Avenging Angel

by Frank Rich

  "Last night you said you got them from wrestling gila monsters in the Mojave Desert."

  "I said that?"

  "Yes."

  "Then it must be true." I walked into the kitchen area.

  "What's for breakfast?" I asked, searching the cupboards and fridge. They were as empty as my stomach.

  "I'm sorry. I can't sign on for rations."

  Which meant she was a runaway, probably from the burbs. I leaned against the stove, folded my arms and gave her a long look. Her big blue eyes mooned from over the horizon of her drawn-up knees. She looked like someone's pretty daughter, the kind of kid a father should feel very protective of. I couldn't exactly assemble in my mind what had happened in the room last night, but knowing my evil ways, I could guess. I didn't feel guilty, just a little sad.

  "What's your name?" I asked.

  "You mean you don't remember?" She looked hurt.

  "I don't remember anything. Did you ever tell me?"

  She thought for a moment. "No, I guess I didn't."

  "Well, then."

  "Tanya."

  "Tanya? Really? What do you do, Tanya?"

  She shrugged. "I survive."

  "I bet. You affiliated with any group, Tanya?" I bent over and began lacing up my boots.

  "I hang out with the Doomsday Punx."

  "Doomsday? They're a gang of gunsels, aren't they?"

  "I'm not a member — I just hang out with them sometimes."

  I nodded and finished lacing one boot. "Are you addicted to anything?"

  She gave me a funny look. "No."

  "Good." I finished the other boot and stood erect. I took three hundred creds out of my wallet and tossed it on the bed.

  "It wasn't that kind of deal," Tanya said, embarrassed. "I slept with you because I wanted to."

  "It would break my heart to hear otherwise."

  "Then why are you giving me plastic?"

  "I'm not giving you anything. I just want you to hold on to it for me. I might need a safe place to stay in the next couple of weeks and when I show up I'd like for there to be some milk in the fridge and snacks in the pantry. I get hungry when I'm on the run."

  "Are you a revolutionary?"

  I looked at her as if debating whether she could be trusted or not. "Yes. But don't tell anyone. We're about to tear this whole shambles down, and the fat bastards know it."

  "What are you going to do?" she whispered.

  I paused for drama. "We're going to storm the Hill."

  Her eyes went wide. I'd said the unthinkable. "You're going to execute the directors?"

  "Naw. We're going to tip over their trees and steal all their chocolates. That'll teach those evil swine."

  She leaned back against the headboard, and the sheet fell away from her breasts. They weren't as small as he thought.

  "You don't trust me," she said. "I knew there was something about you. In the pit you were so ruthless. A lot of people wanted to hurt you because of the way you were dressed but you trashed them. You ruined a lot of egos last night. You were so incredibly mean." She paused. "But I think you're a nice person, too."

  "Hell sent and Heaven bent."

  "Yeah, a walking contradiction."

  "Ethical schizophrenia is the substance of heroes." I leaned over the bed and gave her a kiss on the lips. It was long and soft and if a breath of wind had come through the window, I'd have tumbled into her arms. After it was over I didn't feel like leaving so much. But I knew I had to. When I got to the door I said, "Don't forget about the food."

  "I won't. When will I see you again?"

  "When the Party hounds are hot on my heels."

  "Okay. See you then. Oh, yeah…" she held up one fist and laughed"…power to the revolution."

  I copied the gesture and smiled. She wasn't as naive as she pretended.

  I hopped down the stairs, wondering if she ever expected to see me again. I doubted it; she was a wise kid. I didn't want to screw up her life at such a young age but at the same time I couldn't shake the desire to protect her.

  It turned out she lived three blocks off Hay ward, which meant she'd need a lot of protection. It was a dozen more blocks to my office, and I looked forward to the walk. It would help unlimber the tight harness of my hangover. My dad used to say a hangover was a man's morning sickness, an unavoidable evil like the drinking that brought it on. All you could do was accept the burden and bear it the best you could.

