“I know the radio’s a problem. But just one call, fill him in?”
“Not the way things’ve gone. Coast Guard snags the signal, may as well send up flares.”
Shel undid her seat belt and slid across the seat, nudging her hip against his. “This one’s got me spooked.”
Abatangelo turned to kiss her hair. “I can put you on a plane in the morning,” he said. “Head back to San Francisco, hang out till we wrap this up.”
Shel chuckled miserably. “Like that’d make me any less scared.” She reached inside her shirt, withdrew the amethyst hanging around her neck. Staring through the windshield, she rubbed the wine-colored stone with her thumb. “You gave me a chance to walk away two years ago, remember?”
“You’re being stubborn.”
“Get a grip, mister. I was born stubborn.”
They reached the safe house just before midnight. Remembering that Eddy had given Chaney directions in the presence of a state trooper, albeit “vague and cryptic,” they drove past the entrance twice, peering through the trees, looking for unknown cars, men hiding beneath the pines. They killed the motor, listening for the dogs. Nothing. Turning into the drive finally, they scaled the hill, pulled to a stop in front of the porch, and waited—for a rush of lights, voices screaming, Get out of the car, men wielding guns jumping out of the dark on every side. A wave of relief swept through them as the only sound that greeted them was a spate of barking from the dogs, their heads bobbing into view atop the tall wood fence.
The following night, Abatangelo heard out his lieutenants and made his decision. Maybe the boat’s sunk, they said. Maybe Byrne never even picked up the load, maybe the boat got boarded by pirates in the South China Sea.
“I’ve known Cap Byrne a long time,” Abatangelo responded. “He said he was sailing on home.”
He paid off half his crew, told them the catch was off, then in secret assembled the rest on the beach to wait. The wind was high and the sand as hard as asphalt. Eddy’s trucks waited along the access road, his drivers stationed at the edge of the pines. The beach crew readied their zodiacs near the surf, shifting foot to foot to stay warm, the bikers passing out Desoxyn, the Chinooks with their pints of whiskey. Everybody stared across the cold, dark waves.
Chaney was there, and a few of the Beaverton gang had started baiting him into ridiculous posturings. Abatangelo listened in, and envisioned one of the Beaverton boys pitching the boy off the zodiac into the sea, just to teach him a lesson on who not to lie to. Abatangelo ambled into the circle, made a round of bracing wisecracks, then drew Chaney aside.
“You look like you’re about to toss your lunch,” he said.
The boy’s skin was the color of bacon grease. He had waggling, bloodshot eyes.
“I get seasick easy,” he said.
“I’ll say. You’re on the goddamn beach. Want a smoke?”
The kid wiped his eyes free of sand and shrugged. “Won’t help.”
Abatangelo rendered a fatherly nudge toward the Chinooks. They at least would have the decency to ignore him. “You don’t have to impress anybody but me,” he said.
Just then a bullhorn voice blared from deep in the pines. It ordered every man to stand in place. DEA agents poured out of the trees aiming riot guns and AR-15s as flares arched over the moonless sand. A helicopter with a searchlight came roaring at low altitude around the point.
Men scattered. There was madness, shouting, another warning through the bullhorn. Gunfire.
Abatangelo scoured the beach, found an opening in the trees and ran. A hundred yards inside the pine forest, he found himself caught in the helicopter’s searchlight. In short order he was staring down the barrel of a Mossberg scattergun aimed by a fright-eyed agent.
He got marched back to the shoreline, lined up beside the others already collared, and pushed to his knees. Told to lie facedown, he locked both hands behind his head, inhaling sand. All around him, the rest of the men—Eddy, Joey, Mick, Chaney and the rest of the beach crew—all of them succumbed in like fashion while the lawmen, giddy from adrenaline and spite, went about their business, dispensing the epithets Asshole, Dirtbag, Dipshit.
Back at the safe house, Shel brought the dogs inside, not wanting them in the way in case she had to do a runner through the yard. She was loading boxes, packing up clothes and cameras and Abatangelo’s pictures, when one of the dogs pricked up her ears and whined.
