The Devil's Redhead (30 page)

To combat her growing fear she picked a song, the first that came to mind, a number she loved from the old days, Rickie Lee Jones: “We Belong Together.” She sang it to herself, over and over, the way a mother sings to a child in a storm.

And I can hear him in every footstep's passing sigh

He goes crazy these nights

watching heartbeats go by

and they whisper—We belong together

You're not gonna look back, she told herself, you're not gonna whine and whimper, you're gonna feel good about seeing Danny one last time, letting him know what he means to you, then do what needs to get done. You're gonna face Felix, you're gonna tell him the whole deal, you're gonna get square with him or die. Tell him: You want revenge, here it is.

And you told her to stand tall when you kissed her …

No need to go hunting, Felix. Leave Danny out of it. Leave everybody but me out of it. The deal was you and me. I keep Frank in the saddle, I live, he lives. At least for a while. Can't say I know all the facts, but I'd be willing to bet “in the saddle” is a reach. So here I am. It ain't marriage, Felix, granted, but it's what I bring to the table. I may be a lot of things, but one thing I am not is some two-faced sob sister trying to squeeze pity out of a rock. I don't try to crawl back over a bridge I just burned down. I don't beg back my last chance. And if that means I'm stuck, well hey. I can dig it. I'm stuck.

She reached the ranch house an hour later, by which time the song lyrics and monologue had done the trick. She felt braced for the worst. And that inspired a state of mind that strangely calmed her.

She gained the doorway after a dizzying effort on the porch stairs. Rowena stood at the very center of the kitchen, cigarette in one hand, book of matches in the other, looking for all the world as though she'd been standing in exactly that spot for days. A smell like burnt gum lingered in the air. A tin can full of menthol butts rested on the stove. From further within the house the babble of Duval's television leaked from beyond his bedroom door.

“What the fuck happened to you?” Rowena said as Shel entered the light. Her tone of voice suggested she actually meant to ask: Is it going to happen to me? Shel didn't answer, but instead concerted her strength to work her way along the wall to the breakfast nook where she took a seat. Setting her head on the tabletop, she closed her eyes.

“Where's Roy?” Rowena asked, her voice rising. “I been over to the house, walked the whole damn way and back, over a mile. Nobody there. Not Roy, not Lyle. I been back to the compound, three times since dark. Nobody there, neither. I got a bad feeling. You know something, tell me. I got a right to know. I got a kid, remember?” She waited for an answer, and getting none, moved closer. “To hell with you. To hell with Frank.” She clutched the side of the table and shook it. “You hear me? Things were fine, they were going goddamn fine, then Frank. Fuck him and you, the two of you, I got no place to go, I got no money, no car, I had to hitch my ass back here from the movie me and Duval got shipped to last night. You tell me and you tell me now what the hell's going on.”

She made a halfhearted lunge at Shel, then changed tack and started ransacking her pockets.

“You got money, you give it to me. Give it!”

Her hands pecked at Shel's clothing. Shel tried and failed to fend her off. In the end she put her hands up, thinking, God help me, touching her hair. Her head felt like it was going to come apart.

“The truck,” Shel said finally. “Maybe …”

Rowena found Shel's keys in her pant pocket. She ripped them out and backed away from the table.

“'Bout time,” she said. She gathered her coat from the back of a chair and strode to the rear doorway, calling out, “Duval, you stay put, hear? I'll be back.” She struggled with her coat then turned to face Shel. “Look at you,” she said with disgust. “Come back looking like a punching bag. You're pathetic, know that? You deserve what you get.”

Shortly Shel heard the truck start up and the tires throwing gravel. She set her head back down on the table and looked about the kitchen as though for the last time. The wall clock ticked, the refrigerator hummed. A cobweb hung like a strand of hair in the ceiling corner. On the window ledge, a tiny fern she'd bought at Walgreens struggled to grow inside a Mickey Mouse cup. The ageless mouse smiled back at her with berserk joy. I've come back here to save the people I love, she told Mickey. I've come back to state my case to the Devil.

