The Black Angel

by John Connolly

  Frank had a beer in his hand, but he wasn’t drunk. I had heard him talking to his wife earlier, and they had witnessed Martha’s arrival and the conclave that resulted. I figured Frank had subsequently slowed down on the booze, either of his own volition or at his wife’s instigation.

  I picked up some paper plates and threw them into the garbage bag, still amazed that the weather was mild enough to allow guests to find their way outside, and relieved that I had cleared the lawn of snow a day earlier. Frank watched me but didn’t move to lend a hand.

  “Everything okay, Frank?” I said.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

  There was no point in brushing him off. He hadn’t become a good lawyer by lacking persistence. I finished clearing the plates from the garden table, tied up the garbage bag, and went to work on the empty bottles with a new bag. They made a satisfying clink as they hit the bottom.

  “I’m doing my best, Frank,” I said softly. I didn’t want to have this discussion with him, not now and not ever, but it was upon us.

  “With respect, I don’t think you are. You got duties now, responsibilities.”

  I smiled, despite myself. There were those two words again. They defined Frank Wolfe. He would probably have them inscribed on his gravestone.

  “I know that.”

  “So you got to live up to them.”

  He tried to emphasize his point by waggling the beer bottle at me. It diminished him, somehow, making him appear less like a concerned father and more like a garrulous drunk.

  “Listen, this thing you do, it’s got Rachel worried. It’s always got her worried, and it’s put her at risk. You don’t put the people you love at risk. A man just doesn’t do that.”

  Frank was trying his best to be reasonable with me, but he was already getting under my skin, maybe because all that he was saying was true.

  “Look, there are other ways that you can use the skills you have,” he said. “I’m not saying give up on it entirely. I got contacts. I do a lot of work with insurance companies, and they’re always looking for good investigators. It pays well: better than what you earn now, that’s for sure. I can ask around, make some calls.”

  I found myself hurling the bottles into the bag with more force. I took a deep breath to rein myself in, and tried to drop the next one as gently as I could.

  “I appreciate the offer, Frank, but I don’t want to work as an insurance investigator.”

  Frank had run out of “reasonable,” so he was forced to uncork something a little more potent. His voice rose.

  “Well, you sure as hell can’t keep doing what you do now. What the hell is wrong with you? Can’t you see what’s happening? You want the same thing to happen a—”

  He stopped abruptly, but it was too late. It was out now. It lay, black and bloody, on the grass between us. I was suddenly very, very tired. The energy drained from my body, and I dropped the sack of bottles on the ground. I leaned against the table and lowered my head. There was a shard of sharp wood against the palm of my right hand. I pressed down steadily upon it, and felt skin and flesh give way beneath the pressure.

  Frank shook his head. His mouth opened, then closed again without uttering a word. He was not a man given to apologies. Anyway, why should a man apologize for telling the truth? He was right. Everything that he had said was right.

  And the terrible thing was that Frank and I were closer in spirit than he realized: we had both buried children, and both of us feared more than anything else a repetition of that act. Had I chosen to do so, I could have spoken at that moment. I could have told him about Jennifer, about the sight of the small white coffin disappearing beneath the first clods of earth, about organizing her clothes and her shoes so that they could be passed on to children still living, about the appalling sense of absence that followed, of the gaping holes in my being that could never be filled, of how I could not walk down a street without being reminded of her by every passing child. And Frank would have understood, because in every young man fulfilling his duty he saw his absent son, and in that brief truce some of the tension between us might have been erased forever.

  But I did not speak. I was retreating from them all, and the old resentments were coming to the fore. A guilty man, confronted by the self-righteousness of others, will plead bitter innocence or find a way to turn his guilt upon his accusers.

  “Go to your family, Frank,” I told him. “We’re done here.”

  And I gathered up the garbage and left him in the evening darkness.

  Rachel was in the kitchen when I returned, making coffee for her parents and trying to clean up some of the mess left on the table. I started to help her. It was the first time we had been alone since we had returned from the church. Rachel’s mother came in to offer help, but Rachel told her that we could take care of it. Her mother tried to insist.

