Avenging Angel Page 3

  "Need a ride, angel?" I asked.

  She teetered to a halt in front of me, took an impatient breath, checked the stiffness of her bleach blond mane, looked to the sky and rattled off her prices in a nasal and bored voice. "Straight up, thirty cees per fifteen, round the world, forty-five cees, anything kinky is double, no ropes, bruises or friends, tip is fifteen percent, though you'll probably want to give me more. Okay?"

  I stared and said nothing.

  She dropped her hands to impatient hips. "Well?"

  I pointed a finger at her and hopped off the hood. "I like your style, baby. I'm going to make you a star."

  She rolled her eyes with a tired disbelief. "I already got a pimp and there ain't no movie-producer discount, cheapskate. Do you want any action or not?"

  "What if I told you I was a hit man for Greenpeace?"

  "I'd say that you get a salary just like everybody else."

  I handed her Crawley's photo. "Does he look familiar?"

  "After a while they all do." She laughed and passed the photo back. "Sorry I can't help you, palooka."

  "How about a loan, then?"

  "The nerve," she said, and stilted off.

  I spent the rest of the morning showing Crawley's picture to other denizens of the street without result. It turned out Barridales wasn't exactly a center of amiability. They didn't like outsiders asking questions about their own, no matter how discreetly worded. A lot of grease money might have overridden that, but I didn't have enough credit to buy a beer, never mind bribe some junky. It wasn't long before I came to the realization that my chances of finding Crawley using my present methods were about as good as getting a loan from a whore.

  I drove to east Barridales and parked next to People's Park. I got out and went for a walk, hoping to run into some wayward inspiration. The park had seen better days. The iron fence that separated it from the apathetic slums tumbled and curled crazily. The ancient gate house wore so much graffiti it took on a psychedelic demeanor, which was fitting because as I walked through the gate I felt I was entering a topsy-turvy world. The path I followed was slowly being assimilated from below, tiny yellow-green pods poking their heads from the gray tar, defiant and triumphant. The wide expanses of sun-scorched grass resembled pictures of the African savanna, their stalks high enough to hide the packs of wild dogs known to frequent the park. The hedges and bushes had gone completely feral, twisting their spindly arms to the blue summer sky. Even the conservative oaks had a wild cast to them. I liked the way the park looked, untamed and junglelike. It suited the rest of the City.

  The heavy clomping of boots on asphalt jerked my thoughts back five years to my military days. A platoon of skinheads thundered down the path toward me, their formation tight and disciplined. A muscular platoon leader jogged outside, calling cadence. They all sported matching black shirts, shorts and shaved heads. Stenciled on the front of each shirt was a symbol, three lightning bolts surrounded by a ring of fire. The insignia was alien to me, but new splinter groups were constantly breaking off from the major clans. It was just a gang of your local neo-Nazis out for a little morning exercise before a busy day of raiding leftist rallies and stomping minorities.

  When they got close, I stepped off the path and watched them go by. Their heads gleamed with sweat, and they practiced their scowls on me. I stared impassively back; an irrational pride wouldn't allow me to avert my eyes. Some faces became rabid and threw begging looks to the platoon leader. He didn't seem to notice.

  They thundered into the distance, and I stared after them, my stomach twitching with a sinister exhilaration. I knew some of the skins wanted to bring me down, and had the platoon leader consented they would have ratpacked me in true skinhead fashion. I walked back to the Caddy locked in thought, disturbed that the only kicks I enjoyed anymore were those teetering on the edge of death.

  The hour of 2:00 p.m. found me in my office, staring at the wallpaper, thoroughly stumped. Dash's data sheets covered the desk, and I was about to glean them again for some overlooked clue when the office door opened and Mrs. Woo, the cleaning lady, came in to do the weekly tidying up.

  "When are you going to pay your bill?" she said as way of greeting. It was a little game we played.

  "And hello to you, too, Mrs. Woo," I shouted over the roar of the vacuum cleaner she adroitly maneuvered around the carpet. "How are the little ones?"

  "They're hungry because someone won't pay his bills."

  "Well, don't you worry one little bit, ma'am. I'm working on a big case that will be solved very, very soon."

