Any progress?” said Martin.

  “Rumors, nothing more, but the auction is in a matter of days.”

  “It will be like putting blood in the water to see what it attracts, but fragments are no good to them. They need it all. If they’re as close as we think, they’ll bite.”

  “It’s a risky business you’ve involved us in.”

  “We were involved anyway, whether we wanted it or not. Mordant’s death ensured that. If he could find his way to Sedlec, then others could too. Better to retain a little control over what transpires than none at all.”

  “It was a guess. Mordant was lucky.”

  “Not that lucky,” said Martin. “He broke his neck. At least it looked like it was an accident. Now, you said there were rumors.”

  “Two women disappeared from the Point. It seems that they were present when the collector Winston was killed. Our friends tell us that both have since been found dead: one in Brooklyn, the other in Arizona. It’s reasonable to suppose that whatever they took from Winston’s collection has now been secured.”

  The bearded man closed his eyes briefly, and his lips moved in a silent prayer.

  “More killings,” he said, when he was finished. “That’s too bad.”

  “That’s not the worst of it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “There have been sightings: an obese man. He’s calling himself Brightwell.”

  “If he has come out of hiding, it means that they believe they’re close. Jesus, Paul, don’t you have any good news for me?”

  Paul Bartek smiled. It was a grim smile, but he was still worried that the next piece of news was affording him a degree of pleasure. He would have to confess it at some point. Nevertheless, it was worth a few Hail Marys to pass it on to his colleague.

  “One of their people has been killed. A Mexican. The police believe he was responsible for the death of one of the prostitutes. They think her remains are among those found in his apartment.”

  “Killed?”

  “Shot to death.”

  “Somebody did the world a favor, but he’ll pay for it. They won’t like that. Who is he?”

  “His name is Parker. He’s a private detective, and it seems that he makes quite a habit of things like this.”

  Brightwell sat at the computer screen and waited for the printer to finish spewing out the final pages of the job. When it was done, he took the sheaf of papers and sorted through them, ordering them according to date, starting with the oldest of the cuttings. He read through the details of those first killings once again. There were pictures of the woman and child as they had been in life, but Brightwell barely glanced at them. Neither did he linger on the description of the crime, although he was aware that there was a great deal that remained unsaid in the articles. He guessed that the injuries inflicted on the man’s wife and daughter were too horrific to print, or that the police had hoped at the time to hold back such details in case they encouraged copycats. No, what interested Brightwell was the information on the husband, and he marked with a yellow highlighter those parts that were particularly noteworthy. He performed a similar exercise on each of the subsequent pages, following the man’s trail, re-creating the history of the preceding five years, noting with interest the way past and present intersected in his life, how some old ghosts were raised while others were laid to rest.

  Parker. Such sadness, such pain, and all as penance for an offense against Him that you cannot even recall committing. Your faith was misplaced. There is no redemption, not for you. You were damned, and there is no salvation.

  You were lost to us for so long, but now you are found.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  David Sekula occupied a suite of modest offices in a nice old brownstone on Riverside. A brass plate on the wall announced his status as an attorney-at-law. I pressed the button on the intercom by the door. It gave out a reassuring two-note chime, as if to convince those who might be tempted to run away in the interim that everything would be all right in the end. Seconds later the speaker spluttered into life, and a female voice asked if she could help me. I gave her my name. She asked if I had an appointment. I confessed that I didn’t. She told me Mr. Sekula wasn’t available. I told her that I could sit on the steps and wait for him, maybe open a Mickey’s Big Mouth to pass the time, but if I had to take a leak, then things might get messy.

  I was buzzed in. A little charm goes a long way.

  Sekula’s secretary was spectacularly good-looking, albeit in a vaguely threatening way. Her hair was long and black, and tied loosely at the back with a red ribbon. Her eyes were blue, and her skin was pale enough to make the hints of red at her cheeks look like twin sunsets, while her lips would have kept a whole Freudian symposium going for a month. She wore a dark blouse that wasn’t quite transparent yet still managed to hint at what appeared to be very expensive black lace lingerie. For a moment, I wondered if she was scarred in some way, because it seemed like there were irregular patterns visible on her skin where the blouse pressed against it. Her gray skirt ended just above the knee, and her stockings were sheer and black
. She looked like the kind of woman who would promise a man a night of ecstasy unlike anything he had ever previously imagined, but only as long as she could kill him slowly immediately afterward. The right man might even consider that a good deal. Judging by the expression on her face, I didn’t think she was about to make me that kind of offer, not unless she could bypass the ecstasy part and get straight to the slow torture. I wondered if Sekula was married. If I had suggested to Rachel that I needed a secretary who looked like this woman, she would only have agreed if I signed up for temporary chemical castration beforehand, with the threat of a more permanent solution always on the horizon if I ever felt tempted to stray.

  The reception area, carpeted in gray, took up the entire front room, with a black leather couch beneath the bay window and a very modern coffee table made from a single slab of black glass in front of it. There were matching easy chairs at either side of the table, and the walls were decorated, if that was the right word, with the kind of art that suggested someone suffering from severe depression had stood in front of a blank canvas for a very long time, then made a random stroke with a black paintbrush before slapping a hefty price tag on the result and entering lifelong therapy. All things considered, minimalism seemed to be the order of the day. Even the secretary’s desk was untroubled by anything resembling a file or a piece of stray paper. Maybe Sekula wasn’t very busy, or perhaps he just spent his days staring dreamily at his secretary.

  I showed her my license. She didn’t look impressed.

  “I’d like a few minutes of Mr. Sekula’s time.”

  “Mr. Sekula is busy.”

  I thought I could hear the low drone of one side of a telephone conversation coming from behind a pair of black doors to my right.

  “Hard to imagine,” I said, taking in the spotless reception area once again. “I hope he’s firing his decorator in there.”

  “What is this about?” said the secretary. She didn’t deign to use my name.