Whistler's Angel

by John R. Maxim

  “Last we heard. Check it out.”

  Whistler went, although he doubted that he’d find Briggs and Lockwood. The twins, he suspected, knew that they were long gone or else they would not have let him go by himself. All the same, he did go on the chance of catching up to them. Especially Briggs, who could have tried to help Claudia. He hadn’t; he’d just watched her bleed.

  The Hawker they’d flown in on had been there, all right. Whistler knew that plane. He’d used it himself. As he’d guessed, it had departed several hours before. They had probably fled back east in a hurry when they learned that their two cops had vanished. Very well, thought Whistler. He would track them down later. After them would come Aubrey. He would find Felix Aubrey. He would see every one of them dead.

  The twins, it turned out, didn’t just “go see the judge” who had issued

  the warrant that had legalized the raid. They already had him in the trunk of a car. Tossed in with the judge was a road-kill raccoon that Donald had picked up along the way. “It’s good to give a man time to think,” he told Whistler. “We’ll all have a little talk when he’s ripe.”

  The judge had been “thinking” for more than two days when Kate Geller called Whistler again. She had reached him on his cell phone, said that Claudia was conscious.

  “I’ve a feeling that you’re someplace nearby, am I right?”

  She must have been watching breaking stories on the news.

  “Get over here, Adam. She’s asking for you.”

  “I’m…not sure that’s a very good idea, Mrs. Geller. I think it would be better…”

  “Get your butt over here.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  FOUR

  He’d seen her. They’d talked. Then he watched her fall asleep. He sat with her until the nurse came in again and said it was enough for one day. If her room hadn’t been on the hospital’s third floor, he might have considered slipping out through a window. But he didn’t. He went back to the waiting room where her mother was sitting. She looked up at him and again shook her head.

  “You know, the damnedest thing is...you have such a nice face.”

  “Mrs. Geller…”

  “And an honest face, Adam. Soft voice. Easy manner. And your eyes…those gentle gray eyes.”

  “Mrs. Geller, I’ll be leaving. You should have no more trouble.”

  “I mean, who’d have known? Who would look at you and know?”

  “Almost everything you think you know is false, Mrs. Geller. Not that it matters any longer.”

  “Why is that?”

  “As I said, I’m leaving, and this time for good. I will never come near Claudia again.”

  “She knew you’d say that. Her white light said you would. That light must know you better than we did.”

  “She…um, told you all that? That she thinks she’s an angel?”

  “I think maybe you’d better stick around for a while.”

  “Mrs. Geller...”

  “Don’t get me wrong, Adam. I’d be glad to see you go, but I sure don’t want her chasing after you. And it’s not that I blame you for her being shot. It’s just that you’re not every mother’s dream…” She stopped herself. She sucked in a breath. “Well, you seemed to be. For a while there, you were.”

  “Mrs. Geller, I’m sorry. And I do blame myself. I brought all this on you. I’m so sorry.”

  “Can you make this right, Adam?”

  “There’s a little more to do.”

  “You know that she’s been charged with attempted murder?”

  “There will be no testimony against her, Mrs. Geller. That charge and the drug charge should be dropped within the week.”

  “Those policemen who shot her…I hear they’ve gone missing. Just missing, or shouldn’t I ask?”

  Whistler looked away. He said nothing.

  “And that other man. The one they brought in all cut up…”

  “Um…what man is that, Mrs. Geller?”

  “The bald one. Name of Briggs. They brought him in yesterday morning.”

  “Brought him here? He’s here now?”

  “Intensive Care. You didn’t know? I guess I’m glad to hear that this is news to you, Adam. I was down there with Claudia when they wheeled him in. There’s not much left of his face.”

  Whistler’s eyes narrowed. She misunderstood the look.

  “That man’s hurt enough. You leave him be, Adam. He’s scared and he’s sorry. He said so.”

  “You spoke to him?”

  She nodded. “I held his hand for a minute. He’s not ever going to be the same again, Adam. No need to hurt him anymore.”

  “Mrs. Geller, where was he found? Do you know?”

  “Out at the airport. Seems his plane took off without him. They found him stumbling around where the plane had been. He was trying to keep his cheek from falling off.”

  “Any sign of the other one? Lockwood?”

  “I don’t know. But Adam…enough is enough. I hate that you know people

  who can do things like this.”

  “The truth is, I’m not sure I do.”

  He’d been thinking the twins, but this didn’t sound like them. The twins

  would not merely have marked him. It must have been one of their mysterious friends. He assured Ms. Geller that he had no intention of harming Briggs any further. Lockwood was another matter, but Lockwood would keep. That’s assuming that he got out alive. He told her again that he’d be leaving that day. His only other business was to deal with the judge who was still, at that moment, with the twins.

  He said, “This should soon be over. Or at least where you’re concerned. I think the judge will void the warrant that led to the seizure. You’ll be getting your property back, Mrs. Geller. They won’t try to hurt you again.”

  “Or you?”

  “They might try. But not here. And not right away.”