  I bought a bagel and beer from a deli, then counted the plastic in my wallet. I was sitting just shy of two hundred creds. Which meant that in the past three days I had gone through eighteen hundred creds with nothing to show for it except a hangover, a funny haircut and an army of bruises I was discovering all over my body. But then, it was sin money, and my daddy always did say sin money was best spent on sin.

  By the time I arrived at my office I'd come to grips with my blossoming alcoholism: I bowed to a power much bigger than I. I found I didn't have the authority to make any Sunday-morning pledges. The night's tidings had awarded me with the dark knowledge that I wouldn't stop drinking as though there was a fire in my belly until I cut off the noose around my neck.

  19

  I opened the door to my office and found Inspector Blake sitting at my desk. The only illumination came through half-open Venetian blinds, and Blake looked diabolical and mean in the dim light. I thought about excusing myself long enough to hop a cab to retrieve my pistol from Joe's car, but the inspector would undoubtedly view the act as a sign of weakness.

  "How'd you get in?" I asked.

  "You mean how'd I get past that amateurish booby rig on the door?" He laughed like a hyena in pain. "My trained monkey can do better than that."

  "Yeah? And what else have you taught this monkey to do?" I sat on the sofa and slouched like an insolent juvenile delinquent in the principal's office.

  "However," Blake continued, "I'm not here to discuss the extent of your general ineptness." He sounded proud of the sentence.

  I pointed an accusing finger at him. "You practiced that."

  He ignored me. "You've been fooking around on the Hill."

  I grinned bashfully and blushed. "Oh, darn, now who told you that?" I hee-hawed at him for a quarter of a minute.

  The inspector waited until I finished, then flipped open a little black notebook. He held it in front of him importantly but didn't look at it. A prop, I thought knowingly. His other hand clenched and unclenched mechanically on the desk as he began his litany.

  "You trespassed onto private property…"

  "Did you know their grass is fake? The trees, too!"

  "…hospitalized a staff member…"

  "A rude fascist show-off," I corrected.

  "…threatened a City director and his wife with a firearm…"

  "They wouldn't buy any of my policies and I'm paid on commission."

  "…and refused the orders of representatives of the SPF."

  "You forgot stealing liquor, littering and impersonating a Frenchman."

  Blake leaned back in the chair. Framed in the Venetians with his hat pulled low, he looked like Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar. I wondered if I looked that menacing when I sat there.

  "The whole world is one big laugh to you, isn't it, Strait?" he said, chewing on his words and clenching at the air in front of him. "One big fooking yuck."

  "Yuck, yuck," I complied.

  Blake shot out of the chair and slammed both palms on the desk. "Well, let me tell you something, ya fooking creep! You're messing with the big bastards now, and if you keep it up you'll find yourself doing a high dive into a reclamation vat!"

  We studied each other for a minute; he checked for effect, while I looked for the hidden meaning of his words. I waited for him to sit back down, then asked, "Could you repeat that?"

  Blake lunged up from the seat again and grabbed the sides of the desk as if he thought it was trying to get away. "Listen, you slimy scumbag, and listen good. You so much as think about nosing around an
ymore, and I'll crush you like a stink-bug."

  I mulled that one over and came to the conclusion I owed him a response. "Say that part about crushing me like a stinkbug again. It made me shiver."

  "No handchopper talks to me like that!" he howled.

  "Private enforcer, Inspector. We prefer to be called private enforcers."

  "Ex-private enforcer," he snarled, and shoved a twitching hand at me. "Give me your license."

  "What? You have no right."

  "Yes, I do, Strait. And you know it." His grabby hand made clenching motions. I stared at it.

  I took the license from my wallet and fondled it for a moment. "Aw, I didn't want the darn thing anyway," I said, and threw it at him. It bounced off his dirty raincoat and fell to the floor.

  He picked it up with exaggerated sloth, as if doing it slowly would lend the act more dignity. He slipped it into the same pocket that had devoured my warrant two days earlier.

  Turning up the collar of his raincoat, Blake walked to the door. He jerked it open and gave me one last glare to remember him by. "You and all the other smart-asses are going to get yours, Strait. Sooner than you think. Nice haircut, asshole." The door slammed behind him.

  "It makes my head look narrower!" I yelled after him.

