Blood of Angels

by Reed Arvin

  I back out of the garage and drive across suburban Williamson County, passing more or less identical subdivisions. Stones River. River Glen. River Farms. Each with a house stamped on its own quarter acre of land, a two-story box of furniture surrounded by a patch of grass. One thing I do know: a bigger box and more grass isn’t the answer. Hell, my father had less box and grass than I do, and he was the happiest, most contented guy I ever knew. Dr. Knife seems happy, but he’s Greek and rich and married to my beautiful ex-wife, so what the fuck else would he be? Maybe the guy actually enjoys carving excess skin off people’s jowls. I turn the truck down the packed four-lane road that rolls through Franklin’s busy shopping district. Williamson County’s growing explosively, and it seems like every month the traffic doubles. Bone fishing. I could live on the boat. No wasted space. Efficient.

  I decide to drive down to the DPC to see the hole that pipe bomb put in the building. It would be a hell of a mess, and with the rain continuing sporadically through the night, the interior would be pretty much a catastrophe. Thirty bucks’ worth of mischief, thirty thousand dollars’ worth of repair. It’s a hell of a lot more expensive to be on the right side of things, sometimes. I pull out onto I-65 and head north, into town. There’s no rush hour, so the Ford cruises at seventy-five miles per hour on a stretch of highway I normally pick my way through at one-fourth the speed. I take the Church Street exit into downtown, drive nine blocks, and turn right onto Fifth. I slow and see a medium-size ladder truck parked beside the church. A small group of people are gathered around, rubbernecking. Fiona is there, too; whatever the residual effects of last night might be, they’re not slowing her down. She’s arguing—it seems like every time I see her she’s arguing about something—with a stocky man in dark blue coveralls. A group of workmen are hanging around near the truck, like they’re waiting for orders. From their bored expressions, they’ve been there a while. I pull the truck behind the church and park in the small lot. Fiona’s Volvo is there, but there aren’t any other cars.

  Fiona sees me come around the building and stops what she’s saying, midsentence. She smiles, which turns on some pheromone-chemistry thing that I want to shut off, but can’t, because there’s no switch. You can intellectualize the shit out of the moment a woman’s smile starts to matter to you, but it doesn’t help much.

  I walk up to her. “So you’re OK.” Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, and she’s wearing black jeans and a light T-shirt that says Sprawl Mart. Other than a small bandage on her bare arm, she’s unscathed.

  “You, too,” she says.

  “You came out and got your car pretty early.”

  “I got a little sleep and was fine. I took a taxi out and drove here.” She looks up at the hole where the stained-glass window was before the explosion. “This can’t wait.”

  The workman—his name is Ross, according to the tag stitched into his shirt—interrupts. “Look, while you two are having your little moment, I still got a crew of four sitting on their butts. So are we gonna work this out or not?”

  “What’s the problem?” I ask.

  “The problem is the lack of forty-five hundred bucks, pal. That’s the charge for putting three people up on that roof, clearing the remaining glass, covering it with a temporary waterproof tarp, removing the other cracked windows, and coming back Wednesday with clear replacements.”

  “Other windows?”

  Ross points up to the windows. “There’s hairline fractures in the two adjacent to the one that fell in. They could go at any time. They got to come out, or you’re gonna have lawsuits out the yingyang.”

  “I don’t have forty-five hundred dollars,” Fiona says. “Or anything like it.”

  “Then we load up and go home, lady.”

  Fiona’s face flushes. “This is a church, Mr.…what was your name again?”

  “Moore. Ross Moore.”

  “This is a church, Mr. Moore. The interior of this building is of immense historical value. Surely we can work something out here.”

  “We sure can, for forty-five hundred bucks.” Moore shakes his head. “Look, you’re a nice lady. But I put somebody up on that roof, insurance, workman’s comp got to be paid. I can’t budge on this thing.” He turns to his crew. “Load it up, fellas. We’re heading out.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Fiona says quietly. “I absolutely cannot believe this is happening.”

