Black Angel

by Thomas Laird

  I’ve been lucky that my red names are far fewer in number than my black names. I do have a high solution ratio 85%. But what matters to me most is what’s on the table before me now.

  Someone kicked Hannah Menke’s front door down and scared the hell out of her and her two daughters. Someone killed two entire families in Kuwait on my watch and got away with it. Somebody killed a family in my hometown of Chicago, and he’s still at large. All the above bothers me, and if it’s obsession with my work… I don’t know how else to play the cards I’ve been dealt. I give a shit about the victims I have to speak for. You can call that idealistic, fine. The day I stop caring about cleaning up the messes they leave, maybe I’ll become a security guard in a bank or a night watchman.

  Homicide has a high burnout rate. Numbers. Fucking numbers.

  What are the odds we ever find Thomas and Brandon? What are the odds that neither of them did it and Gerald is a lying piece of shit who needs severe psychiatric therapy for his pathological lying problem?

  Doubts. Self-doubt. It comes with the job. Make a wrong move. It’s like step on a crack and you’ll break your momma’s back. My mother’s not dead, but you get my point, I think.

  I lost my personal contact with the FBI, true. But I got Hannah in return. I think I came out ahead. The days don’t seem as leaden and dark anymore. They actually seem more hopeful.

  Unless I start to obsess on those two pricks out there somewhere. And it might be more than two, if you count the guy who did the family in California. And who knows how many more of them there might be, if Gerald was in fact telling us the truth about this “Internet mafia.”

  Series killers. Serial killers. Organized killers. Call them whatever you like. I was after Carl Thomas and Philip Brandon in spite of my partner Jack Clemons’s doubts about their reasons for killing. Do it for oil. Do it for money. Do it for the Holy Grail. Do it for whatever you like.

  All those victims remain dead, and payment has come due.

  16

  I go to Jack’s softball game in Orland Park, under the lights. It’s Chicago-style, sixteen-inch slow pitch—no gloves allowed. It’s an older guys’ game, at least on the mound and in the infield. The younger guys, like Jack Clemons, are the speedsters in the outfield. Jack played minor league baseball in the Cubs’ organization, Class A, before he was injured and quit and went to college and then became a policeman and later a Homicide. He’s got a girlfriend at the game, but I’ve met her before and I really don’t want to get into any more conversations with her. She’s a little unhinged, I think. Last time I went to one of Jack’s softball games she told me she was going to recruit six Jews and return with them to the Holy Land. I asked her if she were Jewish herself, but she got all huffy and explained she was a “Christian, of course.” So I let her sit by herself on the third baseline. I sit in the bleachers behind the plate. They’re better seats, anyhow.

  Hannah couldn’t make the game because it’s Bethany’s birthday, and both sides of her family, her ex-husband’s and hers, are going out for pizza and cake and ice cream. Bethany doesn’t seem all out of joint about a birthday party at her teen years. She just goes along with it all because she loves her mother and doesn’t want to break Hannah’s heart. Hannah thinks her daughters will remain forever young, like the Bob Dylan song. I humor her about it. She was very excited about Bethany’s party, and who am I to poop on it?

  Jack’s team, The Jesters, out of Orland Park, lays into the Generals, a crew out of Tinley Park, another southwestern burb. It’s 12-1 in the third, so I become bored and I start taking in the scenery. I like to look at faces in the crowd.

  Then I see Carl Thomas standing out on the first base line, about 20 feet from the right field foul pole and the fence. He’s got shades and a yellow tank top, and he’s pretty far from me, but I know it’s Thomas. I’ve looked at his photo in his jacket often enough. When I’m sure he’s staring right at me, I get up slowly and walk down from the top of the home plate bleachers. I don’t want him to think I’m headed his way. I take my time on the short descent, and then I casually head toward the concession stand behind the bleachers. I go up and order a Diet Coke, and then I swivel my face toward the right field line and I see Thomas still standing there. I’m wearing shades too, so I think maybe he doesn’t know I’ve caught sight of him yet.

