Angel of Vengeance Read online

  My eyes never left Coraline’s. “No one’s talkin’ to you, Junior, so why don’t you just do yourself a favor and sit there quietly while the girl makes up her own mind.”

  He was too young and dumb to know it, but I was doing him a favor. No way a lightweight like him could handle a gal like that. If I hadn’t stepped in she’d have K-Oed him before the end of round two. A girl like her was best left to a seasoned masochist like myself.

  “You hard a hearin’, Dad? I said she’s spoken for.” The kid clapped a skinny mitt down on my shoulder.

  Before I turned away, I saw the look of anticipation and excitement that flooded Coraline’s eyes. It was the look of a girl having a fantasy realized. She had been waiting all her life to have something like this to write down in her diary.

  No doubt the kid probably had some tough-guy line he’d seen in a movie ready to deliver, but he never got to it on account of my fist connecting with his nose. There was an ugly crunch and he jitterbugged backward a few steps and crashed down hard atop an adjoining table, overturning it with a crash.

  I reared around on his big moose of a buddy, who looked ready to try his luck, but I guess the sight of Morris and the other boys hurrying over to get my back changed his mind. Black faces have a way of doing that to white boys. Even big dumb ones. Instead of taking a swing, the moose bent and helped his hurt friend up. Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he looked.

  By then the bar’s bouncers were there and began hustling the younger guys toward the exit. Under normal circumstances I’d probably have been tossed out on my ear too—I’d been the one to throw the first punch after all—but then I was with the band and we still had a set to play.

  Amid all the hubbub, I turned back to Coraline. I wanted to make sure the sudden violence hadn’t put the brakes on things. It hadn’t. I found her looking at me, eyes glowing brighter than a welder’s torch, a crooked halo smile perched on her lips. I’d never been looked at by a woman that way before. I’d been looked at all kinds of ways—lots of them bad—but not like that. Coraline was staring at me like she saw in me the potential for some darker life she’d always secretly desired, but had been too timid to seek. Like I was the answer to some pagan prayer. Like I was her cigarette all come to life.

  I stared right back. I guess maybe I saw all the same things in her. I guess maybe that’s why I’d come over in the first place. And I guess maybe that’s why I never saw the kid pull the gun from the waistband of his loose-fitting chinos and shoot me in the back.

  The bullet, a .22, pierced my right lung and lodged in a rib. The sawbones who patched me up told me if it had been just a hair to the left it would’ve paralyzed me. A touch lower and it would’ve killed me. I guess it was supposed to make me feel lucky. It didn’t.

  I spent an angry month in the hospital. Coraline came to visit me every day. By the end of my stay there, I was completely in love. I had thought I had been in love before her, but I was wrong. Dead wrong. The passion I had felt for other dames was a ghost emotion compared to how I felt about Coraline; insubstantial, barely there. This was something else. Something fearsome in its depth and complexity. I was weak for her in a way I’d never been with any other woman, in a way I didn’t even know I could be. If she had asked, I would have killed, died, even sold my soul for her.

  In the end I guess I did all three.

  Once I was released, Coraline and I decided it might be fun to play house together. It was. We rented a cheap little bungalow in Venice just a few blocks off the beach. Caught up in the excitement of it all, we even went and hunted up a Justice of the Peace and made it official. It was my idea. Call me old-fashioned, but I couldn’t stand the idea of people looking down their noses at my girl. I wanted to make an honest woman of her. If only it had been that easy.

  For a while, things were good—real good, if you want to know the truth. I played music with the boys, and Coraline went on auditions during the day and came to watch our shows at night. She liked the late-night lifestyle and the fast crowd I ran with. She liked the parties and the drinking. She liked it all.

  Problem was, my love for Coraline wasn’t the only thing I took with me when I left the hospital. The bullet had hurt like hell, hurt like nothing I’d ever experienced before, and after a month of treatment, the morphine the docs gave me for the pain had begun to seem more a necessity than a luxury. Once I hit the street, I starting buying heroin because it was cheaper and easier to get, but it all came to the same thing in the end. I was an addict.

  I tried to hide it from her, and I had done a pretty swell job of it until she walked in on me in the bathroom one night after we had gotten back from a show at Club Alabam, a needle still dangling from my arm. Your typical dame would have yelled, thrown things, demanded I go and seek treatment, but Coraline was anything but typical. Looking back on it, it seems she had been waiting her whole life for the right twister to come along and sweep her off to Oz. Thanks to me, she found it in heroin.

  “I want to try it,” she said, as I attempted to hide my kit along with my humiliation.

  “No, that’s a bad idea, baby.”

  “Why? It’s okay for you, but not for me?”

  “It’s not okay for anyone, but I can stop. I’ll quit. I swear it.”

  “I didn’t ask you to quit, Mick. I just asked you to share.”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “Fine. Then I’ll just go out and find someone who will. Is that what you want? Me to go out and look for it on my own? Is it?”

  Coraline could be stubborn sometimes. Real stubborn, if you want to know the truth. I knew her well enough by then to know that when she sounded like that there was no point in arguing. She wasn’t bluffing. She would do what she said. So I gave in. I wish to God I hadn’t, but I did. She clapped her hands together like a little girl who has been told she’s getting a pony on her birthday.

  I had to shoot her up that first time because of her aversion to needles. I remember the way she looked at me, a beatific, sleepy-eyed expression on her face. I remember her exact whispered words after I pressed the plunger home. “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.”

  Got to give it to her, she was right. This was Oz. Except in this version the bricks were black and the road led straight to hell. Funny. I had thought I was protecting her by not letting her try it, but I soon found out it was me I was protecting all along. Although I didn’t know it yet, heroin had taken my place in her affections and things would never be the same.