  It’s the middle of summer in Nashville, there’s a gaping hole in the roof of the church, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that air that humid will generate mold inside the sanctuary within days, even if Fiona manages to get everything covered inside. It’s a disaster waiting to happen. I walk up behind Moore and put my arm around him as he walks. This is not a rational choice, but the smile matters now, so fuck it. “Forty-five hundred bucks is pretty steep,” I say.

  “So is the pitch of that roof, hombre. That’s the price.”

  “I’d hate to think you were gouging this woman because of her desperate situation. Me being an assistant district attorney and all.”

  Moore’s footsteps grind to a halt. He looks up at me warily. “You with the DA?”

  I squint up at the roof, gripping his shoulder firmly. “Workmen’s comp regulations are a pain in the ass, aren’t they, Ross?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s a fact.”

  “And when I think about all the licenses and fees, and how easy it is to get hung up on a codes violation…I mean, a job can get shut down for days at a time.” I shake my head, eyes on the roof. “You know, there’s a door up there that opens up to the ledge. You really don’t need the ladder truck.”

  Moore squints, too, making a pretty good show of it. “Yeah, I guess I see that. Still have to put tackle on the workmen, secure them to the building.”

  “Sure, no question. But I imagine the charge for the truck would be—what, about a grand?”

  “A grand? Nope, not hardly, not for the truck.”

  I squeeze his shoulder, eyes still on the roof. “Yeah, I’d say it’s about a grand.”

  “You would?”

  “Yeah, I would.”

  Moore glances over at Fiona. “You reckon she’s got the thirty-five hundred?”

  I pull out my billfold and slip him my Visa card.

  He looks at the card. “Yeah, that’ll do.”

  “I had a feeling.”

  Moore heads off to his crew, and I walk back over to Fiona. “Turns out Mr. Moore is a fan of architecture,” I say. “Once he understood this place was on the National Registry of Historic Places, I couldn’t talk him out of doing the job.”

  She looks at me skeptically. “What did you do, Dennehy? You realize I don’t have the money.”

  “I told you. He considers it a contribution to the cityscape.”

  “Cityscape. He used that word.”

  “Yeah.”

  “My God, Dennehy, you’re a bad liar.”

  She starts off toward Moore, and I grab her arm. “Everything doesn’t have to be a battle, does it?” She stops and watches the workmen beginning to unload their ropes. A couple strap on safety belts and start toward the structure. “Just say thank you, Towns.”

  She looks at me. “Thank you. Now tell me why.”

  I smile. “Something somebody taught me. You go to battle, and you buy your adversary a drink when it’s over. It’s not personal.”

  “This was an expensive drink.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “So I owe you one. A drink, I mean.” She pauses. “I suppose I should be glad it’s not…personal.”

  There it is again; the surpassing desire, some kind of voodoo chemistry drawing me to her. Last time I felt like this, a bomb exploded. Time to go now. “I’ll see you, Towns. I’m glad you’re OK.”

  “You, too. You look…well.”

  I smile. “I look well.”

  “I mean you’re OK.”

  “Yeah. I’m OK.” I walk off, passing by Moore as I go.

  “All s
et, Mr. Dennehy. We’ll take care of it.”

  I take my Visa card from him and push it back in my billfold. “You need anything downtown, Ross, you just give me a call.”

  On the other side of the building, I stop and catch my breath. I look well. What the hell is that? She looked well, too. Way better than reverends have any right to look. I walk to the edge of the far side of the church and turn right again to complete the square. My car’s up ahead, and there’s somebody standing near it. I stop and watch; the guy is looking inside the driver’s-side window, his face pressed against the glass. He steps back and gives the truck a once-over, like he’s an aficionado. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and starts walking back toward the church. It’s Robert, the so-called ex-addict who helps Fiona around the church.

  “Robert!” I call his name, and he looks around, his dark, unblinking eyes staring out from the facial hair. He doesn’t move as I approach. I smell him at ten yards; at five, it’s a serious wall of scent, and I stop.

  “Well,” he says. “It’s you, Skippy.”

