Devil's Redhead

by David Corbett

  He got out of the car, climbed atop the trunk and sat there, watching till daybreak smeared the easterly horizon with its glare. He knew that regret would soon take hold of him. He’d be wrestling with it for the rest of his life, he supposed, but at that particular moment he felt nameless, free of the illusions embedded in his past and no longer fooled by the future. Even the present seemed immaterial. Like light. And that, he guessed, was its perfection.

  He got back in the car, put it in gear and drove to the center of town. In the cramped shelter of a gas station pay phone, he fished quarters out of his pocket and fed them into the coin slot, dialing Waxman’s number.

  Waxman picked up quickly.

  Abatangelo said, “No sign of Shel, Wax, but I’ve got some art for you.” He barely got it out. Waxman talked over him manically, his voice clipped with phone static. Abatangelo caught the word “alive” and said, “Yeah, I’m alive. I’m fine. Fucking lucky, actually, you’ll see what I mean—”

  “Listen to me, damn it,” Waxman cut him off, shouting.

  Abatangelo recoiled a little from the receiver. Fitting it back to his ear, he heard Waxman tell him, “She’s alive.”

  CHAPTER

  24

  The discovery by the police of Pepe’s severed hand, stashed under the front seat of the shot-up car, gave Cesar and Shel the distraction they’d been waiting for. Hugging the shadows, they shuttled down the breezeway stairs and out the back of the property to a steep wooden stair built into the hillside under the eucalyptus trees. The handrail had rotted. Shel took the steps on her fanny, scooting down one by one till they reached the base of the hill.

  At the bottom Cesar drew her up, wrapped his arm around her and half-guided, half-dragged her as he had all night, through the trees and the manzanita to the patchy lawn of the Maritime Academy. Down among the Quonset huts they found a pay phone and called a cab.

  Cesar had changed into a set of Hidalgo’s clothes, but already blood was seeping through the fabric of his jacket. The stained sleeve hung lifeless beside his body. For strength, just before leaving the apartment, he’d taken three last pulls from the rum bottle and scarfed down two fistfuls of raw liver he’d found moldering in the fridge. Shel’s strength ebbed and surged, one moment propelling her a few more steps, the next failing her altogether. She functioned on nerve alone. No rum for her, no raw meat. When she faltered, Cesar goaded her on with snarls of, “You don’t fool me,” or more simply, “You want to die?”

  He pointed to a set of concrete benches near the entrance to the campus, and they made their way among the buildings, trying to avoid the glances of dog walkers already on the Academy campus for morning strolls along the water. High above on the overlooking cliff, the Carquinez Bridge spanned the strait, noisy already with Sunday traffic. Barges drifted underneath, heading inland toward the Delta.

  The cab arrived as the police patrol began scouring the top of the hill with flashlights. Beams flickered through the haze among the eucalyptus trees like large distant fireflies. Shel caught herself staring, then Cesar dragged her into the cab.

  “The ferry,” he told the driver.

  The cab eased up the hill past the guard station, where a gray-clad cadet glanced vacantly into the backseat then waved them on. Halfway up the hill they passed the turnoff into Hidalgo’s cul-de-sac. Over a dozen cruisers gathered at the end. The driver, a husky, older black man, stoop-shouldered, wearing a snap-brim cap, followed the swirling lights with his eyes.

  “Some damn drug mess, gotta be,” he growled, shaking his head. He looked into his mirror at his passengers, choosing precisely that moment when Cesar was prodding his arm, as though trying to goad it into movement. Shel, fearing the scrutiny, said, “Maybe there’s something on the radio. About the drug thing.”

