Angel of Vengeance

by Trevor O. Munson

  She isn’t alone. A big, heavy-set lug with jowls and dark hooded eyes enters behind her. He has a plowshare nose and a free-on-leave smile. He wears a suit, indicating he went straight to the strip club from whatever convention he is in town attending. His tie is loosened, and he carries his suit jacket slung over one shoulder. It’s supposed to make him look cocky and confident, but all it does is expose the dark sweat stains that spread like squid ink from his underarms. I can smell his alcohol-sour taint from the doorway. He’s small-time and doesn’t know it.

  Callie-Dean tells the lug to make himself comfortable and shuts the door and flips a light on. They both freeze, seeing me making myself uncomfortable on the couch.

  “’Bout time you got home, baby. I was gettin’ worried.”

  She gasps. He scowls. I smile.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Callie-Dean demands. There’s the face I know and love.

  “What can I say? I missed ya.”

  “Who’s this? Your pimp?” the lug asks.

  “Close,” I say, standing now and moving over nearer them. “I’m her parole officer. I came by to make sure Callie-Dean hadn’t gone back to turnin’ tricks, but it looks like I’m too late. Gonna hafta make an official report about this. What’s your name, fella?”

  The lug goes all wobbly-kneed and scared-like. Probably thinking of his wife and three kids back home in Smalltown, Nowheresville. “Hey, I just came by for a drink. That’s all.”

  “Relax,” Callie-Dean tells him. “He’s not a parole officer. He’s just a full-of-shit private investigator.”

  Unsure who to believe, the lug looks at me. I just shrug.

  “Well anyway, it’s pretty late,” the guy says, pretending to check his watch. “I’d better get back to my hotel. Got early seminars tomorrow.”

  He starts to back toward the door, but Callie-Dean stops him by taking hold of one hairy-knuckled paw. She looks him in the eyes, doing a fair imitation of my hypnotic gaze. “Wait. You know all those things we discussed at the club? All the things you said you wanted to do to me? You can do them. For free. Every last little one. All you have to do is get rid of him first.” She stabs her sharp little chin my way.

  The lug looks over again, sizing me up. Now he’s conflicted. I just shrug again, light a fresh smoke, and wait to see how it all shakes out.

  The lug leans close to her, whispers, “Even the one thing? The thing I said I didn’t have enough money for?”

  Callie-Dean nods. “Okay, sure, but for that you gotta hurt him. I wanna hear something break.” She speaks to him, but it’s all for my benefit.

  The lug nods, hands her his jacket, then puts his best mean-mug on and looks at me. “You heard the girl. You ain’t supposed to be here. Time to go.” He takes a step toward me, chest puffed out like a rooster in a cockfight. Somehow it seems appropriate. I stay put.

  “You’re making a mistake, buddy,” I tell him. “You’ve been drinking. You’re not thinkin’ straight. A trashy two-bit hooker like her isn’t worth all this. There’s no percentage in it. On the one hand, you get a beating. On the other, you get a venereal disease. Either way it goes down, you lose. So why not just be smart, go back to your hotel and sleep it off, huh?”

  “Get him, Tom,” Callie-Dean says through clenched pearly-whites. “Tear his goddamn head off.”

  I can see that the thought of all the things she’ll do that Tom’s wife won’t has his mind made up. I wait for him to make his move. When he does, I step in, meeting him halfway. Whatever it is Tom has in mind to do never gets done on account of my rearing back and smashing my forehead down hard into his nose. It breaks with a gristly pop. Blood jets from his nostrils like a blast from a twin-barrel shotgun. Tom clutches his splintered nose and collapses to the worn dust-ball carpet with a pathetic mewl.

  Why is it no one ever takes good advice when it’s offered?

  The smell of his blood bellows a fire to life in my guts. Doing my best to ignore the unignorable, I bend, grab Tom by one fatty arm, and help him to his feet. “Let’s go, Tom.”

  “Look what you did to me,” he says in a little-boy mumble of disbelief as I lead him over to the door.

