Angel With a Bullet

by M. C. Grant

  _____

  The taxi pulls up as I exit the front door of the postcard-pretty, three-story Painted Lady where I lease one of six apartments. King William of Orange—who along with his human, Mrs. Pennell, owns the building—stretches full out on the kitchen windowsill of his main-floor domain like an African lion spied through the wrong end of binoculars. When he hears me leaving, he opens one eye and winks approval.

  I am dressed for battle: notepad and pen tucked in the back pocket of slim-fitting jeans; a point-and-shoot camera and digital voice recorder neatly stowed in the pockets of a vintage tea-brown leather bomber. For emergencies, I also carry Lily, a small, pearl-handled switchblade that slips into a moleskin pocket sewn inside a pair of russet biker boots. The scuffed and scarred leather boots are secondhand, the knife a don’t-tell-your-mother present from an over-protective (though rarely present) father.

  My one concession to the chilly San Francisco night is the addition of a gray lamb’s wool scarf that curls around my neck with the warmth and comfort of a purring kitten.

  I give the driver the address where I expect to find the dead body of my former lover.

  “You’re Dixie Flynn of NOW, right?” he asks once I’m ensconced in the back seat.

  I nod and glance at his registration: Charlie Parker.

  “Cool name, Charlie. You play?”

  “Nah! No lungs, no talent. Only one Yardbird in this world and he already made his mark.” He grins. “I read your stuff though. How come it only lands once a week?”

  I grin. “That’s the trouble with weekly news magazines.”

  Charlie nods. “You ever think of moving to the Chronicle or Examiner?”

  “Tried that once, but they wanted to pay me too much. Plus, they have a dress code: No shirt, no shoes, no paycheck.”

  Charlie laughs. “Man, I never expected you to be funny. I mean, you write about all the dark stuff in this town. Sometimes after I read one of your columns, I need to go for a drink. Mo loves it, says you’re the best, but, man, you depress me sometimes. No offense.”

  “None taken,” I lie.

  _____

  Charlie drops me in front of the restored, seven-hundred-seat Metro Theater on Union Street with a cheery, “Catch you on the remix.”

  The street is lit by moonlight and yellow sodium-vapor fireflies trapped under glass. The theater’s neon 1920s-era marquee is dark, while heavy shutters hide the enticing window displays of neighboring boutiques, art galleries, and gem merchants from the great unwashed. This is a street that prides itself on iron bars and quick response from private armed security—unattractive qualities to those who hunt at night.

  The payoff for its vigilance is an eerie silence. San Francisco isn’t a town that sleeps, and it’s unusual to find a pocket that has learned how to catch a few Zzzs.

  Some inner-city dwellers panic when shut off from the constant rumble of cars, buses, junkies, and sirens, but I haven’t spent all my life cocooned in concrete. There was a time when I also sought silence as a refuge.

  Diego’s place is easy to spot: a third-floor penthouse with curtains pulled back, its interior ablaze in cool white light. Two officers in inky blue uniforms pace restlessly inside. Thankfully, there isn’t enough manpower on scene yet to keep the curious away with crime scene tape and an extra body on the door.

  I cross the street and stroll into the open lobby like I belong. Inside, thick carpet the color of a frothy cappuccino and a smooth oak handrail lead the way upstairs. As I climb, I brush my hand along the light-mocha wall, drawn by its unusual texture. Instead of paint, the walls are covered in a soft fabric that probably cost more than my best cotton sheets.

  Diego has moved up in the world since the last time we made art together.

  On the first landing, a lazy three-quarter moon is framed by a large half-circle of leaded glass, the clarity of which would make that bald Mr. Clean beam with pride. I feel at the neck of my charcoal blouse, suddenly wondering if I should have worn a dress and heels—or at least a bra.

  There are three apartment condos on each of the first and second levels, the occupants secure behind heavy, solid-core doors and tamper-proof hardware.

