Desolate Angel

by Chaz McGee

  “Hell, yeah,” Danny said. “That’s why I’m here. It’s an outrage.”

  “It is indeed,” Hayes agreed eagerly, making it seem as if Danny were setting the agenda. “To lose my daughter and then to watch as her killer goes free? How much can you ask a father to take?”

  “I tried to tell them,” Danny explained. “But wait until you get to be my age. People look right through you. They talk right around you. It’s like you’re not even there.”

  Tell it to the marines, buddy. Try being dead. And invisible.

  Hayes, who probably was Danny’s age and then some, but allowed himself to be overlooked by no one, nodded sympathetically at Danny’s comment. “To whom do you attribute this misguided new investigation?” he asked. “Could they have a grudge against you or be threatened by you?”

  “Oh, sure,” Danny agreed eagerly. “It’s Gonzales. He’s commander now, but I knew him back when he was just a wetback kid from the projects who was too little to play football.” Any authority this statement might have had was ruined when Danny glanced around nervously to see if anyone had overheard, his eyes lingering on a trio of muscled Mexican construction workers a few booths over.

  “You have something on Gonzales then?” Hayes asked a little too eagerly.

  “No, no, no, nothing like that.” Danny folded his hands importantly on the table. “I just know what he’s really like. One look and he knows that I know he’s scared inside. He’s not who he pretends to be, you know what I’m saying?”

  Hayes, the master of not being who he pretended to be, nodded. “And the girl?” he asked, his voice lingering on the last word contemptuously.

  “Ah, Maggie’s okay,” Danny said. “But she’s kind of a legacy hack, you know what I mean?”

  “Enlighten me,” Hayes asked, perplexed. Oh, he was smooth.

  “Her father was a cop and his father before him and on and on, so the department kind of had to hire her and now her way up the ladder is greased slicker than goose shit, whether she does the job or not.”

  Danny had always mangled his metaphors. I used to find it funny.

  “And does she do the job?” Hayes asked. “Has she found out anything new about the case to make her think Daniels is innocent?”

  “Who knows? She won’t give me the time of day. Too stuck-up.”

  “What exactly is she doing?” Hayes asked.

  Danny shrugged. “My guess is she does just enough to keep the brass off her back, like the rest of us. She’s just shuffling papers. Thinks setting Daniels free makes her a hero. She might have something going on with Gonzalez on the side, though. He sure as hell seems to have a thing for her.”

  It was strange. I knew every word was nonsense. I knew it was the vile, drunken ramblings of an unhappy soul. And yet, a flash of jealousy rose in me at the thought of Gonzales and Maggie together. How quickly ugliness could take over your soul, I realized, against all reason and all vigilance.

  “Is that so?” Hayes said, as if disinterested. But he had sensed a possible advantage and I could see his dark eyes glitter at the thought of having something to hold over Maggie and Gonzales.

  Danny shrugged. “Could be. He’s given the green light to get the Daniels kid out of prison. On what basis, I ask you?” Danny’s voice rose. His indignation had been awakened. “That was a clean case. You know how hard me and my partner worked on it. We followed every rule, we crossed the i’s and dotted our t’s.” He did not notice his mistake and Hayes did not correct him. “I mean, we looked into every possibility. Worked day and night. You know how it was. We felt your pain. We weren’t going to rest until we found the killer. Now they’re calling it all into question. All that work we did. It’s bullshit is what it is.”

  “And now they’re releasing Bobby Daniels from prison,” Hayes said sadly.

  Danny nodded. “He’s going to get off scot-free. Probably get a zillion-dollar settlement to boot.”

  “Do you know when they’re letting him go?” Hayes asked. His whole body stiffened and the vein in his temple bulged. We had come to the point of the charade, I realized. He wanted to know when and where to find Daniels.

  Danny did not notice the change in Hayes. “Not yet. There’s a lot of paperwork you got to do first.” His tone was patronizing, as if Hayes could not possibly understand the intricacies of police work. Foolish, foolish Danny.