  I turn with my Diet Coke and head back toward my seat, but when I get to the bottom rung of the bleachers, I place the cup of soft drink on the seat and then I burst into a sprint toward Carl Thomas, and several people in the home plate seats gasp as they see me tear down the right field line.

  Carl finally makes me as I’m headed at him, and he pivots and races to the right field fence. It’s a six foot chain link, but he’s over it like a high jumper in competition. When I reach that same chain link, I have to struggle and grope to clear it, but I overcome this hurdle, and I’m after him.

  There is another softball diamond opposite Jack’s, and there’s a game going on right now. I’ve landed in left field. Thomas is galloping across their infield, ahead of me.

  When I make it to the adjacent field’s shortstop, the bull moose of a softball player tackles me.

  “The fuck you think you’re doin’?”

  “I’m a policeman,” I tell the giant who’s pinned me to the grass behind short.

  “I’m after a felon, so get the fuck off me!” I bellow.

  “How I know you’re a cop?”

  “Let me up.”

  He finally relents as the other two teams begin to circle us like Native Americans around a wagon train.

  I get up and take my ID out of my pocket. They take a quick look, and then I burst through their circle.

  “Sorry, man!” I hear the apelike shortstop yell behind me.

  There’s another fence behind this field, back of home plate. It was the direction Thomas was headed, at least. I scale it hurriedly.

  There’s a large copse in front of me now, but there’s no sign of Carl Thomas. The trees are thick. There are oaks and thorny elms and maples, and they’re bunched so tightly together that I can’t make out an entry.

  And then I see a tiny dirt path off to my left. There are tall oaks on either side of this little slit. If Thomas entered these trees, I’m thinking he had to do it here. The underbrush is too thick for him to have made his way at any other starting point.

  I take off down the path at full speed. My legs aren’t bothering me, even after going over the top of two fences and even after being tackled by a Dick Butkus look-alike back on the second ball field.

  I’m running as hard as I can, and my wind is still there, but I know he’s got too big a lead. So I stop. I have to place my hands on my knees. My wind has suddenly betrayed me. I’m not the athlete I used to be a decade ago. Sammy’d think I was falling apart if my brother saw me right now.

  Then I hear a rustling off the path. Suddenly I stand erect.

  I’m not armed. My nine millimeter is in the trunk of the Cavalier, back at the parking lot. I didn’t want to carry it because it’s too hot, even though it’s mid-September. The 90s won’t depart and give way to all that Canadian air up north.

  I’m the veritable sitting duck here. He can see me but I can’t locate him. It’s probably what he planned. He decoyed me. He knew I’d seen him all along, and he was just waiting for me to pursue. Stupid. Very stupid. Poor field tactics. I should have called for backup as soon as I made him out there in right field. I should have called in the troops, goddamn it. Now I might get myself shot in the process, as well. He has me. The advantages are all his. He knew where he was going all along, and now I’m going to die in a wood next to a softball diamond. Maybe they’ll all hear the crack of Thomas’s weapon, anyway.

  The rustling continues. I think about climbing this tree next to me, but the trunk is thorny. It’s a thorny elm. I begin to run into the underbrush when I hear a voice calling me.

  “Will! Goddammit! Will!”

  It’s Jack Clemons in full
softball regalia—and he’s armed with a wooden baseball bat.

  I stop in my tracks and turn. Jack has halted by the path, and he’s waiting for me.

  “Are you going to come on out here?” he asks. He’s nearly out of breath, himself.

  I walk out of the ground cover. I know I must be covered in poison ivy or poison oak, and I begin to scratch reflexively.

  “Jesus fucking Christ. Where were you headed?”

  “Thomas. It was Thomas.”

  “Where? Where the fuck…”

  “He’s gone. It’s just for chuckles and grins. He’s fucking with me.”

  “He could’ve fucking shot you out here, goddammit, Will!”

  “My piece is in the car.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  We stand quietly here, both of us trying to regain our oxygen.

  “I’m in the middle of the fucking game, and I see you streaking down the right field line. But I never saw him, Will. All I saw was you, tearing like hell toward that fence.”

