Avenging Angel Page 5

  "No," she murmured. "But I want to."

  I loaded my eyes with a thousand promises and whispered, "You shall, Teresa, you shall," then handed her the contract. After a dizzy minute we parted eyes and she took a look at it.

  Her smile collapsed like a dynamited bridge. "I'll have to get my supervisor to look at this," she gasped, and fled. She came back a moment later, hiding behind a thin, mustached man in a somber blue suit. He smiled perfunctorily and passed the contract back to me.

  "I'm afraid we can't help you, sir," he said.

  "What? I know it's not stamped, but you can call SPF HQ to get a confirmation of the kill." The last word made Teresa flinch, and I could sense heads jerking behind me.

  "There is no need to call, Mr. Strait. That document…" he nodded toward the paper"…is a fake. Not a very good one."

  I'd heard that twice since breakfast and I didn't like it any better this time. I wanted to say something, maybe make an ugly scene, but the events of the day had left me defeated and tired. I glanced at Teresa peeking over the supervisor's shoulder, and her eyes told me she would never walk in the park with me, never ever.

  Taking the contract, I turned around. The people in line stared at me. I knew what they thought of my kind. Only now, with Crawley's innocent blood on my hands, they were right. My shining armor of self-righteousness had collapsed around my feet, and my conscience lay bare before their daggerlike stares. What the hell, I thought, and did my drag-leg, hunchback routine all the way to the door.

  I drove with a rude fury. I'd been played for a stooge, and somebody somewhere was enjoying a good long laugh at my expense. It burned me up. I didn't mind getting beaten, shot at or rejected; that was all in the nature of the game. But when somebody played me for the fool, used me like a back-street whore fed on sweet promises of country cottages and white-picket fences, I had to make somebody pay.

  7

  But first I'd get drunk. I picked up a quart of vodka and a gallon of orange-flavored drink on the way to the office.

  By five in the afternoon the vodka was gone and the orange drink didn't taste good by itself. By five-fifteen I got tired of my own company. I was talking to myself and I hated listening to drunks. I was thinking too much about my lost self-image, and more than anything else I wanted to forget.

  I walked across the street to the St. Christopher's Lounge. The bartender there was a friend of mine, and if it wasn't too busy he'd sometimes listen to my drunken gibberish. His name was Amal. He had one ear.

  Like most Hayward bars, the St. Chris was frequented by prostitutes of both genders. They fit right in with the decor. If you walked into the place when it was dead empty, you could still tell it was a whore bar. It just had that feel about it.

  I sat where I always sat, at the end of the bar farthest from the door. I ordered a screwdriver from Amal and checked the odds. At 5:20 p.m. the whores outnumbered the fish three to one. I knew some of the girls and waved at them. I wasn't feeling too sociable, and they must have picked up on that because they didn't come over to talk to me. Or maybe they thought I was still broke.

  A sullen-looking pimp was getting quietly loaded two stools down. Quarterly earnings were probably down. A loud fat man sitting at the closest table was telling stories about his college combatball days to two whores who smiled and nodded but really didn't give a damn. He was drunk and his actions stank of the burbs. His wife was probably spending the weekend visiting the folks so he decided he was going to hit the town and pick up a couple of loose City girls. Hell, they were all sluts anyway, he figured. He was the type who'd get mad when he found out all they wanted was his money. He'd pay them, but he wouldn't tell his buddies back in the burbs that. Hell no, those sluts paid him. I turned my back so I wouldn't have to look at him but I could still hear his voice. I thought about picking a fight, but one of the whores would probably stick me.

  Amal came back with my drink but wouldn't surrender it until I showed him some money. He was wise to my tricks. I gave him a fifty and left the change on the bar. I put half the drink down in a single swallow. I didn't know how to drink mixed drinks, and that was why I usually drank beer. I couldn't evoke enough self-discipline to make myself sip.

  But tonight I didn't care. I was going to wrestle with that wily demon alcohol; we were going to grapple like the sworn enemies and best chums we were. I wanted to get so incredibly legless that my mind would go blank and my only worry would be getting Amal to understand my next order.