  "Why don't you get an honest job that pays money?" she suggested, attacking the sofa with the vacuum nozzle. "Like Mr. Rex, the talent agent downstairs. He always pays on time."

  "Mr. Rex is a pimp, Mrs. Woo. Don't let the expensive suits and capped teeth fool you." I leaned back in my chair. "Oh yeah, I'm stumped now, but I'll soon overcome that."

  The vacuum died with a wail, and she began hopping around the room with a duster. "Yeah, yeah. Last week you said you couldn't pay your bill because you couldn't take any more cases until you found yourself emotionally." Sarcasm wrinkled her face, but she never spared a glance from her work. Amazingly efficient, I thought, no movement wasted. I could learn from her.

  "That was last week. This week I'm trying to find someone else. I know his name and neighborhood but not his exact whereabouts."

  "Why don't you look him up in the phone book?" she said while replacing the liner of my waste bin. "That's what I would do."

  I smiled politely, amused by her charming naiveté. "I wish it were that easy." My smile expanded into a chuckle.

  "If you don't pay your bill by Friday I won't clean anymore." She gathered up her equipment and left. I stared after her fondly.

  The phone book squatted maliciously on the corner of the desk. I whacked it with a pencil and laughed at the poor sweet naive woman.

  I found a Rolland D. Crawley in the white pages, residing at Apt. 45, 123 °Close Court Ave., Barridales. I dialed the listed number.

  "Hello?" a voice said.

  "Hello there, is this Mr. Crawley?"

  "Yes."

  "Would you like to buy some life insurance, Mr. Crawley?"

  "Oh, no thanks, I'm covered."

  "Sorry to have bothered you." I hung up.

  The nervy bastard, I thought angrily. With his rap sheet he should have been on the run, dodging from one safehouse to another like a hunted rabbit. Instead, he was in the white pages, wedged cozily between the probably law-abiding Susanne C. Crawford and the Craxton Valley Flower Shop. Another sure sign of mankind's headlong plunge from grace with God.

  4

  I sat in my car across the street from the Close Court Apartments for four hours before I saw anyone resembling the picture of Crawley. The setting sun didn't offer much light, and I didn't recognize him until he was thirty meters from the lobby door. I trained light-intensifying binos on him and smiled to myself. His hair and beard were longer, and he'd put on about fifteen soft pounds, but it was definitely the archfiend in question. He waddled down the sidewalk toward the apartment tower, an overloaded bag of groceries in each arm. He'd apparently stepped out on my way over, either to stock up for the month or to plan a little shindig at the apartment.

  The simpler the plan, the less can go wrong. I learned that during my stint in the Rangers and it had been reaffirmed many times since. With this nut of wisdom firmly in mind, I got out of my car and stretched, trying not to look like a professional killer. I wore wraparound shades, black slacks and a dark gray canvas jacket to cover the bulky Myers 20 mm gyrapistol, the professional's weapon of choice for a close-in job. The explosive gyrajets packed more punch than a .12-gauge slug but wouldn't go through walls and rile up the neighbors. I also had a .32 snubnose Colt revolver clipped to the back of my belt and a switchblade in my pocket in case things got really rough. I honestly didn't think I'd need all of them, but they made me feel more dangerous.

  I pulled a grocery bag f
rom the backseat and strolled across the street, timing it so I arrived at the lobby door right behind Crawley. He put his bags down gently, fished out his keycard and unlocked the door.

  I looked down at his grocery bags, stuffed with a myriad of delightful snacks. The bag I carried was similar to Crawley's except all the cans and boxes in mine were empty, resurrected from the bin behind my office building. I carried it for one simple reason: people don't think you're dangerous if you're carrying groceries. On-duty muggers and rapists don't carry bags of groceries. Even a squeeze-crazed psychopath could look docile with a bag of snacks cradled in his arms. It was one of those useful, little-known quirks of human nature.

  He opened the door and I held it while he picked up his bags. He gave me a suspicious glance, and I smiled and stepped in behind him.

