She Talks to Angels

by James D F Hannah

  Woody tapped at his wrist, gesturing to a watch he wasn’t wearing. “Time waits for no man.”

  “Time can lick my ass right now.”

  Woody was already halfway up the next flight of stairs. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Asshole smoked more than me, wasn’t even fazed. I hated him. I took hold of the stairwell and pulled a deep breath into my lungs before willing my legs to keep moving.

  “How come we never saw Gillespie coming down the stairs?” I said.

  “I’d say he took the elevator.”

  “Isn’t that against the rules when there’s a fire alarm?”

  “Brother has money, bodyguards, and secrets. Why would he give two shits about the rules of fire safety?”

  Someone had propped the door to the seventh floor open with a wedge of wood, which helped since there was another keypad and I wasn’t sure how we would have gotten past it.

  Nothing on the seventh floor hinted anything about GRPD. The entrance was unmarked, with a wall of frosted glass and a metal security door with a security camera mounted overhead and yet another keypad.

  Woody took a black case of lockpick tools from the front of his jeans and dropped into a crouch. He unscrewed the front off the keypad and pried it open, revealing a rainbow tangle of wires. He snipped a few wires, re-attached them to other wires, replaced the keypad, and hit the zero button four times. There was a buzz, and the door lock clicked open and we walked in.

  The offices of Gillespie Realty and Property Development had the charm of a Cold War-era Soviet government office. The walls were gray and barren. No receptionist desk where you expected there to be one, and no visitor chairs. The doors weren’t marked by name or occupancy.

  The space broke into separate hallways from the main area. Woody looked down each hallway with a casualness that belied the ticking clock we were running on. The fire alarm whooped along consistently, and in the distance I heard fire trucks.

  Woody waved me to follow him down a hallway. There was only one door there, at the far end. There was another keypad set flush next to the doorframe.

  “I’m willing to bet this is Gillespie’s area,” Woody said as he set about taking the keypad apart. He repeated the same trick as he had on the entrance, and the door opened.

  “Goddamn but sometimes it’s a chore to be this good,” he said.

  “However do you manage the struggle.”

  Gillespie’s office was a cross between the Vatican and Graceland. A floor-to-ceiling picture of the bleeding heart of Jesus stared down at you as soon as you got through the door. There were paintings of The Last Supper, of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, of Jesus hanging from the cross. In the rare space that wasn’t covered in a painting depicting Christian suffering, the surface was dark varnished oak polished to a high gloss or gilded with gold leaf. The chairs were all leather, high-backed, and looked more appropriate for interrogation during the Spanish Inquisition. A meeting table in the center of the room had a two-foot-tall cross with a crown of thorns hanging from the top.

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “That would be the motif, yes,” Woody said.

  “What are we looking for?”

  “Check around his desk. Hope Gillespie is more of a paperwork guy than an electronic guy.”

  Woody headed back out toward the hallway. “I’ll be right back. Get cracking.”

  The papers around Gillespie’s desk were neat and organized. Stacks of manila folders were assembled so the edges were straight and even. I wondered if he used a ruler to line everything up just so.

  The folder tabs were all marked with what I guessed to be the names of different real estate projects. Healy Acres. Estleman Road. Grafton Construction. MacGuffin Valley.

  I pulled that last one free from the bottom of the stack. It was the thickest of the folders, its contents barely contained.

  The first page looked like a topographic map scoping out an expanse of land. Underneath it was a clipped stack of papers with the top page that stated this was a “report of geological findings” and gave map coordinates I’m sure would have made sense if I was a pirate. I threw it on top of my clipboard.

  I gave the drawer handles a good pull. Locked. Woody could have cracked them in no time. This was, yet again, one of those unfortunate times when I wasn’t Woody.

  Except the bottom right-hand drawer. It opened up easier than a date at prom. Something shiny caught a bit of light and I reached toward the back of the drawer.

