The Angel Maker

by Ridley Pearson

  A police cruiser approached in the opposing lanes. Boldt rolled down his window and beat on the side of his car, signaling—he hoped—for backup. His eyes left his lane for only a second, but when he looked back, the traffic ahead of him had come to a complete stop.

  He slammed on the brakes, the car in an immediate skid, the remaining distance shrinking impossibly fast. He then pumped the brakes as he’d been trained to do—a half dozen times in quick little jabs. He cut his speed in half. The unforgiving back bumper of a pickup truck loomed directly ahead. Thirty yards to go. Twenty. An adrenaline rush choked him. His hands tightened on the wheel. Miles … Liz … Bear Berenson saying, “This here is the Lou Boldt …” More brakes. Still too fast. Too close …

  Mentally, these last few seconds slowed perceptibly. He could feel the shrinking space between his vehicle and the pickup, he could somehow measure it precisely.

  In desperation, he hit and held the brakes. The back tires cried out. The car fishtailed.

  The pickup truck—this entire lane of traffic—rolled forward as drivers anticipated a green light. This added one vehicle length of roadway between Boldt and the pickup. He skidded to a stop inches behind the pickup.

  The van was sitting four cars up.

  He grabbed for his weapon. Weapons were not his way, this kind of street cop work was not his work, but he saw little choice.

  The driver of that van was connected to Sharon Shaffer’s abduction.

  The stopped traffic was nothing more than a red traffic light, not a traffic jam as he had first believed. In a moment the traffic would begin to roll again. In a moment Boldt would be doing sixty again chasing him. He checked his rearview mirror: That patrol car was nowhere to be seen. All alone.

  He threw the car into PARK and approached the van in a squat from the passenger side in order to avoid the chance of being seen in the driver door mirror. He hurried between waiting cars, his back cramping. Too old for this shit. Someone behind him honked, pissed off, no doubt, that he had left his car. Oh great! he thought. Let’s attract as much attention as possible.

  The light changed to green. Engines revved, and traffic began moving again. He caught up to the van and, arm outstretched, took hold of the handle to the side door. He yanked, now pulled along by the van’s progress. Locked! He lunged for the front door next, the van moving even faster. From behind him the volley of protesting horns continued.

  He took hold of the passenger door handle and jerked upward to open it. At that very instant, a finger appeared and locked it as well. The tie didn’t go to the runner: Boldt stumbled and fell. The van pulled away.

  By the time he reached his car and was driving again, he couldn’t see the van for the trucks, the Hondas for the hatchbacks. He stayed with it a while longer, but the van was nowhere to be seen. Without a radio and without backup, Boldt resigned himself to failure.

  Depression overwhelmed him—not for what was coming from Shoswitz, he could handle Shoswitz—but because a woman was missing, and Boldt was convinced the driver of this van was an accomplice in her abduction.

  It was time to start all over, he decided. Time to do things right.

  Time to have a little talk with Connie Chi.

  25

  Tegg had never seen Maybeck look this desperate, otherwise he might have objected to Maybeck’s barging into his office unannounced. Maybeck was relegated to the back hallway, the walk-in, the disposal of waste; he was overstepping his bounds.

  “What is it?” Tegg complained.

  “The laptop’s been stolen,” Maybeck announced.

  Tegg felt a sharp pain in the very top of his skull, and one of his tics hit him hard. He felt his shoulder lift and his head strain to meet it. He recovered and said, “Tell me about it, Donald.”

  “Don’t call me that!”

  “Start talking, Donald. This instant!”

  Maybeck suffered through an explanation, trying to make himself into some kind of hero in the way he had avoided the police. Tegg was beginning to see him in terms of a corpse—just exactly how would he dispose of a person that size?

  The laptop? He blamed himself for having ever entrusted such an important matter to Maybeck. It had all been by design: trying to distance himself from incriminating evidence wherever possible. But now? He had to assess his situation, to take control. The planned date of the heart harvest was inside that laptop—the entire history of their operation, if you knew what to look for.

  “First you handle Connie. She must be dealt with. Hmm? Nothing violent, I’m not suggesting that, just see that she’s out of the way, out of town. Now! Then we get the computer back,” he said. “One thing at a time. Hmm?”

  “Connie’s first,” Maybeck replied like a magpie echoing his master’s voice.

  “Immediately.”

  “No problem. I know where to find her. I set that up like you told me to.”

  “You’ll watch for cops.”

  “I know.”

  “This ‘punk,’ as you called him,” Tegg said distastefully—he had no use for such slang—”is there some way to identify him?”

  Maybeck said brutishly, “I could always report it to the police.”

  Tegg waved a finger at him. “Don’t challenge me, Donald. Insolence will get you nowhere with me.” A bonfire, Tegg was thinking. That size body was just made for a bonfire. One fire to burn the flesh, a second for the bones. Maybe even a third for those teeth. “This is your error we are attempting to correct here—let’s pay particular attention to responsibility, shall we? We’ve discussed this all before. All before.” How strangely seductive the lure of violence could be. He wanted to hurt this man.

  “I can handle it.”