  The driver’s eyes, reflected in the overhead mirror, shifted from Cesar to her. She shot him back a game smile. Nodding, he reached over and tracked the radio dial through sparks and gurgles of static, weak signals and noise. Finally he tuned in a talk station, offering standard Sunday morning fare: Charles Osgood sang the praises of the five-string banjo. A local gourmand touted lime pickle. When the local update came on, the bloodbath at the marina made the lead story. Fourteen men, all nameless, dead. Eight wounded, all critical. Few if any expected to live. “Believed to be drug-related,” the announcer said, and then linked the deaths to those at the ranch house, the junkyard on Andrus Island. The announcer’s voice had a maddening, forced breathlessness to it, like some promotional windup. Even so, at the mention of drugs, the cabby eyed them once again in his rearview mirror. Shel could think of nothing to deflect his attention this time. How had Cesar put it, she thought. Plan B, cut off their balls. Fourteen dead, and that was just the last go-around. Twenty-five total, with more soon to die. One of them, of course, being Frank. Farewell reckonings ticked through her mind with hopeless pity. Three years trying, she thought. Three years gone. And what of the others? She glanced toward Cesar for some form of shared grief, only to watch his eyes turn to stone, staring out at the leaden morning as the cab pulled up to the ferry building.

  Cesar paid with money he’d pilfered from Hidalgo’s pocket. Counting off the bills, he shot the driver a look of such guileless menace that Shel forced herself to laugh, like it was some sort of twisted joke between them.

  “Why not just pull your gun,” she said as the cab drove off. “Tell the guy to zip his mug or you’ll drill him.”

  “That’s what I did,” Cesar said, without irony. He edged away, looking for a door that might be open. Over his shoulder, he added, “Stop nagging.” He tried a door. “When the fuck’s this place open?”

  Stop nagging, she thought. Like we’re some old married couple. The idea whistled through her like a cold wind as she searched for a place to sit. She found a concrete bench under the roof overhang, facing the street, out of the weather.

  “It’s early,” she called back after him. There was a schedule on the wall he’d completely ignored. “First ferry doesn’t sail till nine.”

  He didn’t hear, hobbling around the building, attacking other doors. The building—an octagonal structure of metal and glass, painted aqua, with a low-pitched roof—sat perched at the center of a long promenade, directly across from the Mare Island shipyard. Flagpoles defiled along the landscaped walkway, each flying a different state flag at full mast in the drizzling rain. A marina sat to the north. To the west lay the vast high derricks and dry docks of the shipyard. A destroyer sat anchored at one end of the channel, an aircraft carrier at the other.

  A runty man with a gnarled, whiskered face disembarked from a city bus in front of the ferry building. He passed not twenty yards from where Shel stood, trundling with singular focus toward a kiosk that he unlocked and set about tidying. Shortly, a newspaper van motored down the hill, turned sharp along the waterfront boulevard and braked at the ferry plaza, disgorging three bundled stacks of the Sunday edition. She wondered if there was a picture of her in today’s paper, like there had been yesterday. She was struggling with what that might mean as, like a spider, the gnarled little man scuttled out from his kiosk, retrieved the bundles and dragged them back to his lair where he attacked them with wire snips.

  A police cruiser appeared up the boulevard, traveling slow. The cabby, she thought, he made the call. The cops wouldn’t think twice about it, not with Cesar packing two guns and dragging that arm around. Not with her barely able to walk, face tattooed with bruises. If they took her into custody, she’d have Felix to worry about all over again. He’d slip someone into jail to kill her. That or bribe some guard to do it.

  Cesar was on the far side of the ferry building, out of sight. Gathering up her strength and using the kiosk to block the cruiser’s view, she lurched over to the ugly little man, grabbing at a trash bin and a post along the way.

  “How’s it going?” she offered, steadying herself on the kiosk ledge and panting. She looked down at the front page of the paper to hide her face. The small stac
k of papers on the ledge were weighted down with a rock.

  The man inside the kiosk sat atop a tall metal stool. The space around him reeked of sweat and stale cigarettes.

  “Buck and a half,” he said in a rasp that suggested cancer. Shel looked. Sure enough, just above his collar, a small clotted scar appeared, and in an instant it brought back Felix, his sitting there in the kitchen with her, clutching her hand, asking if Frank would hold up. Telling her there was nowhere to run.

  “Dollar-fifty,” the man said, louder now. His eyes were a flinty green and his breath smelled the way his teeth looked. He held out his hand, the palm concealed beneath a fingerless glove of ratty black wool.

  “Let me check,” she said, searching each pocket she knew was empty. The man waited, his breath whistling in and out.

