Devil's Redhead

by David Corbett

  He turned toward her and said, “Let’s drop this, all right?”

  “I’m sorry, it was stupid, I just thought—”

  “Forget it.”

  They lifted their glasses in unison and drank. Shel tried hard not to think of Frank, or Felix, or the twins.

  After a moment, staring straight ahead, he told her, “I got your letter.”

  Shel let loose with a long and windy sigh. “Then there’s not much point talking about it,” she said, “is there?”

  He studied her. “You look fabulous, incidentally.”

  She felt her lips break into a weak and childlike smile. She wanted, again, a kiss from him. “It’s the light,” she said. “It’s kind.”

  “No. I’m aware of the light. I know what light can and can’t do. That’s one thing I do know.”

  The corners of his mouth softened into a forgiving smile. She found herself gratified to see he was still a handsome man. Overall, despite the desert, he looked trim and sturdy and free of serious defect. The hair was shorter, with bristlings of gray. He looked stronger, bigger in the neck and chest and arms. She longed to hear his stories about the Safford weight room. He could be such an achingly funny man.

  “Do you believe in echo?” he asked her suddenly.

  The question roused her. “Come again?”

  “Echo,” he said.

  She stared.

  “‘Who can believe in echo, when day and night he lives in urban confusion?’ It’s a question posed by Kierkegaard.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “Danish philosopher.” After a moment, he added: “You get a lot of time to read in the desert.”

  “No fooling.”

  “This particular line, the one about echo, it stuck with me,” he said. He offered a mischievous smile. “The point, as I understood it, is that it’s hard, believing in echo, given how confused life is. Modern life.”

  “Echo,” Shel said.

  “In context, it has Christian implications. God’s grace bestowed on virtuous men. The good guys.”

  “Oh man,” she murmured, shaking her head.

  “Bear with me. Now I, like you, have serious doubts about the grace of God. Let alone the good guys.”

  “Well, hey.”

  “So I read this particular line a bit differently. Echo is simply a voice like my voice, in a sense. Someone like me, out in the world somewhere. She exists. Not a wish. A fact. She’s there. And her existence, it creates a sort of echo.”

  He gazed at her, his face full of: Pick it up. She expected him to grab her wrists, shake them. And, in no small way, she wanted him to.

  “Sounds a little to me like long-lost love,” she said.

  “Not lost,” he said. “Come on. A soul like your soul. Calling out somewhere. What do you think? You believe in that or not?”

  She tried to work up the nerve to respond. Yes, she’d tell him. She believed, somewhat, sure. So? Sensing his impatience, she resorted merely to, “I’m having fun.”

  “That’s good.”

  “No. It’s not. Not at all.”

  He started leaning toward her. His kiss found the corner of her mouth, gentle and dry. He touched her arm and she found herself closing her eyes. Their lips parted with the next kiss and she felt a dizziness with their mingling saliva. She clutched the bar for balance and pulled away gently.

  “People know me here.”

  “No they don’t. Just Pete, remember? And he’s cursed.”

  “Don’t be flip.” She clutched the lapels of his jacket and shook him with an intensity half-comic, half-heartbroken. “Why don’t you hate me?” she said. “I walked. When it was easy, you were helpless, in the middle of nowhere, what could you do to stop me? It was chickenshit. So why are you being so nice?”

  Abatangelo reached for her hands and gently removed them from his jacket. He enclosed them in his. “I got over it,” he said.

  “That’s not fair.”

  Abatangelo laughed. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I didn’t do anything to earn this,” Shel said. “Forgive somebody who’s earned it, all right? Forgive Eddy. Don’t go easy on me. It’ll just come back to haunt me.”

  She withdrew her hands from Abatangelo’s hold and drank long from her Bloody Mary. It had acquired a watery flatness. Pepper grains fastened to her teeth, she had to work them loose with her tongue.

  “How perfectly quaint of you,” he said.

  “Don’t get snide, Danny, please. Okay?”

