Black Angel

by Thomas Laird

  “Hannah…”

  “I know. You have a job to do. So I’m buying a gun, and I’m going to send these two to lessons so they can shoot him in the head if he ever comes back.”

  “I’m very sorry I wasn’t here to help, Hannah.”

  “You can leave now. I don’t think whoever it was will be back for a little while.”

  I can’t think of anything to say. I can’t come up with an apology. It’s too lame to tell her we ran out of man hours to watch her home. She already knows that excuse.

  I’m going to watch her house from out on the street the next few nights on my own time, just to make sure she’s safe, until she’s got the door fixed and the security system back online. I won’t tell her, though, because she’s angry with me. I led her to believe I’d be here for her—and not just professionally. I made her think I’d be around when she needed me. Instead I was home asleep when Jack made the call.

  So I get up and walk out of her room before they take the three of them to the hospital to treat them for possible shock.

  *

  I work four to midnight on shift. I spent midnight to dawn out on the curb, about a block down from Hannah’s house. I make regular passes on foot around her premises, but I don’t come too close so that I won’t trigger whatever electrical security system she’s got. At least the bells and whistles don’t go off as I circle the place.

  I think about the fear on her face, and then I want to find Brandon and Thomas and shoot them both. We have a very good circumstantial case against them with Gerald’s testimony about the Internet chats and the physical meet in Milwaukee. Our DA thinks he can convict them both of the Chicago murders with what he’s got. Confessions would be the clincher, but I’m thinking neither Thomas nor Brandon would tell the truth about what they did in Kuwait and in Chicago. They’d never give it up; they’d make us dig to smoke them both.

  Which is fine with me. I want to throw a full shovel of dirt on both of their graves. We still have the death penalty in Illinois.

  I sit outside Hannah’s lovely home, and I remember my anxiety on the way over here on the night of the attempted break-in. Jack didn’t tell me they were alive. He was en route himself, and there was no time for details. There was just the rush to get there and see for myself.

  *

  On the third midnight-to-dawn surveillance, I knock on Hannah’s door.

  “Yes?”

  She looks very tired, drawn.

  “Can I come in?”

  “It’s one o’clock in the morning.”

  “Please let me come in, Hannah.”

  “I don’t think…”

  I kiss her and take hold of her before she can further remonstrate with me.

  “Maybe you’d better come in, after all.”

  *

  I look down into her eyes as I enter her. Her breath escapes softly from her parted, full lips. Then I kiss her and lift her off the mattress, and I’m joined completely with her. I feel her tightening inside, and then she gasps.

  *

  “You’re sure the girls are sound asleep,” I grin at her.

  “I’ve got the door locked. They can’t get in,” she smiles hazily up at me.

  “I can’t do this again,” I tell her.

  “Why not?”

  “It doesn’t feel right. It feels a little awkward, with them in the next couple rooms down the hall.”

  “So are you saying we should meet for a four hour nap?” she laughs.

  “No motels, no. But I live with my father.”

  “So it’s the same deal at your place.”

  “Yeah. But I was talking about moving out into my own apartment. I’d hate to leave the girls alone here, right now.”

  “They stay with their dad, every other weekend. Even though he’s an asshole and doesn’t deserve visitation rights.”

  Then the anger passes her beautiful face, and she looks up at me.

  “They go to their father’s this Friday night and they don’t come home until Sunday evening. The bastard still loves both of them, I have to admit. Even with his new twenty-eight year old ho.”

  “So, am I being invited?”

  I slap my hands against my thighs, and then I feel my fingers gathering into a fist. I feel like a rejection is imminent. My face flushes, embarrassingly. I can sense the deep red.

  “You are.”

  My hands unclench. The heat is released from my cheeks. The temperature is quickly back to normal.

  “I’m off shift on Saturday. I could come here at midnight on Friday when I get off work.”

  “Don’t you get called in for cases at any hour?”

