Natural Born Angel (22 page)

“Sure is,” Maddy said, trying to be cheerful herself, although it felt like a thousand butterflies were flying loop-de-loops in her stomach at the moment.

As Maddy stepped out of her Audi in the car park, she peered up into the cloudless sky.

Across the perfectly blue atmosphere, far, far up, two fighter jets screamed across the sky, leaving two crisp white trails behind them. Maddy idly wondered if one of them was Tom.

Sadie rolled up almost noiselessly in her golf cart.

“They’re ready for you,” Sadie said, her perfect white teeth sparkling in the morning sun.

“Great,” Maddy replied, smiling forcefully. Looking around, though, she was confused. “Wait, where’s Jacks? He said he was going to meet me here.”

“Yes, yes,” Sadie said, pulling a bouquet of flowers from the seat of the golf cart. “These are for you. Jackson isn’t feeling well and couldn’t make it.” Sadie looked at her watch. “We should get going. They are waiting.”

“Oh.” Maddy took the bouquet of assorted flowers in her hand as she climbed into the golf cart, trying to hide her confusion and hurt. She looked at the card.

GOOD LUCK TODAY, MADS. LOVE, JACKS

Disappointment washed over Maddy – was he really sick? Why hadn’t he told her directly? He was supposed to be there!

Maddy didn’t have time to think about it. Before she knew it, they’d arrived and Sadie was leading her into the small auditorium built into the end of the bungalow offices. The room also served as an event space whenever the training facility was holding some occasion or party or there was a presentation from an Angel expert.

Sitting at a long wooden table that had been placed at the front of the room were Louis Kreuz, Susan, Trueway and Philip, the tweedy teacher she’d met the first day of Guardian training, whom she’d been quietly battling with ever since. Looking to her left as she entered, Maddy was surprised to see Jackson’s stepfather, Mark, sitting in the auditorium seats further up. He gave her a subtle thumbs-up.

Sadie seated Maddy behind a smaller table in front of the board of instructors. There was a bottle of water and an empty glass on the table. Maddy didn’t think she’d need it: she knew that there was to be no more discussion. The decision would simply be made.

“We’re here today to either recommend or deny Madison Montgomery Godright’s nomination to Guardianship,” Louis Kreuz said. “As you know, Maddy came to us much, much later than normal for training. And her unique situation creates other considerations.”

Maddy anxiously glanced back towards Mark, but he wore a look of pure confidence.

“We have had our discussions. Now that the potential nominee is here, it is time for us to recommend or deny. The decision must be unanimous. Is the board ready?”

All three other instructors nodded.

“We’ll begin with Archangel Archson,” Kreuz said.

“Recommend,” Susan said brightly, smiling at Maddy.

“Phil?”

“Recommend,” Philip said, coughing into his hand.

“Trueway?” Kreuz said, narrowing his eyes.

Maddy looked at her flight instructor, former Agent Trueway. He eyed her without emotion. Maddy’s heart was pounding up through her throat as she waited for him to speak.

“Recommend,” he said.

Silence hung in the room as Maddy looked at Louis Kreuz, who for once didn’t have a cigar in his hand. It needed to be unanimous in order for her to move to Commissioning.

Kreuz looked at Maddy and began addressing her. He was strangely much more formal, as if he felt the gravity of the situation.

He cleared his throat.

“This is exceptional in our history in the training of Angels. A half-Angel, half-human, brought to our facilities for training and Guardianship. And now promoted to nominee after only a short period of training. Unknown territory. We have no idea how she will react in a save. If her inner Angel will truly win out during the save . . . or if her weaker human side will prevail.”

He cleared his throat again, loudly. He continued: “It looks like the minds of the other members of this board are to recommend,” he said. “And I have no choice but to go along with their view.

“Madison Montgomery Godright, you are recommended for Guardianship.”

S
ylvester awoke from a strange dream, sitting up in bed. In the dream he had been following someone down a fetid, dark alley, the buildings reaching to the top of the blue-black sky. The alley never ended. It just kept extending and extending, Sylvester never getting any closer. The figure in front of him always remained the same distance away. Every once in a while, the figure would stop and turn around. Sylvester couldn’t see his face.

“Hey! Hey!” Sylvester would yell. He would reach for his gun, but it wouldn’t be there. And the figure would continue running. And Sylvester would keep going down the never-ending alley.

The only thing that changed in the alley was that it got hotter. A lot hotter.

The ring of his landline woke him. The old-school telephone rang again. And again. In his white undershirt and boxers, the detective fumbled for the light, and then the telephone.

He looked at the clock: 4:34 a.m.

“This is Sylvester,” he grumbled into the phone, rubbing his eyes.

“You were looking for me, detective?” a strange voice said on the line in a hushed tone.

Sylvester sat up straight.

“Could be. Who’s this?” Sylvester scrambled to put his glasses on, along with getting a pad of paper and a pen.