She found herself singing again, the same tune as before. “We belong together,” she repeated, over and over, eyes closed. Outside, the wind picked up. Tree limbs scraped the walls of the house, banging the gutters along the roof. The noise roused her, she opened her eyes.

Duval stood just beyond the table's edge, staring at her.

“Hey,” Shel whispered. She worked up a smile and reached out her hand. The boy backed away.

“Now don't,” she said. She struggled upright. The room swam. “Help Aunt Shel to her feet, all right? She's got some medicine in the basement. She'll feel worlds better if you just give her a hand.”

Duval continued edging away. All of sudden, with the same blank expression he wore for everyone, he spun around and lunged from the room, fleeing back down the hall. Shortly his door slammed shut and the latch was thrown.

Got a real streak going with the fellas right now, Shel thought.

She gained her balance and removed her shoes, the better to feel the floor beneath her. Using the wall, she edged down the hallway, stumbled to the narrow door, and peered down the wood plank stairway to the cellar. Vertigo greeted her at the bottom. Who put this chasm in my house? The overhead lamp swayed back and forth, tipped by her own hand reaching for the chain. Shadows ballooned then shrank on opposite walls. She drew a breath so deep it made her cough, then gripped the handrail, sliding down step by step.

At the bottom the concrete floor was clammy and freezing cold. A disgusting shiver rifled up her legs at the same time a thunderclap of pain shot down from her head. She faltered, one knee gave way and, holding out her arm, she managed to hit the floor softly, whispering, “Whoa, boy.”

Despite her best effort to be stoic, her face was wet with tears. Every inch of her skin bled sweat, and she sat there panting, holding her head and wondering, Good God, what is this?

After several minutes the pain at least became a known quantity, she could think. Where oh where did I put that stash, she wondered, Frank's old meds, from the times I took him to the hospital. Unable to reach her feet again, she crawled around the back of the stairwell and found the old blue suitcase in a clutter of sagging boxes. She fumbled with the clasps, then just threw it down, busting it open in a cloud of vaguely familiar clothes. Tucked into the inner flap she found the small brown prescription bottle, inside of which she found Haldol, some Pavulon, Nembutal, a Darvocet. Quite a brew, she thought. Not a painkiller in the crowd, but given the circumstances, I'll settle for numb.

She swallowed dry the first two capsules that tottled into her palm. Taking a deep breath, she settled down onto the cold floor and prepared to wait.

Abatangelo gave Waxman a lift to the Cantina Corozan, down the street from his flat. It was time for the rituals of sobriety. Coffee. Ice water. Cheap heavy food. Waxman leaned into the pay phone, connecting with the Metro desk to get a go for the next day's edition.

The article, scrawled on place mats, a third of it in Abatangelo's handwriting, lay on the counter. It had taken two hours to get it down. After muddled agonizing, Waxman chose a front-on shot of Shel for the art.

This was the way with Wax, Abatangelo remembered, you had to stroke his hand. You had to check his fever, bring him soup, tell him how much you loved absolutely every thought he stole from you. Otherwise he'd stop listening halfway through. The eyes would glaze over. You'd never recognize a word you said.

One of Waxman's modifications, except for one teasing line, was to downplay the Aryan Menace theme, until the connections seemed a bit less contrived. Abatangelo had responded, “Sure, sounds smart,” secretly feeling a little off the wall for having played this card to begin with.
Blut und Ehre
, he thought. Blood and Iron. Where the hell did
that
come from?

Another of Waxman's self-assertions involved removal of all mention of Abatangelo from the article. In defensive tones, Waxman had argued that an “anonymous source in the narcotics trade” conveyed more credibility to the average reader than a named felon. Abatangelo offered only token protest. Remaining nameless had the advantage of postponing Shel's awareness that he was the one who'd dropped the dime on Frank. It troubled him, thinking how she'd react once she knew. He made a pact with himself—he would never claim he only did it for her.

