If Angels Fall (tom reed and walt sydowski)

by Rick Mofina

  Florence’s scalp tingled. She saw the flames. Thebroken heart. And the cobra curled around Virgil Shook’s left forearm.

  It was him. In line, making his way to the servingtable.

  “Whatzamatter, Florence? You look like you seen aghost.”

  “Huh?”

  “Something catch your eye, there?” Marty, an ancientbottle-and-can collector, smiled at her from his plate of food, then followedher gaze across the hall to the long line of people waiting to be served.

  “Oh. No, Marty. I’m sorry.” Florence distracted him byputting her hand on his frail shoulder. “Ran off with my thoughts, I guess.Say, how about some gravy for that turkey?”

  “Well, I don’t want nobody goin’ out of their way.” Atoothless smile came out from hiding in Marty’s grizzled beard.

  “No trouble for a handsome man like you.”

  Florence stole another glimpse of Shook. Their eyeslocked, charging her with raw panic. She looked away, struggling to conceal it,squeezing Marty’s shoulder.

  “Gravy. Coming right up, Marty.”

  Lord Jesus, please help me! Was she running to thekitchen? She didn’t know, or care. She was numb with fear and ordered herselfto be strong. Be calm for the children.

  “Careful!”

  She nearly ran into a volunteer carrying an urn of hotsoup inside the kitchen door. She leaned against a wall, gasping. Louey came toher. “Florence, you okay? What the hell is going on?”

  What the fuck was it with that little bitch? Why wasshe gawking at him like that? Like she knew something about him. Shook couldn’tplace her. Fuck it. Let it simmer. He had enough to think about right now, likethe letters. It had been a week. Nothing had surfaced in the news. Nothing tohelp him get off. The blue meanies keeping a lid on it, denying him thepleasure of increasing San Francisco’s pain. What would the Zodiac do? Send theletters to the press, threaten harm if they weren’t published.

  Slices of turkey and roast beef were heaped on Shook’splate next to a mountain range of mashed potatoes.

  “Welcome, friend,” a young woman volunteer said.

  Shook was cold to her kindness. Moving down theserving table, he grimaced. His pain was nearly unbearable, his need to loveagain was overwhelming and this other player, New Fuck, made it too hot tohunt. The letters, the game with the priest were poor substitutes for the realthing. He couldn’t’ stand it any longer. He had to do something.

  Kindhart.

  They could hunt together. Shook could plan somethinglike he did with Wallace. Grab a little prostitute, enjoy her, and turn up theheat. It would be rapturous. But where was Kindhart these days? He seemed to bescarce. Fuck him. Shook could do it himself. He grabbed a couple of buns and ithit him again. Who was that twitching dwarf gaping at him back there? She wasfamiliar, yet he couldn’t place her. Why had she acted so strange? Pious littlecunt. Maybe he would give her a lesson in humility.

  Shook bit savagely into a bun and headed for asolitary table.

  ***

  Florence was hysterical.

  “It’s him! It’s him! Sweet Lord, he saw me!”

  “Listen to me, Florence! Take a deep breath!” Sydowskisaid.

  Turgeon was on the cellular phone. “Have the unitsmove in to the church exits now! No lights, no screamers!”

  Florence was sobbing. Sydowski was bent over, holdingher shoulders in his big hands, comforting her. Turgeon pinpointed Shook fromthe kitchen door.

  “I’ve got him, Walt. Doesn’t look like he suspectsanything yet-yes.” Turgeon described Shook over the phone, “Caucasian, whiteT-shirt, beard.”

  “Good work, Florence. It will be over with soon.”

  Curious kitchen staff had gathered in a circle.

  “Folks, this is San Francisco Police business. It is amatter of life and death that you tell no one we are here.” Sydowski flashedhis shield. “Please. It’s important that you carry on.

  “What exactly is going on, officer?” one man asked.

  “Sir, we will tell you later. Please. Your help isvital now.”

  “Walt, dispatch called the TAC Team.”

  “We’ll sit on him until they get here.”

  “And if he runs, Walt?”

  Sydowski didn’t answer. He went to the door for a lookat Shook.