  “Mom, we’re fine,” said Rachel, and there was an edge to her voice that caused Joan to beat a hasty retreat, pausing only to give me a look that was equal parts sympathy and blame.

  Rachel used the blade of a knife to begin scraping the food from a plate into the trash can. The plate had a dark blue pattern upon its rim, although it wouldn’t have it for much longer if Rachel continued to scratch at it.

  “So, what’s going on?” she asked. She didn’t look at me as she spoke.

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You were kind of hard on Angel and Louis today, weren’t you? You hardly spoke a word to them while they were here. In fact, you’ve hardly spoken a word to me.”

  “Maybe if you hadn’t spent the afternoon cloistered in your office, we might have found time to speak.”

  It was a fair criticism, although we had been in the office for less than an hour.

  “I’m sorry. Something came up.”

  Rachel slammed the plate down on the edge of the sink. A small blue chip flew from the rim and was lost on the floor.

  “What do you mean, ‘something came up’? It’s your daughter’s fucking christening!”

  The voices in the living room went quiet. When the conversation picked up again, it sounded muted and strained.

  I moved toward her.

  “Rach—” I began.

  She raised her hands and backed away.

  “Don’t. Just don’t.”

  I couldn’t move. My hands felt awkward and useless. I didn’t know what to do with them. I settled for putting them behind my back and leaning against the wall. It was as close as I could come to a gesture of surrender without raising them above my head or exposing my neck to the blade. I didn’t want to fight with Rachel. It was all too fragile. The slightest misstep, and we would be surrounded by the fragments and shards of our relationship. I felt my right hand stick to the wall. When I looked down there was blood upon it, left by the splinter cut.

  “What did that woman want?” said Rachel. Her head was down, loose strands of hair falling over her cheeks and eyes. I wanted to see her face clearly. I wanted to push back her hair and touch her warm skin. Like this, her features hidden, she reminded me too much of another.

  “She’s Louis’s aunt. Her daughter has gone missing in New York. I think she came to Louis as a last resort.”

  “Did he ask you for help?”

  “No, I offered to help.”

  “What does she do, her daughter?”

  “She was a street prostitute, and an addict. Her disappearance won’t be a priority for the cops, so someone else will have to look for her.”

  Rachel ran her hands through her hair in frustration. This time, she did not try to stop me as I moved to hold her. Instead, she allowed me to press her head gently to my chest.

  “It will just take a couple of days,” I said. “Walter has made some calls. We have a lead on her pimp. It may be that she’s safe somewhere, or in hiding. Sometimes women in the life drop out for a time. You know that.”

  Slowly, her arms reached around
my back and held me.

  “Was,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “You said ‘was.’ She was a prostitute.”

  “It’s just the way that I phrased it.”

  Her head moved against me in denial of the lie.

  “No, it’s not. You know, don’t you? I don’t understand how you can tell, but I think you just know when there’s no hope. How can you carry that with you? How can you take the strain of that knowledge?”

  I said nothing.

  “I’m frightened,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t talk to Angel and Louis after the christening. I’m frightened of what they represent. When we spoke about them being godfathers to Sam, before she was born, it was like, well, it was like it was a joke. Not that I didn’t want them to do it, or that I didn’t mean it when I agreed, but it seemed like no harm could come of it. But today, when I saw them there, I didn’t want them to have anything to do with her, not in that way, and at the same time I know that each of them, without a second thought, would lay down his life to save Sam. They’d do the same for you, or for me. It’s just…I feel that they bring…”

  “Trouble?” I said.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “They don’t mean to, but they do. It follows them.”

  Then I asked the question that I had been afraid to ask.

  “And do you think that it follows me too?”

  I loved her for her answer, even as another fissure appeared in all that we had.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think those in need find you, but with them come those who cause misery and hurt.”

  Her arms gripped me tighter, and her nails dug sharply into my back.