  I followed him to the elevator. He pushed the Up button and we waited sharing the uncomfortable silence of strangers. The floor indicator above the doors wasn't working, but we pointed our heads at it anyway. I caught him sliding me sideways glances but I ignored him.

  The elevator chimed and the doors slithered open. Two Rastas smoking spliffs got off the elevator, and Crawley said hello as though he knew them. We got into the empty car.

  Crawley pushed the fourth-floor button, and I reached over and jabbed at it, too.

  He reacted with a nervous twitch, as though he'd expected me to strike him. He looked at me directly, eyes narrowed. "I didn't know we had any new tenants on the fourth floor."

  "Naw, I'm just visiting. My girl lives up there."

  "Oh!" His face relaxed and the tension seeped out of it. "You must be Joan's new beau."

  I nodded. "That's right."

  I regarded Crawley, upset that his outward appearance didn't reflect his rap sheet. But then, they rarely did. Experience had taught me that those who didn't look the part always seemed to make up for it with gory deeds. Most serial killers tended to resemble cat-loving, elementary-school teachers.

  "Say," he said brightly, "I'm having a cozy little poetry party over at my flat tonight. I'm making an absolutely delicious chez suzanne with a delightful little carbaigne sauce. Since you're a friend of Joan's, you're more than welcome to come over." He savored a little grin. "They always wind up being wild affairs."

  Oh, I'll bet they do, judging by your rap sheet, I thought. "Uh-huh," I said.

  Crawley frowned and turned his eyes to the door. He didn't seem overawed with my conversational skills, but I wasn't going to start bawling about it. The last time I'd got chummy with someone I was about to kill he tried to take me into the afterlife with him. The elevator dinged, the doors slid open, and Crawley stormed out.

  The hallway was dim and deserted. I meandered behind Crawley, pretending to dig for my keycard, giving him enough time to open his door. He picked up his bags as I came abreast of him.

  "Here, let me help you," I said, shoving him into his apartment with my free hand. He squealed with surprise and fell on his groceries. I stepped inside, drew my pistol and heeled the door shut behind me.

  "Hey!" he said, rolling onto his back, alarm plastered across his features.

  "Rolland Crawley?" I asked earnestly.

  "Yes? I mean no! No-o-o!"

  "Oops! Too late!" I squeezed the trigger twice. The gyrajets whooshed out of the pistol and exploded in Crawley's chest, excavating fist-size craters. Crawley sprawled spread-eagled on the spilled bags as though he was trying to protect them. I put down my bag.

  I bolted the door to prevent any unpleasant surprises and cleared the apartment room by room. It was a cozy two-bedroom affair, unremarkable in every aspect except that all the walls in the room were covered with poetry written in every imaginable hue of felt pen. I'd never claimed any station as critic of things poetic, but most of what I read seemed overly dramatic to the point of foolishness.

  Returning to the living room, I holstered the gyrapistol and searched Crawley from head to toe. I found a set of keycards, a pack of a popular brand of joints, a chrome lighter inscribed with his initials on both sides, a pencil and a wallet. In the wallet were rolling papers, a packet of paisley-pattern condoms, a half-dozen business cards and one of those wallet-size calendars banks give out. Nothing illegal or out of the ordinary.

  Much to my dismay, there wasn't a fraction of a cred on Crawley's entire body, which meant Crawley shopped entirely by handscan. Like the Party commercials said, only fools carried plastic, and Crawley was obviously nobody's fool. I put the wallet in my pocket.

  In a fit of community service, I called the three-digit reclamation number. The cheery voice on the other end sounded disappointed that there was only one reclaimable. I told her she could reclaim me any Friday night. She laughed politely and asked for my name and account number so she could credit me with the reward. Generally I didn't bother, but these weren't proud times. The reclamation agency paid one credit for every ten pounds, which meant I'd be getting about twenty creds out of Crawley.

  I put the phone down and looked at the body again. Remember what he's done, I told myself, the children he's murdered, the lives he's destroyed. You've no reason to feel pity or horror or anything.