  She smiles coyly at me. She thinks I’ll come up with some lame excuse and that I’ll let her down. Her grin is almost evil.

  “Maybe the bad guys’ll be reasonable, this weekend.”

  “What about the other thing?”

  She shows me all her lovely pearlies, now. She’s having fun, dangling me over the open pit barbeque. The flames heat up my mug, again.

  “Other.… You mean Mary?”

  “Her name is Mary?”

  Her visage goes to a pout, suddenly. Now she seems to be on the defensive.

  “Yes.… Yeah, I guess I’ll have to talk to Mary.”

  “You’re not marrying me, Will. We’re just getting to know one another. Don’t get so serious on me.”

  I’m being lectured by an older, worldly woman. She has her hands on her hips, and it’s as if I’m back in the seventh grade with the ancient Mrs. Monaghan, the geography teacher.

  “You’re not serious?”

  “Are you questioning me?”

  She smiles.

  “I don’t mean to.… I just don’t get into casual things at least, I try not to.”

  I force my blush to dissipate. I’m telling my facial temperature to cool it, also.

  “We’ll just have to see, then, won’t we, Will.”

  She kisses me again, and then I have to put my pants on because I can see the first darts of dawn piercing her blinds.

  15

  The St. Louis cops are keeping an eye out for Brandon, but there have been no sightings.

  And I’m beginning to wonder if Thomas might be dead accident, perhaps suicide, although he’s not the type to take to the idea of suicide, I don’t guess.

  The conversation with Special Agent Mary Janecko, FBI, did not go well. I did all the smart things: I took her to a big restaurant with lots of people there, but she made a scene anyway, throwing ice water on my lap. It gave several customers a big laugh, but it made me look like a fool, on the way out, who’d just pissed his trousers. Apparently my “informant” at the Bureau has now become a dry well.

  I knew it wouldn’t be pretty. I always had an idea that Mary had a vindictive streak. She simply never showed it until now. All her talk about becoming committed apparently was just that—talk. We never moved to any other level than bed partners and lovers. It’s all a moot point, now that I’ve left her.

  I had trouble all through high school when I dated because I never wanted to float. I wanted to find someone who really liked me, even loved me. It never happened. We’d go out, we’d become romantic sometimes, and then she’d flit off to be with someone else.

  I joined the Corps after college because they practice fidelity, just like the famous Marine slogan, semper fidelis. Those two Latin words were what attracted me to the Crotch. But when I got into the Marines, I noticed it was just a slogan, just a cliché, to a lot of the men in the service. All there was was cynicism—it was every man for himself, a lot of the time. In reality, I mean. Everybody said the words, but I didn’t see many guys living them. It’s like the Secret Service, which I had aspired to join until I got into the NCIS instead. The guys who protect the President really would take a bullet for the Boss. I would’ve been like that, had I made it into that branch. I felt that way for my country, and a lot of the guys I grew up with in the city thought I was a fool. I was a romantic, like that S
panish idiot, Don Quixote. Jousting at windmills.

  Because I believed that justice was attainable, that our cause was right. Because I believed in the American Dream. The young guys I came up with all became pessimists or cynics. They told me this country would go down, and that like every other world power, we’d flame out over the course of history.

  I refused to buy it. Not because I’m some idealistic pinhead who believes what the Establishment tells him to believe. It’s just that I really do love this country. I love what it stands for in spite of all its glaring blemishes and shortcomings. I’m not a shiny-eyed moron. I know all about the evil on this globe. I’ve seen it, personally, in the Middle East and right here at home. I’m not a right- wing bible thumper, either. I have no religion. I was baptized a Catholic, but I’ve never practiced. My parents never dragged Sammy or me to church. If we wanted to go, they always said they’d take us and drop us off. But they never went, themselves. We put up a tree at Christmas, and we hunted for eggs on Easter when we were little, but Mom and Dad never did the hypocrite route by attending mass on Christmas and Easter to become C and E Catholics. They gave us all the right words about right and wrong without the evangelism bit. My Dad gave up on God after World War II. My mother said there was a reason she divorced Him from her life as well, but she never elaborated. Sammy and I grew up without knocking off gas stations or murdering the neighbors or even cheating on school exams. So I guess we were raised properly.

