Angel

by Nicholas Guild

  “Could you look up the juvenile records of one George Tipton?”

  “Our George Tipton?” There was a pause at the other end of the line, as if Marshal Cheffins had the rap sheets right there on the kitchen counter with him. “He beat up my youngest boy Jerry in the fifth grade. That George Tipton?”

  “Sounds like him.”

  “Juvenile records are sealed—you know that, Counselor.”

  “Not to worry, Bill. The guy junked himself in a car crash a couple of years ago and is now occupying real estate in a New Jersey cemetery.”

  “Glad to hear it. Sure, then. Come by the station anytime tomorrow and we’ll tour the cellars together.”

  Kinkaid replaced the telephone receiver, feeling dissatisfied that tomorrow was not today. His glance fell on the stack of brief pages that had come over the wire that morning.

  “Screw it,” he said, out loud to the empty office.

  He wasn’t done yet. There was still one more place he could look.

  . . . . .

  New Gilead High was a boxlike modern structure dating from the late 1960s, when the suburban population growth had at last reached this far north into Fairfield County. Kinkaid could remember spending summer evenings playing cowboys and Indians on the construction site, where a network of ditches and the cement foundation blocks had offered excellent concealment from The Enemy.

  The school was still relatively new when he entered as a freshman. Everything about the place seemed newly minted, from the amberlike polish of the gymnasium floor to the student body, so many of whom had arrived with the real estate developments on the outskirts of town that at dinner there were witty references to “Carpetbagger High” and even some talk of sending an application to Choate.

  The transfer never came about, but young Kinkaid did not imagine he would have gained much from it. His father sometimes said he lacked self-confidence, which was only a rough shorthand for the truth, which was that he was too shy and unathletic for great social success. Choate would not cure anything. He would just have to muddle along as best he could.

  And in the end he did achieve a measure of success. He became an academic star, the school’s very first graduate to win a scholarship to Yale. It didn’t stack up to much with the girls—he would have to wait until college to lose his virginity—but his father was satisfied. And so were his teachers. Even at this distance of time the staff remembered him with a certain sense of shared triumph. He was counting on that.

  “Jimmy! Jimmy Kinkaid—how are you?”

  A woman in her late fifties, her hair a mass of grey-brown curls, looked over her glasses from behind a typewriter and then bolted up and toward him as in she had been startled awake. Kinkaid smiled and took both her hands in his—they ran into each other probably once a month in the Grand Union, but apparently his return to actual school precincts somehow transformed this into a reunion.

  “Fine, Mrs. Sherl. How are you? How is summer session?”

  Summer session was all remedials and typing classes. Mrs. Sherl had no use for summer session, a subject on which she became almost philosophical as Kinkaid smiled and nodded.

  But at last she got around to asking what brought him by.

  “I wonder if I could have a peek at the old files,” he said, precisely as if he were asking if he could use the men’s room. “It’s an estate matter. You remember George Tipton?”

  “I ought to, he was in here often enough. Don’t tell me somebody’s left him a fortune.”

  “No—it’s his estate that’s at issue.”

  “Oh . . .” Mrs. Sherl frowned, sticking one hand in the pocket of a emerald green polyester vest that reached almost of her knees. “So he dead, huh?”

  Kinkaid nodded. “Traffic accident, a couple of years ago.”

  “Well, I’m not surprised. He was always a wild kid.”

  The two of them stood there, divided by the low construction board counter that was the office staff’s version of Hadrian’s wall, according George Tipton his moment of silence. And then Mrs. Sherl looked up into Kinkaid’s face and smiled.

  “So what do you need to see, Jimmy?”

  Jimmy Kinkaid, hometown boy, made a vague gesture with his left hand that trailed off into a shrug.

  “Anything you’ve got,” he said, the perfect picture of workhorse boredom. “It’s just a question of picking up all the pins.”