  It was an iPhone. Several generations back, because you could actually hold it in your hand. Not like the big-screen TVs everyone carries around now.

  The case caught my attention. It was a bejeweled thing, shiny and sparkly. Enough bling on it, its reflection would screw up passing airplanes.

  All shiny and sparkly like a Kardashian threw up on it.

  Woody’s head poked through the door. “Find anything?”

  “Think so.”

  “Then grab it and let’s shake dust. The fire department’s here already.”

  I came around the desk and followed Woody into the main lobby. “Is breaking and entering no longer a valid excuse?”

  “Nope. Neither is pulling that fire alarm.”

  We started back down the stairwell. I said, “Where’d you go off to?”

  “I figured that they had a separate security system from the rest of the building, so I erased the footage of us coming into the office.”

  “Smart man.”

  “Yes I am.”

  We were about to clear the fourth-floor landing when a door threw open and a guy carrying an ax stared at us. His fire gear looked like it was made for someone much smaller than him. His gut swelled through an open-front fire coat he couldn’t have fastened shut with a bungee cord. He shoved his helmet to the back of his head, threw the shield back, and twitched his nose at the sign of us, moving his mustache back and forth like a staggering, drunken caterpillar. A small patch on the coat read “Assistant Chief.”

  “What the fuck are you assholes doing in here?” he said. “You not got good sense to know that alarm goes off, you leave the building?”

  There was a barely perceptible beat, and then Woody smacked his clipboard with the back of his hand. “Did you not get the memo on the drill?”

  The assistant chief said, “Hell no, we didn’t get no memo. What are you talking about?”

  Woody looked back at me with a worn expression. “They didn’t get the memo.”

  I opted to dive in. “Typical bureaucracy bullshit. Always one hand not talking to the other.”

  Woody said to the fire chief, “You should have gotten a memo on the drill.”

  “Cyrus never told us nothing about a drill.” He narrowed his eyes until they almost vanished in his face. “You two ain’t from Milt’s office no how. I know Jack and Walt both.”

  “That’s because we didn’t come from Milt’s office,” I said. “We’re up from Charleston.”

  “The hell you doing from Charleston?”

  “It’s a state thing,” I said. I leaned closer to the guy. “You keep a secret?”

  The assistant chief’s face read that sure, he could keep a secret, but it wouldn’t be for long. “What is it?”

  I dropped my voice down to a conspiratorial whisper. At least whatever that would be when you’ve got alarms going off around you. “Governor’s got us investigating offices all around the state.”

  His eyes got wide and conspiratorial. “What’s that about?”

  “Who knows? Someone’s pissed off at someone, so there’s gotta be a head to go on the chopping block.” I shrugged. “You know how it is in Charleston.”

  He shook his head in utter disgust. “Goddamn government. Always screwing off good guys like Milt.”

  “Hey, this isn’t nothing personal against Milt. I’ll be honest that we’re liking what we see so far. What we understand, Milt’s a stand-up guy, and we’re gonna make sure that all goes in our report.” I cracked a sly smile. “Now those as
sholes over in Gerrold County—” I let that hang there.

  It took the assistant chief a beat, but he caught it. Gerrold was the county next door, and the high school had been a rival for Parker County for decades. Acts of vandalism against the schools were a regular thing every year before the annual football game in the fall. There’d been more than a few fights between students over the years. I suppose it was like West Side Story, except stupider. I hoped he wasn’t above such obvious and blatant jingoism.

  “Fucking Gerrold County assholes,” he said. “Nothing but assholes and sack lickers.”

  Nope. He wasn’t.

  I gave him a thumbs-up. “You tell Milt that we’ve got his back.”

  “Sure will. Thanks for the heads-up. Let you boys finish up your work, and send ’em a big, fat ‘Fuck you’ over in Gerrold County from us.”

  We cleared the stairs and exited out onto the bank parking lot. Everyone milled around and talked and looked pissed off because they had been forced out into the world.