  My dad loved America too, but he never waved any flags, and neither have I.

  But I’d take a bullet for my country, and I don’t give a shit if no one but me believes it.

  *

  I watch Hannah’s house on my own time. I spend some time with her when the kids are with their father. And I’ve told Dad that I’m moving into an apartment.

  “Does that mean you’re not gay after all?” he said from behind his newspaper.

  I’ve made arrangements to move into a New Town flat this weekend. It won’t take much to move me. All I’ve got are my clothes and my books and of course my nine millimeter weapon, holster, bullets and badge. And one Detective’s ID, too.

  I cart my three suitcases to the second-floor flat with the help of Jack Clemons. It helps that he drives a Ford 150 truck. I asked him what the hell he needed a full-sized truck for when he lives by himself (only about a mile from here), has no wife or kids (whom he knew about) and isn’t a handyman/construction kind of guy.

  “You never know,” was his cryptic answer.

  We get me moved in in an hour and forty minutes.

  “You own nothing,” he smiles as we sit on the couch in my furnished, three room apartment. Bedroom, kitchen/dinette, and living room. Fairly spacious for $750 a month. And Hannah is coming over tonight to christen the bedroom, she says.

  “No. Just a few clothes and those.”

  I point to three boxes of books.

  Jack goes to the boxes and opens them.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” he grins at me.

  “Fucking poetry,” he laughs.

  “It’s not fucking poetry,” I inform him.

  “Robert Frost, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Who the hell are these guys? I mean I heard of Frost, but…”

  “Those guys are called ‘The Beat Poets,’ ” I explain. “Allen Ginsburg and some of the others. But I’ve got Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, too.”

  “Did your brother leathernecks think you were a little odd, with all this shit?”

  “I never shared my literary tastes with anybody in the Corps. I read this stuff on my own time. I even wrote some poems in college. Got a few published in the college review, as a matter of fact, asshole.”

  “Now you’re showing me your vindictive side.”

  “I learned it from my ex-girlfriend, Mary.”

  Jack looks at his hand and smiles patiently at me. He always seems amused with my love-life.

  “I never liked that bitch, Will.”

  “Speak kindly of the departed.”

  “She ain’t dead, Detective.”

  He grins paternalistically at me, and suddenly I want to whack him. I can feel the tension gathering in both of us, even though I know he’s trying to be funny.

  “To my life she is. She threw water all over my crotch at Spinoza’s.”

  Spinoza’s was the popular eatery I took her to when she doused me.

  “You should have shot her in the head.”

  “Sure, then you could come cuff me, Jack.”

  “I would’ve given you a twenty-four hour jump to cut out of town.… Are we done here?”

  He looks back down at that same hand, and an evil grin returns to his face. I can’t help but like the asshole.

  “Yes. Thanks for the help.… What’s on your mind?”

  He looks around the room as if he’s looking for a long-lost relative.

  “This thing is becoming colder as we speak.”

  “You mean Carl Thomas and friends.”

  “Yes, Will. Exactly. I don’t like the stink in my nose.”

  “What’s troubling you?”

  “You mean other than the fact that those two fucks are running free?”

  “Sometimes the bad guys get away with it. I had to live with that three thousand-pound primate on my back in Desert Storm after they whacked those two families over there.”

  I glare at him as if I don’t believe he’ll ever know what I know, because he’s never seen what I’ve seen. It’s not his fault he wasn’t in Kuwait, but I’m glaring at him angrily, anyway.

  “I don’t like what this Gerald told us. The whole conspiracy thing, to kill up the tree, working your way up the echelon in the oil game. It just sounds too whacked out.”