  This explanation, deliberately unspecific as if was, seemed to be enough, because five minutes later Kinkaid found himself in possession of a thick manila envelope.

  “Can I keep it for a day or two?”

  What he was asking was doubtless in violation of school rules, and probably of state law as well, but Mrs. Sherl’s brief consideration of the matter suggested that it did not deeply touch her conscience.

  “Sure,” she said, after about two and a half seconds of staring at the slight fur of dust along the envelope’s top edge. “I don’t suppose there’s going to be much demand for it.”

  . . . . .

  The class bell had already rung as he left the office, so the hallways were nearly empty. Like a knot of conspirators, a few teenage girls clustered around the main entrance, clutching clipboards and books to their bosoms. One of them, a skinny little dishwater blonde who was lucky to be fifteen, favored Kinkaid with a long sidewise look and, at last, her own version of The Enigmatic Smile. Apparently it never hurt to get in some practice.

  “They’re only babies,” he thought to himself. He was amused—that, and nothing more. The girl seemed to sense as much and glanced away.

  Kinkaid hoped he had not inflicted a failure on her, the poor little kid.

  And it occurred to him, with something like relief, that they had been no less little kids all those years ago. The unrequited passions of his own teenage years had been just the same, serving their apprenticeship in these same corridors. Perhaps for everyone adolescence was one long ordeal by humiliation.

  He looked about him, at the display cases and the bulletin boards and the painted cinderblock walls, at once so familiar and so strange, and became conscious of a curious affection for this place, which he had hated so when he had belonged to it. Maybe that was why—he was only a visitor now, a tourist in a museum.

  Had anything changed, or was it just the same? He read a notice, four months out of date, announcing tryouts for the senior class play. Guys and Dolls. Very appropriate.

  Artifacts from an even more remote past were kept behind glass. A series of oak and brass plaques recorded class honors for each semester since 1976. The name “James Kinkaid IV” appeared five times, twice in the senior year.

  But the really spectacular laurels—silver cups the size of coffee urns and trophies that might have been mistaken for coat racks—were reserved for athletics. Varsity Basketball Champions, 1990. All Conferences Swimming Champions, 1988. And the immortal football team of that glorious year 1986 . . .

  Kinkaid’s mouth went completely dry, and for several seconds he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. They were all there.

  A framed photograph stood beside the golden trophy, and their names were on a neat typewritten list, along with their positions and their years. Terry Vogel, Steven Billinger, Andrew Castlesmith, George Tipton.

  They were all there, every last one of them.

  “Jesus, Jimmy, you don’t want a girl like that,” his father had told him, on the night the world ended. “From what I hear, she’s been fucked by every guy on the football team.”

  11

  Frank Rizza hated the drive to up to Muir Beach. The road wound around like linguini and all those trees gave him the creeps. He liked the city, where he knew his way around, and he particularly liked the area south of Market Street because he owned it. That was nice. That was really having a life—not like this shit. You get out of your own territory and you never knew what might happen. Up here in fucking Marin County even the cops were strangers. One time some dickhead on a motorcycle had even written him a ticket.


  Why couldn’t the bitch live in San Francisco, where all that money could at least buy her a good time, instead of out here in the piney woods with not another living thing around except the fucking sea otters? A gorgeous piece like that, it was a waste.

  Not that she seemed to care—or maybe she did, and that was the idea. She was weird. Frank didn’t have the faintest idea what went on in her mind, which was the main reason she scared him so much.

  That, and the fact she could put him in the gas chamber anytime she felt the need.

  He would start thinking about it the minute he saw the Golden Gate Bridge. He would turn the corner and get a look at those spires and think to himself, this is the road to San Quentin. This is the way they take you when the end of the line is Death Row. And then, after about five miles, you would take the turnoff and the fucking trees just swallowed you up. It was spooky as shit.