  On the top floor, the door to Diego’s penthouse stands open, exposing the scene within.

  Messy doesn’t do it justice.

  Dixie’s Tips #3: Vomiting at a crime scene, although oftentimes warranted, is not recommended. You only have to blow chunks once to be forever looked upon as a girly sidekick to the “real” journalists. If necessary, swallow.

  Beyond the door waits a headless body, pale and oozing atop polished hardwood floors.

  Jeez.

  I brace myself against the doorjamb as my legs unexpectedly tremble.

  Surrounding the body is a sticky carpet of burnt crimson edged in black. The ruby carpet also grows on walls, glistening in the light like a human lung—alive and breathing.

  I look away, digging deep within myself to unearth roots for my bravado. I’m no stranger to blood. What woman is? But on my beat, death is rarely gentle, and one’s first and most human reaction is often to flee.

  As part of the night crew—reporters, police officers, firefighters, hookers, junkies, paramedics, undertakers, pimps, dealers, coroners, nurses, and bartenders—I learned how to survive by detaching from the humanity of the dead. I trained myself to look at death as the introduction to a story, with the body serving as merely the hook beneath my all-important byline.

  It sounds morbid, but it’s surprising how oddly automatic it becomes. Then again, I usually don’t know the corpse on an intimate level. And, truth be told, most of us on the night crew also drink too damn much.

  Pulling my gaze from the body, I scan the room. Diego has come a long way from the one-bedroom he rented in the building I still call home. He lived directly above me, except for a brief three weeks when he shared my bed. We lived a year in those twenty-one days and parted on difficult terms. We didn’t hate each other per se; we just couldn’t stand the sight of ourselves in the other’s presence.

  Beyond the lake of blood, two uniformed officers—one saggy in the seat, the other bakery fresh—stand with their backs to me. Their focus is a large picture window and the empty street below. The slump of shoulders and heavy air of silence say all they want is for a detective to show so they can report what precious little they know and book off.

  Careful not to disturb them, I check the main door. It proves even more sophisticated than I first guessed. A steel bar hidden in the core of the door could slide into brass-finished iron plates on the floor and ceiling, making it practically impenetrable when locked. Try to kick that sucker in and you would end up flat on your ass with a broken ankle.

  When ready, I inhale deeply and return to the meat of the matter.

  The corpse is male, shirtless, with a firm, muscular stomach. I kissed that stomach. Not now, but then. My fingers traced sharp, square-cut muscles. Diego hated to be tickled, the loss of control. Naturally, that made it impossible to resist.

  The bloodless skin still holds a bronze pigment, and I have to dam a sudden dampness in my eyes.

  Focus, focus. Come on, Dix. It’s been a year. Do your job.

  There are no tattoos, which surprises me. Even though Diego didn’t sport any when we were together, I always suspected he was just itching to ink his own skin. The body is bent awkwardly over two large cushions, legs splayed wide with bare feet pointing in opposite directions. A single-barreled shotgun is laying a few feet away with something small, red, and meaty stuck in its trigger guard.

  OK, stop. Don’t look.

  I have to. Jesus, I have to.

  The head, or what is left of it, is a burst melon—everything from the mouth up, gone.

  The thought that immediately enters my head is that I miss his eyes. The light that
was Diego had glistened within those eyes like an erupting volcano. The orbs were so bright that I often wondered if he could see in the dark.

  No point taking a photo, I tell myself. It would never make it into print. Can’t have our readers gagging on their Sunday morning cornflakes.

  The skull’s jellied contents are what carpets the walls, but there is also an abnormally symmetrical shape at its epicenter. Stepping closer, I stifle a gasp as the shape takes three-dimensional form.

  Positioned directly in the path of the volcanic spatter stands a large, rectangular canvas.

  The stretched canvas, anchored firmly to a heavy easel, is covered in tiny fragments of shattered bone, pummeled brain matter, and at least a bucket of congealing blood. Within the gore, however, Diego has painted an intricate pattern in what I can only guess is some form of clear wax.