  He sat alone, back close to the wall, stabbing at hisfood with his right hand, his left forearm draped defensively around his plate,displaying his tattoos, letting the world know he was a motherfucker. Hescanned the hall continuously, trusting nothing. It was the way you ate inside.Old habits died hard. But he never faced trouble here. It was one of the thingshe liked about Our Lady. That, and the fact that it was clean. The hall wasclean and the church was clean, smelling of candle wax and lemon furniturepolish. Pure and clean.

  That was it.

  Shook stopped chewing.

  She cleaned upstairs. Polished the pews. And she wasalways there when he visited the priest! He had a clear line to the kitchendoor as a thin young man carrying a tub of dirty dishes entered. In the halfsecond the door opened, Shook saw a professional-looking woman in a blazertalking on a phone. And he saw that little slut talking to a man in a suit,with gray hair, tanned face-he recognized him from TV news.

  He was a fucking cop!

  Shook’s pulse rate exploded. The little bitch wastelling them about him.

  They had come for him!

  Shook heard the squeak of brakes, an engine idling.Through a cracked basement window, he saw the car’s rocket panels, it’sblack-and-white paint scheme. The window was too small to get through.

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  Uniformed officer Gary Crockett joined Sydowski andTurgeon in the kitchen, a radio in his hand.

  “Use your earpiece,” Sydowski demanded. “Tell theothers.”

  Crockett relayed their order through his radio.

  “You got bodies at all the exits?” Turgeon asked him.

  Crockett nodded. “Who’ve we got?”

  “Suspect in the child abductions-shit!”

  Sydowski saw the Channel 5 Live News van pull up tothe rear.

  “Crockett, have somebody keep the press back!”

  “TAC is rolling, Walt,” Turgeon said from her phone.“Yes. Patch him through-Walt, it’s Lieutenant Gonzales.”

  He took the phone. “Leo. It’s our boy.” His eyes wereon Shook.

  “We need him, Walt. Sit on him ‘til TAC gets there.”

  “I know my job, Leo.”

  “I’m ten minutes from you. Rust and Ditmire are ontheir way.”

  “Jesus!” Sydowski tossed the phone to Crockett. “He’smade us. Linda, come on! Crockett have your people move in when I shout.”

  Shook rose, walking calmly to the door. He heard theirfootsteps on the hardwood floor behind him.

  “One moment please!” It was the male pig.

  Shook’s stomach tightened. He kept walking. He was notgoing back inside. Never going back. He reached down into his boot. “Police!Stop right there!”

  The economy had cost Dolores Lopez her job cleaningtoilets in the office towers of the financial district. Her boss, Mr. Weems,was a born-again Christian who cried when he let Dolores go. She was a singlemother with four children. She didn’t know what she was going to do. In onemonth, she would lose her apartment on Potrero Hill. Every day she prayed tothe Virgin who smiled upon her. They had found Our Lady’s shelter last week andMr. Weems had arranged a job interview tomorrow with a cleaning firm inOakland. Dolores was telling her children to never abandon hope, to always payhomage to the Mother of Jesus, when she felt her hair being torn from her head,as she was lifted by an arm crushing her neck.

  The steel point of a knife was pressed solidly belowher eye.

  She heard shouting, but did not scream.

  “Mama! Mama!” Carla, her three-year-old daughter, ranto her. Someone pushed her back. Dolores pulled weakly at the arm around herthroat. And she prayed because she knew she was going to die.

  Please, Holy Mother, watch ov
er my children.

  Sydowski pulled his Glock from his hip holster.Turgeon had her Smith amp; Wesson trained on Shook’s head.

  “Drop the knife, now!” Sydowski was ten feet away.Turgeon moved to Shook’s side. Shook glanced at her and said nothing.

  “Everybody on the floor!” Sydowski locked eyes withShook. “Don’t be stupid! Release the woman! We want to talk!”

  Two uniformed officers entered the doorway, gunsdrawn. Sydowski noticed the eye of a TV news camera peeking through one of thebasement windows. His fingers were sweating on the trigger of his gun. He hatedthis. Christ, did he hate this. Shook was encircled, four guns aimed at him.Sydowski ordered the officers into a pattern to avert crossfire.

  “You can leave here dead, or you can leave here alive.But you are not leaving with the woman. Drop the knife now and release her.”

  “Let me out of here or she dies and it’s on you!”