  “That’s right.” Unlike the time before, he’s definitely glazed. His pupils are a mile wide, and his eyes are glassy. “You like the truck, Robert?”

  “It’s nice. It’s bitchin’. It’s a completely bitchin’ ride.”

  “I saw you checking it out.”

  He smiles, exposing a row of horrifying teeth, a telltale sign of time spent on the pipe. “And I saw you looking at Fiona.”

  I watch him, trying to read his face. “You ought to get a shave, Robert. It’s too damn hot for a beard like that.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I’ll do that.”

  “I understand from Fiona you’ve had a little drug problem in the past.”

  His eyes darken. “Telling tales on me, the reverend. No matter, Skippy. All behind me now. I’m straight as a whistle. Clean as an arrow. And all because of her.”

  “Reverend Towns?”

  He smiles and opens his arms wide. “Don’t you know, Skippy? She’s the patron saint of lost souls. She’s my reason for being.”

  SOMETIMES, I HAVE TO ADMIT, I get the whole totalitarian thing. It’s so damn efficient. Somebody pisses you off, you haul them in, question them awhile—no witnesses, naturally—and you find out what the hell’s going on in their weird little mind. I pull back out onto Fifth, turning away from the church toward the river. Totalitarianism may be an occasionally tempting prospect for a prosecutor, but here, in Nashville, Tennessee, people like Robert the ex-addict are free to annoy the hell out of whomever they please, as long as they don’t break any laws when they do it. The little fucker’s got things figured out pretty well, actually. He’s a guest of Fiona, so he can’t be arrested for vagrancy while he’s near the church. It’s sanctuary, in the old sense of the word.

  I drive down Second Avenue, past 222 West. The tourist traps are all shuttered after a Friday night of draining money from country music fans. Shee-it, we just missed Shania Twain. I hear she was in the Wild Horse Saloon, night before last. I drive past the little park near Fort Nashboro, a reconstructed piece of history that harkens back to before the Civil War. The General Jackson, a dinner-cruise riverboat that inexplicably features a group of Chinese acrobats as its entertainment, sits peacefully at its docking, a slight wake lapping against its giant sides.

  Thirty-five hundred bucks. That was an interesting choice. Dr. Gessman will definitely have words of wisdom for that one. “Your attachment to your sworn enemy is a metaphor for your inner conflict. You don’t know what side you’re on, anymore. Check please.”

  I pull to a stop at a light. Is that true? Is that why she gets to me? Because I actually want to switch sides? I drive on, thinking I seriously need to get through this case. Nail Bol, take a vacation. Sort things out. Hell, the department owes me about twenty weeks. And the twenty weeks right after this case wouldn’t be the worst twenty weeks to be somewhere else. I’ll just let Rayburn handle the flack. That’s what he’s good at, and anyway, he’s given everybody orders not to talk to the media. So good. Bol goes down, and a couple of days later I’m practicing my bone-fishing skills in Biscayne Bay.

  CHAPTER

  13

  BANANA. CUP OF PEET’S. Daily Zoloft. Breakfast, in other words. I stare at the blue pill, wondering if it makes sense to take it with coffee. Sort of defeats the purpose. Nevertheless, I’m amazed again at the psychic weight—Dr. Gessman’s term—that one human being can carry while continuing to smile, crack wise, and otherwise appear to fully function. All it takes, apparently, is a blue pill and a Sunday to decompress. Sunday, day of rest. No local TV news. No talk radio, either, which means Dan Wolfe won’t be fanning the anger of his hounds.

  The reverend Fiona Towns will be preaching her proletariat-uprising message to a scattering of souls, no doubt, and thanks to a pretty hefty Visa bill I’ve incurred, she won’t be doing it with the outside air pouring into the room. Other than that, everybody can just chill, even me. I do not, for the first time in my career, spend the day before a trial begins poring over every detail of the case. Bol’s voir dire will kick off the festivities—and festivities they will certainly be, when the Wolfe Pack, the anti-death-penalty crowd, the Nationites, and the Sudanese all meet in one twenty-first-century, political cluster fuck in about a fifty-square-yard space outside the courthouse—and that conflagration is too much to take on in advance. What I need, I realize, is a fucking day off.

