The Devil's Redhead (40 page)

Waxman averted his eyes. Stirring with one hand, he reached down blindly with the other, nudging one of the cats away.

“You understand, Wax? I told Frank Maas—the guy who almost killed the woman I love—I told
him
I was sorry.”

“Yes, well—”

“I'm not saying my motives are pure. I need him, sure, right, he's the only link back to Shel I've got now. And he's scared, Wax. He's tired of running. He wants to come clean. So I brought him here.”

Waxman turned back to face him. “Look, not so long ago I'd have had no worries on the matter. The paper would have backed me up. But no more green eyeshades. We've got suits running the editorial board. They're facile types who mouth platitudes and watch their asses. They're particularly fond of this new buzzword, ‘Public Journalism,' whatever the hell that means. And don't ask them today if you want the same answer tomorrow.”

“The story, Wax. That's your protection.”

“Not anymore.” He turned off the heat and removed the saucepan from the burner. “When the police come around the press room to bitch, when they pound the table and accuse me of harboring a fugitive or abetting a kidnap after the fact or whatever other iniquity they concoct on the spot, the suits won't so much as blink. They're going to say, ‘Here, take him.'
Ecce homo.
To the tune of a fife and drum they'll run me up a flagpole and leave me there to hang.”

The door to the bathroom opened. Frank appeared, tottering in the doorway. Gathering his bearings, he guided himself with one hand along the wall while the other hand pressed a washcloth to his face. His skin was mottled with cuts and bruises and flush from the cleansing Abatangelo had given the wounds with Listerine. Abatangelo had nursed his own wounds, too. Scratches ran down his arms. Black and blue eruptions of puffy flesh, detectable as bite marks up close, dotted his face, resembling the ravages of acne from a distance.

Frank shambled into the kitchen, resting his weight on the door frame and looking from one man to the other. “I guess I'm ready,” he whispered. His eyes were glassy. Abatangelo got up from his chair, took Frank's arm and guided him into the dining room. Waxman ladled out vegetables and broth, dug two slices of wheat bread from a cellophane bag and dropped them onto a saucer.

Waxman's dining room doubled as a study. Paperbacks tottered every direction on the bookshelves, several rows deep, and they gave the place a smell of mildew. Above the desk hung a portrait of Sandino, the Nicaraguan patriot. A pair of nail trimmers rested on the window ledge beside a withered tea bag and a handkerchief soiled from nosebleeds.

Waxman placed the soup and bread on the table. Frank sat there, staring at it. Abatangelo picked up the spoon and molded Frank's hand around it.

“You said you'd help us,” he said. “Be a good idea to eat.”

Abatangelo tore off a corner of bread and dipped it in the broth, lifting it to Frank's lips. After several urgings and refusals, Frank accepted it, eyes still glazed. Abatangelo gestured for Waxman to get his recorder down from the bookshelf and to ready himself with paper and pen. Sighing, Waxman obeyed.

In time Frank stopped resisting, he accepted more bread, more soup, his skin acquired color. His eyes grew steady, but a dullness remained. Finally, he wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and gestured that he was through.

Abatangelo inserted a cassette into Waxman's recorder and poured Frank a glass of red wine. Frank accepted it, drinking with his eyes closed and downing the entire glass.

Abatangelo said, “Tell Wax what you started to tell me in the car.”

Frank nodded, still holding on to the glass. He implored with his eyes, and Abatangelo poured out three fingers more. Frank smiled at the portion, took a sip.

“Clean the slate, Frank,” Abatangelo said. “You owe it to her. Remember what you said? Wax here, he can bring you public, and that's about as safe as you can expect, given the circumstances. I'm still good for the three grand, that's a promise. You're going to need it for a lawyer. Turn yourself in, get yourself holed away in witness protection. But first, here and now, you tell your story. That's the deal.”