  Shook cut Dolores with the knife, blood spurted downher cheek. Her children screamed.

  “Officer!” Sydowski was talking to the uniform fifteenfeet from Shook’s right shoulder. “Do you have a clear head shot?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Don’t try it, pig! You’ll hit her! Let me outta here.I ain’t going back in the fuckin’ hole.”

  “We just want to talk, Virgil.”

  “I ain’t going back!”

  Dolores’s face was a half mask of blood. Shook twistedthe knife.

  Sydowski holstered his gun, raised his open hands, andeased forward. “We want to talk, Virgil. Please, let her go.”

  When Shook relaxed his arm to reposition it acrossDolores throat, she bit into his bicep and stomped on his foot. Shook winced,and she broke away grabbing Sydowski’s outstretched hand, flinching when sheheard two shots.

  They were deafening. The first bullet hit Shook in thelower neck shredding his internal and external jugulars, exiting into theceiling. The next destroyed his trachea and spleen before lodging in hisstomach. The knife went flying. He dropped to the floor.

  The uniform officer was frozen, his gun stillextended. There were screams, sirens, and the smell of gun powder. Policeradios crackled. Turgeon called for an ambulance. Dolores Lopez embraced herchildren.

  Shook was on his back, making gurgling noises, bloodand vomit oozing from his mouth. His white T-shirt was glistening crimson.Sydowski was on his knees, trying to obtain a dying declaration. Turgeon wasthere with him, listening.

  “What’s your name?” Sydowski said.

  Shook made unintelligible noises.

  “Where are the children, Virgil?”

  Shook’s mouth moved. Sydowski placed an ear over it.Nothing.

  Sydowski touched his fingers to Shook’s neck. Wasthere a pulse?

  Gonzales rushed in. “How bad is it?”

  Turgeon shook her head. Sydowski bent over Shook’smouth again.

  Special FBI Agents Rust and Ditmire arrived.

  “Oh, this is beautiful,” Ditmire said. “Fuckingbeautiful.”

  Shook was still making noises when paramedics beganworking on him. “It’s bad. We’re losing him,” one of them said.

  Sydowski stood, and ran his hand over his face.Walking away, he grabbed a chair, smashing it against the wall under thequotation:

  IT IS IN DYING THAT WE ARE BORN TO ETERNAL LIFE.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  The new note taped to Reed’s door was scrawled in unforgiving block letters:‘WHERE IS RENT? NO RENT, NO ROOM. L. Onescu.”

  Reed had broken too many promises to Lila. His keydidn’t work. She had changed the lock. He set down the paper bag containing hissupper. Two bottles of Jack Daniels and potato chips. He searched his wallet.Thirty-five bucks. His checkbook was in the room. Damn.

  He walked the two blocks uphill to Lila’s building,entered the lobby, and leaned on the buzzer to her condo. No answer.

  “She’s not home, Reed,” a man’s voice echoed throughthe intercom. “Hey, I’m surprised you’re not at work tonight.”

  Reed looked into the security camera.

  “Long story. I’d rather not talk about it now,Mickey.”

  “Sure.”

  “Where’s Lila? She leave a key for me? I have moneyfor her.”

  “Gone to visit a nephew in Tahoe. No key. Sorry, pal.”

  Reed walked back, got his supper, sat in his car infront of Lila’s Edwardian rooming house, overlooking the Marina District, theGolden Gate, and the Pacific. It was night. He thought of bunking with theother tenants, or driving to a motel. He was exhausted. Maybe he would callsome of the guys at the paper, ask for a couch. He took a hard hit from thebottle. Staring at San Francisco’s blinking lights, he searched for the answerto one question: “How the hell did he get here?”

  He was seething. It kept him awake, made him thirsty.What had happened? He was a professional, married to an exceptional woman,blessed with a fine son. They had a good life. They were fighting to save it.They owned a good house in a good neighborhood. He had never intended to hurtanyone in the world. He worked hard. He worked honestly. Didn’t that count foranything? Didn’t it? It had to. If it counted for something then why the fuckwas he in the street, swilling whiskey in the back seat of his 1977 Comet,watching the thread holding his job and sanity slowly unravel?

