The Devil's Redhead (5 page)

Abatangelo reached into his pant pocket, withdrew his federal release check and asked for a pen. He endorsed the check and slipped it into the waiting hand. “Thank you,” he said.

The driver pocketed the check then handed back a plain white envelope. Inside, Abatangelo found a budget fare one-way air ticket from Tucson to San Francisco, plus cash.

“You're an honest man,” he said after counting the money.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Abatangelo met the man's eyes in the rearview mirror. “Nothing,” he said, pocketing the envelope. “It's all here, I'll need it. Thanks.”

The driver coughed and shook his head. “How far you think that mouth will get you?”

Not free ten minutes, Abatangelo thought. Already this. “Look,” he said, “it was a poor choice of words, I admit. If it'll help, I apologize.”

The driver tapped his temple with his forefinger. “The prison's up here, my man. You ain't out till you're out up here.”

They drove in silence to the federal highway junction, then south between Coronado Forest and the Peloncillos. The oncoming storm struck in time over Greasewood Mountain to the west, and with typical desert swiftness surged overhead within minutes, showering the highway with hail and rain before journeying east, accompanied by a ghostly wind. Abatangelo rolled down the window, put his face in the storm like a little kid. The worst of it passed as suddenly as it had come. In the ensuing calm he asked if they could pull over.

“Don't tell me you gotta pee.”

“This won't take long,” Abatangelo assured him.

The driver sighed and slowed the car onto the berm. Abatangelo opened the door, collected the 35 mm and got out. Hiking his collar about his neck, he crossed the wet slick highway at a trot. Twenty yards beyond the asphalt he stopped, lowered his collar and idly chafed his hands. He studied the desert plain, stubbled by frost-blackened cacti and easing into low chaparral. Mt. Rayburne stood in the distance, snowcapped and shrouded in a filmy haze. To the south, the Dos Cabezas Mountains lay misted in faraway rain. The desert floor wallowed in storm shadow, with tails of sand kicked up by crosswinds.

The mere fact the view spread wide before him, unbroken by walls, free of razor wire, it shuddered up a profound relief and he found himself taking slow, smiling breaths. Lifting the Bell & Howell to his eye, he set the focus on infinity and snapped three frames, to remind himself forever of this moment. Turning left and right, he shot the rest of the roll impulsively, focusing on anything and everything that loomed suddenly before him, letting it clarify in the hot spot, triggering the shutter. Lowering the camera finally, he took a long, deep breath of the rain-tinged air, then capped his lens and turned back toward the highway.

Once he was back inside the cab, the driver turned around. The man's eyes were a vivid blue, deep set in a way that enhanced the pockmarks on his cheeks.

“Listen,” he said, “I came on a little rough back there. You know, it's just … not every guy I pick up at that place has a brain in his head.”

“It's not a problem,” Abatangelo said, putting the camera away. He turned to peer out across the desert again.

“I'm not a young man anymore,” the driver said.

“Me neither.”

The driver took a moment to study him. “You been in what? Time, I mean.”

“A hard ten.”

The man whistled. “Well, now.” He regarded Abatangelo a bit more mindfully. “That's a heavy beef. What they tag you for?”

“Pot,” Abatangelo said. Sensing this explained too little, he added, “We brought it in from Thailand.”

The driver put the cab in gear. “Bring it in from the moon for all I care.” He checked his mirror and eased back onto the highway. “What happened, you take the fall so your crew could skate?”

Smart man, Abatangelo thought. “Nobody got to skate,” he advised.

Shel and the others had served three and a half in exchange for his ten. It was his choice. His plea. The feds jumped at the chance to claim they'd taken down the main man. Their case had developed evidence problems, they'd gotten arrogant and sloppy. Not so sloppy they'd lose, but bad enough Abatangelo's offer sounded like a bargain. Their snitch—neither the odious private investigator Blatt nor the wannabe biker Chaney, as it turned out, but one of the Beaverton pillheads—was working a second grand jury out of Portland. The agents tried to hide that fact, and got caught in the snare of their own lies. It was fun to watch them squirm on the stand. Pity it provided no more leverage than it had.

The driver rolled down his window and spat. “Ten fucking years. Out here no less. Over smokes.”

“Yeah, well, it was a lot of smokes,” Abatangelo offered. “I'd been at it awhile.”

“Which means what, you deserved it?”

They stared at each other in the mirror.

“No,” Abatangelo said. “That's not what I said.”

The driver held his gaze a moment longer, then offered a comradely laugh. Lifting his head, he intoned, “‘While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.'”

Abatangelo smiled.

“That funny?”

“I wasn't expecting to hear cabbies quote Lenin till I got to San Francisco.”

The driver eased down into the front seat a little, as though finally convinced he could relax. “We got a chunk of time to Tucson. Settle back. You want, I can turn on the radio.”

“No thanks,” Abatangelo said. “I'm enjoying the quiet, actually. Prison's a noisy place.”

“I remember,” the driver said. He reached into his pocket, withdrew the kickout check, and read the name. “Abbot'n'Jell-O?” he said.

“Nice try.” Abatangelo recited the name, the driver read along, then he tucked the check back into his pocket. “That's Italian,” the cabby said.

“So goes the rumor.”