  The time he made his bones, when he was still a kid not more than eighteen or nineteen years old, Frank stole a car, a blue ‘66 Dodge, and then went out looking for a small-time dealer named Patsy Trevi—the guy was a spade, so what the hell was he doing with a name like that?—who was snorting most of his product and selling baking powder on his patch. That kind of thing is very bad for trade. He was also into Frank’s boss for four big ones, which there wasn’t a chance in hell he was going to pay back, so Sal Gracchus, who ran South of Market in those days, decided it would set a better example if they took care of Patsy before some dissatisfied customer blew him away and they had to deal with that.

  It was Frank’s first chance to put himself a little forward, so he wanted to do the thing right. Patsy, who thought he was getting a quarter of a kilo of nose candy on consignment, met him in a bar on Clementina Street, so stoned he probably would have believed the stuff came straight from Santa Claus’s big bag. They went out to Frank’s car, which was parked in the back, and Frank conked him with a tire iron, stuffed him in the trunk and then, just to be on the safe side, cut his throat. He had thought the job through and there was even a plastic tarp spread out in the trunk so Patsy wouldn’t mess up the carpeting.

  Then Frank got into the car and drove up to the Muir woods to get rid of the body. Patsy Trevi was just going to disappear.

  Except that when he found a good spot for the grave, off a dirt road that seemed to go nowhere, he opened the trunk and found that apparently he hadn’t cut deep enough. He opened the trunk and held up a lantern and there was Patsy, staring at him with these big saucer eyes. It was a shock. Then the stupid fuck started screaming—a real high-pitched scream, like a woman—and climbing out of the trunk like he planned to run all the way back to Clementina Street. Frank was a little excited himself and went to work with the tire iron until you couldn’t tell which side of Patsy Trevi’s head had been the face. So much for keeping the upholstery clean.

  The ground was soft under those big redwood trees and he was able to dig a nice deep hole. All the time he was digging it some god damn bird was up there in the branches, screeching its fucking head off—it sounded for all the world like Patsy’s screams. By the time he got back to San Francisco, Frank Rizza was a nervous wreck. How he managed to drive home without piling up the car was a miracle, and when he got there he climbed into bed and didn’t come out for three days.

  No—no way was he ever going to get to like these woods.

  And the broad had to live right here, in the middle of the fucking haunted forest, and she had to have his balls in a noose. Life was a mother fucker.

  Well, maybe not in the middle. More like at the edge.

  Eventually the road hit the coast again and followed it for three or four miles. Then there was a private driveway that slid off to the left and seemed to go on forever. It ended in front of the beach house, which was very modern, with lots of unpainted wood and huge windows everywhere. The house was maybe thirty feet above the ocean. From where you parked you couldn’t hear the traffic up on the road anymore. All you could hear was the surf pounding on the rocks down below. The isolation was almost total.

  Frank had never been inside the house. He had no idea what kind of life was lived there and he had more or less accepted the idea that he was never going to find out.

  Not that he hadn’t tried. One time, about two years back, he had even sent a man to nose around, to find out the usual details, like if there was a housekeeper or maybe even a boyfriend around, or when and by whom the groceries got delivered. That kind of stuff. Charlie Accardo was a good man, trusted and careful, the sort that could follow you around for a month and you’d never know he was there.

  “Just go have a look through the trees,” Frank had told him. “Take a few days, don’t spook nobody, and let me know what you find out.”

  A routine piece of work for a guy like Charlie. But Charlie never came back. It was like he fell off the face of the Earth.

  Frank never mentioned it to Miss Preston—that was her name, Miss Alicia Preston, and that was almost everything Frank Rizza knew about her, except that she seemed to be rich—and he never sent anyone else to check up on her. He never dared, because if Charlie had been alive he would have come back. Some people really cared about their privacy.

  There were no other cars on the gravel turning circle in front of the house. There never were. Frank parked about twenty feet beyond the front door, beside the beginning of a little path that sloped downward toward the ocean, eventually becoming steep enough to turn into a wooden stairway that led to a deck shaded by a couple of huge trees. On the other side the path picked up again and went down to the water, but Frank stopped at the deck. There was a glass-topped table and a couple of lawn chairs. Miss Preston was sitting on one of them.