  “That’s right,” I say. “No fun, but that’s as good as it’s gonna get around here for you. So if you don’t want a second helping, I suggest you head on back to the hotel and forget you were ever here. How’s that sound?”

  Ten-dollar tie clamped to his nose in an attempt to shut off the bloodworks, Tom nods. Sounds good. Sounds real good in fact. I open the double doors for him and send him on his way with a friendly pat on the back.

  When I lock the doors and turn back, Callie-Dean is gone.

  I find her in the bedroom, tearing her pink cotton-candy bedding apart in search of something.

  “Lookin’ for this?” I ask, taking the black Beretta I found stashed between the mattress and box spring during my own search from the waistband of my pants and showing it to her.

  Seeing I have her gun, Callie-Dean stops everything, her face tight and all the uglier for it. Then, in the blink of an eye, her whole demeanor changes as dramatically as a chameleon on a branch as she switches from one lethal weapon to the other she has at her disposal. She smiles seductively.

  “You know you’re pretty good,” she tells me. “I like a man who can handle himself.”

  “Save it.”

  “No really. It’s a big turn-on. I know I was a bitch before, but why don’t you let me make it up to you?” Showing me how big and cute her eyes can be, Callie-Dean reaches down and pulls her sweatshirt off over her head in one fluid motion.

  “Put that back on,” I tell her, trying to keep my eyes where they belong.

  “No,” she says cutely, biting on a long fake fingernail. “Not ’til you fuck me.”

  “I don’t think that’d be a good idea, baby,” I say.

  “I think it’s a great idea,” she says.

  “I’m a little short on cash.”

  She reaches back and unfastens her brassiere from behind, letting it slide free down her long tan arms and drop to the floor. Bending forward, she takes her jeans off, sliding them down her muscular legs and simultaneously showing her implants off to best advantage. I lose the battle with my eyes and let them do what they do best. I have to admit whoever her surgeon is, he does good work.

  “A girl doesn’t have to make money to want to get laid.”

  “That’s just a fringe benefit, huh?”

  “I like money, but I like cock more,” she says all breathy-like as she climbs hands and knees onto the bed and aims her hard little panty-clad walnut-cracker at me. “C’mere an’ fuck me.”

  When I don’t dive slobbering onto the bed after her, she looks back over one circular-saw shoulder blade in confusion.

  “I’m not gonna fuck you,” I say.

  For the first time the expression on her face suggests she might be taking me seriously. “Why not? You’re not a queer are you? I mean, you’re good enough looking to be one, and the hat’s a little gay, but I don’t get that vibe.”

  “I’m not a queer.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is I have a sneaking suspicion if I went to bed with you I’d wake up with a steak knife forget-me-not in my chest. Don’t feel bad about it, you just aren’t my type. I like my women less Black Widow Spider.”

  “You motherfucker!” she yells, turning and attacking like a scorpion. I catch her by the pincers and push her back against the pillows. She comes skittering at me again. I push her back again. We stare at each other, her eyes seething with hatred, mine indifferent. Standoff.

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to finish our conversation. I know you suggested I sue, but I’d just as soon settle out of court,” I say. “Turn the radio on if you want. If you cooperate we should be able to keep this to three songs.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You already tried that. Didn’t work.

  “Tell y
ou what, you do your best impression of a lady and I’ll show you what else I found besides the gun. How’d that be?”

  Callie-Dean hate-stares me. Unfazed, I take the snapshot I found of Raya from my breast pocket and toss it onto the bed between us.

  Her cold eyes glance down at it, then back up. “So what?”

  “So it’s funny, you tell me you don’t know her, but here I am at Raya’s last known address and it turns out to be yours. On top of that, I find a picture of the two of you together. Coincidences like that might lead someone to believe you knew her better than you let on.”

  All of a sudden self-conscious, she grabs a pillow and hugs it to her, hiding herself from me. “Maybe I did, but that doesn’t mean I know what happened to her.”

  “Tell me what you do know.” I nod at the photo album that still sits atop the oak dresser where I left it. “Start with that book there. Who are all those kids?”