  “You think I’m making this shit up?”

  “Take it easy. I’m on your side, jackass. Take it easy.… Let’s get back, huh?”

  When we’ve got our collective winds back, we begin the long walk back to Jack Clemons’ softball game.

  *

  The envelope sits on my desk at work. I know who it’s from without even opening it. The 9 X 12 is postmarked Chicago, so he is here in the city for real. It’s from Carl Thomas.

  Inside is a single sheet of typing paper, plain white. Standard size. It has a crayon-rendered picture of a bull’s eye, and in the center is my name Will Koehn—glued to the spot. It’s made from newsprint. There is no other message.

  *

  Captain Pearce is very concerned and irate.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the first little message?”

  “I thought it might just be a crank.”

  “Very lame, Koehn.”

  “Very lame indeed, Sir. My apologies.”

  “Apologies don’t feed the bulldog, Will.”

  “Aye. I mean yes, Sir.”

  “You will not withhold any viable information or evidence from me again, young man. Am I being clear?”

  “You are, Sir. Very clear.”

  *

  “He’s in town,” Jack tells me as we eat dinner at White Castle once again on the four-to-twelve shift.

  “Master of the obvious,” I grin at him.

  The lovely smell of fried onions permeates the already greasy atmosphere. The smell of the ground beef is all over us. It is delicious, this high-fat heaven.

  “He can’t stay under forever.”

  “Maybe. He’s stayed cleared of me since Desert fucking Storm,” I remind Jack.

  A waitress walks by. Her upper lip has a slight mustache over it, and I can see the beads of sweat that have clustered above her mouth. The windows are fogged with the heat of the cooking inside and the humid air outside.

  “Well, he’s clever. You have to hand him that.”

  “Yeah. I know all about this prick. I know he scored a perfect on his SATs. I know he had a full academic ride to Stanford and he passed it up to go to some small college in Ohio. I know Brandon is almost his twin—astronomical scores on both the ACT and SAT, and a full scholarship to UCLA. Smart pricks, both of them. Officer material. Right?”

  The guy sitting down three seats from us is wearing a 1940s fedora. Too bad he isn’t also wearing a zoot suit. The hat makes him look like he’s arrived here fifty years too late.

  “You don’t need to get pissed at me, partner. I’m still on your side.”

  “I know, Jack.… I’m sorry. I’m venting. That’s what Mary used to call this shit.”

  “Fuck,” the guy with the boss fedora mutters. It’s barely audible, but he said it loud enough so the waitress with the mustache heard him as she lays down his platter of sliders. Apparently she didn’t remove the onions from his hamburgers, as he requested.

  “If they’re so goddam smart, how come they’re criminals?”

  “Gerald said it was about evening up with the man, getting square with the Establishment.”

  Jack grimaces as he sips at his coffee. He looks as if he’s swallowed arsenic, the way his face is all twisted up in pain.

  “You believe Gerald?”

  “No,” I tell him.

  “Then why are they killing these people, these young girls? They all were involved in oil.”

  He’s got his “demanding” pose with his body language. He’s ordering a response from me. Next thing he’ll do is stand up in that boxer’s stance.

  “They have that common thread. But it doesn’t seem right. It seems too…too plotted out. Everything they’ve done has been by the numbers. It’s too obvious of a plan.… Does that make any sense?”

  My mouth goes dry. I see the bodies in Kuwait again. Suddenly I’m transported back to all that ugliness.

  “You’re talking about misdirection, Will. Yeah, I get it.”

  Jack’s face goes serious. He’s lost his wisecrack, Homicide attitude. He can’t joke away this case, the way we both try to from time to time, just to lighten the air we breathe.

  “It’s like a come on. It’s as if they have this false scenario they’re running at us to keep us going the wrong way. I don’t have anything to back up my impression, my take on this, but I think they’re running a gag on us, a game.”

  “Why?”

  “Yeah. Indeed. There it is. Why, indeed?”