  While the raw canvas soaks in the blood, the pattern repels it. Without the wax, the canvas would have been just another mess to clean up, and without the blood, the pattern would never have been revealed.

  I move closer, mesmerized. As my eyes relax, shapes flicker within the pattern, but the blood has yet to set and the final message eludes me.

  Once you look past the gore—which I assume will be an easier chore once the canvas is removed from the scene and allowed to dry—the power of the piece is palpable.

  Unexpectedly, almost spiritually, I feel this could become Diego’s greatest creative achievement: a complete and personal sacrifice to art and a single-barreled Fuck You to the world.

  But that is also what bothers me. The Diego I had known was far too narcissistic to conceive of something so self-sacrificing.

  To me, it looks more like murder.

  Two

  “Hey! Get the hell away from there.”

  I snap a photo of the bloodied canvas and turn to see cute buns looking both stunned and surprised to find an extra person in the room.

  I flash him my most promising smile, since my décolletage gene—necessary to distract all men from all things—sputtered and died shortly after puberty, and I still haven’t managed to master the art of fluttering my eyelashes in a way that doesn’t look like I’m having a seizure.

  Time to work.

  “Dixie Flynn, NOW. Who found the body?”

  Saggy pants turns to display a face not dissimilar to a Shar Pei chewing a wasp. “How’d she get in here?”

  The flash of anger that steels his younger partner’s eyes shows he doesn’t appreciate the inference.

  I nod toward the door. “It was open. I was in the neighborhood.”

  I flash the smile again, playing innocent and coy, like butter wouldn’t melt.

  “You’re the gal who writes the columns, right?” asks the first cop. “Sergeant Fury’s girlfriend.”

  The older cop laughs. “Fury doesn’t have friends, never mind a—”

  The look—trained at the knee of my mother, and her mother before her—stops him short, but it doesn’t seem to penetrate his partner’s Kevlar vest.

  “He likes this one,” the younger cop says as his eyes scan my body for fingerprints. “Word in the locker room is he adopted her as some kind of charity case after she wrote a fluff piece when his wife was killed a few years back.”

  “Who called this in?” I ask, the words practically cutting my tongue. “Or is Detective Fury the only cop worth quoting?”

  The partners exchange a look as if sharing a telepathic secret. The senior one shrugs.

  “Neighbor,” says junior.

  “They find the body or did you?”

  “We did,” he continues. “Neighbor called in a report of gunfire but didn’t breach the scene.”

  “How did you get in? That’s quite the lock.”

  He shrugs. “Neighbor had a spare key.”

  “Neighborly.”

  “Yep.”

  “So the door was locked?”

  “That’s why we needed the key.”

  I nod at the body. “Messy.”

  “Very.”

  Junior puffs up his chest to show if there is any extraneous vomit on the floor, it doesn’t belong to him. This was his way of impressing upon me that if I ever needed any spiders killed or leaking bodies removed, I would know whom to call.

  With some effort, I manage not to shudder. His cuteness factor has dropped so far below my minimum, it’s no longer on the radar. It’s a pity sometimes when they open their mouths.

  “You I.D. the victim?” I ask.

  “Mailbox says Mr. Diego Chino. Neighbor said he lived alone, some kind of famous artist.”

  “That what made you tip off my editor?”

  Silence.

  I move on. “Neighbor sure it’s him?”

  The young officer winks at his partner. “She didn’t feel up to helping us look for his face.”

  _____

  Detective Sergeant Frank Fury storms into the apartment with trench coat flapping and bare hands curled into fists the size of boiled hams. He is ready for a challenge and appears mildly disappointed when the two officers merely gawp and retreat.

  “Ah, crap,” he grumbles while looking at the body. “What a bloody mess.”

  The two uniformed officers physically shrink as Frank’s glare falls upon them. Then he spots me.

  “How in hell did you get here?”