Frank nodded. It was difficult to tell if he was agreeing to what was said or simply confirming that he'd heard it. Shortly, without any change of expression, he turned to Abatangelo and said, “You're gonna steal my old lady.”

Abatangelo studied Frank's eyes. A little late to be worried about that, he thought. “I don't want to see her hurt,” he said. “You don't, either. Not now. Not again. You said so. So what are we going to do, Frank?”

Frank ran his fingertip around a stain on the tabletop and his eyebrows jigged; he looked like a man in furious discussion with his better self. Then, without further provocation, he lifted his gaze to the ceiling and, as though the words were written there, began to talk. His voice droned in a tremulous whisper, which Abatangelo found encouraging. There was little time to deviate, to invent. The words just came. Waxman jotted down what he could, names to get back to, threads of the story left hanging. The recorder caught the rest.

All in all, Frank seemed reasonably in possession of his faculties, though the story bounced around time-wise and he tended to obsess on cryptic digressions till Waxman brought him gently back. His mind was a whirlwind, in contrast to his voice, which droned on vacantly. The phrase “fitting and fair” cropped up a lot, a sort of conversational tic to create a little moral distance whenever the story grew particularly incriminating. Every now and then his eyes flared, a look of puzzlement darkened his features, as though he himself was startled by his own admissions. As though everything had happened to someone else, and that someone was hovering nearby, invisible, whispering in his ear. Hopefully, Abatangelo thought, the invisible someone wasn't lying too much.

The clincher came when he admitted yes, it was likely true, he was responsible for the deaths of the Briscoe twins. He stammered through the admission, beginning to end, saying he couldn't quite remember the thing itself, but there was a terrible feeling hanging over the images he had in his mind. The moment he conceded this, looking up into Waxman's eyes, a palpable change came over him—not so much as though a weight had been lifted, as a light had gone out. His spirit seemed smaller, duller. And ironically, because of that, it seemed more convincing.

Meanwhile, Waxman's notepad overran with names: a Mexican known only as El Zopilote, others named Cesar, Humberto, Pepe, Gaspar Arevalo, then the Akers brothers, Felix Randall, Lonnie Dayball, Rick Tully. Waxman went back over the story again and again to eliminate the confusions and tie the digressions together. He ran down the names one last time and Frank promised it was every one he could think of.

“Remember,” he said, glancing back and forth between them, “I helped out. Right?”

Waxman sat back, reviewing his notes. Abatangelo pulled his chair up next to Frank's and leaned close enough to whisper. “Where is she, Frank?”

Frank chuckled nervously, flinched, and went pale. “Just a guess, all right?”

“For now.”

Frank nodded and rubbed his arms. Abatangelo uncorked the wine bottle, doled out another portion, this one larger than the last.

“Thank you,” Frank said.

“Keep going.”

Frank nodded and licked his lips a long while. Eventually he said, “At the hotel.”

“What hotel?” Waxman asked.

Frank gestured with his hand to convey a distance. “North side of the river, around Montezuma Hills. It's the only hotel out there.”

Abatangelo asked, “Will they keep her alive?”

Frank cringed and the edges of his mouth curled up.

“If you know,” Waxman offered.

“I don't know,” Frank said. Still more softly, he added, “I'm sorry.”

Abatangelo had to force back the impulse to reach out, grab Frank by the throat and scream,
Sorry?

Frank said, “There's another name.”

Waxman snapped to. “Please?”

“The money man, the one who owns the hotel, the land it's on, everything. His name, his name is …” Frank looked up at the ceiling again but apparently it failed him now. He shrugged and looked down. “More Air—”

“Moreira,” Waxman responded.

Frank flinched and wiped his hand across his mouth. “You know these people.”

“Not the others,” Waxman replied. “Rolando Moreira, I know. It's not a name that's hard to recognize. He's been in the papers of late. He gives a lot of speeches. And apparently he's throwing some giant party for his daughter.”

“I don't know about that,” Frank said.