  She didn’t look at him as he approached. Her attention seemed focused on some object on the beach, although there was nothing to be seen down there. A tall glass full of ice and what was probably club soda rested on the table beside her.

  She wore a white one-piece bathing suit, very sleek and cut high on the hip but leaving her ass pretty much to your imagination. It was sexy as hell without showing much. It just made clear the lithe animal perfection of the body that it concealed. Her hair was pale blond and tied back in a pony tail. Her skin looked as if it would be cool to the touch.

  He sat down on the other lawn chair and waited. It was a pleasure just to be allowed to look at her. She was the most unapproachably beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  After what was probably only a minute or so but seemed much longer, she turned her head a few inches and her gaze fell on him. Frank Rizza felt his breath catch, whether from fear or desire or something closer to astonishment he couldn’t have said. She smiled at him. The smile meant nothing, as he had come to understand, but it still had its effect.

  “I see you’re still out of jail,” she said, in a perfectly neutral voice. “Haven’t they handed down an indictment yet?”

  “It’ll never come to that.” Frank shrugged and allowed himself a slight smile, as if to reassure a friend that he was fine in spite of everything. The IRS had been all over him for more than a year. “It’s just the usual harassment. They haven’t got a case and they never will.”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  Before directing her attention back to the shoreline, she let her eyes rest on his face for just a second or two. Her expression never changed, but somehow she managed to make her point.

  “Yes, of course,” those few seconds whispered into Frank Rizza’s soul, “You are quite safe from everyone except me.”

  Then she seemed to forget his existence. She turned her head away and left him alone with the consciousness that everything he had in this world, including his very life, was hers to take away.

  “Where did you get the tape?” he asked suddenly, hardly able to recognize the sound of his own voice—he had never, never meant to speak those words. Now, somehow, he couldn’t help himself.

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “What makes you think anyone gave it to
me?”

  She didn’t even look at him. He was a dangerous man, a killer with a bad temper, a man known for getting even, but there was no crisis as far as she was concerned. She sounded merely bored.

  In that moment he hated her, more than he had ever hated anyone. Had there been a gun in his pocket he would have taken it out and shot her. He wouldn’t have been able to help himself.

  That was why his gun was in his desk drawer at home—he could not trust himself in the presence of this woman.

  “Everything is arranged,” she had told him once. “If anything ever happens to me the police will receive everything they need. The tape, the girl’s dental records, the location of the grave, everything. You know you can’t even get into a cab without their knowing about it—how far do you think you’d be able to run? You’ll be in prison before dinner, and the only way you’ll ever get out is in the back of a hearse. So don’t be rash, Frank. California has the death penalty.”

  God how he hated her. It would almost be worth it to kill her. Almost, but not quite.

  It had been the one completely stupid act of his life. He couldn’t explain it, except that Velma, the little bitch, had started teasing him about his wife. The next thing he knew she was lying across her king-size bed with the handle of a pair of scissors sticking out of her throat.

  They hadn’t known each other long. He had found her working in a topless bar a couple of blocks south of Union Square and had set her up in an apartment. She had a great pair of jugs, but she had a bad mouth. Sooner or later, somebody was going to kill her.

  So there she was, the late Velma Gray, stretched across the mattress with her eyes wide open and her best nightie ruined. She still looked pretty sexy except that she was dead. At least she had shut up.

  Frank tore down the bathroom shower curtain and wrapped her in that to keep her from leaking blood all over everything. Then he phoned Charlie Accardo.

  The hard part was getting her out of the building. They had to wait until the middle of the night and then take her down to the garage in a blanket. Charlie got rid of the body and the next day they went through the apartment and collected all of Velma’s stuff to make it look like she had moved out.