She launched herself out the back, bolted through the yard. She had her hands on top of the redwood fence when from behind an agent threw the full force of his body into hers, pinning her against the fence to tackle her. Her face slammed hard against the wood, leaving behind a smear of blood. Her nose turned to red wet putty. She tried to kick free as they hit the ground, but the agent dropped his knee down hard into her solar plexus. All the air in her lungs vanished. Her brain locked in a spasm of pain and the night sky turned bright white.
Her vision returned with her breath, by which time the agent had her up and cuffed. “Reasonable force,” he said through his teeth. “Fleeing suspect. Just so we’re clear.” Her knees buckled as he prodded her back inside.
The place was swarming now. Animal control was marching off with the dogs, leaving behind a convention of straightlaced assholes in blue windbreakers interspersed with longhair narcs. The agent who caught her eye, though, was a woman. Shel knew what that meant. She got pulled into a bedroom and nobody bothered to close the door. On the contrary, a couple of agents stood in the doorway to watch, others peeking in from time to time, grinning, staring, popping their gun.
Rather than uncuff Shel and let her undress herself, the female agent did the job. Shel’s bloody shirt got pulled open and drawn down to her wrists. Her jeans came next, all the way off. The pockets were pulled inside out, her socks checked, her bra unhooked and the cups inspected. When nothing was found, the female agent turned to her crowd.
“Gentlemen?” she inquired.
No one bothered to leave. The female agent turned back to Shel. Pulling a latex glove from her pocket, she squeezed her hand into it and said, “Squat, dear.”
In the hours that followed, Abatangelo, still on the beach, learned in snatches overheard from passing agents what happened at the house.
“She was lovely,” one said. “Blushed like a newlywed.”
They were goading him, he realized. It’d suit them just fine if he got to his feet; they’d gladly hammer him back down into the sand. Not wanting to give them that sort of satisfaction, there was nothing to do but lie there. He vowed to make it right somehow, at the same time wondering, as he would for the next 593 days through trial and his 100 months in prison, what he might have done differently. Shel would blame herself, it was her nature. He wanted to tell her the blame was his, not hers, he’d had a bad feeling all along but didn’t act on it, he’d let his loyalty to Byrne cloud his judgment. He wanted to tell her a hundred things, anything, just for the chance to see her again, and knew he would spend the rest of his days, if need be, trying. It would define the rest of his life, that vow, that fear. To see her again. To make it right.
Two agents pulled him to his feet and prodded him across the sand to the transport wagon where they posed him for his in-custody Polaroid. The agent aiming the camera squinted through the viewfinder and said, “Flash us some teeth, lover.”
CHAPTER
2
1 9 9 2
The guard who walked Abatangelo from sign-out to the forward gate cupped his hands to his mouth for warmth, cringing from the cold. An eastbound storm unleashed forefront winds across the high desert. Repeated flaws of cold air sang through the razor wire and hammered the prison’s concrete walls.
Reaching the gate, the guard murmured, “Watch yourself, now,” through clenched teeth. Abatangelo thanked him, lowered his head and stepped through the opening. The guard locked the gate behind him, spun around and hustled back up the walkway to the warmth of the prison.
Abatangelo headed down the long walkway for
the parking lot, carrying a brown paper sack filled with the few belongings he’d decided to bring with him.
First and foremost was the old Bell & Howell 35 mm SLR the prison chaplain had given him, fitted with a Canon lens. Abatangelo had used the camera working on the prison newsletter, taking portraits of the men up for parole hearings, or the recent high school graduates he’d tutored for the GED. It had felt good, felt right, having a camera in his hands again.
As for books, he’d donated his to the prison library; only a handful were coming with him: Kierkegaard’s Works of Love, and five collections of photographs: one by Ben Shahn from the Depression; one by Henri Cartier-Bresson; two by Susan Meiselas, one titled Carnival Strippers, the other Nicaragua; and the last by James Nachtwey, Deeds of War. Six books, one philosopher, four photographers: his heroes, his hope.