  *

  My life with Hannah continues to intensify. She spends weekends here when I have time off, and sometimes she comes over during the week when her mother can stay at the house with the two girls. Neither of us wants them to be alone any more, or at least until Brandon and Thomas are taken down.

  We don’t talk about marriage because the divorce is too fresh in her mind, but I have nothing else on my mind—except the two elusive rapist/murderers who occupy my sleeping and waking moments.

  I want to make a commitment to Hannah, and I’ve had it on my mind ever since I burst into her home that early A.M. and kissed her and took her to bed for the first time.

  I don’t broach the subject of matrimony because I’m afraid to scare her off. I can see she’s wary of my intentions, but that doesn’t stop things between us from being more intense as the days of September burn into the chill of October. Sooner or later it’ll flood its way out of my lips. I’ll ask her to marry me in spite of reason. I know she wants to go slow. But going slow is what I tried with Mary, and I saw how that all unwound at the end.

  She’s loveable. She’s sweet. She has a mild temper, but it’s there when she’s riled. I don’t see me marrying a passive-aggressive woman. My mother was that way with my Dad, and it drove him nuts sometimes, but he loved her so much he overlooked it.

  Hannah is definitely assertive when her back is up. And what a pretty back it is. And the rest of her is not bad either.

  We laugh together. She likes poetry, too. I never expected that from a certified public accountant—she passed her CPA ten years ago, she told me. She likes the Beat poets that I enjoy. We don’t mesh on every single item, but we do have more in common than just the lust. The lust is good. You need it to be in love eventually, I figure. It’d be boring if you didn’t have the hots for your old lady. It’s a necessary ingredient for something that lasts.

  But you need respect and concern. You need to want to do for the other. You need to want to take that bullet for your partner—your partner in Homicide and your partner at home, too. I want to do for Hannah Menke. I want to be there to protect her.

  I want to take care of her daughters too. I’ve also come to fall in love with both Barbara and Bethany. I almost look at them as if they’re my own kids, although I’ll never expect them to call me Dad. They’ve already got one of those.

  But I’d take a bullet for those two. I know it deep inside myself. I want us to be a family. Even though this has all happened in a hurry, something
deep down resonates that it’s all true, it’s all right.

  I’m hoping that I feel this way forever, and I’m hoping that Hannah does too. Even when they clank the doors shut on Thomas and Brandon, I’m hoping she’ll still need me.

  I know how it is with me. I guess I am a damn fool romantic, but I’d give it all up for those three. All they’d have to do is ask.

  17

  Aguascalientes, Mexico

  The trick is to sell the cause. It’s simply marketing. To the men who were recruited in the States, it was Big Oil. Down here, it’s the Government in general. These are not the guerillas up in the mountains. These are the college boys from Mexico City who want to get at the corruption that keeps la gente down—keeps the people down. It was the same for Zapata at the turn of the 20th Century, except that he was dealing with the hill people, the mestizos, the Indians. They were the dark-skinned denizens of the rugged country, the men who carried machetes because they couldn’t afford guns and ammunition.

  It’s almost easier to recruit them here, in central Mexico, because they’re still Zapatistas at heart, even if they are university students on the Internet fighting for justice by murdering their fellow countrymen.

  I always look for young men who have a taste for very young girls. I indulge in their rape fantasies. I talk to them about power. Power is the real issue. Not oil, like that lie I use in el norte. It’s about power over persons. The young girls just titillate them into more murder, more mayhem. It’s a rush like any other high- velocity drug. It makes you swell, it makes you erect. The adrenalin flows wildly as you watch their terrified eyes. They watch horrified as their family is strung up. They watch in disbelief as they see their last sight before they are blinded and then butchered with a final blast through the leftover eye. Then there’s true darkness.

  The cop in Chicago was after me back in that short-lived desert war of a few days. He searched for me but he could never lay hands on me. I was too elusive, too intelligent for him. And I don’t even have to kill Will Koehn to exert my power over him. I can have someone else kill him if I like. All I have to do is toy with him, as a kitten is toyed with by a boy with a piece of string.