  I sat on the sofa for a moment and thought about his last couple of remarks. Barring the comment about my new hairstyle, the part about my kind getting ours sounded like a slip, a gloat he couldn't hold back. As if he knew a secret nobody else knew.

  My first instinct was to get drunk. My second was to be a hermit in the desert. Both fell short of what I could term dealing with the situation realistically. A visit from the inspector meant I was making big people nervous, and powerful forces were moving against me. I felt like a pawn heading for the back row with the opposition diverting a rook to ambush me.

  I didn't think too long about taking the inspector's advice and forgetting the whole business. I couldn't back out now. I was buried up to my neck in slime, and pretending it wasn't there wouldn't stop me from sinking. Maybe I was just trying to redeem my lost self-image of infallible avenger, like a paladin of old going off on a dangerous quest to make up for some failing of character. Maybe I was trying to overcome the guilt of being the only survivor of a butchered battalion. Maybe I had a secret death wish as Joe claimed. All I knew for certain was that I was locked into the thing and had to see it through to the end. Besides, the inspector had called me a lot of mean names, and I was burning to get even with the bastard.

  I took a Colt .45 out of the file cabinet and stuck it in my waistband. I checked my appearance in the mirror. The mohawk still gave me a shock every time I saw my reflection, but I was getting used to it. It did make my head look narrower, and some girls seemed to like that effect. I locked up the office, reset my amateurish booby rig and went outside.

  I caught a cab to the university and found Joe's car parked next to mine. Someone had spray painted a huge red peace symbol on my hood, which made for an ironic touch.

  After last night's indiscretions, I felt kind of funny about popping inside Joe's office for some idle banter. I decided I'd get the gyrapistol out of his car myself, even if it meant kicking in a window. I'd do a lot to avoid an uncomfortable situation.

  Joe must have felt the same way because his Chevy wasn't locked. I gathered my things, then drove back to Hayward. I parked in front of my office and put on the shoulder rig and gyrapistol, then covered it with the coat. It was still dirty from last night, but that was the fashion in this part of town. I put the .45 under the seat and took a walk.

  20

  If you wanted to check the pulse of the City, then Hayward was the jugular vein. People from all over the City came to Hayward to satisfy one bad habit or another, and they all left a residue of information behind. You just had to know where to ask the right questions.

  The Silver Spoon was a favorite of Hayward pimps, so naturally there was a full platoon of streetwalkers hanging around outside. I found T-Bird inside, staring into a cup of what passed for coffee. He'd probably been there all morning. He was nicknamed after his favorite drink.

  "What's the word, Bird?" I said, sitting across from him.

  "Jake, my man," he said at half speed, and slid out a hand with languid ease. I laid my palm on his and drew it across slowly. "Smooth," he said. "Real smooth."

  I ordered coffee from a middle-aged woman with poor posture and too much makeup, a good-time girl put out to pasture.

  "So what's the noise on the street, Bird?" I felt cool saying that.

  "Lots of noise, Jake. Lots of noise."

  "Anything new or unusual?"

  "The rich is gettin' richer and the poor is gettin' poorer." He rolled out a low chuckle. "But that ain't nothin' new or unusual."

  The coffee arrived, and I drank mine without saying anything, I could tell T-Bird was formulating something in his head. After a couple of minutes he spoke again.

  "Ol' Moses Perry sayin' it's time for 'nother crusade."

  I nodded. Moses Perry led a wino crusade down Hayward almost every year. It was getting to be as regular as Christmas. "Liquor prices go up again?"

  "Nope. He jes' say it's time." T-Bird's eyes came up from his coffee. "He's 'fraid of somethin', Jake. Lotsa people 'fraid. Some people makin' noise that the cats on the Hill gonna bring some shit down on the people and some is listenin'. Brothers and white folks are walkin' together, mohawk and dreadlock are talkin' to one 'nother. It's beau'ful, Jake, jes' beau'ful."

  Two more cups of coffee and a slice of pie later, T-Bird hadn't said anything else, so I stood up. "It's been great rapping with you, Bird, but I have to slide. I'll get the tab." I dropped a twenty on the table.