  A spreading diameter of blood was making an island of him and his groceries, and I decided I'd stalled long enough. I placed a copy of Crawley's death warrant over his face so he'd stop staring at me and took a miniature battery-powered saw out of my coat pocket. To claim my proper reward, I had to take in his scanhand as proof of having done my job. It was one of the less glamorous aspects of my job.

  On the way out of Crawley's apartment, I nearly collided with a very attractive young woman wearing huge sunglasses and a paisley-print head wrap. She seemed very surprised to see me coming out of Crawley's flat and looked as if she was going to say as much when she noticed the small black plastic bag in my left hand. Horror dawned on her face like an ugly sun.

  Her pretty mouth gaped open with abject revulsion, and her reflective sunglasses threw back a distorted image that had me looking like some kind of twisted fiend. I mumbled a pardon and could feel her eyes on my back all the way to the stairwell. I shoved open the door and lurched down the steps, feeling for all the world like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

  Embarrassment and shame had changed to righteous anger by the time I reached the Caddy. Where did she get off looking at me like that? As if I was some kind of twisted creature when the real monster was bleeding in his groceries minus his scan-hand. Why did I feel so dirty? I was the legal entity — I was doing society a favor. I was a modern-day paladin, a white-hat, one of the good guys. Instead of skulking out of there, I should have marched out waving a goddamn banner, shouting the news of my good deed. She was probably a criminal herself, wanted by the SPF. So why did I still feel so dirty?

  5

  Halfway home the fuel warning light began blinking at me menacingly, which seemed a shame since I didn't have any creds and my reclamation reward wouldn't go through until the next day. I began fretting whether I was going to make it home or not.

  I decided that since it was the drive to Barridales that had used up what little alcohol I had, it was only fair that Crawley pay for it. I pulled off the side of the road and reached into my glove box for some electrical tape.

  Minutes later I rolled into an alcohol station powered by sheer momentum. The engine had died of thirst. I got out and pushed the big beast the remaining five meters to the pump. My Caddy was an 05 model, the last big ones ever made. It drank more alcohol going around the block than I did on a three-day bender, and that was saying something.

  The alcohol station was a big affair with twenty nozzles and a bulletproof booth for the attendant, undoubtedly built during the corporate era. The Party owned it now; the Party owned all the major industries since they'd crushed the war-weak corporations twelve years ago. I operated the nozzle with my left hand, filled the tank, then walked over to the pay booth.

  "Pump six," I said.

  "I know that," a heavyset woman snapped from behind
the transparent shield. "Creds, card or scan?" she growled as if gnawing on broken glass.

  "Scan," I said with a boyish smile. "You know, it takes a lot more muscles to frown than it does to smile."

  She looked at me as if I were a crippled rat heading for the pantry. I winked at her with practiced charm. She stabbed a button on her console, and I slid a hand under the protruding head of the scanner.

  I was counting on two things. One, Crawley had enough credit in his account to pay for the alcohol, and two, my sparkling conversation would distract the attendant from noticing the unusual pallor of the scanhand.

  "Say, are you busy tonight?" I asked hopefully, sliding her my best leer.

  "I don't like men," she said.

  "Sure you don't." I dropped a lazy eyelid at her.

  "Which account?" she grated, her jowls shaking.

  "Either one, sugar. You're fantasizing about me, aren't you?"

  "Party Bank, then," she shrieked, her voice high with frustration and anger. I felt certain she wanted to hurt me.

  "Naw, the other one, honey jowls."

  "Second Federal!" she screeched. "You want Second Federal, then!"

  "Yes!" I shouted ecstatically into the speaker grille. "And you! I want you, too!"

  She stabbed at buttons with ferocious vitality, ripped off a receipt, threw it into the pass tray and slammed the tray forward. "Here's your receipt, you… male!" she cried, her sweating face craned close to the shield, her bulging eyes daring me to utter one more insolent word.

  I retrieved the receipt from the tray with exaggerated lethargy and gazed at it for a long moment. My mission was accomplished. My car was full of fuel, and there were impatient customers behind me. But I couldn't just leave. It seemed absolutely necessary to play the scenario out to its natural end. I felt locked into the thing, and all the precious momentum couldn't be wasted. I considered and discarded a half-dozen conclusions before I hit on one that felt right.