Whistler's Angel (2 page)

“Well,
if I was you
,” her mother mimicked his grammar, “I would get the hell out of this house.”

The interview had gone downhill very quickly. The big one looked as if he might slap her. The other one, the bald one, waved the bigger one off and pulled a file from his briefcase. He said, “We tried to do this without scaring you too badly. Now I’ll show you what a psycho Whistler is."

The file, or the parts that he allowed her to read, said that he, Adam Whistler, was a cold-blooded killer who was wanted in a half dozen countries. “He’s not just a killer. He’s worse. He’s a butcher. You think he wouldn’t kill you? Two women? Let me show you.”

He produced several photographs of the scene of a massacre. It appeared to be a family. They all looked Hispanic. Men, women and children, grandparents as well.

“
And this is just one. It’s not even the worst. Now look close at the kids. See their throats have been cut? He did the kids first so their parents could watch. You want someone taking pictures like these of you two? Help us, we’ll help you. It’s that simple.”

According to Claudia, this was followed by a rant against him and his “expatriate father.” His father, they said, was, if anything, worse. A renegade, a traitor, turned his back on his country. An extortionist, an employer of killers for hire. A man who had taught his own son how to kill. And a man not above using innocent women as a cover for his criminal designs.

Most of this wasn’t true, but enough of it was. Claudia was in no mood to sort fact from fiction. What she knew was that he had lied from the start. Claudia had confronted him. She caught him off guard. She asked him, “Just tell me. What are you?”

He said, “Wait a minute. You say one of them was bald? And the second man, the bigger one….thin lips and no neck? His eyes look like nobody’s home?”

“And he stank of cigars. So you know them.”

“Claudia…look…there are things I haven’t told you…”

“Oh, really? No shit.” She threw up her hands. “And this stuff about your father. He’s actually worse? Who was your grandfather, Hitler?”

She knew his father. So did her mother. They’d met in Aspen four months before this happened when his father had flown over from Europe. His father and her mother had since become friends, corresponding by telephone and
email.

“Claudia...none of this is at all what you think. If you’ll let me, I’ll try to explain.”

“Do you kill people, Adam?”

“People who? You mean that dead family they showed you?”

“Them or anyone, Adam. That’s a yes or no question.”

“No, I don’t. I mean...not people like you. I would never...”

“Oh, Adam, shut up and get out.”

“Those men...what exactly did they ask you to do?”

“It no longer matters. I told them to cram it. They were even more repulsive than you are.”

Whistler was sure that he knew who they were. Two men, dark suits, and that heavy-handed could only be Lockwood and Briggs. They weren’t trained agents. They were little more than goons. The one with dead eyes, the one who’d almost slapped her mother, was Lockwood, a man with a near-lizard brain who had once attempted to intimidate Whistler by actually twirling his gun. And Claudia was right; he did stink of cigars; he had one between his teeth at the time. It had apparently never crossed the man’s mind that a pistol being twirled is non-functional.

Whistler dropped him with a kick to the crotch. Briggs was there at the time, but chose not to intercede although Whistler had invited him to do so if he wished. Briggs was marginally brighter than Lockwood, but, as evidenced by the presentation he’d made, had failed to grasp the concept of overkill. They both worked for a man named Felix Aubrey and the ledger Whistler took belonged to Aubrey. But he couldn’t imagine what they’d hoped to gain by approaching Claudia in that way. One does not tell a woman, “See? He cuts children’s’ throats” and expect her to carry on as before except that she’d now be an informant.

The worst of it was
,
there was nothing to inform on. Neither Claudia nor her mother were being “used” in any way. Neither he nor his father had any “designs.” He had thought that they’d reached an understanding with Aubrey. All he’d wanted from them was to be left alone. They would be left alone in return.

He was sorely tempted to find her two visitors and throw them both out of a window. But as angry as he was, he decided to do nothing. It wouldn’t help
Claudia’s opinion of him if she learned of their deaths on the six o’clock news. He would simply go away, stay away for a while. In a week or so he would try calling Claudia. She might hang up on him the first time or two, but he wouldn't give up. He would get her to listen. After hearing the truth she might still despise him, but at least she would hate him for things he had done and not for what those clowns had told her.

Doing nothing turned out to be a mistake. He’d allowed himself to hope that if he took no action, they wouldn’t bother Claudia or her mother again, having realized that they were in no way involved. In that respect, he’d been stupidly naïve. Having shown their hand with that clumsy approach, they decided that they had better play it out, and quickly, before he or his father could respond. He should have foreseen that, but he hadn’t.