“He's been drumming up aid in the Mission and the Delta, aid for his little projects. Rehabilitating gang members. Providing legal assistance for migrants. There's talk it's all just a front.”

“Yeah?” Frank said.

“What I know, I only know secondhand.” Waxman attempted a smile. “From friends. I have friends in the movement.”

“Aha,” Frank replied. The way he said it, it came out sounding like: You would.

Abatangelo said, “This hotel, the one out in Montezuma Hills, how easy is it to get in and out of?”

Frank affected bewilderment. “In, easy. Out, I mean, out how?”

“Out with Shel.”

“I don't know she's there.”

“If she is.”

“There's a zillion rooms, they've got guys, Cesar, Humberto, Pepe, the place is crawling with guys.”

“This marina then, the one you mentioned. The writing above the phone, it said something like, ‘The lady waits. Same place by the river.'”

“Yeah?”

“You think that's where they mean to bring Shel?”

“I don't know.”

“You're going to show us where it is. Right?”

Frank shrugged in a way that suggested he meant yes. “Can I lie down somewhere for a little while?”

Abatangelo sat back, took a deep breath and told himself to be careful. Removing the cassette from the recorder, he labeled it, set the tape down on the table where Frank could see it, and said, “This is the truth, right? Not a little story to make us go away.”

Abatangelo shot Waxman a glance that said, Let him answer.

Frank paled and licked his lips. “Honest,” he said quietly. “Please. I'm so tired.”

Abatangelo scooted the cassette across the table to Waxman. “Sure, Frank. Catch yourself a little nap. We'll need you on your toes for the trip out to the marina.”

Waxman took the covers off his own bed and provided them to Frank on the couch. Frank lay down, tucked up his knees and drew the bedding over his head. Drawn by their own sheddings, the cats materialized, leaping up onto Frank's body and pumping the blanket with their paws. Waxman gestured for Abatangelo to join him in the hallway. Once they were alone, he whispered, “Are you all right?”

The question caught Abatangelo off-guard. “Why?”

Waxman studied him. “I'm not saying it's as bad as it was at the restaurant, but there's a look in your eye. It changes, but something's always there, and it's frightening.”

Abatangelo felt exposed. Judged. Frank's not the only object of scrutiny in this story, he realized. “I'm not sure I can help that.”

“Perhaps you should try,” Waxman cautioned. “Relax.”

Abatangelo laughed. “Oh yeah. Ring for the masseuse.”

Waxman gestured fussily. “Look, I have a call to make. Help yourself to tea, or the fridge. Make yourself comfortable. That's what I meant.”

He vanished into his room, and Abatangelo watched him go, feeling abandoned to his own intensity. He went back into the dining room, commandeered a chair from the table, sat in it backward, and rested his chin on his folded arms. Shortly his outrage failed him and he realized how tired he was. He catnapped in the chair, unaware of how much time was passing. His thoughts grew dreamlike, and at one point he imagined his father and Frank on the beach at Montara, scattering Shel's ashes.

The next thing he knew, Waxman was greeting a visitor at the door.

She was a small, thin woman with broad dark features. An Indian, Abatangelo guessed. She appeared to be in her twenties, though a certain hardness about the eyes made her seem much older. She wore a work shirt, flannel jacket, white Keds; her black hair hung straight to her elbows. There was a sadness about her, but a certain ferocity as well. Whatever sorrow she'd endured had been racked into clarity.

She clutched an accordion folder to her chest. Declining introductions, Waxman led her into his own room and closed the door behind them. Waxman's voice, the woman's voice, thrummed urgently back and forth beyond the door for about a quarter hour, then the muted voices stopped, Waxman's door opened again. The woman visitor returned to the entry, studying Frank now with an expression of profound disgust.

As she stood there, Abatangelo noticed something he'd failed to see before. A hatchwork of whitish scars mottled her throat. Her shirt collar, buttoned to the top, partially concealed them.