  Woody said, “In case you’re curious, ‘one hand talking to another,’ that’s not a real thing.”

  “It will be.”

  “Hands don’t talk to each other. Ever.”

  “Sign language.”

  “Still not a thing.”

  “The Gerrold County thing was a nice touch on my part.”

  “You can always count on men with mustaches to still root for their high school football team.”

  We rushed through the parking lot. I saw Dagny talking to a small clump of people, but she didn’t see us.

  Who did see me, though, was Robert Charles. He stood away from everyone, watching the assemblage of fire trucks and emergency personnel. I caught sight of him as Woody and I made it to the sidewalk, and he watched us cross the street and get into the Aztek and drive away. He did not look happy to see me.

  30

  Woody sat at the kitchen table while I made coffee. Izzy wandered in and gave Woody a few investigative sniffs before pushing her head underneath his left hand. As he rubbed her head, Woody flipped through the pile of pilfered paperwork.

  Once the coffee finished cooking, I poured him a cup, kept it black. He took a sip. “You put any actual coffee in this coffee?”

  “Some of us aren’t trying to make jet fuel.” I doctored my cup like I was a Russian at the Olympics. I’d doubled the strength on this pot because anything less would be met with condescension from Woody. Okay, even higher level of condescension. For Woody, snark wasn’t even trying.

  “You drink coffee the way most alcoholics consume booze,” I said. “One addiction for another.”

  “You could say that. You’d be full of shit, though. No one ever spent all night drinking coffee then drove their car down the wrong lane of traffic into a semi. Coffee is what we do because it’s impolite to shoot firearms in most social settings.”

  I pointed to the paperwork. “You getting anything out of that stuff?”

  Woody stopped petting Izzy, and she let out a small whine. Her brown eyes pleaded for attention. They always pleaded for something.

  “You’ll live,” he told her. “I promise.”

  Izzy sighed and accepted her fate and curled herself into a corner, dropping to the floor with a thud.

  Woody shuffled papers around, set aside a few, and spread a few others out like a hand of solitaire. “Most of this involves the golfing development Dagny was talking about. GRPD is working to buy an absolute shit-ton of property.”

  “So they plan on building this thing? A theme park golfing development.”

  “That’s what the paperwork wants you to believe.”

  “A statement both cryptic and misleading.”

  “As intended.” He tapped his finger on the geologist report. “The problem is this. This report states that most of that area sits on one of the biggest natural gas reserves on record. We’re talking billions of dollars.”

  Natural gas had become a huge industry in West Virginia, sliding into the spot reserved for coal. Gas wells had substituted out satellite dishes as the state flower, appearing all over on people’s yards like shining, slithering, highly explosive vines.

  It was all thanks to the Marcellus Shale, a rock formation that ran underneath West Virginia and up as far as New York. The shale was chock-full of untapped natural gas, and companies had spent the best part of the previous decade rectifying that by tapping the living fuck out of it.

  What happened was, companies bought the mineral rights from landowners, meaning the owners kept the property, but the mineral company could sink a well on the land and suck the natural gas out. They also paid the property owners a percentage of the profits from exploration, and those checks were nothing to be sneezed at, if only because sneezing on a check is gross. Anyway, the outcome in this was people’s entire lives and income brackets changed overnight, and all they had to do was be okay with a conglomeration of steel pipes on their land. It was stunning what folks became good with once they got that check every month.

  I drank some coffee. “Natural gas wells don’t seem conducive with a golf course. Might get in the way of the ninth hole.”

  “It would if there was a chance in hell of anyone seeing this report. This folder you snagged, there’s two different surveys. One’s dated two months ago, and another one a week later. The first report is the one with the natural gas information. The second doesn’t mention it at all.”

  “So GRPD is buying up this property for an alleged golfing development and not telling the original owners they’re sitting on a fortune in mineral rights.”

  “You have a wonderful way of summarizing the obvious.”