There were letters in the sack, too, though not many, a sort of greatest hits collection. Only Eddy Igo had kept up the pace beginning to end. Shel had written at least once a week for the first five years, then it tapered off a little for the next two. Abatangelo had detected an encroaching depression in what she’d written. He’d urged her to see a doctor. Then, at year seven, the letters stopped.
After that, he had his own bouts of depression to deal with. The sickness unto death, Kierkegaard called it. Overall, he supposed he’d been lucky to have the newsletter to work on, the young mutts to tutor, the chaplain to argue with. Funny what passed for luck inside a prison.
Then, two weeks ago, a letter appeared. For the first time in three years she’d written. The sight of her handwriting, it felt like mercy. He’d read and reread the letter over and over—it was so worn from handling, he’d taped the creases so it wouldn’t come apart in his hands. This letter did not get carried in the sack. It remained in its original envelope, tucked inside the breast pocket of his jacket. He felt the pressure of it against his chest, just over his heart.
Reaching the edge of the parking lot, he spotted the man with whom he’d made arrangements for transport to Tucson. Leaning against a mud-caked Checker, the man had long black hair combed straight back, revealing a dark, pockmarked face and an oft-broken nose. A cigarette hung from the corner of his mouth. Abatangelo stepped forward and said, “Man of the hour.”
The driver smiled through his cigarette smoke and opened the cab door. Abatangelo ducked inside. The interior reeked of tobacco and hair oil, the heater blasted foul hot air. A necklace fashioned of wolves’ teeth and hawk feathers hung from the rearview mirror.
The driver put the cab in gear and circled away from the prison. Reaching his hand across the front seat, he said, “Got your kickout?”
Abatangelo reached into his pant pocket, withdrew his federal release check and asked for a pen. He endorsed the check and slipped it into the waiting hand. “Thank you,” he said.
The driver pocketed the check then handed back a plain white envelope. Inside, Abatangelo found a budget fare one-way air ticket from Tucson to San Francisco, plus cash.
“You’re an honest man,” he said after counting the money.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Abatangelo met the man’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Nothing,” he said, pocketing the envelope. “It’s all here, I’ll need it. Thanks.”
The driver coughed and shook his head. “How far you think that mouth will get you?”
Not free ten minutes, Abatangelo thought. Already this. “Look,” he said, “it was a poor choice of words, I admit. If it’ll help, I apologize.”
The driver tapped his temple with his forefinger. “The prison’s up here, my man. You ain’t out till you’re out up here.”
They drove in silence to the federal highway junction, then south between Coronado Forest and the Peloncillos. The oncoming storm struck in time over Greasewood Mountain to the west, and with typical desert swiftness surged overhead within minutes, showering the highway with hail and rain before journeying east, accompanied by a ghostly wind. Abatangelo rolled down the window, put his face in the storm like a little kid. The worst of it passed as suddenly as it had come. In the ensuing calm he asked if they could pull over.
“Don’t tell me you gotta pee.”
“This won’t take long,” Abatangelo assured him.
The driver sighed and slowed the car onto the berm. Abatangelo opened the door, collected the 35 mm and got out. Hiking his collar about his neck, he crossed the wet slick highway at a trot. Twenty yards beyond the asphalt he stopped, lowered his collar and idly chafed his hands. He studied the desert plain, stubbled by frost-blackened cacti and easing into low chaparral. Mt. Rayburne stood in the distance, snowcapped and shrouded in a filmy haze. To the south, the Dos Cabezas Mountains lay misted in faraway rain. The desert floor wallowed in storm shadow, with tails of sand kicked up by crosswinds.
The mere fact the view spread wide before him, unbroken by walls, free of razor wire, it shuddered up a profound relief and he found himself taking slow, smiling breaths. Lifting the Bell & Howell to his eye, he set the focus on infinity and snapped three frames, to remind himself forever of this moment. Turning left and right, he shot the rest of the roll impulsively, focusing on anything and everything that loomed suddenly before him, letting it clarify in the hot spot, triggering the shutter. Lowering the camera finally, he took a long, deep breath of the rain-tinged air, then capped his lens and turned back toward the highway.