  “They’re just kids I tried to help. Kids who needed a place to stay for a while.”

  “Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t exactly strike me as the philanthropic type.”

  “Fuck you. You’re a real asshole, you know that?”

  I do, but I don’t say so. “Alright, so convince me. Why the sudden goodwill and charity?”

  “Because I know what it’s like to be on the street. I’ve been there. It’s no fucking fun.”

  “No, I don’t guess it would be,” I say. “How’d you meet her?

  The question catches her off guard. “Huh?”

  “How did you and Raya come to meet?”

  “At a club.”

  “What club?”

  “The Tomb Room.”

  “You’re into Goth bands?”

  “Sometimes.” She shrugs. “I’m into lotsa things.”

  “I bet they’re into you too.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “If you were just trying to help her out, why’d you deny knowing her when I first asked?”

  “Why should I help you? I don’t know you.”

  “And the fact that I’m trying to locate a missing fourteen year-old girl doesn’t buy me anything?”

  “Not in my book.”

  “The girl has a family. They miss her.”

  “Well, maybe she doesn’t miss them. You ever think of that? When you run away from something there’s usually a good goddamn reason for it.”

  “Yeah? So why’d she run away from you?”

  The ice-cold eyes that stare back at me are as lovely as they are murderous. “Fuck you,” she says again, in case I somehow missed it the other times. “Get out.”

  I sigh. I can’t think of anything else that might be gained by staying. I know whatever she’s hiding is the key to all of this, but I’m not going to get it out of her tonight. Not like this. My options are limited. I haven’t been invited so I can’t use my powers, and because she’s a dame, I can’t get physical with her the way I would a man. Well, I suppose I could, but I don’t do that with dames; not even ones like Callie-Dean who might actually benefit from it. Goes against the rules. Times like this I wish it didn’t.

  “Make you a deal: I’ll go, but I’m taking this with me.” I swap the picture on the bed for one of my business cards. “I’ll give you ’til tomorrow night to give me a call and tell me what you know or I’m goin’ to the cops with it and you can talk to them.”

  Her eyes shoot wooden stakes as I place the gun atop the photo album and turn to go.

  “You’re a real prick, you know that?”

  I do, but I don’t say so.

  11

  From the Los Angeles Times, Sunday December 12, 1943:

  HOLLYWOOD PRODUCER FOUND DEAD KILLERS BROUGHT TO JUSTICE

  Less than twenty-four hours after film producer Roy Mcardle was found beaten and murdered in his Hollywood Hills home, police have two suspects in custody. Police were tipped to the potential suspects after a neighbor, alerted by the sound of gunfire, witnessed a man and woman exiting Mcardle’s home late Saturday night. Thinking something seemed amiss, the neighbor, who wishes to remain nameless, managed to get a description of the mystery couple’s car and a partial plate number to give police.

  According to authorities, the vehicle turned out to be registered in the name of ex-jazz musician-turned-dope fiend Michael Angel. When police arrived at the Venice beach home Angel shares with his wife, Coraline Desmond Angel, they found the murder weapon, drugs, and thirty grand in cash belonging to Mcardle.

  Mcardle, a long-time Hollywood insider with a long list of western and gangster pictures to his credit, was known for his mistrust of banks and for keeping his money in an office wall safe. Officials speculate that the murder was the result of a robbery gone awry.

  The couple will be arraigned downtown early Monday morning.

  It didn’t take the L.A.P.D. long to track us down after the shooting. Five uniformed officers battered the Venice Beach door down and rousted us just before five the next morning. The real crime was we never got to spend a thin dime of the money.

  The interrogation was just like in the movies, except without all the witty banter and clever lines. Real cops are never that clever or witty. Still, they had a good case. They had a body with a .38 caliber bullet in it. They had a snub-nosed .38 registered to me that they believed had done the shooting. They had the eyewitness who saw a car, also registered to me, leaving the scene of the crime. They had the bag of money belonging to the victim found stashed under my bed along with the gun. As they put it—they had my ass on a platter. The only thing they didn’t have was the right person fingered for the crime, but I couldn’t see the point in arguing.