  “Well, darn,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. The cruiser had moved on, down the boulevard. “My pal’s got the money.” Cesar had stayed put behind the ferry building; maybe he’d seen the police as well.

  “You wanna paper or don’cha?” the man barked. He slid one of the papers from under his rock, folded it over, held it out in one hand while the other extended once again for payment. “Buck and a half,” he said, back at the beginning.

  “No thank you,” she said, turning away to lurch and hobble back to her bench. How long, she wondered, sitting down, till another cruiser comes by. This one without warning. Her only chance was to get to the city, connect with Eddy. She’d called from Hidalgo’s apartment, left a cryptic message. Knowing Eddy, he’d already sounded the horn to Danny. That was her chance. And then? She’d fled Danny to save him, now she was running back to save herself. It was cowardly. I’m sorry, she wanted to tell him. Sorry and scared and buying time.

  Cesar returned from his hiding place beyond the building, staring after the police cruiser that turned back uphill toward downtown. He collapsed onto the bench beside her.

  “Fucking cold out here,” he said, as though nothing had happened. He clutched the lapels of his jacket. His face was damp, but Shel couldn’t tell if it was from rain or sweat.

  “Tell me something,” she said. “The men who died, what was the point, exactly?”

  Cesar uttered a caustic laugh and wiped his face with his coat sleeve. “You’re funny,” he said.

  Shel exhaled and the breath stung as it left her. Tears dammed up behind her eyes for reasons she couldn’t place. “I want you to tell me about the men who died,” she said.

  Cesar looked away. Following his gaze, Shel saw terminal derricks in silhouette against the winter morning sky. They looked like skeletal giants clutching one another.

  “We got a little speech,” he said, “last night, from Facio, the guy in charge. El Zopilote, he’s called. The Buzzard. He told us, ‘There are cases in which the greatest daring is the greatest wisdom.’ Like that? He read it from a book. After a little more of that horseshit he finally got around to talking about Gaspar Arevalo.”

  “He’s who?” Shel asked.

  Cesar glanced at her. “I thought you wanted to hear about the men who died.”

  “I do.”

  “Well, he was the first. The mojado Felix Randall’s people strung up like a dog a few weeks ago.”

  “The thing that happened out on Kirker Pass Road?”

  Cesar chuckled. “Yes. The thing.” He worked up a wad of spit, let it form at his lips and then dropped it in a long, slow stream to a spot between his feet, inspecting it for blood. “Know what else Facio told us? The guy that road is named for, a norteño named Kirker, he got rich scalping Mejicano peons. Women, children. Pretended they were Apache scalps so he could claim the reward. In Mexico, he’s despised. Up here, they name a highway after him.”

  Shel studied his face. It betrayed nothing she did not already know about him. The eyes were the same as always, hard and quick and focused on something a little ways off.

  “Nothing like a little local color,” she said finally. “What else did he tell you. This leader of yours, what’s his name—”

  “Facio.”

  “Him.”

  “He told us to bring honor to ourselves and our families.”

  Cesar leaned back, spread his serviceable arm across the back of the bench and cackled. “Honor,” he murmured. “He plays me for a fool. Orders Pepe to shoot me like a pissy little sneak.”

  Inside the ferry building a custodian appeared, unlocking the doors one by one. Cesar shot to his feet, wrapped Shel’s arm around his shoulder in a single motion and drew her up after him. Side by side they staggered across the plaza, their bodies leaning against each other till the door came open and they ducked inside.

  The interior was a few degrees warmer at best. Cesar planted her in a seat then hurried to the rest room, where, she imagined, he’d run hot water over his hands, splash his face with it. He was gone several minutes, and when he came back out he was as pale as before, warming his hands in his armpits.

  “I’ve thought about it,” he said as he sat down next to her. “We’re driving to Chicago. Lot of Mejicanos there, we can blend in.”

  He was sweating again, and trembling. His eyes seemed more remote than before.

  Shel said, “I’m going to blend in with who?”

  “This guy you called,” he said, ignoring her, “who is he?”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “Friend how?” A blatant inference of sex strained the question.

  “We were arrested together.”