  “Cab,” I say dryly. “Driver’s name was Charlie Parker, but he claims not to be musical. Not sure I believed him.”

  Frank rubs the knot between his eyes. “I’ve got two boys downstairs with strict orders to keep the jackals out of my hair.”

  “Not much left to get tangled in.”

  He scowls.

  I show my teeth.

  It’s how we work best.

  Frank and I prowl the same beat, but he doesn’t have the luxury of typing -30- (a nostalgic journalistic holdover from the days of the telegraph that means, quite literally, “No More”) at the end of each story before sending it to press and starting the next. He tends to hold on to the idea of justice too tightly until the frustration oozes from his pores like musk. That fervency has bled into a craggy face with a W. C. Fields nose and shovel-sharp chin, and left its mark most prominently in a pair of predatory, steel-gray eyes.

  His wardrobe does nothing to help, with baggy brown Kmart pants, wrinkled cotton dress shirt, a skinny tie the color of a coffee stain, and a knot so tight you know he never unties it. He wraps it all in a shapeless trench coat that barely envelops his solid 240-pound frame.

  Next to Frank, I look like a juvenile delinquent. He stands eight inches taller than my five-six-in-heels, which means if there’s a moonroof in his severe salt-and-pepper flat top, I can’t tell.

  I move carefully around the edge of the room to stand beside him. I’ve only been on the scene a short time, but already I’ve managed to distance myself. The body on the floor has become more of a puzzle piece than flesh and blood. Perhaps that cold detachment is one reason I have trouble getting second dates.

  “His name is Diego Chino,” I volunteer. “He’s an artist.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s big if you move in the right circles.”

  “I get dizzy easy.”

  We both smirk.

  “Looks like suicide,” I say.

  Frank nods.

  “But might not be,” I add.

  Frank flares his nostrils. “Go on.”

  “Notice the canvas?”

  “The one covered in blood?”

  “Yup.”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s brilliant.”

  “Come again.”

  “The raw power of it,” I explain. “That piece is going to be worth a fortune.”

 
“Once you clean the blood off?”

  “No. The blood is the paint. The positioning of the canvas and direction of the gun blast was intentional. It’s a modern masterpiece.”

  “You’re one sick pup.”

  “Wait and see. I won’t be surprised if Diego’s agent has a buyer by morning.”

  Frank holds up one hand. From heel to tip, it is larger than my entire face.

  “OK,” he says. “Let’s say this painting is valuable. Why does that rule out suicide?”

  “Diego was a publicity machine. He courted celebrity and gained a following, but his star was fading. Hollywood’s nouveau riche are a fickle bunch. One week you’re a must-have, the next, not so much. In another year, he could easily be forgotten, replaced by the next great discovery. Bottom line, he was too self-centered to let that happen. I don’t believe he would check out without a fight. His ego wouldn’t let him.”

  “Maybe he ran out of ideas,” Frank reasons. “And legends are born when they die young.”

  “Could be, but the indefinable thing that makes a true artist is soul. Peel back the layers and you find an unquenchable desire to leave a mark, create a kind of immortality.”

  “You’re making a strong case for suicide,” Frank says.

  I shake my head. “There’s also the ego factor. Making a mark is important but totally pointless if you’re not around to bask in the glory. Diego didn’t want to be Van Gogh, dying a pauper with nothing but rejection to show for a life’s work. He wanted to be Picasso, Dali, Warhol—worshipped while he walked the earth. That’s why his limited-edition prints were practically limitless. And that’s why he was letting his art be used on ties for rich businessmen and on print ads for perfume. Pretty soon he would be doing Converse shoes and Christmas wrap.”

  “Everyone’s a critic.” Frank rubs his temples.

  “True, but I know what I’m talking about. We used to argue into the small hours—”

  “What a minute,” Frank says. “You know the victim?”

  I’m not big into kissing and telling to friends who happen to be colleagues. Or colleagues who happen to be friends. Whatever.