  “I’m sorry if I sound snide. That wasn’t my intent.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “But forgiveness is seldom earned, you realize. Trust me, this is an area I’ve considered with some interest. You can reach a point where you tell yourself, ‘I’ve done enough, if that isn’t good enough for the bastards, fuck ’em.’ But that doesn’t mean you’ve earned their forgiveness. Even if they turn around and give it to you.”

  Shel flagged her hands in the air, as though in mock surrender.

  “Forgiveness comes or it doesn’t come,” Abatangelo went on. “Right? It’s a gift. In this particular case, a gift from me.”

  Averting her eyes, she toyed with her glass. Abatangelo, discovering he’d drained his own, thrummed his fingers on the bar, trying to get Pete’s attention. Pete was not there. A plume of smoke was all that was visible through a storeroom door.

  “How can you forgive me,” Shel said finally, “when you don’t even know all the facts.”

  “I know enough.”

  “Hardly.”

  “Your letter—”

  “Doesn’t tell half.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re happy. Like he’s good to you.”

  This one hit. Shel drifted back a little on her stool.

  “He’s the beating you deserve, right? Let me guess, your being with him, it’s all the work of Fate. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  Shel waved him off. “I can’t make sense out of what you’re saying.”

  “My apologies. Been alone with my thoughts for a while.”

  “Danny, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m tired of you being sorry, frankly. Why are you shacked up with some cranker lowlife? You hear a lot about speed sex in the joint, that what we’re talking here? How bad does he knock you around?”

  “I’m not getting into this.”

  “And on the other hand, why, just for conversation’s sake, why-oh-why are you here with me?”

  “Auld lang syne.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “You came looking for me, not the other way around.”

  “And you’re going to make me work, right? You’re going to make sure I bust my hump to prove I really mean it, I’m not bitter, I miss you, always have. Always will. You’re the one thing I was looking forward to. All those years, ten of them, remember that part, ten goddamn years, the last few in particular, all I thought about at night, and you know what goes on in a cell block at night. I closed my eyes and wished hard. You were all I wanted. It was my antidote to bitter. I’m a sentimentalist, I’ve got a long memory and I’m loyal as a dog at dinner. There. That enough? What’s it going to take? Want me to spill some blood?”

  Shel said, “Please don’t.”

  Pete the bartender reappeared. After a quick survey of the room he pulled a flyer from a cabinet behind the bar and hurried toward Shel. He set the flyer down so she could read it and said, “You seen these around?”

  The flyer bore the picture of the Briscoe twins. Across the heading, it read: “Murdered: Ryan and Bryan Briscoe.” Shel felt the bottom drop out of her stomach.

  “The woman who’s been passing them out,” Pete said, removing the flyer from sight, “she just pulled up in the lot outside.”

  Shel flinched. Why did Pete suspect she’d have any concerns about the twins? Working up a tone of nonchalance, she said, “Time to settle up, I guess.”

  “Forget it,” Pete said. “Go on.”

  Shel started searching for her keys, s
lipping off her stool and watching the door. As she did, a plain-featured woman in her mid-thirties entered the bar. She wore slacks and flats, a sport jacket with a white blouse underneath, carrying herself with an air of studied tact. A crook in her nose suggested a break, and she wore squarish gold-rimmed glasses. Beyond a wristwatch she wore no jewelry. Freckles clouded each cheek and her short-cut hair was the color of wet straw.

  Overall, Abatangelo thought, she looked cordial and educated and easy to fool. Shel pegged her for a lesbian. The woman glanced about the room.

  “Let’s not be in a rush,” Shel murmured, turning back to Abatangelo so her face would be discernible only to him.

  “What’s this about?”

  “A mistake.” She took his hand in hers, set it in her lap, and smiled up at him cheerlessly.

  The woman approached the younger crowd and consulted with them briefly. She gestured with a thumb toward the parking lot, and one of the men shrugged. Then the busty cute girl in the gathered pink dress poked her head up and pointed across the bar. Shel flashed on a girl from grade school. Always scrubbed and packed in petticoats, the good girl, the unhappy girl, the innocent little snitch. They follow you through life, she thought, the good girls, the unhappy girls. The woman with the straw-colored hair turned toward Abatangelo and Shel, broke into a grateful smile, then nodded her thanks to her informant.