Either way, there he stood, outside her hospital room, his heart breaking at the sight of her lying there. They had moved her that morning from Intensive Care but her care seemed no less intense. There were tubes in both arms and one ran to her nose. Apparently she needed help breathing. Her throat was thickly bandaged and two drains had been implanted. She looked so very small, so very frail in that bed. But she seemed to be asleep and not in pain.

Her mother was with her. She looked up and saw him. She started to speak but she could only shake her head. She got up and left the room without a word.

He had spoken to her doctor about her condition. The bullet had hit her just over the collarbone. It had grazed both her trachea and her spine, but in the doctor’s view, she’d been lucky. He said the shock and the swelling had caused some paralysis, but he thought that she’d recover full use of her limbs. On that morning she’d been able to raise her left arm. She could move and even flex all her fingers. She was still quite weak and it hurt her to talk. The doctor said that he could see her, but for only a few minutes. The doctor’s real concern was the loss of brain function. He said, “Well...you’ll see for yourself.”

Whistler, reluctantly, entered the room. He tried to make no sound, but she must have sensed his presence. She took a deep breath and her eyes fluttered open. It took them a moment to focus on him. When they did, he’d expected to see blame, condemnation. Their expression, however, was gentle, serene. There was even a trace of a smile.

She moistened her lips and asked him to come closer. Her voice
was raspy, not much more than a whisper. She told him that she was glad that he’d come. She had needed to see him so that she could explain why the light had told her to go back.

“Um...the light?”

“The white light. You’ve heard of it. It’s really there, Adam. You really do see it when you die.”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“No, you’re not.” She paused to swallow. She tried to clear her throat. “But it’s there. And it spoke to me. It sent me back to you.”

“Claudia...listen...you should not try to talk now.”

“Wait, I’m jumping ahead. The white light comes later. The first thing you know, you’re out of your body. You’re just kind of floating above it. I saw myself lying in the dirt where I fell. And I saw when the doctors were working on me. But you never get upset. You almost don’t mind. Then you sort of remember that you have to go someplace and suddenly you’re in this long tunnel.”

“And the light is…at the end of the tunnel.”

“Actually, it comes toward you like it wants you to stop. I slowed down, but I wanted to see past it. There were people there, Adam. Way off in the distance. They were on the other side of a beautiful meadow. I could only see shapes, but they were definitely people. They were waving at me, Adam. They were waiting to greet me. I bet one of them was my father. You think?”

Whistler shrugged. Or nodded. Or did something in between. He had known that her father was long deceased. He had broken his neck in a rock-climbing accident when Claudia was five years of age.

“And they had a dog with them. It was wagging its tail. It was good to see that dogs go there, too.”

The whisper, he realized, wasn’t all from her injury. It was as much a sound of wonderment, of awe. It did hurt her to speak, but she didn’t seem to care. She narrowed her eyes as another thought struck her.

“I didn’t see a cat, but there were birds in the meadow. If they have dogs and birds, they’d have cats, don’t you think? Not that the cats would go after the birds. Nothing bad happens there. It’s all love.”

He said, “You need your rest. We’ll talk later.”

“Adam, sit.”

“Claudia, I’m so sorry. This whole thing is my fault. I never dreamed that they’d try a stunt like that. And you were right about me...well...some of it, anyway. I just wish...”

“Adam, hush. Get a chair.”

“I should go.”

“You’re staying, Adam. Now go get a chair. You’re going to want to hear this sitting down.”

A nurse stopped at the door. She tapped a finger on her watch, reminding him not to overstay. He nodded, but he did take a seat.

“Now hold my hand and listen,” she said, and he obeyed. He was glad to feel some strength in her fingers.

“Believe me,” she told him, “I know how this will sound. But you haven’t been there. I have.”

“I’m listening.”

“And don’t argue with me, Adam. You’ll be wasting your breath. You don’t have a choice. I don’t either.”

He thought he was about to hear some sort of prophecy. That some biblical catastrophe was about to occur if mankind did not change its ways. Or else that...although it was well after Christmas...three spirits were going to visit him that night and give him a chance at redemption. This last turned out to be the closest.

She proceeded to tell him she’d been given a mission. Her task, the light told her, was to go back and save him. She would teach him how to live, how to love, and love freely. She would be his friend, his companion, his protector, so
that he needn’t fear those who still lived in darkness. And when he’s become the man he can be, they would start to build a family…have children.

“Um…Children?”

“I’m pretty sure, yeah. I think that’s part of the plan.”

“I see. Would this...be anytime soon?”

“That’s long term, I think. No big hurry. First things first. Unless you’d rather...”

“I can wait.”

She looked at him, squinting “You think I’m nuts, don’t you.”

“Claudia…no, I do not think you’re crazy. But I think you need time to get well.”