  “But you will know when it happens?” Hayes emphasized the “you” as if Danny were the most important man in the department.

  “Oh, sure,” Danny said, sitting up straight. “I know everything.”

  “It’s so sad when the justice system fails like this,” Hayes said. His voice was somber, as if he were speaking of a great tragedy. “It’s just so wrong when the elaborate system we have constructed to bring about true justice fails and something unspeakable like this is allowed to occur.”

  Danny nodded, distracted by his need for more sugar. Hayes fell silent when the waitress appeared to bring Danny a refill of cola. Sensing it irritated Hayes, she took longer than was necessary, then leaned over their table, across the wall divider, and pretended to refill my coffee cup.

  Hayes glared at her.

  The waitress shrugged. She was enjoying needling the affluent white man in his too-clean clothes. “She’s still here.” The waitress nodded toward the old lady beaming at us from her booth by the door. “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

  Hayes ignored her and she left, smiling to herself.

  I was starting to like that Elvira.

  “I can’t help but reflect on the flaws in the system when something like this happens,” Hayes said smoothly.

  “Like what?” Danny asked, not really interested. He was eyeing the garishly topped pies circling endlessly in a glass display case near the cash register.

  “Like loopholes. Like lawyers out to make a name for themselves. Like detectives who want to use their sex to get ahead without doing any of the real work. Like killers going free to satisfy people’s ambitions.”

  His voice had taken on a harsh edge. It was a masterful performance.

  Unless he truly meant it.

  I wasn’t sure which scenario scared me the most.

  “Life’s a bitch and then she dies,” Danny agreed.

  “Do you know what I think?” Hayes asked, throwing his napkin on the table in disgust. “I think when something like this happens, good men have no choice but to take matters into their own hands.”

  Danny looked blank. “What do you mean?”

  “When good men stand by and do nothing, bad men prevail,” Hayes explained.

  “You said that?” Danny looked confused. “It sounds like a famous saying or something.”

  Hayes let a flicker of disgust cross his face, “Yes, someone famous said it. I can’t quite recall whom. But that is not the point.” He leaned closer to Danny. “The point is that good men cannot simply stand by when something likes this happens. Good men take matters into their own hands.”

  “Anything else?”

  Danny and Hayes both jumped and I had to give the waitress credit. She had stepped on Hayes as thoroughly as a housewife crushing a cockroach to oblivion on her kitchen floor.

  “I’m out of here,” she explained pleasantly. “You can pay the cashier.”

  Hayes turned his head slowly to glare at her. The hatred in his dark eyes was naked and unmistakable.

  She smiled back at him, as if not noticing his hostility, but her tone when she spoke held just enough of a victorious edge to zing Hayes one more time for the road. “Boyfriend’s picking me up in two minutes,” she explained. “This is my last shift ever here. And you’re my last customers ever here. I’m on to greener pastures. So don’t worry about a tip. You two were such good sports about Mrs. Palermo. She’s a regular, you know. We care about her.”

  As she walked away, I felt a tidal wave of uncontrolled, entitled fury rise in Hayes, feed on its own power, and swell to a near-breaking point.

  “Serv
ice in this place can get a little dicey,” Danny offered obliviously.

  Hayes slid his black eyes to Danny and glared, but said nothing.

  Danny looked uncomfortable. “I’d, uh, offer to get the check, but . . .”

  “Of course not,” Hayes said, his control returning. “I invited you. I insist on picking up the tab, as they say.” When he reached for the bill, his long, tapered hands were as graceful as a pianist’s. His nails had been freshly manicured.

  “What were you saying?” Danny asked. He wanted to be sure he’d earned his free meal, I thought wryly, remembering how much he loved his freebies.

  “I was saying that we need to make sure that Bobby Daniels and that partner of yours don’t make a mockery of the justice system,” Hayes said. “I can only imagine Detective Gunn’s triumph should that happen. How powerful she will feel. Who does she think she is?” he asked. “Well, I’ll tell you. She thinks she gets to call the shots. She thinks she gets to come in late to the game, then act as coach. She thinks she gets to make a fool out of you, to cast aspersions on your work. She thinks she gets to decide it all.”