“It’s about the bombing. Minx . . . he told me about you. That you might be able to help me.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Sylvester said. “I can help. Now where are you?”

There was silence on the line. Sylvester could hear the man breathing. “No. It’s too dangerous. We need to meet somewhere public.”

“The train station,” Sylvester offered.

“No, they’re watching. The Angel Wax Museum. In the lobby. Noon. Come alone.”

“How will I recognize you?”

“I’ll know you, detective. Noon. Come alone, or you’ll never hear from me again.”

“Who are— ”

Before the detective could finish his sentence, the phone clicked dead – he’d hung up.

Sylvester slowly placed the receiver down. He sat on the edge of the bed in the room that was dark except for one bedside light, his mind running over the strange turn of events.

For a moment he lay back down on his bed, but his eyes remained wide open. After only a minute or so, he let out a large sigh and got up, walking to the kitchen to make the first pot of coffee of the day.

At eleven thirty Detective Sylvester was on Angel Boulevard amid throngs of tourists, in the heart of Angel City. He was wearing a shirt just picked up from the cleaners and a pair of shoes he’d had re-soled down at Raoul’s on Santa Monica. He felt all right. He was ready for this case to break open.

The reports and DVD surveillance that the Godspeed kid had slipped him from the Angel investigation didn’t give him too much info, aside from confirming for Sylvester that there were two bombers, working in tandem. He hadn’t been able to glean anything further than that, though. The case had remained slow up until the call early this morning.

Sylvester walked his way around fans snapping pictures of the stars on the Walk of Angels; the empty spot where it was rumoured Maddy Montgomery’s star might go drew an especially huge crowd. Looking down as he walked along the glittering pavement, Sylvester noticed names of Angels past and present that he had known over the years. As he got closer to the Angel Wax Museum, he came across Jackson Godspeed’s star. No one was taking pictures of it. Sylvester shook his head.

He reached the wax museum. In the very front of the building, surrounded by glass so everyone could see it from the street, was a new wax statue of Maddy with her shorter, oblong wings with the fine silver threading that ran along them. Groups of people were excitedly lining up to enter.

Sylvester walked down Angel Boulevard a little further, then back, slowly letting his old police instincts take over as he read the crowds. It was fairly busy for a weekday, with double-decker buses blowing by, throngs of tourists, vendors selling maps to the Angel houses in the Hills, those hawking T-shirts reading “SAVE ME”, the Angel impersonators whom you could pay to get a picture with. Above the whole scene hung massive billboards with half-naked perfect Angels selling perfumes and clothes, along with garish neon signs. Every once in a while, some remnant of old Angel City would peek through the chaos, giving Sylvester a sense of the city he once knew. One he had been proud to be an Angel in.

Looking up, Sylvester saw three-storey footage of Maddy’s arrival at a red-carpet event across town. She smiled perfectly as the flashes surrounded her.

At eleven fifty Sylvester walked to the ticket desk and purchased one adult ticket for entry to the wax museum. He walked into the lobby, scanning the crowd slowly. No one seemed out of place, or otherwise nervous, just your general crowd of Angel City tourists.

Some of the more popular wax statues were in the lobby, including Vivian Holycross in the outfit she wore to last year’s Commissioning, one of classic hunk Owen Holymead, and one of Gabriel, one of the founding members of the Council of Twelve. Gabriel appeared wise and almost glowing in his white robes. Behind him was a wax statue of an ancient Angel in Grecian battle dress, holding a copy of
The Book of Angels
in his hand.

The detective walked down one of the hallways. It was uncanny, how many of these wax Angels he had once known in real life. Seeing their statues was like seeing ghosts from his former life.

After a few minutes, the detective made his way back to the lobby. He checked his watch: eleven fifty-eight. Two minutes. He pulled off his glasses and wiped them with his shirt. A nervous habit.

The detective eyed the visitors moving between the wax Angel statues, trying to discern who would be meeting him. He looked at a bench off to the side, where a man in his thirties was reading a copy of the
Angel City Times
. Was that him? Then the man stood up and walked out the door of the wax museum, hugging his wife and small child, who had been using the restroom.

Sylvester continued watching the crowd, his pulse quickening as he glanced down at his watch and saw it had reached noon. A tour bus must have just let out on Angel Boulevard, because a huge group of people began streaming in. The faces in the crowd mixed with the perfect wax Angel faces.

Suddenly, in his peripheral vision, Detective Sylvester saw a man in a dark suit on his left, and then another on his right. They were moving fast. Directly towards him. Adrenaline pounded in Sylvester’s veins as he started at a dead run towards the exit.

Instinct took over, but before Sylvester could escape the men, an iron grip clasped down on him from behind and pulled his hands together, binding them together in plastic zip-ties.

Five square-jawed men in suits were on him in seconds as he struggled in his restraints.