  She got up. She started pacing. She did not like that answer. “You’re saying they’ll wait. They’ll pick the time and place.”

  “And you’re concerned that your daughter might be with me. Put that out of your mind. She will not be.”

  “Adam...tell me. Are you a good man?”

  “Not the way you’d think. No.”

  “You worked for those people?”

  “I worked with them for a time.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “That’s not much of a distinction.”

  “Not to you. I know that. But in any case, it’s finished.”

  “And just so I’m clear…you’re all government people? You’re telling me my government does this kind of crap?”

  “No. Well, not exactly. It’s not what you think.”

  “But you do frame people. And you take away their homes. And if they give you any trouble, you kill them. Am I close?”

  “Mrs. Geller…”

  “What ever happened to the good old days, Adam, when we only had the IRS after us?”

  He answered, “Mrs. Geller, I will tell you this much. At the outset, the people this unit went after were people with a great deal of blood on their hands. They were people who deserved to be dead or in prison, but who couldn’t be touched by legal means.”

  She stared. “A death squad?”

  “A punitive unit.”

  “Death is pretty damned punitive, Adam.”

  “Mrs. Geller, many governments have units such as this one. For the most part, what they do is track laundered money and identify its source and destination.”

  “Now you’re saying you’re accountants.”

  “Accountants and attorneys do go after that money. One of their weapons is financial ruin through seizures and endless litigation. The search itself can be dangerous work. There are people, high up, who will readily commit murder to avoid exposure and the loss of position. That leads, now and then, to the need for stronger action beyond what accountants and attorneys are trained for. Now and then, there’s a case of an eye for eye, but…no, not a death squad.
That was not the idea.”

  “It was not? Past tense?”

  He rubbed his chin. “These…things sometimes get out of hand.”

  He could hear his father saying, “No, Adam. Not sometimes. It almost never fails. Any anti-drug unit that’s run off the books becomes corrupt sooner or later. Any punitive unit that gets into killing tends to solve all its problems by killing.”

  Whistler chewed his lip. He waved off the subject. He said, “As for Claudia, let’s give her time. She’ll realize that her white light was only a dream. She’ll be glad I left quietly. You’ll see.”

  A sad little smile. A shake of the head. “Did you talk to her doctor about the white light?”

  “He never mentioned that part of it.”

  “He’s had other patients who’ve had near-death experiences. Not a one could be convinced that what they went through wasn’t real. He thinks this might not go away.”

  “All the same...”

  “She’s so very young, Adam. She’s only twenty-four.”

  “Agreed. I’m too old for her. I know that.”

  “That’s not what I meant. A little older is okay. But you’re older in a different way, aren’t you.”

  He said nothing.

  “And your father…he’s full of surprises himself. A criminal? A renegade? He taught you how to kill?”

  “Not a word of that is true, Mrs. Geller.”

  “Not a word? Or not exactly? Look me in the eye.”

  “Mrs. Geller, my father is the best man I know. If you liked him, you should try to trust your instincts.”

  She nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll wait and hear it from him. In the meantime, Adam, you speak for yourself. I want to hear your side of the story.”

  “It’s not much of a story. One thing leading to another.”

  She folded her arms. “I think you owe me that much. I think the both of you do.”

  “Mrs. Geller...”

  “Try not to get her shot again, Adam. Okay?”

  “Mrs. Geller...you’re not listening. It’s over between us.”

  She was still pacing. She gritted her teeth. “I want to despise you. But I can’t and I don’t. I wish Claudia did, but she doesn’t.”

  Again, he was silent. He looked at his shoes.

  “On the contrary, Adam, she thinks she’s supposed to love you. Do you want to know something? She was almost there already. I think she could have handled the truth.”

  Still nothing.

  “She’s very special, Adam. She was special before this. And you…no matter what you think of yourself…have a decency about you that keeps showing through. Maybe she can really save you. You think?”

  “I have to go.”

  “Adam…I can’t tell you how I hate saying this. Do you know what I’d tell you if I weren’t her mother?”

  Whistler let out a sigh. He waited.

  “I’d tell you pretty much what she asked me say. That you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  FIVE

  He did leave that day, intending never to return. He tried to put Claudia out of his mind. For what he meant to do, there was every chance that he might not live to see her again anyway.

  But Whistler couldn’t make her face go away. The way she looked up at him. Those wonderful eyes. Explaining with total and absolute certainty that she was his guardian angel.

  And then her mother. Another surprise. Her mother should have said, “Get out of here, Adam. Come near her again and I’ll clobber you. She isn’t an angel; she’s not going save you. She’s not even going to save you from me, so get lost while you still have the chance.”

  But she didn’t. What she said was, in essence, “Don’t blow this.”

  The odd thing was, he could almost believe it. There was Claudia’s survival. A miracle in itself. She should have been a vegetable at best. And if there really were such things as angels, he’d expect them to look very much like Claudia. They would, like Claudia, have an inner glow about them. A radiance that sets them apart. The first time he’d ever laid eyes on Claudia, he could have believed it right then.