  I looked at my reflection in the mirror behind the bar. It was one of those smoked types, the kind that always makes you appear mysterious and handsome. I heard the voice of doom in my head. The man you see in the mirror, ladies and gentlemen, is a murderer. And he's going to pay for it. Even in the dim lighting I could see certain doom gathering darkly inside my eyes, the sure knowledge that I would wake up with nothing gained but a grotesque hangover, a gutful of self-pity and perhaps a darker understanding of myself. But then, I thought, raising my glass and saluting my reflection, sometimes that was all one could ask for. I spent another couple of minutes staring at myself out of habit, then dropped my eyes to my drink.

  Someone slipped onto the bar stool next to me, and I checked my watch. Six minutes since I'd sat down. Not bad, but with as many sharks and few game fish in the water it was nothing to get vain about. I slid my eyes sideways to see what breed of mutant my good looks had reeled in.

  I could always spot a hooker from first glance, no matter how she dressed or acted. They all had that unmistakable aura of accessibility about them, even the classy, expensive ones who would never see the inside of a dive like the St. Chris.

  She didn't look like a whore. Or maybe I just didn't want to believe someone so beautiful was available to any loser who cashed a paycheck. She had the femme fatale look down to a habit: full, pouting lips painted a glossy black, petite, slightly upturned nose, high cheekbones and long almond-shaped eyes, a face right off the cover of a fashion magazine. Her hair, cut in a short bob and dyed a lustrous blue black, lived in dramatic contrast with her alabaster white skin. A black cotton gown clung to the curves of a model-thin body whose tone hinted at an athlete crouching inside. She possessed the perfection of beauty you couldn't take in all at once; you had to gape for a while to realize its depth, then everything came together and there she was.

  "Would you like a drink?" I asked.

  "Yes, thank you. Whatever you're having is fine." Her voice was sandpaper rough yet unmistakably cultured. She put on a pouting smile that carried to her raven eyes, and I sat mesmerized for a horizonless moment before I could bring myself to order the drinks. I knew I was gaping like a yokel on his first sojourn to a topless bar, but since the day of my birth my poor head was slave to the black passions that ruled my fool heart.

  When the drinks arrived I said, "You shouldn't hang around in a place like this. Somebody might take you for a whore."

  Her smile uncurled a little, and I waited for her to tell me she was just an art student hopping dives for kicks, but she didn't. She didn't say anything, which was answer enough.

  "Oh," I said, the knowledge murdering my heart in cold blood. "You don't resemble one."

  "I'm new."

  I wanted to tell her she didn't belong there, not in the St. Chris, not on Hayward, not in the City. I wanted to kill her pimp and set her up in a nice safe cottage in the burbs. I wanted to shield her from all of life's ugliness.

  "Aw, it's probably not as bad as my job," I said. Crawley's face reared up in my mind, and I tried to drown him. I showed Amal my empty glass and he brought me a replacement. I swallowed half of it to show my appreciation.

  "You drink very fast," she said.

  "I'm in a hurry," I said.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Unconsciousness."

  She nodded. "Are you drinking to forget or to punish yourself?"

  I gave her a long look then finished the rest of my drink. "Since when are whores so philosophical?"

&n
bsp; She turned to the mirror and we stared at our reflections.

  "My name is Britt," she said.

  "I'm Strait."

  "Is that a declaration of your sexuality or your name?"

  "Both."

  "What do you do, Mr. Strait?"

  "I get by."

  "What do you do for a living, I mean?"

  I looked at her. "Why all the questions? You taking a survey for your pimp?"

  She smiled darkly into the mirror. "I'm sorry. You just interest me."

  "Do you really want to know?" I turned to the mirror and stared into those inkwells.

  "Yes."

  "Okay." I regarded my drink. "I'm an insurance salesman. Best damn policy peddler in my office. Wanna buy one?"

  She laughed and reached for her drink. She took the glass in both hands, wrapped full, bee-stung lips around the pair of straws, tilted her head forward and looked dead at me from under long, black eyelashes. Classy moves, I thought. She wasn't from the City.