  Cesar regarded her with a look of barely suppressed relief. And surprise. He seemed impressed.

  “Pot smuggling,” she added. “Ten years ago.”

  Cesar looked away again. “That doesn’t mean I can trust him,” he said.

  “No,” she agreed. “It means you have to trust me.”

  Eddy Igo’s body shop sat midway to the beach along the Noriega streetcar line, deep in the heart of San Francisco’s Sunset District. The shop was a single-story cinder-block structure painted daisy yellow and kelly green. Even in the fog, it looked perky. Abatangelo pulled up in front where two work bays faced the street, each with a corrugated aluminum door, above which appeared, in stenciled lettering: I-GO YOU-GO BODY REPAIR.

  He entered the customer waiting room, triggering a small bell. There was a vinyl chair, a matching vinyl sofa, an end table covered with grease-stained copies of Car & Driver, a counter with a cash register and Coke machine. Inside the work bay, the chassis of a VW Bug sat hoisted on a hydraulic rack, its roof cut away and its hood removed. A 3100 engine hovered over it, machined for oversized cylinders and suspended by pulley chains. Coiled rubber hoses hung from grapples. A smell of gasoline and cold metal hung in the air.

  The place was still. Abatangelo called out Eddy’s name.

  A moment’s silence, then from the back: “Danny, yeah. Back here.”

  He followed the sound down a dark narrow corridor past a grease-stained washtub, startling himself as he passed the filthy mirror. The wound at his temple had stopped bleeding, but the scab was fresh and large. His eyes were hollowed out by shadows and he still had a handkerchief wrapped round his blistered hand.

  He turned into a dingy room lit from the ceiling by buzzing fluorescent tubes. Two battered file cabinets and an ancient Frigidaire lined the far wall. Across from them, soiled work orders fixed to clipboards hung by chains from a pegboard panel.

  Eddy sat at an old metal desk, loading a Browning shotgun with buckshot. A Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum with two speedloaders sat on an oilcloth at his elbow. His eyes were wired, his skin wan. His bald spot gleamed from the overhead light, hair curled and tufted around it like he’d jumped out of bed and come here running.

  “Got the call on my machine,” he said, not looking up from his task. “The line forwards through to my house after hours. Saw the light blinking when I got up.” He shook his head, kept loading. “God damn lucky Polly didn’t pick it up. Tried to reach you. Then I called that doofus at the newspaper.”

  “Waxm
an,” Abatangelo said.

  “That’s the one.”

  Eddy pumped a round into the Browning’s chamber then stuffed extra shells into each of the breast pockets of his coveralls.

  “Why all the firepower?” Abatangelo asked.

  “She said ‘we’ on the phone,” Eddy said, leaning back and setting the shotgun in his lap. “I don’t know who ‘we’ is.”

  “Are,” Abatangelo said.

  “Don’t fucking start with me,” Eddy responded. Glancing up, he added, “You look like death warmed over, by the way.”

  Abatangelo collapsed into the empty chair across the desk. He rubbed his eyes. “Ed, bear with me here a minute, okay? I just came away from a …” He waved his hand, struggling to claim a word. Nothing came, so he settled for “nightmare” and took a deep breath. “First I watched Frank Maas, the character Shel was involved with, blow himself to shreds with a homemade bomb. I mean, pieces of him just lying around, some on fire. Then I sat out near a marina along the Carquinez Strait as somewhere between thirty and fifty men went at each other with guns and more guns. I photographed the dead, among other things. They looked a lot like meat by the time I got to them.”

  Eddy heard him out, waited a moment, then shot him a peace sign. “That’s deep,” he said.

  Abatangelo felt the air in his throat turn thick like cotton. “Excuse me?”

  “Stop preaching.”

  “Oh, that’s rich.” Abatangelo shot out his hands, as though to measure the insult. “You know, I remember sharing a motel room in Corona Del Mar one time with a guy looks a lot like you. There was two million cash stowed under the bed. I don’t remember any weapons around.”

  “We were young and dumb,” Eddy said. “Dumb with luck. I don’t get the sense your old lady’s bringing any luck with her.”

  “Let me handle it.”