The Devil's Redhead (38 page)

Frank glanced around, to see if anyone else was paying attention to the program, or him. The bartender was bent over, stocking his fridge. The owner, a slight balding Persian in a double-breasted suit, patrolled the dining room with hands clasped behind his back, leading with his chin. The hostess, a thin blonde maybe thirty years old, wearing makeup so garish it made her look fifty, stood at her lectern, fussing with the brunch menu.

Frank reached inside his jacket, removed his hand-worn copy of the newspaper piece and smoothed it out on the bar. He'd given it maybe three dozen readings, feeling more naked each time, an effect only enhanced now by the television coverage. But the worst of it wasn't the fear. The article talked about this smuggler just out of prison, a guy with a long and difficult name. It said he and Shel had been an item years ago, before they both went down on federal charges. Worse, it said that he was the man Shel had run to after Frank had tried to murder her. The article actually used the word “murder.” It also used the word “lovers,” referring to Shel and this other guy. It all made sense now, he thought. What a sick, pathetic, piss-driven fool you've been. This was who Shel was secretly mooning over all that time, not Mooch. She'd never said a word about the guy, not once in over two years. How many other secrets had she kept? How many times, when I sat there, pouring out my heart, telling her my plans—not just for me, for us, that was the sick part, for us, damn it—how many times had she really been thinking of this Danny Grab-Your-Banjo, or however the fuck you pronounced his name?

He glanced one last time at the picture of Shel, winced, then folded the paper over again and returned it to his pocket. Shortly a plump, redheaded professor-type came through the entrance, stumbling on the door saddle. He was garbed in tweed and corduroy, checking every face as he came aright, catching his balance. Frank watched in the mirror above the bar, biting his lip, heart pounding.

Spotting Frank at the bar, the professor made the proper mental connection and came forward ardently, extending his hand the last few steps. “I'm Bert Waxman,” he said. Frank detected in the voice traces of jug wine, chalk dust, arguments in the library. He'd sold crank to voices like that. “I appreciate your willingness to meet with me here.”

“You have to pay for my drink,” Frank told him.

They sat at a table against the wall and the waitress appeared shortly. She had chubby legs and wore a crucifix nose stud; a cold sore as large and white as a chancre filled the corner of her mouth. Waxman only wanted coffee but Frank ordered another double gin, asking it be brought at once. The waitress checked out his face, then spun around and vanished. Once she was out of earshot, Frank remarked, “I think I'd shoot my lips off before I let that woman kiss me.”

He and Waxman eyed each other briefly. Frank felt vaguely discouraged. Waxman was coming into focus, impression-wise, and he was exactly the sort of person Frank had been bred to loathe: educated, browbeaten, sincere. The kind folks run to with their inspired lies. A scribe for users. Like I'm one to complain, Frank thought. He hid his throbbing thumb in his lap.

“I've had a chance to think through the way you want to work the money angle,” he said. “This third-party thing.”

“Yes,” Waxman said, clearing his throat.

“Won't work. Where's my guarantee it's not just smoke?”

“I think you can understand I'm in much the same position,” Waxman said. “How do I know you have anything genuinely valuable to provide.”

“Oh, I do. Believe me, I do. And it's a damn sight better than what you've got so far.”

The waitress returned, bearing their drinks on a tray. Frank downed half his before Waxman was through tending to his coffee: heavy cream, three sugars.

“Look,” Frank said, “this source of yours. This I-talian guy. I'd be careful if I were you. Strikes me as the type to say anything.”

“There were two police versions of events quoted in the article as well.” Waxman pinched his empty sugar packets into sections and set them on his saucer like tiny flowers. “You don't seem terribly bothered by either of them.”

Frank blinked. “Meaning what?”

“Say what you like about Mr. Abatangelo's reliability, it's his story that troubles you.”

“Like hell.”

“You're shaking.”