Struggling and panting, Sylvester’s eyes grew wide as, through the glass, he spotted a black Suburban idling at the kerb on Angel Boulevard. They led him towards it.

T
he thick, hard plastic restraints dug into Sylvester’s wrists, rubbing them raw as he attempted to break away from his captors. Blood pounded in his ears, survival instincts taking over.

Tourists stared slack-jawed as these men in suits hoisted the struggling detective towards the front exits of the wax museum.

It’d been a set up.

“What are you doing? I’m Detect— ”

“Be quiet!” the square-jawed man holding him barked, pushing Sylvester forward.

“Step away from Detective Sylvester!” a voice resounded through the open glass door to the museum. It was Sergeant Garcia, in plain clothes. He pointed his service revolver at the man next to Sylvester. His aim was steady.

In horror, Sylvester watched as the men in suits suddenly drew pistols from inside their jackets, beginning to turn them on Garcia.

“ACPD! Drop your weapons! ACPD! We will shoot!” The voices seemed to come from everywhere at once.

Within a moment, the entire lobby turned blue, as uniformed ACPD officers rushed from all corners upon the men holding Sylvester. “Drop your weapons or we will fire upon you!”

Sylvester smiled: Sergeant Garcia had his back.

Scrambling to lay their guns on the ground, the outnumbered men in suits screamed “FBI! FBI, for God’s sake, FBI!”

The suited men stepped away from Sylvester, who still had his arms bound behind him, as they pulled their federal badges from under their suit jackets while keeping one hand in the air.

“FBI?
Jesus Christ.
Who are you!?” Sylvester yelled at them.

“Us? Who the hell are
you
?” the tallest of the suited FBI agents yelled back to Sylvester as he slowly laid his government-issued nine-millimeter handgun on the cool marble floor of the wax museum.

“Detective Sylvester, ACPD,” Sylvester panted. A uniformed cop was behind Sylvester, cutting his hands free from the plastic restraints. Dozens of ACPD officers were now frisking the outnumbered FBI agents, checking their badges, chaos all around.

A senior FBI agent suddenly arrived on the scene, his beard stubble grizzled and long wrinkles running across his forehead.

“Senior Agent Wilkins, Special Crimes,” he identified himself. “What the hell’s going on here with my investigation?”

His hands free, Sylvester walked up to this lead FBI agent, red colouring his face.

“
Your
investigation? Goddammit!” Sylvester yelled, spinning around on his heels.

“Come on, David, calm down, calm down. It’s OK,” Garcia was trying to pull him back.

“We’re all on the same team here, detective,” the senior FBI man said.

“Are we?” Sylvester demanded.

“My men detained you as a matter of safety and precaution.”

“Precaution for what?
Senior agent
, you just pissed all over my meet-up with a confidential informant in a high-profile case! I’m going to have your ass for breakfast!”

The FBI man looked at Sylvester. “Informant? You mean Jesse DeWinter?”

“I don’t have his name. We were supposed to meet here at noon. He’s gone now, though, spooked for ever!”

Wilkins shook his head. “Jesse DeWinter died instantly at eight forty-four this morning when his car struck the median at high speed heading eastbound on I-10 near the Washington Boulevard exit. He was pronounced dead at the scene.”

Sylvester reeled. “Dead?”

“We searched his apartment shortly after. We’ve been keeping an eye on him here in Angel City as a potential political radical. We found a photo of you, along with this note.”

Wilkins reached into his coat and pulled out a photo of Sylvester that had been printed from the Internet, along with a small scrap of paper: “Wax Museum – noon.”

“It was a meet-up,” Sylvester said quietly, sitting down on the bench. “He was coming in . . . someone found out.”

“HDF literature and bomb making materials were found in his car – or what remained of the car after it burned,” Special Agent Wilkins said. “We had our suspicions. Now it’s a pretty open-and-shut case that the HDF was behind the bombing. The next step is to move into the HDF organization itself.”

Sylvester shook his head, hands plunged into the pockets of his overcoat. Was that it? After Minx obviously sent DeWinter on to Sylvester himself. Why would he be turning against the HDF now? Whom did he fear?

“Forensics is running tests on the residual bomb material, but early results say it’s a one hundred per cent match to the bomb used earlier this month.”

Sylvester absently looked out of the glass walls at the waves of pedestrians walking down Angel Boulevard. Tourists were stopping outside the front glass wall and taking pictures of Maddy’s wax statue through the glass.

“Of course it’s a one hundred per cent match,” Sylvester said softly. “I bet it wasn’t even damaged in the fiery accident.”

“It’s just a shame we couldn’t talk to DeWinter before his accident. It would’ve been helpful,” the FBI lead said.

Sylvester, breaking from his mental fugue, looked at Wilkins through his wire-framed glasses.

“Accident?” he said. “Obviously, it was no accident.”