  Now he’s pissed off, too. His jaw is thrust out at me pugnaciously, as if he wants me to take a swing at him. He’s almost in that fighter’s stance. It’s the way he holds himself when he becomes combative, I’ve noticed.

  “Guys kill people because they hear little voices telling them that God’s telling them to smite thy neighbor. So what’s so nuts about getting even with the gas people?”

  “It sounds like.… terrorism, is what it sounds like.”

  His rage is beginning to boil over. I see his hands clenched as if he really is going to take a whack at me.

  “This country hasn’t been attacked by terrorists. Yet.”

  “I can’t see it happening, either.”

  He slumps out of his fine anger, all of a sudden. His shoulders go lax, and an unexpected chill takes over the room.

  I look at him in the eyes.

  “I don’t want to go there, Will.”

  “Nobody else does, either. Right now we’re after two killers. I don’t really give a shit why they killed all those vics. All I want to do is stop them from doing it again.”

  “Motive does matter. I don’t give a damn what you say.”

  “That’s always been pretty obvious to me, partner. And I like a guy who thinks for himself anyway.”

  “Yeah. Right…”

  He looks at my boxes of books.

  “Poetry? Jesus Harold Christ. Poetry.”

  He waves, and then he walks out the door.

  *

  First there was a list of a dozen solid suspects, back in Kuwait. Then the list dwindled to three. Captain Benjamin Anderson, Lieutenant Carl Thomas and Lieutenant Philip Brandon. Anderson was eliminated when he was presumed dead in action, KIA, killed in action. The body was never recovered, but his vehicle, a Hummer, was so severely burned that nothing but fragments of the hood remained; the heat from the explosion was so hot it damn-near melted everything down to cinders. His dog tags were thrown from the blast, as were his scorched combat boots. That was all they could find to recover of his body and the two other Marines in his vehicle. There were only particles of the lance corporal and the gunnery sergeant who were signed out with the vehicle. No one recovered anything until two days after they’d gone missing. It was presumed they’d run into a booby-trapped vehic
le in the road, but they were out in the boonies outside of Baghdad, so no one witnessed the blast. They were due at their camp, just three miles from the home of Saddam Hussein. They never made it back to their tent.

  I liked Thomas and Brandon in-country because of their borderline profiles from psych records. Neither of them was outright Section Eights, but they were loners. The Corps has its share of loners, and I’d always qualified as one before I joined NCIS just before the shit broke out in Desert Storm, but these two were different kinds of outcasts. They seemed to know where their boundaries stood—neither man had any kind of military offense on his record. They were clever fuckers, I’m saying. They never went too far, but they were always on the edge, their superior officers had written in their personnel jackets. Both of them were a little too good to be true, it seemed to me. I was running on instinct with Thomas and Brandon, but I really liked them for those multiple homicides then, and I still liked them, even though we had a nut’s word that they did the Chicago slayings.

  Organized killers. Series murderers. Serial killers. Serial killers. Madmen who weren’t so mad as to leave incriminating evidence behind. Smart assassins, left no forensic evidence.

  Left only suspicion in the mind of a young NCIS investigator whose job was Crimes Against Persons/Violent Crimes. Violent crimes, as in murder.

  Even the Soviet Union was beginning to admit it had a problem with these kinds of predators. They’d always had series killers, but they liked to say it was a “western” phenomenon, not something a communist state had to suffer.

  Jack was right. The scent was becoming faint; the trail was becoming obscured. The longer a homicide went unsolved, the colder the case became. Thomas was mist. Brandon was a phantom. Jack was becoming anxious to break this thing open, not to mention the anxiety level our Captain Pearce must be burdened with.

  I never felt the pressure of having red names on our white board in Homicide. Some detectives lived and died with their percentage of solved cases, but I tended to look at my load as a challenge, not a percentage. I’m not a bean counter, and perhaps I’ll live to learn to regret it. The word has always been “quota.” It’s like a car salesman. If you don’t move the merchandise, you get shit-canned. Same is true in homicide.