“Look,” Frank said, sensing it was time to invent, “Shel told me all about this guy, got it? I can tell you things about him his own mother doesn't know.”

“His mother,” Waxman enjoined, tasting his coffee, “is dead.”

“Yeah, well,” Frank said, thinking: If she's dead, she can't contradict me. “Figure of speech, okay?”

“What in particular did Mr. Abatangelo get wrong?”

The room turned hot suddenly. Frank felt sweat prickling his skin. “Look, what I mean is, if I were you I'd sort things out a little, not just write them down on the jump. Use your head, you know? Ask around.”

Waxman nodded. “Go on.”

“I can help you there,” Frank said. “Unlike this Dan Slab-of-Mango guy, who wouldn't know the truth if he had to drive it around like a bus.”

“The truth, which is?”

Frank was having trouble with his throat, it kept wanting to close up on him. Worse, little stabs of memory kept jagging across his mind's eye and scaring him. Wetting his lips he leaned forward.

“The crew that smoked those three folks in that house last night? I can put you through to the chief. Absolutely. Nervy little fucker, mean as a hornet, got a birthmark right here.” He tapped his forehead. “Your article, it got the Mexican angle right, but, you know, it was kinda spotty. No offense. But I mean, that's the problem, right? That's why you need me.”

“Who is this crew?” Waxman asked. “What are their names?”

Frank shook his head. “Money first.”

Waxman twisted his pen cap, leaned forward and asked, “Do you concede that you were with the Briscoe twins the night they were murdered?”

Frank grimaced and sat back. He shivered a little. “I'm getting a little sick of being blamed for that,” he said.

“But you were with them.”

“I didn't do it.” Frank slammed back the rest of his cocktail, at which point he realized he had quite a package on. Everything but his skin seemed warm to the touch. Surfaces gave way a little when he looked at them.

“Look,” he said, a bit loud, “it's easy to crap on me. I'm easy to hate. But get this”—and he prodded his finger into Waxman's arm—“by the time those two got sniffed, I was long gone. I never touched them, I didn't see who did. I liked the little fuckers, why would I smoke 'em?”

Waxman asked, “Where did you go when you left their house?”

Frank shoved the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. His head seethed with fervent whispers. When he took his hands away he reached for the sugar bowl mindlessly and fingered a half dozen packets, slipping them into his coat pocket.

“That's all I got to say,” he said, looking up in a daze, “till I see some cash.”

Abatangelo waited in his car outside the Brighton Hotel as an immense American sedan drifted from its parking space. Good omen, he thought. Right in front.

Waxman had refused to tell him where the meet was being held, insisting he see Frank alone. So Abatangelo had driven over in the Dart, parked down the street from Waxman's apartment, and, when the cab appeared, followed. Wax, Wax, Wax, he'd thought—you simply do not understand the stakes involved. I deserve a good look at this character. It won't do, letting you sit there and get lied to—not if I'm the one who's got to risk five more years in stir just to pay him off.

He steered the Dart into the parking spot and hustled inside the hotel. Brunch patrons queued at the hostess stand. Abatangelo worked past them gently, murmuring apologies. When he reached the hostess she bristled, glaring up from her seating chart, which she'd rendered into a chaos of crayon smears. She looked ready to let go with a good long scream. Abatangelo smiled, said, “Meeting a friend,” and kept moving.

He spotted them across the room. Obscured behind a waiter pushing a flambé cart, he made half the distance between the hostess stand and the table before Frank looked up. Don't be hostile, he told himself. Just mosey up, introduce yourself, sit down, and take it from there. For the fraction of an instant it took to tell himself this, the plan worked well. Then Frank's eyes turned wild. Maybe I'm walking too fast, he thought. Maybe there's blood in my eye. Whatever the reason, Frank bolted up from his chair, spilling coffee across the tablecloth as Waxman stared down at the stain oozing toward him.

“Don't,” Abatangelo shouted, sensing it was the wrong word just as the whole situation went wrong.