  “Heads up,” Abatangelo said quietly.

  “There are women in this world that torture’s too good for,” Shel replied.

  Abatangelo gestured toward Pete for another round then turned back to Shel and whispered, “One more time, quick, what’s this about?”

  Shel replied merely, “Let me talk.”

  “Lachelle Beaudry?” the woman said in greeting. Up close her appearance conveyed an even greater effect of blandness. Her skin looked wan from lack of sun, her glasses sat crooked on her face, she had matronly hands. Shel thought: my name. How did she get my name?

  The woman drew a business card from her shoulder bag and offered it to Shel, who declined to accept it. The woman then extended it to Abatangelo, who took it in his fingers, smiled, and put it in his pocket without so much as a glance.

  “My name is Jill Rosemond,” the woman said. She regarded Abatangelo quizzically. “You must be …”

  “Somebody else,” he replied.

  The woman smiled. To Shel, she said, “There’s a red Pathfinder parked outside. The girl over there said she saw you drive up in it. It’s registered to a Lachelle Beaudry. Her and a man named Frank Maas.”

  She again regarded Abatangelo inquiringly.

  “Not me,” he assured her.

  Shel lifted her head back, eyes closed, looking pained.

  “Perhaps this is a bad time,” the woman said.

  Shel laughed. “Now there, you’re on the right track.”

  “Yes, well. I’m working for a family up in Lodi, the Briscoes. They had a pair of twin sons.”

  “I always heard twins came in pairs,” Shel said.

  Jill Rosemond’s smile withered. “These twin brothers,” she responded, “are dead.”

  Shel responded, “As in identically dead, or fraternally dead?”

  Abatangelo reached out and placed a cautionary hand on Shel’s knee.

  “I’m not accustomed to humor on this subject,” Jill Rosemond said.

  “Then I’d guess you’re not from around here,” Shel replied.

  Jill Rosemond adjusted her glasses and worked up another smile, hoping to start over. “I was hired by the family. The twins had not been heard from in some time.”

  “Kinda comes with being dead, don’t you think, Jill?”

  “I located the twins, found them finally in a house they rented along Sand Mound Slough. They’d been murdered.”

  Shel said, “Sounds like you got there late.”

  “People tell me the twins had been seen recently with a man named Frank Maas.”

  “Here it comes,” Shel groaned, feigning enough-is-enough. “And know what I hear? Those two Briscoe kids were slumming it. Pair of coked-up little freaks. They were due.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  Shel waved her off. “I’ll tell you something else. Kids don’t run away from home ’cause everything’s great. I’d say the people paying you want to calm a bad conscience.”

  Jill Rosemond’s expression conveyed she had heard this before. “What else,” she asked, “would you like to tell me?”

  Shel shook her head. “You’ll listen to damn near anything, I’ll bet. Earn your fee. Family’s got as much use for you now as they do their kids, right? You were supposed to make contact with these prodigal twins of yours. Get them in touch with the family again, work up that backslapping get-together everybody was pretending they wanted. But you took too long. You blew it.”

  “It appears we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot.”

  “Stop the heartfelt sincere bit, will you? It is very annoying.”

  “I do not—”

  “Have you been paid?”

  Abatangelo pressed Shel’s knee harder with his hand. She jerked her leg away.

  “I beg your pardon?” Jill Rosemond said.

  “This family, they’re into you what, a few grand now? Maybe more. So you tell them, I’ll go the extra yard. I’ll keep on pushing, pass on everything I find out to the boys in Homicide. ’Cause if a perp crops up, or somebody who’ll pass for one, you want it to look like you helped out. And then you mail the Briscoes the bill, Jill. You’ve made it worth their while to pay up finally. They’ll get some vengeance, which’ll keep up appearances. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  “I merely want to talk to Frank Mass,” Jill Rosemond said. “I think he can help me. Maybe. How can I know till I talk to him?”