Regardless, if all went well, in less than twenty-four hours, Frank would be on the run alone, in custody for murder, or dead. Better than I have a right to expect, he thought. But exactly what Frank had coming. Remember, he's not just some sorry, hapless twerp. He kills people.

At the pay phone Waxman seemed neither agitated nor terribly pleased. They were dealing, him and whoever. The smell of boiling beans and fatty meat impregnated the tiny cantina. Above the grill, Christmas decorations streaked with greasy dust rattled in the overhead fan's humming exhaust.

Waxman said, “Sure, sure, sure,” and got off the phone. He scratched his throat and turned, eyes searching out Abatangelo, nodding. They were on. He crossed the room as though the man on the other end of the line were still arguing with him.

“Congratulations,” Abatangelo said. “How's it feel?”

Waxman sat down and tasted his coffee. “We bump a piece on the American Atheist Society. Twenty column inches somewhere between the obits and the weddings. No art.”

Abatangelo shrugged. “From tiny acorns,” he offered. He would have liked a stronger bid out of Waxman, but he told himself, Be patient. He slid the manila envelope containing the best of his prints—of Shel, the ranch house, the cars coming in and out—across the counter. “Just in case,” he said, trying to sound optimistic. Waxman accepted the envelope, then fingered the article lying out before him, folding it into sixes.

“One o'clock deadline,” he said. “This still needs tuning.” He removed his glasses and put his fingers, short and thick and freckled, to his eyes, massaging them in circles. “Take it to the tabs, Jew,” he murmured.

“You ride yourself too hard,” Abatangelo told him.

Waxman smiled wanly, finished his coffee and put his glasses back on. Away from his face, his hands shook.

“I've got two cats to feed,” he announced. He rose and searched his pockets for his keys.

They bid each other good night. Abatangelo, outside the cantina, watched while Waxman trudged uphill along Delores Park, brightened one moment, darkened the next, as he passed through successive wastes of lamplight. When he vanished finally into the shadowed doorway of his apartment building, Abatangelo turned away to find his car.

Steering toward home, he fidgeted with the radio and found a nightfly playing Ellington's “The Midnight Sun Will Never Set”—winking horns, a Johnny Hodges solo insinuating flesh and romance. At Market and Church, streetlights flashed overhead in a winter mist. Derelicts and leather queens ignored the crosswalks, wandering the street in defiant oblivion. In a high lit window, a man with a sheet gathered around his neck got a midnight haircut from a woman in a red slip.

Abatangelo pictured Shel lying awake in his bed, dressed as he'd left her, in his sweatshirt and boxers. He imagined she'd be restless, staring at the walls. Probably her headaches had kept up. It still seemed a miracle of sorts she was even there.

He stopped at a corner market for another liter of Stolichnaya. Two Lebanese brothers manned the store—one scowled, the other offered a smile of dizzying falsity. Abatangelo asked the two brothers where the pay phone was, and in sudden, familial unison they pointed back toward the ice machine. He dialed his own number, preparing to apologize for not calling sooner. It rang ten times. Eleven times. Behind the register the smiling brother, mimicking a baseline fade-away, ash-canned a crumpled candy bar wrapper from ten feet.

“I not be stopped,” he shouted, fists in the air. “I am Hakeem.”

Abatangelo hung up, barged out of the grocery, threw himself behind the wheel of his car, and headed for North Beach. Don't go off till you know there's something to go off about, he told himself. She's not your secretary, why would she answer your phone? She's unplugged the damn thing. She's asleep. He turned onto Columbus recklessly, tires catching the film of fresh oil the rain had lifted off the pavement. Abreast of The Smiling Child Market he braked so suddenly the car fishtailed across the center stripe. He nearly tagged the 30 Stockton heading downtown.