  “Spare me such indulgence, would you? Dream on your own time.” Tegg felt another tic coming. He squashed it with anger. Interesting how that worked, he thought—perhaps anger, always heralded as the enemy, was indeed a friend. “We will go to whatever means necessary to obtain that computer. A reward, a ransom, I don’t care what you have to do.”

  “I can put the word out. We offer a reward, and we’ll be onto this thing like flies on shit. It’s password protected,” Maybeck reminded. “That’s one thing good about it.”

  “There’s nothing good about this!” Tegg announced. He cleaned out his wallet—one hundred and fifty dollars—and practically threw it at Maybeck. “That kind of thinking is poison! Do you hear me? Poison! We need that computer back immediately. That computer is evidence, Donald! Get that into your head. That laptop is exactly what the police want. That’s our battle, don’t you see? And it’s not one we want to fight, believe you me. No, sir. But we’ll fight those we must. Hmm? You bet we will.”

  “I can get it back.” He waved the money at Tegg. “I have friends.”

  This seemed unlikely, if not impossible—especially the latter statement. “What an idiot you are!”

  “Shut up!”

  “An idiot, do you hear me?” He leaned toward Maybeck. “You get that laptop back, and you destroy that database before the police are any the wiser! Get rid of the van, too. If you fail in any of this, you will regret it!”

  “Doctor?” His receptionist’s voice. “Is everything okay?”

  He’d been shouting. “Out in a minute,” Tegg replied in a friendly voice to the closed door. How much had his employee heard? How could everything come down around you so quickly?

  Maybeck whispered, “I say we zoom the girl we kidnapped and take our chances with Wong Kei.”

  “Is that what you say?” Tegg asked, standing and approaching him, daring to put his face up against Maybeck’s. Breath like an open sewer. “I’m not terribly interested in what you have to say, Donald. But you had better be interested in what I have to say. Extremely interested.” He whispered, “Connie, then the laptop, the van: That’s your order of business, your priorities. If Connie won’t play along … well … Use your imagination.”

  “No problem,” Donnie said.

  Was he actually
condoning such a thing? He felt a disturbing pressure in his head, like a tire taking too much air. He wondered why he couldn’t just step away from it all? Let it go. How far would he go in order to make up for that mistake of his? He didn’t like himself; he didn’t even know himself. He had studied the psychology of cornered animals in college; only now that he was experiencing it did he begin to understand.

  Only now did he see clearly what exactly was to become of the black man out in the kennel. He too was a liability, one that at this point they could certainly not afford.

  But not for long.

  26

  With the surveillance a complete disaster, with no one to be mad at but himself, with no appetite, Boldt left work and headed directly to the back door of The Big Joke. He didn’t want Liz to see him like this—he wasn’t sure what he wanted. Had he been a drinker, he would have gotten drunk, but booze only gave him a sour stomach and a bad case of the blues. The blues themselves seemed the best way out—eighty-eight keys of refuge, where voices sang in his head and drove out all thought. The club was closed to the public by order of the Treasury Department, but since Bear Berenson lived upstairs, access was still available through the back. The piano had never been confiscated—just the financial records—and only two of the six screws intended to lock it shut had violated it.

  Boldt let himself in, found the piano in the dark, and started playing. A while later Bear settled himself into a chair at the table farthest from the stage, because Boldt hated the cigarette smoke and because this table sat immediately under a light which Bear needed to read his trade paperback, How to Beat the IRS, a gift from Boldt. He studied it like a preacher with a Bible, his reading punctuated by grunts of disapproval and sighs of supplication. A captain going down with the ship, he paused and looked up only to relish a particular phrase from Boldt’s piano or to roll himself another joint.

  It had been several days since Boldt had played, and he took to it hungrily, tuning all else out. His pager—switched off—his holstered weapon, his shield and his wallet all occupied a leathery heap by the glass of milk that Bear occasionally refreshed on his way back from the bar.

  The investigation would occasionally surface, like a prairie dog lifting its head from its lair, but Boldt would send it into retreat with the stomp of a foot or the stabbing of a dissonant note.

  Bear disappeared sometime during the marathon. Boldt didn’t look to see what time it was. He heard the phone ring several times, glad it wasn’t his. A while later, needing the bathroom and unable to use the club’s because of the dark, he found his way upstairs. Bear was asleep in front of the television. With that much pot in him he wouldn’t be worth trying to awaken and put to bed, so Boldt left him.

  He was back at the piano and into one of his better renditions of “All The Things You Are” when he detected movement out of the corner of his eye.

  He turned to see Liz standing in the darkness. Like him, she had entered through the back door. Arms crossed, she observed him solemnly, in quiet contemplation. No telling how long she might have been there: Liz was not one to interrupt his playing.

  “Bad day,” he offered.

  “They happen,” she reminded.

  A wind moved through the room carrying the scent of her with it. Perhaps this was what had stopped him in the first place. She smelled gorgeous. She explained, “We need you, Miles and I. We need you even when you feel like this—especially when you feel like this. I worried. I was picturing a hotel room. Something like that.”