  1 excused myself and stumbled to the men's room. After relieving myself I washed my hands and looked in the mirror above the sink. It amazed how much the smoked mirror behind the bar had been deceiving me. The vodka had sucker-punched my looks. My eyes were puffy and my face stretched toward the floor. My hair was going in no particular direction, and the scar on my cheek stood out on my flushed skin like a line of chalk. I had drunk myself ugly. I felt unworthy of the girl at the bar. Someone should have jerked me off my stool and given me a good shaking, demanding just what the hell did I think I was I doing with a woman like that. What did she see in me?

  "Jesus Christ," I said to my reflection. "She's a prostitute, you simple knave, all she wants is your money." I tried to bring anger down on her mercenary greed but I couldn't swing the emotion. If anything, I was disappointed at her for associating with someone like the bum in the mirror. I splashed cold water on my face and ran a comb through my hair. It didn't seem to help.

  When I came back out she was gone. A dizzy panic got a stranglehold and squeezed the breath out of me. Damn, I thought, crawling onto my stool, I should have been more charming.

  Hope told me she was freshening up in the ladies' room. Fifteen minutes and two screwdrivers told me she wasn't. The ice in her drink had melted, and Amal was giving it vulturelike glances. It was three-quarters full, which proved she hadn't just been hustling a free drink. I tried hard, but couldn't squeeze a whole lot of consolation out of that.

  I practiced staying upright all the way to the jukebox and filled its belly with change. I had a strong taste for angst and anguish at the best of times, so I punched in ancient punk and new death-blues. I warded off a descending male hooker with a hard look, retook my stool and ordered another drink. While Amal subtracted from my stake on the bar, I hooked his sympathetic ear with my earnest sorrow.

  "I tell you, Amal," I said, trying to feel like Bogart. "I'm really low."

  Amal nodded sympathetically.

  "I'm a murderer, a stooge, and now my woman has left me heartbroken and ruined."

  "Your woman?" Amal echoed, raising an eyebrow.

  "Yeah, the one that was just sitting here," I said.

  Amal rolled his eyes.

  "Okay, so she's a working girl," I said. "Everyone needs a profession."

  "Yeah. I've never seen her here before. Must be new."

  "That's right," I said. "I really thought I could change her."

  Amal laughed cynically and left to attend fresh customers. The after-work crowd was starting to show up, rowdy gangs of T-shirted workers. The women swooped down on them from their bar-stool perches like hawks, hitting them up before they got both feet in the door. Four heroes of the assembly line laid noisy siege to the bar, confusing Amal by yelling out all their orders at once. They shouted and laughed and slapped each other on the back. They'd been working on some assembly line all week, and now that they had their hard-earned paychecks they meant to cut real loose. Four prostitutes moved up behind them, laying their own siege, causing the factory guys to elbow each other and giggle, as if it were their looks instead of their fat wallets that attracted them.

  The sullen pimp finished his bourbon and left to look for a quieter place to wrestle his demons and I did a little spin on my stool, putting my back to the bar. I was beginning to feel a little loose myself. My brain had checked out and the extremities of my body were starting to tingle. I'd plunged headlong off the cliff of reality, and though I would hit ground sooner or later, for now I was flying.

  A not unattractive redhead swung over to the jukebox. After looking over the play list she fed in some creds and punched in some songs. Instead of swinging back to her seat, she hung out by the juke, perhaps waiting for one of her numbers to come on. She casually faced in my direction as if she was checking her hair in the mirror. Her eyes flickered to mine on the way back to her purse. She dug out a book of matches and a pack of joints. She took her time about lighting one, making a show about how sensual lighting a joint could be. She inhaled deeply, blew out a veil of smoke, then dropped smoldering green eyes on me. They did sprints up and down my length then settled on my eyes. She smiled a sly little smirk as if we were sharing a secret joke. It must be my good looks, I thought.