Once he was back inside the cab, the driver turned around. The man’s eyes were a vivid blue, deep set in a way that enhanced the pockmarks on his cheeks.
“Listen,” he said, “I came on a little rough back there. You know, it’s just … not every guy I pick up at that place has a brain in his head.”
“It’s not a problem,” Abatangelo said, putting the camera away. He turned to peer out across the desert again.
“I’m not a young man anymore,” the driver said.
“Me neither.”
The driver took a moment to study him. “You been in what? Time, I mean.”
“A hard ten.”
The man whistled. “Well, now.” He regarded Abatangelo a bit more mindfully. “That’s a heavy beef. What they tag you for?”
“Pot,” Abatangelo said. Sensing this explained too little, he added, “We brought it in from Thailand.”
The driver put the cab in gear. “Bring it in from the moon for all I care.” He checked his mirror and eased back onto the highway. “What happened, you take the fall so your crew could skate?”
Smart man, Abatangelo thought. “Nobody got to skate,” he advised.
Shel and the others had served three and a half in exchange for his ten. It was his choice. His plea. The feds jumped at the chance to claim they’d taken down the main man. Their case had developed evidence problems, they’d gotten arrogant and sloppy. Not so sloppy they’d lose, but bad enough Abatangelo’s offer sounded like a bargain. Their snitch—neither the odious private investigator Blatt nor the wannabe biker Chaney, as it turned out, but one of the Beaverton pillheads—was working a second grand jury out of Portland. The agents tried to hide that fact, and got caught in the snare of their own lies. It was fun to watch them squirm on the stand. Pity it provided no more leverage than it had.
The driver rolled down his window and spat. “Ten fucking years. Out here no less. Over smokes.”
“Yeah, well, it was a lot of smokes,” Abatangelo offered. “I’d been at it awhile.”
“Which means what, you deserved it?”
They stared at each other in the mirror.
“No,” Abatangelo said. “That’s not what I said.”
The driver held his gaze a moment longer, then offered a comradely laugh. Lifting his head, he intoned, “‘While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.’”
Abatangelo smiled.
“That funny?”
“I wasn’t expecting to hear cabbies quote Lenin till I got to San Francisco.”
The
driver eased down into the front seat a little, as though finally convinced he could relax. “We got a chunk of time to Tucson. Settle back. You want, I can turn on the radio.”
“No thanks,” Abatangelo said. “I’m enjoying the quiet, actually. Prison’s a noisy place.”
“I remember,” the driver said. He reached into his pocket, withdrew the kickout check, and read the name. “Abbot’n’Jell-O?” he said.
“Nice try.” Abatangelo recited the name, the driver read along, then he tucked the check back into his pocket. “That’s Italian,” the cabby said.
“So goes the rumor.”
“It mean anything? In English?”
Abatangelo regarded again the wolves’ teeth and hawk feathers hanging from the rearview mirror. “You mean like Crazy Horse, Little Wolf, something like that?”
“Whatever.”
Abatangelo wondered at the man’s curiosity. People had the strangest notions about Italians, especially out here, the middle of nowhere.
“The prefix ab,” he said, “it usually means ‘down.’ And angelo—”
“Means ‘angel,’” the driver guessed.
“It never got spelled out to me in so many words, but—”
“Fallen angel,” the man said, excited, like he was a game show contestant. He uttered a snarly little laugh. “That fucking perfect or what? A hard ten for Mr. Fallen Angel.”
At the airport they drove around to the departure gates and pulled to the curb. Abatangelo stared out at the gleaming modern structure of metal and glass. Skycaps manned their consoles. Travelers bustled in and out. He found himself strangely paralyzed. Shortly, he realized the cabby was staring at him.
“Scared?” he asked.
“So it would seem,” Abatangelo replied.
“Normal enough.” The man smiled. “Crowds here aren’t that bad. At the other end, it’ll be worse. Park yourself in the can if you have to. Wait it out. It passes.”
“Thank you.” Abatangelo gathered up his paper sack and got out and came around to the driver’s side window. “How do I look?”
Devil's Redhead Page 3