“It mean anything? In English?”

Abatangelo regarded again the wolves' teeth and hawk feathers hanging from the rearview mirror. “You mean like Crazy Horse, Little Wolf, something like that?”

“Whatever.”

Abatangelo wondered at the man's curiosity. People had the strangest notions about Italians, especially out here, the middle of nowhere.

“The prefix
ab
,” he said, “it usually means ‘down.' And
angelo
—”

“Means ‘angel,'” the driver guessed.

“It never got spelled out to me in so many words, but—”

“Fallen angel,” the man said, excited, like he was a game show contestant. He uttered a snarly little laugh. “That fucking perfect or what? A hard ten for Mr. Fallen Angel.”

At the airport they drove around to the departure gates and pulled to the curb. Abatangelo stared out at the gleaming modern structure of metal and glass. Skycaps manned their consoles. Travelers bustled in and out. He found himself strangely paralyzed. Shortly, he realized the cabby was staring at him.

“Scared?” he asked.

“So it would seem,” Abatangelo replied.

“Normal enough.” The man smiled. “Crowds here aren't that bad. At the other end, it'll be worse. Park yourself in the can if you have to. Wait it out. It passes.”

“Thank you.” Abatangelo gathered up his paper sack and got out and came around to the driver's side window. “How do I look?”

He'd shorn his hair close in prison, a gesture to self-denial, and he looked like a large, savvy monk. Complicating the picture was his new suit, received only yesterday by mail. It still bore the creases from its packaging. Worse, he had on nothing but a white T-shirt underneath. The family friend who'd sent the suit had forgotten to send a shirt along.

After a cursory up and down, the driver said, “Screw how you look. How do you feel?”

Abatangelo uttered a small, nervous laugh. “First time thrown in the pool. Multiplied by a thousand.”

“A word to the wise?”

“Feel free.”

“You seem the brainy type.”

Abatangelo wondered where this was going. “Thanks.”

“Don't thank me. Listen. I've known guys like you, they come outta prison a little too ready to just keep on keeping on. Hole themselves away, read everything they get their hands on. Never quite get the flow of being on the outside. You follow?”

“Yes. I do.”

The driver tapped at his temple again. “Just because you can think deep thoughts, that don't mean they ain't got you right where they want you.”

“Point taken,” Abatangelo said.

“Lash out. Fuck parole, break the chain. It takes some practice, remind yourself you're a free man again.” The driver's eyes were intense, but his voice was calm. “Got yourself an old lady? In Frisco, I mean.”

The question caught Abatangelo off-guard. He felt the pressure of Shel's letter against his chest. “As a matter-of-fact,” he began, but then found himself unable to finish.

Putting a fresh cigarette between his lips but not lighting it, the cabby reached up behind his visor and from beneath a rubber band removed a business card and a keno pencil. He scrawled a name and address on the back of the card.

“You're due,” he said. “I get up your direction now and again. Why's a long story. This girl here, Mandy's her name. I'm not saying she's a knockout, but you gotta make sure the pump still pumps. Don't think it over, don't contemplate the fallout, just call. Go. Fuck her till she cries. You're a free man. You owe yourself. They stole ten years from you. Steal them back.”

Abatangelo accepted the card and read it. There was a Tenderloin address beneath the words
MANDY PODOLAK, HOLSTEIN HOTEL.
He pictured a woman large, plain, and nonjudgmental. A long story.

“I'll tell her you send your best,” he said.

“Don't bother.”

The driver put the cab in gear and drove off. His arm appeared from the window in a final salute as he merged with outbound traffic. Once he disappeared, Abatangelo dropped the card into the nearest rubbish bin.

He reached into his coat pocket, felt the envelope with Shel's letter inside. No return address. That was coy. And she'd written about her new life, the man in that life, some guy named Frank, blah blah blah. The good news was, she didn't sound like she was any too thrilled about the guy. And she'd thought enough to keep track of Abatangelo's release date after three years of silence. That meant something.

It meant she wanted him to find her. Find her, or die trying.

CHAPTER

3

Frank awoke with fragmentary images of the night's final dream trailing away. The last thing he remembered was sitting in an empty room, alone at a wood plank table, eating tripe with his fingers.

Sitting up, he tested his balance at the edge of the bed. Why is it, he wondered, I do crank and up pop the weird little nightmares about food. His skin felt like it'd been stretched across a larger body then allowed to shrink. You're a walking road map of your own sick impulses, he thought. Where was Shel? Where was his shiny white nurse?

He rose to his feet, tottering a moment, then felt his way toward the door. The morning was quiet, except for the intermittent howl of wind funneling between the house and the barn. He made his way to the guest room. Shel went in there sometimes to have a smoke or read when she couldn't sleep.

He turned on the light, smelling a faint reminder of her shampoo. A pair of sweatpants and two mismatched wool socks lay scattered across the floor. The bed was unmade, the window open. She liked the window open at night. It had something to do with the stint she'd pulled at the FCI in Dublin.

Just then his head erupted in pain, like his eyes were exploding from the back. He put his hands to his face and dropped to the floor. On his knees, head to the floorboards, he waved his hand overhead trying to find something to grip. After a moment he gave up, struggled to his feet and charged blind down the hallway toward the kitchen.