  “Not likely.”

  “But possible. Anything is possible. Have I let you down? Have you let me down? Can I blame it on your work? Can I blame it on you? I want to. I try to.”

  “I miss the music, that’s all. I miss you more, you and Einstein. Where is he?”

  “Emma is pulling emergency duty.”

  Their neighbor. She pinch-hit when they needed her.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” she asked.

  “Maybe not.”

  “I love you.” When he failed to reply she added, “I want to be your piano. I want to be the one you turn to when you feel like this. I want to be the one to help.”

  “You do. It’s not you, it’s me,” he said.

  “It’s both of us. It always is.”

  “I screwed up a surveillance this afternoon.”

  “Do you see what this stuff does to you?”

  “Please.”

  “But do you? He’s killing you, too. He is! And me and Miles. What about your son? I hate this. It’s as if we never worked any of this out. But we did, once.”

  “I love this work. I live to stop guys like this.”

  “But when you don’t? Look at you.”

  He glanced at the piano. “This is the other me.”

  “No, Lou: This is the same you. I won’t give you permission to love your work more than your family.”

  “Who said anything about that?”

  “I did.”

  “I’m talking about me.”

  “You never talk about you. That’s one of our problems.”

  “One of our problems?”

  “Things are far from perfect,” she advised him.

  There was a spider in one of the spotlights, searching its web for food, seemingly supported by nothing. Boldt felt like that at times: alone, hanging by a thread, caught at the focal point of all that heat.

  “People die. You see enough of it, it makes you think.”

  “Shit happens,” she said. She was angry.

  “Do you wish I hadn’t signed back up?”

  “I wish you were happy. You’re not. Not with me. Not with yourself. I want to understand that. I want to help.”

  “Do you want me to quit?”

  “Do you?”

  “I will.”

  “You need an excuse? I’ll give you one if you want.”

  Sometimes she knew him better than he knew himself. Boldt shifted on the bench. “Maybe there’s a way to balance the two.”

  “Which two?” Was she asking about Daphne? Was she haunted by that?

  “Music and work. Friends and family. Work and family.”

  She forced a smile. “Honesty is a good place to start.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I need some evidence, Sergeant.”

  He stood, crossed the room, and offered his arms. She folded into him naturally and wrapped around him like a vine. “More evidence,” she said, and he hugged her tighter. He slipped his hand inside her skirt and cupped a buttock. She purred. Her hair caught in his unshaved face. It tickled. “I’ll try to be there for you.”

  “Me too.”

  “It’s hard,” she said.

  “That’s because it hasn’t felt you this close in a while.” That made her laugh, which was good. “We need more laughter.”

  “We need a lot of things,” she said softly into his shoulder, and giggled self-consciously.

  It felt fresh, wonderfully fresh, as if he had never touched her before. Each movement of hers, each probe, carried a tingling electricity. She pulled out his shirttail; her hands felt hot on his skin. She was fully off the floor, hanging off him. Her lips smeared him with lipstick, her smell invaded him. He groped for the door, stumbling with her along as baggage. She unfastened his belt—how he wasn’t sure—and went for the button to his pants. He kicked out the door’s stopper. She threw the bolt, as if they had practiced this.

  She refused to be let down, clinging to him like Miles. Giggling playfully. His pants fell down around his knees and he staggered. “No,” she protested, as he tried to lower her onto a bar stool. “No,” again when he aimed for a table. As he limped around waiting for approval, she lifted her skirt into a ruffle and tugged on her underwear, but with her legs clasped around him in a straddle, they weren’t going anywhere. “Damn,” she gasped urgently, charging him with excitement. The room was dark and strangely hot. He felt like a klutz, scanning the room for somewhere to satisfy her. She felt anxious, alive, n
ervous, hungry.

  She hung off him, head lowered back, her lacy chest exposed from an unbuttoned blouse. She pointed like a lookout on the bow. He leaned his head down, took her bra in his teeth and tugged until he freed her breast which he sought with his lips. He found her, and she gasped as much from surprise as pleasure. He felt her heat pressed against him, and it drove him to an impatient frenzy. He was about to drop her, she was so far cantilevered off him. Her legs gripped him like a vise. He found the other breast and went after it with his tongue. She cried out. Her legs gripped even tighter and she worked herself against him in an unmistakable motion. “Oh, God!” she said in a way that called for him. “Down,” she commanded.

  He lowered her onto the piano bench, her head dangling off the far end, her skirt gathered at her waist. He jumped—fell—out of his khakis. She struggled free of her last barrier with an ambitious bend of the knee. Her scent overwhelmed him, and he lost any sense of their surroundings. It was just them. Joined. Athletic and driven toward fulfillment. Wild. She coached with sharp cries of approval and overactive hips. An elbow smacked the keys and sounded a dissonant chord.

  Red light from an EXIT sign. Her hair stretched like spilled water toward the floor. He could see darkness down her throat as she laughed a pleasure-ridden, gutteral laugh. He had been a long time waiting to hear that laugh again.

  He warned her, and she liked that.

  “Wait … wait …” she pleaded.