  I spend two hours on the Internet, trolling through boat ads, picturing myself on one vessel after another, juggling numbers and interest rates. Apparently, offshore fishing is a rich-guy’s sport, because two hundred grand buys thirty-six feet of used boat with mechanical issues, not the gleaming forty-five-footer I want.

  The day looks up considerably when, to my shock and amazement, Indy shows up. He saunters through the animal flap in the back door casual as hell, like he’s just stepped out for a drink, not disappeared for two days. He walks over, checks out the half-empty bowl—God knows what he’s been eating while he’s been gone—and looks up at me expectantly. I climb off the couch and size him up. “Well,” I say. “Look what the cat drug in.” He swishes his tail dismissively, then looks around, wondering where the good food is. “Listen, cat,” I say, “even I eat leftovers.” But Indy takes a hard line, so I open up a can of Fancy Feast, spoon it into the bowl, and set it down on the floor. The cat digs in, without so much as a by-your-leave.

  I nap an hour in the afternoon, my body smart enough to know what’s coming, storing a little energy in preparation. “Calm before the storm,” as Carl said. Monday, the news organizations will be back on my ass in force. Monday, the trial begins. Monday, I realize with a shock, is Carl’s last official day. Monday, it seems to me, can go to hell. I stay in for dinner, brew some more Peet’s, and settle in on the couch with a book.

  Maybe it’s because of how Fiona showed up, but when the doorbell rings around 7:30 that evening, my first thought is that it’s her. Turn her around, send her home. Whatever it is on her mind, it’s too late now. I push a hand through my hair, unlock the door, and pull it open. There, looking concerned and beautiful, is Bec, just back from Orlando.

  “Rebecca. What are you doing here?”

  “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, sure.” She walks past me, her black hair in a ponytail, wearing Mr. Designer everything, looking like the doctor’s million bucks. Her skin, fresh from a weekend baking under the Florida sun, is as dark and luscious as mocha ice cream. She hugs me, somehow distant and close at the same time, which is exactly what an ex-wife is.

  “Is Jazz OK?”

  “Of course.” She looks around, taking in the living room like she hasn’t seen the changes, even though she has, at least a dozen times. “Maria kept the papers while we were gone,” she says. “I know about the gun at the barn, the explosion at the church, everything. I came as soon as I could get Jazz unpacked and answering her fifty e-mails.” I breathe her in automatically—she smell
s good, like lavender—then step away. She walks past me, stopping in the middle of the living room. “So how are you? Are you hanging in there?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Why are you here, Bec?”

  She shrugs, her slender shoulders moving in a petite, dismissive arc. “I thought you could use some company.” Her eyes run along the furniture, like she’s looking for dust. “Everyone you know works at the DA’s office,” she says. “You’re all in the same shape. You need someone from outside.” She looks toward the kitchen. “I smell coffee,” she says. “Pour me a cup?”

  I follow her into the kitchen, and she sits, looking like she never left. I walk to the cupboard and take down a cup, filling it three-fourths with coffee. I add cream and sugar in the precise measurements that a thousand repetitions make automatic. Rebecca looks out to the deck off the back. “You’ve done a lot of work here.” She leans back in her chair. “I always liked this place, you know.”

  I set the coffee down in front of her. “So Jazz had fun in Orlando.”

  “Um hmm. She’s probably telling all her friends about it online.”

  “Watch who she talks to on that thing, Bec. There’s bad people around.”

  She frowns, still beautiful, as though her mouth was made to frown, shaped perfectly for it. “I know what this gun situation must mean to you, Thomas. How’s Carl taking it?”

  “You know Carl. The man’s a rock.”

  “Yes.”

  I can’t figure out why she’s here. Seeing her without Jazz hasn’t happened since the divorce. “So you thought I could use some company,” I say.

  “Um hmm.” She runs her finger along the rim of her cup thoughtfully. “Well, I had something I wanted to discuss.”