  “We all have our gifts. Mine is that and a huge dick. So what’s the angle then? They can’t expect to buy all of this land and yell ‘Psych!’ and throw up gas wells.”

  “I’m not sure that wasn’t the plan all along. I did my own checking into GRPD and Parker County Savings and Loan after we talked to Dagny. They’ve both been having money issues for years. The bank has sunk cash into GRPD projects that have swirled down the shitter time after time. Building construction. Housing developments. Commercial parking lots. You name it, and the return on investment is always in the negative.”

  “Bound to be a board of directors putting a squeeze on Charles. No way they’re losing money hand over fist and not looking for some sort of explanation.”

  I sat down. The cell phone rested away from everything, next to the salt and pepper shakers. I picked it up and pushed the home button.

  Meadow Charles’s face appeared, staring back at me. Her hair down, her eyes bright, the world perfect. Meadow Charles, with everything in the world to look forward to.

  I pressed the button again and a keypad screen appeared, pressuring me for a passcode.

  I slid the phone across the table to Woody.

  “It’s Meadow’s goddamn phone,” I said.

  Woody glanced down at the device. “But it was in Mitchell Gillespie’s office. Funny thing, huh?”

  “I ain’t laughing.”

  “I suppose it’s a different sort of funny.”

  “The kind where there’s not a dead girl. Question is, how did Gillespie get it, and why’s he got it? Because there has to be a reason.”

  Woody refilled his cup. “I’d suppose there’s something on the phone. There a security code on it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Woody rubbed at his graying beard. “This doesn’t fall into my vast skill set. We will need outside help.” He leaned his chair on its rear legs. “I’ll call Rooster up and see what he can do. He owes me a favor.”

  “How do you end up being owed a favor by a guy named Rooster?”

  “You think you’re the only person I associate with, Henry?”

  “That didn’t answer my question, Woody.”

  Woody traced his finger around the edge of Meadow’s cell phone.

  “No, it didn’t,” he said.

  31

  Woody and I parted ways,
and I choked down a handful of painkillers; my knee was fine, but everything else hurt, the lingering side effects of getting my ass kicked twice in a week. I wasn’t built for the abuse I’d taken, but I doubted anyone else was either.

  I dozed off on the couch before snapping awake somewhere in the middle of a dream I couldn’t remember, but I knew it involved me getting punched in the mouth. It’s a sad fucking state of affairs when your dreams and your everyday life are the same goddamn thing.

  I was hobbling toward bed when my phone rang.

  If your phone rings at two in the morning, it’s safe to assume shit has not only gone south, but it’s changed addresses and is taking up permanent residence there. There could be exceptions to that rule, but unless you’re expecting to become a grandparent or Sweden is calling you with an awards announcement, whatever is shaking down on the other end of that ring is going to fuck up your next few days.

  It was Dagny calling. Her voice was thick and full of tears.

  “I need you here,” she said. “Parker General. Hurry.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “It’s Deacon. He OD’d.”

  Dagny was pacing in the emergency room waiting area when I walked in. She wore a plain white T-shirt and capris and sandals. Her hair was pulled back, her face red and puffy, with wads of tissue clutched in her hands. She saw me and pushed her face into my chest. A bolt of pain stretched out past my rib cage when she did so—Tommy had gotten a few solid hits there back in Charleston, and my chest looked like old fruit—but I let Dagny have the moment, holding her as she cried.

  She drew her head back. Warmth radiated from her like the surface of a star.

  “Tell me what happened,” I said.

  “They found his car idling next to the road. He was slumped down behind the steering wheel. They said they thought he was asleep at first, then they saw the syringe, and—” She sobbed and turned away from me. “I don’t understand, Henry. Had he said anything to you?”

  “Nothing. But I also haven’t gotten to talk to him in days.”

  I wouldn’t tell her anything about Gillespie or the cell phone. Not yet, at least. There’s only so much any person can deal with, moment to moment, and now was more than enough.