  My main concern right then was for Coraline. A guy like me, I figured, was ready-made for prison—hell, it was a wonder I’d avoided it that long—but a girl like Coraline couldn’t hack it on the inside. With her enthusiasm for life, she would quickly blacken at the edges and die like a pressed flower between those gray walls. I couldn’t have that on my conscience because when it came right down to it, I blamed myself for everything. None of it would have happened if I had loved her the way she deserved. If I had never let her try dope. Or if I’d stopped her from selling her body. Or if I’d gone to visit Roy alone. I could have changed things every step of the way and I hadn’t done it. I’d let her down. I figured I owed her. So I took the rap.

  I told the detectives all about how I’d forced Coraline to go along to the house and beat her up when she tried to refuse. I told them how I’d made her use her familiarity with Roy to get me inside. And how I’d killed him once I’d got hold of his money to keep him from squawking. They bought it; ate it up in fact. And why not? Dames with faces like Coraline’s only did things like that in the movies. In the real world they got done by thugs with mugs like mine.

  My trial began in April of 1944 and only took two weeks. It seemed about right to me, considering my confession and all the evidence the D.A. had gathered against me.

  In exchange for a plea to a lesser charge and six months in a women’s correctional institution, Coraline came and testified against me as the prosecution’s star witness. Despite the circumstances, I was glad to see her. I spent those days memorizing every detail of her. The way she wore her black hair swept back from her face the way I liked best. The dimple in her right cheek that only appeared when she smiled. The dark freckle at the base of her neck. If I was going away—and it sure looked like I was—I was going to do my best to take her with me any way I could.

  “I didn’t want to go, but he—he made me. He hit me when I said no. I—I was scared. So I went. I went and I watched him shoot poor Roy dead.”

  She was a wonder on the stand. She cried on cue and told the sympathetic jury what a monster I was, how frightened she had been, how horribly scarred she was from the terrible ordeal, how sorry she was to have been involved in any way. By the end of her testimony, even I was half convinced I’d done it.

  The vote was unanimous. Guilty. No surprise there. In f
act, the only surprise of the whole trial came during the sentencing phase when it took jurors only twenty-eight minutes to decide to give me death. It was a record for that time.

  As they lead me out past Coraline, I stared deep into those acetylene-torch eyes. The look in them was a violent twister of love and sorrow and relief. I stared until they pulled me out of that courtroom and I couldn’t stare any more.

  Then I went and waited to die.

  Time on San Quentin’s death row unfolds slowly. That would seem to be a good thing considering what awaits you at the end of the line, but it’s not. Knowing what’s coming only drives home the futility of the never-ending days. Days stacked on weeks stacked on months stacked on years like a house of cards and just as pointless.

  All that time, I never heard so much as a single word from Coraline. Not a call. Not a letter. What I got was nothing and lots of it. I’m sure a lot of guys would have been sore about that, all things considered, but I didn’t blame her any. I was glad of it, if you want to know the truth. I had not given up all I’d given up so she could waste her life pining for the dead. I wanted her to live. During the endless, countless hours of nothing to see and nothing to do, I created whole lives for her. I imagined her cleaned up and using her looks and talent working in the pictures, or traveling the world, seeing sights I’d never see, or raising a family with some average Joe who treated her like she hung the moon. You see, it didn’t matter what to me, just so long as she was doing something with my sacrifice. Anything. It didn’t seem much to ask.

  I guess it was though.

  Toward the end of 1945—November if I recall—I noticed a small article in the week-old copy of the Times I’d managed to get my hands on. The story explained how workers at the city dump had found the partially-nude body of a young woman. The body had later been identified as belonging to one Coraline Angel, the same Coraline Angel who had made the papers as an unwilling accomplice in the scandalous murder of producer Roy Mcardle. A heroin addict and prostitute, it was speculated that she had overdosed in one of the many east Los Angeles flophouses that had cropped up since the war and been disposed of by the other junkies hoping to avoid trouble with the law.