  “And I love you for the fact that it pains you to turn away. I love you for wanting to help them, and I’ve seen the way you’ve been these last weeks. I’ve seen you after you walked away from someone you thought you could help.”

  She was talking about Ellis Chambers from Camden, who had approached me a week earlier about his son. Neil Chambers was involved with some men in Kansas City, and they had their hooks pretty deep in him. Ellis couldn’t afford to buy him out of his trouble, so somebody was going to have to intervene on Neil’s behalf. It was a muscle job, but taking it would have separated me from Sam and Rachel, and would also have involved a degree of risk. Neil Chambers’s creditors were not the kind of individuals who took kindly to being told how to run their affairs, and they were not sophisticated in their methods of intimidation and punishment. In addition, Kansas City was way off my turf, and I told Ellis that he might find the men involved were more amenable to some local intervention than the involvement of a stranger. I made some inquiries, and passed on some names to him, but I could see that he was disappointed. For better or worse, I’d gained a reputation as a “go-to” guy. Ellis had expected more than a referral. Somewhere inside, I also believed that he deserved more.

  “You did it for me, and for Sam,” said Rachel, “but I could tell the effort that it caused you. You see, that’s the thing of it: whichever way you turn, there will be pain for you. I just didn’t know how much longer you could keep turning away from those who reached out to you. I guess now I know. It ended today.”

  “Rachel, she’s family to Louis. What else could I do?”

  She smiled sadly.

  “If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else. You know that.”

  I kissed the top of her head. She smelled of our child.

  “Your dad tried to talk to me outside.”

  “I bet you both enjoyed that.”

  “It was great. We’re considering going on vacation together.”

  I kissed her again.

  “What about us?” I asked. “Are we okay?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I love you, but I don’t know.”

  With that she released me, and left me alone in the kitchen. I heard her climb the stairs, and there came the creak of the door to the bedroom where Sam lay sleeping. I knew that she was looking down upon her, listening to her breathe, watching over her so that no harm would come to her.

  That night, I heard the voice of the Other calling from beneath our window, but I did not go to the glass. And behind her words I discerned a chorus of voices, whispering and weeping. I covered my ears against them and squeezed my eyes tightly closed. In time, sleep came, and I dreamed of a leafless gray tree, its sharp branches curving inward, thick with thorns, and within the prison that they formed brown mourning doves fluttered and cried, a low whistling rising from their wings as they struggled, and blood upon their feathers where the thorns had pierced their flesh. And I slept as a new name was carved upon my heart.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Spyhole Motel was an unlikely oasis, a resting place for travelers who had almost entirely despaired of ever finding respite before the Mexican border. Perhaps they had skirted Yuma, tired of lights and people, longing to see the desert stars in all their glory, and had instead found themselves facing mile upon mile of stone and sand and cactus, bordered by high mountains they could not name. Even to stop briefly by the roadside was to invite thirst and discomfort, and maybe the attentions of the Border Patrol, for the coyotes ran their illegals along these routes, and the migras were always on the lookout for those who might be colluding with them in the hope of making some easy money. No, it was better not to stop here, wiser to keep moving in the hope of finding comfort elsewhere, and that was what the Spyhole promised.

  A sign on the highway pointed south, advising the weary of the proximity of a soft bed, cold sodas, and functioning air-conditioning. The motel was simple and unadorned, apart from a vintage illuminated sign that buzzed in the night like a great neon bug. The Spyhole consisted of fifteen rooms set in a wide N shape, with the office at the end of the left arm. The walls were a light yellow, although without closer examination it was difficult to say whether this was their original color or if constant exposure to the sands had resulted in their transformation to that hue, as though the desert would tolerate the motel’s presence only if it could lay some claim to it by absorbing it into the landscape. It lay in a natural alcove, a gap between mountains known as the Devil’s Spyhole. The mountains gave the motel a little shade, although barely steps from its office the heat of the desert winds blew through the Devil’s Spyhole itself like the blast from the open door of an incinerator. A sign outside the office warned visitors not to wander from the motel’s property. It was illustrated with snakes and spiders and scorpions, and a drawing of a cloud puffing superheated air toward the black stick figure of a man. The drawing might almost have been comical, were it not for the fact that blackened figures were regularly found on the sands not far from the motel: illegals, mostly, tempted by the deceptive promise of great wealth.