  Wallowing in alcoholic self-pity, he looked at hissituation for what it was: circumstances. Benson had thrown a fit, Reed forgotto pay his rent, and was too drunk now to go somewhere for the night. No onewas to blame. He chose the car. Quit sucking on the bottle. Call it a bad dayand go to sleep. Deal with it in the morning.

  An engine revved rudely.

  The sun pried Reed’s eyes open.

  It took a moment before he realized where he was andwhy.

  His head was shooting with lightning strikes of painand the stench in his mouth was overpowering. The bottle was half gone, theother untouched. He saw the greasy, half-eaten bag of potato chips, and nearlypuked. He had to piss.

  He needed a shower, a shave, a new life.

  Reed spotted a kid walking by, delivering the Examiner.

  “Bobby, can you spare a paper?”

  The lanky teen stopped, taken aback by someone inReed’s shape crawling out of a car in Sea Park.

  “I have exactly enough for my route.”

  Reed fumbled with his wallet.

  “Here’s five bucks, just give me one, and buy anotherone.”

  The kid eyed the bill, then gave him a crisply foldedcopy.

  Reed sat on the hood of his car, letting the sun warmhim, and unfolded the paper. His mind reeled, the headline screamed:

  KIDNAPPING SUSPECT SHOT BY COPS IN CHURCH.

  It stretched six columns over a huge color photo of aman bleeding on a stretcher. There was an inset mug of him, file photos ofTanita Donner, Danny Becker, and Gabrielle Nunn. The guy was shot in a hostagetaking yesterday at a soup kitchen in an Upper Market church. He was pegged asthe man behind Tanita’s murder and the two abductions.

  Virgil Shook? Who the hell was Virgil Shook?

  Reed devoured the story and the sidebars. Never heardof Virgil Shook. The Examiner had nothing on Edward Keller. They gotthis guy in a church in the Upper Market? Didn’t he get a call from a womanconnected to a church there, a woman claiming she heard the killer confess?Yes, and he had written her off as a nut.

  Reed went inside, upstairs to the bathroom down thehall from his locked room. He remembered old Jake on the third floor subscribedto the Star. Reed flushed, then took the stairs two at a time, andbanged on the door until Jake said, “Go away.”

  “Jake, it’s Tom, Tom Reed from downstairs. It’simportant.”

  Jake didn’t answer.

  “Jake did you get The San Francisco Star today?I just want to look at it, please! It’s important!”

  Reed heard shuffling, the locks turned. Jake waswearing over-sized boxers, a T-shirt dotted with coffee stains, and a frown. Hepractically threw a wrinkled copy of The Star at Reed.

  “Have it! Criminals are ru
ining this great lady of acity.”

  Reed hurried to his room with Jake calling after him”“Why don’t you guys accentuate the positive of San Francisco!”

  Out of habit, Reed had his key in the door to his roombefore remembering it wouldn’t work. Damn. His phone rang. Once, twice, threetimes. The machine clicked on.

  “Reed, this is Benson. Your employment with The SanFrancisco Star is terminated today. You disobeyed my instructions.Yesterday’s hostage taking proved that your story about Edward Keller waserroneous. It was a virtual fabrication that would have left us open to alawsuit. Personnel will mail your severance papers and payment. No letter ofrecommendation will be provided.”

  Reed slammed his back to the door, slid to the floor,burying his face in his hands.

  He couldn’t think. He was free falling. He was fired!Terminated! Blown away.

  His phone rang again, but the caller hung up.

  What was happening to him?

  The other bottle was in the car. Untouched. Reed wipedhis mouth with the back of his hand, feeling his stubble, realizing he stillhad The Star in his hand. He read the articles about the hostage takingwith Virgil Shook, the pedophile ex-con from Canada. Molly wrote most of them.Zero about Edward Keller.

  The phone rang three times. The machine clicked.

  “Where the hell are you?” Molly said. “I need yourhelp here, Reed. Haven’t you heard, all hell’s broken loose. It’s not EdwardKeller, it’s some pervert from Canada. Call me! They’ve started looking for thebodies! Get your ass in here!”

  Yeah, right.

  Reed sat there, his eyes closed. He was drowning.Floundering in the awful truth.

  He heard his phone ringing again. The machine got it.

  “Tom, what happened?” His wife was angry. “We waitedat the airport for an hour.”

  Airport? He was supposed to pick up Ann and Zack thismorning.