  He’d first met her four months before any of this happened. He did not then, however, think in terms of the celestial. He thought in terms of a warm and friendly girl of the sort he wished he’d met ten years before. A girl who, because of what he had become, seemed hopelessly out of his reach. He first saw her on a ski slope at Aspen.

  He’d gone to Aspen to meet with his father. His father had flown over from Europe where he’d lived for almost all of Whistler’s life. Whistler first had called him, not to meet, just to talk. He said he’d tried to believe in what he’d been doing, to believe that it was making a difference. But the cure, he’d come to realize, was worse than the disease. The war on drugs, as fought, was unwinnable. It ruined more lives than it saved. And that war, for some, was as profitable as dealing. He’d known traffickers whom he would sooner have trusted than some of the people who opposed them.

  “You’ll forgive me for saying I told you so, Adam.”

  “I know. I just didn’t want to see it.”

  “The first casualty of war is always the truth. What has happened that opened your eyes? Are you in trouble?”

  “I might be. You know Felix Aubrey?”

  “Know him? I warned you about him, remember?”

  “Yes, you did and I heard you. Will you listen?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Aubrey keeps a set of records. Or he did. I have them now. And he’s probably guessed that I took them.”

  “What’s in them? How hot?”

  “They could put him in prison. He would have lots of company.”

  The line went silent for a moment. Then, “Get over here, Adam. Get on the first flight you can.”

  “If I disappeared, he would know that I’m the one. I’m not sure that Aubrey knows who you are, but that might be the first place he’d look.”

  “Your point?”

  “I don’t want to cause trouble for you.”

  “Um…Adam, not to sound as if I’m full of myself, but I think I can probably

  deal with it.”

  “Even so, it’s my problem. Could you meet me over here?”

  “Name the place. But be careful. Don’t say it straight out.”

  “Last Dollar. You remember? I can be there tonight.”

  “Last Dollar. I got you. So can we. I’ll buy a ticket.”

  His use of “we” meant he’d bring the Beasley twins. He seldom traveled without them. The “I’ll buy a ticket,” meant that he’d fly commercial. He had his own plane and had access to others, but a private jet’s movements were too easily monitored. Sometimes it was better to get lost in the crowd. “Last Dollar” was the name of a ski trail at Aspen. He’d skied that trail with his father many times, beginning when Whistler started college in the States. Before that, they’d skied all over Europe. He and his father had often gone skiing whenever there were problems that needed thinking out. Either skiing the Alps or going for a sail on the boat his father kept on Lake Geneva. There was something about a big stretch of open water, and especially the mountains with their clean air, vast snowfields, that helped put the rest of the world in perspective.

  Whistler got to Aspen first. He waited at the airport through several arrivals before spotting one of the twins disembarking from one of the last incoming flights. The twin must have seen him, but did not acknowledge him. About ten people back, his father appeared. Or rather he loomed. A big man, he was wearing a brown Stetson hat and a three-quarter-length shearling coat. Shaggy hair and a beard made him look even bigger. He seemed a bit tired, but no less alert after spending twelve hours on airplanes. He was walking stiffly, however. Bad back. It had troubled his father for the past fifteen years. Although Whistler had found it hard to envision, he claimed he’d injured it doing the Tango.

  His father did not acknowledge him either. He proceeded down the concourse to the baggage claim area. Whistler never saw
the second twin get off. That meant that he was probably already there and was someplace in the terminal, watching.

  The Beasley twins were bodyguards, among other things, but they weren’t the kind who stayed close. One would be here, the other would be there. That way no one would take special notice of them, or even necessarily know that there were two until, one presumed, it was too late.

  Whistler left the terminal and walked to the parking lot. There, he got into the car he had rented and waited for his father to come out with his bag. He left the lot and pulled up near his father. His father waited until one or both twins were in a position to follow. Only then did he throw his bag in the back and climb into the passenger seat. Only then did he reach, again stiffly, to embrace him.

  “Your back hurting you?” asked Whistler.

  “Comes and goes. It’s nothing. I’ll pop a pill later.”

  “I got us a suite that has a Jacuzzi. A good soak…”

  His father waved off the subject. He said, “Those records you mentioned. I want to have a look at them for starters.”

  “There’s an envelope under your seat. Photocopies.”

  “The original?”

  “Airport locker.” Whistler gestured over his shoulder. “In a package addressed to you, just in case.”

  “I take that to mean that he can’t kill you yet.”

  “Not until he can be sure he’d get it back.”

  His father opened the glove department. Its small bulb would give him enough light to read by, but not enough light to silhouette him. He felt for the envelope beneath his seat and started reading the copies.

  “This is a ledger,” said his father, surprised. “I’d assumed that you meant computer records.”

  “An actual ledger. Green cloth. Yellow pages.”

  “And in Aubrey’s own hand? Not even in code. Why would anyone keep something like this?”

  “Well, I know that Aubrey won’t use a computer. He thinks they’re too

  easily hacked and he’s right. But I don’t think he’s dumb. Wait until you see some of the names in the ledger. He knows that if the law ever got its hands on that, the evidence would probably be suppressed.”