  The motel derived as much of its custom from referrals as from those who saw its sign in passing on the highway. There was a truck stop ten miles west, Harry’s Best Rest, with an all-night diner, a convenience store, showers and bathrooms, and space for up to fifty rigs. There was also a noisy cantina, frequented by specimens of human life that were barely one step up from the predatory desert creatures outside. The truck stop, with its lights and noise and promise of food and company, sometimes attracted those who had no business being there, travelers who were merely tired and lost and seeking a place to rest. Harry’s Best Rest was not meant for them, and its staff had learned that it was prudent to send them on their way with a suggestion that they seek some comfort at the Spyhole. Harry’s Best Rest was owned by a man named Harry Dean, who occupied a role that would have been familiar to his predecessors on the border a century before. Harry walked a thin line, doing just enough to satisfy the law and keep the migras and Smokies from his door, which in turn usually enabled him to stay on the right side of those individuals, mired in criminality, who frequented the shadier corners of his establishment. Harry paid some people off, and was in turn paid off. He turned a blind eye to the whores who serviced the truckers in their rigs or in the little c
abanas to the rear, and to the dealers who supplied the drivers with uppers and other narcotics to keep them awake or bring them down as the need arose, as long as they kept their supply off the premises and safely stored amid the tangles of junk in the back of their assorted pickups and automobiles, the smaller vehicles interspersed among the huge rigs like bottom-feeders following the big predators.

  It was 2 A.M. on Monday, and the Best Rest had quietened down some as Harry helped Miguel, his bar manager, to clean up behind the counter and restock the beer and liquor. Technically the cantina was no longer open for business, although anyone who wanted a drink at that time of night could still be served at the diner next door. Nevertheless, men continued to sit in the shadows, nursing their shots, some talking together, some alone. They were not the kind of men who could be told to leave. They would fade into the night in their own time, and of their own accord. Until then, Harry would not trouble them.

  A connecting doorway led from the cantina into the diner. A sign on the diner side announced that the bar was now closed, but the main door to the cantina remained unlocked for the present. Harry heard it open and looked up to see a pair of men enter. Both were white. One was tall and in his early forties, with graying hair and some scarring to his right eye. He wore a blue shirt, a blue jacket, and jeans that were a little long at the ends, but was otherwise largely unremarkable in appearance.

  The other man was almost as tall as his companion, but obscenely fat, his enormous belly hanging pendulously between his thighs like a great tongue lolling from an open mouth. His body appeared out of proportion to his legs, which were short and slightly bowed, as though they had struggled for many years to support the load they were required to bear and were at last buckling under the strain. The fat man’s face was perfectly round and quite pale, but his features were very delicate: green eyes enclosed by long, dark lashes; a thin, unbroken nose; and a long mouth with full, dark lips that were almost feminine. But any passing resemblance to traditional notions of facial beauty were undone by his chin, and the tumorous, distended neck in which it lost itself. It rolled over his shirt collar, purple and red, like an intimation of the gut that lay farther down. Harry was reminded of an old walrus that he had once seen in a zoo, a great beast of blubber and distended flesh on the verge of collapse. This man, by contrast, was far from the grave. Despite his bulk, he walked with a strange lightness, seemingly gliding across the sticky, shell-strewn floor of the cantina. Harry’s shirt was streaked with sweat even though the AC was blasting, yet the fat man’s face was entirely dry, and his white shirt and gray jacket appeared untouched by perspiration. He was balding, but his remaining hair was very black and cut short against his skull. Harry found himself mesmerized by the man’s appearance, the mix of terrible ugliness and near beauty, of obscene bulk and irreconcilable grace. Then the spell was broken, and Harry spoke.