  "I got to get out there, too," Bird said, but didn't move. "Got to check on them girls. They's lazy, got to watch them every minute."

  T-Bird didn't have any girls. He was what was known as a pseudopimp, which meant he dressed like a pimp, talked like a pimp and walked like a pimp, but he didn't have any girls, though you couldn't tell him that. If he did have a stable, the competition-conscious Hayward Pimp Association would kill him. As it was, they tolerated T-Bird, even let him hang out with them sometimes, like a favored groupie.

  "Ain't you too old to be pimping, Bird?" I said.

  "Me? Naw." He laughed. "I'll be too old when one of them lazy whores sticks me with a pick — that's when I'll be too old." His blue eyes twinkled up at me. We slid palms and I went outside.

  It was eight blocks to Speaker's Corner, and when I got there it was deserted except for a couple tramps hiding from the midday sun beneath the raised platform. They said they hadn't seen Moses Perry since yesterday's sermon, but for the price of a bottle of cheap cutter they told me where he might be found. I thanked them and headed for the river.

  I found Moses sitting on the edge of a quay, his sandaled feet dangling into the river. As I sat down beside him, he jerked his head at me.

  "Whoa, Jake, ye petrified my soul. I thought ye was Lucifer sneaking up on me." He shook his big shaggy head and tugged on his beard.

  I let my soles slip into the cool current. "Time for another crusade, Moses?"

  He looked at the water a long time before he answered. "The Lord came to me, Jake. I was laying behind the Cat and Fiddle, and He came and sat beside me and told me things." His wild eyes jumped on me. "Horrible things, Jake. Horrible, horrible things."

  A train clattered along the opposite bank, and we watched it go by. It rumbled into the distance, racing toward uncertain horizons, on its way to God knew what faraway land. Half my heart ached to go with it.

  "What did the Lord tell you, Moses?"

  Moses began manically pulling his fingers through his long, greasy hair. "Horror! Horror! The beast is coming from a high place. He will walk among the people, and there will be dying and crying and the City will be as flame. He will seek out and kill the prophets and saints first. That's why I thought ye was him sneaking up behind me. Creeping up to grab my soul w
ith one black hand and rip it out of my corpse." He pulled his shoulder-length hair in front of his eyes, closing himself off from a frightening world.

  "Is that why you're having the crusade, Moses?" I asked softly. "To stop the beast?"

  He peeked a wild eye out at me. "No, no, I can't stop him. It's in the prophecy — no one can stop him. We are going to flee. The day after tomorrow I shall gather the flock and we shall crusade all the way to the end this time, all the way to the promised land. Gonna make it this time, Jake — gotta make it." He drooped his head and put his hands over his ears. My session was over. I lifted my feet from the water and stood up.

  I looked down at him sitting there, an old man trying to hide from his self-created horrors. During his sermons at Speaker's Corner, Moses could bring to mind the Old Testament prophet, calling down damnation and doom, challenging all the powers of evil with wild eyes and shaking fists. Sitting on the edge of the quay, he just looked like a frightened old wino.

  I knew Perry and his tribe would never make it to any promised land. They'd be lucky if they made it halfway down Hayward. As always, the crusade would start at Speaker's Corner after a fire-and-brimstone sermon from Perry. Then they'd go stomping up Hayward, five thousand strong, singing garbled hymns and throwing bottles. Moses would be at the front, tall staff in one hand and the good book in the other, righteous purpose in his step and drunk as a sod. Their ranks would swell as they went, as winos and tramps and bag ladies poured out of alleys and doorways until they were ten thousand strong. The lice-infested, bedraggled army would keep marching and none would stand before them, not pimp, whore nor pusher. The lowest creatures of the street would reign supreme and for one glorious day the winos would inherit Hayward.

  Then some tramp would put a brick through the window of a liquor store, and the proud army would melt into a mob of looters. For the rest of the night there would be anarchy in the streets as the winos grabbed what they could, looking for their promised land in the bottle. The pressure cooker of Hayward would let off some steam, and the morning's light would find the powder blue reclamation vans discreetly collecting the hundred or so winos who had gone all the way.