  Danny was staring at Hayes. “I never thought of it that way,” he said.

  “Well, you should,” Hayes explained. “I offer the waitress as a case in point. Women spend their entire lives trying to tear men down. That’s what they’re wired to do. They’re weak and they’re helpless and they’re angry at us for being the stronger sex. So they spend their lives trying to destroy us.”

  When Danny looked doubtful, Hayes stepped up the pressure. “Just look at your own life. I’m betting there’s a woman there somewhere. Someone who used you, took your money, enjoyed her own life without a thought to getting a job, then left you when things got tough and you needed her. She walked away and manipulated the courts and the system to bleed you dry. Am I right?”

  Danny had grown still and his eyes were far away. A silence descended. I could hear the clock on the wall ticking. I could hear Danny’s heart beating. The air had grown thin and every object in the room seemed to appear in ultra-relief. My hearing became acute. I could understand conversations on the other side of the room, I could hear the clink of pans in the kitchen.

  It was as if the entire universe was swirling around the eye of a hurricane, and I sat right in the middle of that eye, watching a man weigh his soul. His very salvation balanced on the edge of a razor and the rest of his life depended on what he now chose.

  “Detective Bonaventura?” Hayes asked, his voice sounding kind. “I apologize sincerely. Did I hit a nerve?”

  Danny shook his head as if to free himself from the past. “No. I was just thinking.” He looked up at Hayes. “I think I have a way to find out when Bobby Daniels gets released from prison.”

  “Excellent.” When Hayes smiled, a darkness descended over me. Danny had chosen. Danny was lost. “Absolutely excellent.”

  Chapter 21

  I spent the rest of the night outside the Hayes house, watching to see if he would go out in search of someone to take his frustrations out on. The next morning, I went in search of Danny, knowing that Alan Hayes would not hesitate to start using him. I had no success. He did not show up for work and I could not find him at any of the usual bars. I backtracked through my memory for every sorry dive we had ever sought refuge in and checked them out. No dice. And though he had been estranged from his family for years, I even stopped by the house where Danny’s ex-wife and his son still lived. The yard was in disarray and the house looked neglected. I knew Barbara was working two jobs to keep her and Danny Jr. afloat. I guess some things just had to slide.

  It made me sad to see the deterioration of the yard, a once-tidy lawn where we had sat on summer nights, grilling steaks and raising beers to the future, boasting about our latest successes in solving a case. Danny’s life had slid into the bottle right before his divorce and drowned in it soon after. But I could not pinpoint exactly where it had all gone wrong for me, when my life had taken the last, irrevocable wrong turn. Somehow, when I was not looking, it just had. Perhaps that was just the way it was, that no one ever recognized a moment for what it was—and perhaps it was kinder that we were allowed to hold on to our illusions for just a little bit longer after the point of no return.

  I know it had happened to Danny, too, that his life had slipped away from him when he wasn’t looking and that he drank to stave off the realization that it was now too late to get it back—and that nothing would turn out as he had planned. But now? It was one thing to give up on your own life. It was another to destroy the lives of others because you were angry about your own. Oh, it was far worse. Nothing good would come of this. Nothing.

  I watched the empty house for a few hours, remembering what had been. A woodpecker lived high in a tree next door and kept flying down to test the tin pipe that dangled from the overflowing gutters to the ground. With a rat-tat-tat , he’d probe the metal, fly off indignantly, only to return and try again. I could not decide whether I admired his perseverance or thought he was the stupidest damn bird I had ever seen.

  Eventually, I gave up and wandered over to the apartment complex where Danny had rented a unit after his wife kicked him out. Though no one was home, baby paraphernalia and college books were scattered over every available surface of the four-room apartment, telling me that Danny had moved on and other tenants taken his place. I examined a terry-cloth duckling that a chubby fist had flung to the floor. The orange bill was frayed from where it had been gnawed on by tiny baby teeth. It pierced my heart. One of my sons had a duckling just like it when he was a baby. I remembered using it to scrub him in the tub at night. Yet I could not remember which son it had been. How was it possible to forget such an important thing as that?