  It was obvious she was selling something, but I admired her presentation. She held the joint next to her head, and her rounded hips swayed almost imperceptibly to the beat. Someone seemed to be messing with the thermostat, and I thought about taking my jacket off. Suddenly her eyes plunged to her full breasts, where she delicately brushed ash off her green velvet dress. Then she looked up slowly, her eyes rising like twin suns, brighter and greener than when they'd left. She tilted her head the tiniest bit to the right and gave me a long, slow wink. The wall between my desires and virtues crumbled like the shabby facade it was, and I smiled helplessly back. She took her cue and began swinging slowly toward me.

  "Here comes your woman," Amal said from behind me.

  "I'll say," I said, watching her.

  "No, I mean your woman. The one that left you heartbroken and low."

  I looked back and followed his nod to the door. Britt cut through the crowd like a perfect knife. Three-quarters of the men in the place watched her moves with hungry eyes, and the other quarter was gay. With a soaring heart I realized she was walking my way. I glanced at the approaching redhead and I looked at Britt. I determined they would arrive at precisely the same time.

  They became aware of each other and neither seemed willing to give up. Working-girl pride. Just when I thought they would leap upon each other like alley cats, Britt shot the redhead a look. The look only lasted an instant, but the magnitude of violence it implied was incredible. If I added that look to my repertoire, I wouldn't have to worry about clients stiffing me. The redhead's resolve vaporized, and she veered off to the ladies' room.

  Britt slid onto her stool and smiled at me as if she had never left. In the light of her beautiful smile, the look she'd given the redhead seemed an impossibility, a false memory.

  "I'm sorry for leaving, Mr. Strait," she said.

  "Call me Jake."

  "Jake. I had to make a call."

  "Of course," I said as if there could be no other explanation.

  She smiled and I stared. My brain seized up, and I couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound contrived or secondhand. I felt a strong need to charm her but I felt more numb than clever. Her overpowering presence magnified the monstrous silence, and I was starting to smother when Amal handed her the phone.

  She frowned, said yes into it three times, then handed it back. She traded her frown in for a demure smile and sipped her drink.

  It was probably her pimp calling to give the new girl a little pep talk, the odd pointer. Maybe he'd come in and coach her with subtle hand signals from across the bar, or even stand behind her and feed her good lines.

  She didn't volunteer an explanation and I didn't ask. We faced each other, and the weight was settling on my neck again when my old chum
trouble muscled in.

  "Hey, hey!" One of the loose factory boys tapped Britt on the shoulder from behind, and Britt smiled as if she'd been expecting it all day. "Yo, baby," he continued in his eloquent style. "You're wasting your time talking to pretty boy there. Come sit with us, one hundred percent beef over here." He laughed at his little joke and looked back at his friends to make sure they got it, too. They yucked it up to show that they did.

  "No, thanks," Britt said, and her lips curled up, igniting her eyes. She wiggled on her stool, a slow, happy movement. "I prefer the company of a man to that of boys."

  The factory boy narrowed his eyes at the back of her head and looked confused. He wasn't accustomed to bar girls talking to him that way. He was the type who figured that when he had a fat wad of creds in his pocket, every girl in town was in love with him. "Hey," he growled. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "What does it sound like, boy?" Her breathing picked up, her nostrils flared, and her full lips parted a little to take in more air. She leaned forward until her eyes were so close I thought I was going to drown in their black depths. She's hypnotizing me, I thought.

  The goon glanced back at his three friends who'd taken up position behind him, eager to show their assembly-line camaraderie. He clamped a hand on Britt's shoulder and said, "Listen, you whore…"

  Technically his terminology was correct, but the word stabbed my belly like a cold blade.

  "Take your hand off her or I'll shove it up your ass," I snarled, proving I was no stranger to eloquence myself. I could sense the goon glaring at me, but that didn't matter. I couldn't tear my eyes away from Britt's; they were all I could understand. Britt smiled wider, gave me a nod and I felt as if I was taking a cue. I slipped off the stool and looked into the face of the enemy.

  He was a burly six-foot-three, an inch taller than me. He shoved out his chest and threw his arms out a couple of times to make sure I noticed that he was bigger. He looked confident because he saw a pretty face and to him that equated weakness.