Frank checked every direction, bat-eyed, ashen, then hurdled the next table. Four middle-aged women launched to their feet, screaming. Waxman stared, dabbing his trousers mindlessly, as Abatangelo, acting on instinct, lunged past the screamers and caught Frank's ankle. Porcelain shattered, glass and flowers sailed airborne. “Stop it,” Abatangelo shouted as a searing pain shot through his wrist. Frank had doubled on himself, sunk his teeth through the skin, clear to bone. He went at Abatangelo's face with his nails, gouging the eyes. He broke loose of Abatangelo's hold, teeth and fingernails dark with blood, and one of the four women collapsed in a faint. Waiters and busmen drifted back against the high walls uttering, “God, Oh God, My God.” Blind, the ripped eye hot against his fingers, blood clouding what he could see, Abatangelo flailed, lunging again, grabbing Frank's coattail from the back and with the other hand reaching out for his belt. Frank kicked free, tore at him again, hissing like an animal. He twisted back and bit Abatangelo's face, found the eyes with his nails again. Abatangelo recoiled, Frank scrambled to his feet and shoved his way through the crowd past the hostess stand shrieking into faces, tumbling out into the lobby, pulling fiercely on the heavy brass door.

Abatangelo closed distance behind. Frank tumbled down the stairs onto the sidewalk, struggled up crook-kneed. Abatangelo caught him, snapped him up into a headlock, grabbed his hair, drove his face hard against the Dart's window twice, dazing him, then lifted him by the scruff with one hand, the other digging in his pocket for his keys. He opened the trunk, lifted Frank and threw him inside.

He drove one-eyed, hyperventilating, not really clear on which turns he made, how fast he took them, who was ahead or behind. What the hell was that, he wondered. His pulse throbbed as his keys chimed faintly against the steering column. Behind him, the constant muffled pounding and shouts from the trunk intensified.

Some time later, how much he wasn't exactly sure, he was on his feet again, beside the car. Behind him stretched an empty pier in the shadow of a looming skyway. Warehouses, locked up for the weekend, defiled for blocks in each direction. He caught his breath, listening to the shrieks of the seagulls overhead and the fading cries from his trunk, the dull thud of shoes and hands against metal.

He settled down onto the pier to sit, facing the water and dabbing at the cut near his eye. Midday haze obscured the distance, even the bridge dissolved from view. Nearby, the seagulls rose up slowly and then settled down again on the rotting pier. Tenderly, he inspected the places where Frank had bit his face, feeling puffed skin.

Get him to talk to you, he reminded himself. Scare him if you have to, use what force you have to, but get him talking. Keep him talking till he tells the truth.

He rose to his feet, returned to the car and removed his keys from his pant pocket. Frank had fallen quiet inside the trunk, as though gathering up his strength for the next round. In one movement, Abatangelo inserted the key, popped the trunk, and with his right hand stiff like a blade dug deep into Frank's midriff beneath the sternum cartilage. He drove his left thumb beneath the trapezius, paralyzing Frank's right shoulder and arm. Frank did not scream. His face turned white and the popping eyes displayed their veins.

“You know who I am, right?”

“No,” Frank whispered. Then: “Yeah. Don't. I didn't do anything. I can help.”

“Help what.”

“Find her.”

“Oh yeah? Find her how.”

“I know who's got her.”

“You don't have her?”

“Me? No, no.”

“The Mexicans.”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I'll tell you. First—”

Abatangelo dug his thumb deeper into Frank's shoulder. “You love her?” Abatangelo whispered. “Come on, cocksucker, you don't have to think about it. Do you care what happens to her?”

Frank said, “Yes.”

The word made Abatangelo want to spit.

“There's an envelope in my pocket. Take it out.”

Frank's left hand, shaking, managed to tug the packet of photographs out. Images of Shel, bruised, scratched and bloody, tumbled across his chest and face.