  Enough of the past. I had to keep my mind on the present. I had to keep my mind on the case. Maggie was in danger.

  Why would Danny be so willing to hurt Maggie? Why would he be so willing to work with Alan Hayes? Surely it wasn’t because of her rejection of his clumsy advances. The way Danny drank, the terrible care he took of his body—I don’t think he had actually felt desire for anything but another shot of whiskey in years. And though his pride may have taken a hit, he lacked the energy to follow through on defending its honor. I was certain of that.

  And did he really care about the Hayes case and being proved wrong? I was certain he had not cared about it even back when it was new. Why would he care about it now? What did he hope to gain? The past? Oh, Danny—to think you could return to the past and reclaim it in some way. Only someone who had given up on the present would ever think in such terms.

  I thought back to the days when we had first investigated the murder of Alissa Hayes. Neither Danny nor I had been in good shape; we were both beginning our final slides into the bottle. Danny was still reeling from the breakup of his family, though it had happened a good five years before. And I’d had my own excuse for drinking then, as well, though I could hardly remember the details. It was a promotion of some sort that I had coveted in the more sober recesses of my heart and not gotten. Of course, looking back, I was barely holding on to my present job at the time. There was no way anyone would ever have seriously considered me for more. But we have such power to delude ourselves and I had been deep into delusions back then.

  With neither one of us sober or focused enough to work the Hayes case properly, we had simply followed the path of least resistance, one that had ended in an innocent man sitting in a jail cell. Yet, that was neither the first nor would it be the last case of injustice caused by incompetence, or even by our incompetence. It wasn’t like Danny had intentionally steered us wrong or had anything to do with Alissa’s death.

  So why would he want to stop Maggie from doing her job?

  I had no way to find Danny to ask him, no way to move forward in figuring out what it all meant. And so I returned to Maggie for the afternoon. She would have someone to watch over her.

  Maggie was working furiously on a warrant application, enterin
g paragraph after paragraph into the computer. A cold cup of coffee and forgotten salad sat unnoticed beside her as the hours passed. Occasionally, she would pick up the phone and speak to Peggy upstairs in the lab, double-checking the spelling of some of the more technical terms before entering them into her report.

  By three o’clock she was ready to submit the report to Gonzales. She walked it upstairs herself. Seeing her approach, he waved her inside. I followed like an invisible puppy, watching the two of them intently, wondering if Danny’s suspicions had been right, fearing they had something going on.

  But Gonzales did not give her a second glance when he took the papers from her. There was nothing between them but professional respect. I was ashamed to have thought like Danny, even if for only a second.

  Gonzales read through the application and the file beneath it quickly, frowning the entire time. When he was done, he stared at Maggie intently.

  “What?” she asked defensively, her fatigue starting to show.

  “Where’s Bonaventura?” he asked. “He’s AWOL and I’m pissed off about it. When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “Last night,” she said, still protecting Danny. She would not tell Gonzales about how Danny had barged in on her visit to the Hayes house. She would not betray the brotherhood, even if the brothers did not consider her fully one of their own. “We went out to dinner,” she explained. “I thought I might be able to get something out of him about the case.”

  Gonzales looked skeptical.

  “I know,” Maggie added. “It was stupid. He had nothing to give me. I’m not sure he even remembers the case. And he was plowed.”

  “Did he try to put the moves on you?” Gonzales asked abruptly.

  Maggie looked shocked.

  “I’m asking for a reason, Gunn,” he reassured her. “I’ve had complaints about him from other women in the department.”

  She shrugged it off. “It’s not anything I can’t handle.”

  Gonzales shook his head, disgusted. “He’s a human train wreck and he’s not going to stop until he’s taken others down with him. But if I can him now, I lose the respect of one hundred and forty fellow officers.”