  “Oh Lord,” Shel groaned. “The scent. Go get ’em.” She leaned forward. “Horseshit.”

  “I’m sorry, but this attitude of yours strikes me as just a bit hysterical.”

  “Then, like I said, you’re not from around here, honey. We’re skeptical out this way. We’re white trash. Your kind never brings good luck.”

  Shel gathered her things and dropped off her bar stool. “I’ve got nothing else to say to you.” She headed for the door. Abatangelo left his change and scrambled to catch up with her in the doorway.

  “Let’s take my car,” he said under his breath.

  “Danny, that’s not a good idea. Go home.”

  Outside, the parking lot glowed from overhead lamplight. Up the hill traffic rushed past on the Delta Highway, cruising west into Pittsburg or east toward Antioch.

  Abatangelo took Shel’s arm. “She’s going to follow you.”

  Shel shook off his hand. “She’ll be in for a rude shock.”

  Jill Rosemond stormed up from behind. Her face was flushed. Reaching them, she came to, adjusted her glasses and struck a pose of righteous fury. “I want to paint you a picture,” she said. “It’s a picture the family’s going to live with for a long time.”

  Abatangelo tried to turn Shel away but she fought off his hold. She held out her finger as though intending to ram it through the other woman’s chin.

  “You listen …,” Shel hissed.

  “No, I’ve listened enough,” Jill Rosemond replied, holding her ground. “It’s your turn. I found the Briscoe twins in an upstairs room with their chests torn up by close-range gunfire. I had to wave through a cloud of flies to make sure it was them. Blood spread into the carpet like a paste, I still smell it sometimes. The twins, they were all of eighteen years old. Eighteen. Left there like meat, bloated, swimming with maggots. But that’s just another day in the life of white trash, I suppose.”

  Shel crossed her arms, made a low caustic laugh and said, “That it?”

  “I want to talk to Frank Maas.”

  “No no no,” Shel said. “My turn now. My turn to paint the scene.” She cocked her head. “You ready? This Frank Maas you want so bad, he had a baby boy once, know that? Name was Jesse. He wa
s all of three years old when he died. Killed with a hammer through his skull. Killer made his mother watch all this till he beat her to death with the same fucking hammer. There’s more, God yes, but I’ll spare you the details. Here’s a promise, though: I got you beat on the gore scale, sugar. His own damn kid. Frank’s kid. And who do you think got dragged in for questioning. Right. Sorry-ass Frank. He didn’t have money to hire an item like you, he just had to sit there and take it. Four damn days they grilled him. When they had to let him go they put him on surveillance, followed him up and down the county. He was the one, they were positive, no doubt. Go get ’em. Frank loved that boy. Loved him with every ounce of strength he had. But if the real killer through some thunderbolt from above hadn’t heard his conscience calling, walked in and given himself up, they’d still be out to nail Frank for his own boy’s murder. Just like you want to do with these twins. Don’t tell me otherwise. Christ. Listen to you. Wouldn’t know the truth if it bit you. Wouldn’t care. The hell with you. I’ve seen your kind. Frank and me, we’ve been through this. And that, my dear, is another day in the life of white trash, if you so much as give a shit.”

  She spun away toward her truck. Abatangelo stood there, not moving. No wonder, he thought. A boy. He shook himself from his stupor, offered Jill Rosemond a shrug and hurried toward Shel.

  “You have my card,” Jill Rosemond called after him. Her voice seemed brittle and false now. Abatangelo started to run as Shel sorted through her keys. He reached the truck as she was getting in and lodged his arm inside the door.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” he said. “This is nuts.”

  “I gotta run now,” Shel said, voice cracking. “It was nice to see you. I mean that.”

  She turned the ignition key and released the parking brake. She did not put the car in gear, though. She leaned forward in the seat and rested her forehead against the steering wheel, inhaling through her mouth.

  Abatangelo said, “I didn’t know. I never heard about—”

  “Danny, don’t,” Shel moaned.

  He pulled a pen from his pocket, scrawled his number and address on the back of Jill Rosemond’s card. “In case,” he said, handing it to her.