  Over the course of the next few months we sunk into addiction together like panicky swimmers who drag each other beneath the waves. Larger and larger quantities of our time went to scraping together the cash to buy. With two sizeable addictions to feed, it was no easy task. Pretty soon I found I wasn’t in a band anymore. I pawned my trumpet. Why not? It was no good to me just sitting around. When that money was gone I brushed up on my lock-picking skills and turned to breaking and entering. But in the end it was Coraline who became the real breadwinner by selling the one thing she had to sell—her body. It killed me to let her do it, but the dope it provided helped me forget.

  With her looks and that body, it wasn’t long before Coraline had built a fairly sizeable number of steady clients, many of them key players in the film industry willing to pay good money for a quickie with a discreet gal. Most times I went along with her on her “dates,” to make sure no one got out of line. One particular night, however, I shot too much and got too high and Coraline drove out to a certain producer’s Hollywood Hills house alone. She came back three hours later with her lovely china doll face all beat to hell. Always a gentleman in the past, the bastard had gotten drunk and mean this time around.

  One eye swollen shut, the left side of her face a violent tale in Braille, I listened with growing rage as Coraline filled me in around a fat lip. I’d grown up watching my mom take regular beatings from my dad until it killed her. I didn’t believe in laying hands on a woman, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to let some rich
Hollywood asshole get away with doing it to mine. I went and grabbed the snub-nosed .38 I kept under the mattress for protection.

  “Let’s go see him.”

  She looked at me, curious. “What are you gonna do to him?”

  “I’m gonna beat him until his face looks like yours and then I’m gonna beat him some more.”

  “I have a better idea. He’s rich. You know how you hurt a guy like that, baby? You take his money. He got screwed by the banks back in ’29 and now he keeps all his cash in a wall safe in his house. I saw it. He paid me out of it once. I’d never seen so much money in my whole life. We do this, our money troubles will be over.”

  I should have said no. If I had everything would have been different, but I didn’t. I was mad—mad as hell, if you want to know the truth—and she was preaching to the choir.

  “Let’s compromise. We’ll do both.”

  We piled into the black Packard we were driving then and drove to the Hills for a little social call. The house—a tall two-story number with ivy-covered white-stone walls, a terracotta roof, and an arched entryway— looked like a thousand others stabbed down along the twisting roads that snaked through the Hollywood Hills.

  We knocked. No one came to the door, so Coraline and I let ourselves in. We found him passed out on the living room couch, knuckles still covered with Coraline’s dried blood. He was a big fella, but the muscle of his youth had turned to a jelly-like fat from years of overindulgence and good eating. He woke up to the barrel of my .38 doing a Woody Woodpecker routine on his forehead. His expression went from surly to worried in the time it took him to recognize Coraline through her swollen features and take note of the gun.

  “I’m back, Roy, and I’ve brought a friend,” Coraline said over my shoulder. “What’s wrong? Aren’tcha happy to see me, lover?”

  He didn’t look happy. Scared. Confused certainly. Not happy.

  “Whaz’is?” he asked, his words still slurred by drink. “Whaz goin’ on?” He looked back and forth between us. I let Coraline do the explaining. She was always the better explainer.

  “Look at my face, Roy. Look what you did to me. I came over to show you a nice time and look what you went and did.”

  “I shouldn’t’ve done thzat.”

  “No. You shouldn’t have. So now you’re going to have to pay for it. That’s what grownups do after all, isn’t it? Pay for their mistakes.”

  “How much d’you wan’?”

  “Well, I’m not going to be able to work for a while looking like I do, so you’re going to have to pay me disability. It could get expensive.”

  “How much?”

  “Make you a deal. Let’s go into your safe. You start paying and I’ll tell you when my face stops hurting.”

  “I’m not opening my g’damn safe for nobody.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Coraline said, with a look at me. “I suppose you’d better hurt him, Mick.”

  I hurt him. I was happy to do it. I pistol-whipped the fat drunk bastard until his face matched Coraline’s and then I pistol-whipped him some more. He was sobbing like a huge overgrown baby by the time Coraline grabbed my wrist and made me stop. A slick mixture of blood, snot and saliva dripped from Roy’s nose and mouth, staining his expensive linen shirt.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Roy. I forgive you. It’s over. All you have to do is be a good boy and give us the combination to the safe and I won’t let him hurt you any more. I promise,” Coraline cooed.

  Battered as he was, Roy still hesitated. I raised the gun again, and the numbers came spilling out like a jackpot in a Vegas slot.

  We herded him at gunpoint into the mahogany world of the office. The safe was in the wall, behind a portrait of Roy’s homely mother. Pulling it from the wall, he made as if to go and open the safe, but I pushed him aside. I didn’t want to take the chance he might have a gun of his own hidden within. I handed the .38 to Coraline, told her to cover him, and spun the small black dial. The safe popped open first time round, revealing a stash of cash the likes of which I’d never seen outside of the movies, and a small black pistol.

  Shaking a disappointed finger at Roy, I turned back to the safe and began to toss the cash—what looked at a glance to be about forty grand or so— into the bag we’d thought to bring. When it was empty I closed it and zipped the bag and smiled at Coraline.

  She didn’t notice. She was too busy staring down the barrel of the .38 at Roy. The way her one eye was swollen shut gave the impression she was taking careful aim.

  “We’ve got the money, but my face still hurts, Roy,” she said regretfully.

  “Coraline—” I interrupted.

  “Yes, darling?”

  “This wasn’t the plan,” I said.

  “Stay out of it, Mick. It’s not your face he beat up. It’s not you it happened to.”

  I had to admit that it wasn’t. Still, this wasn’t the plan.

  “Put the gun down, baby.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She smiled. “I don’t want to. And besides, he knows my name. He can finger us. We walk out of here he’ll have the police on us in an hour.”

  “No I won’t. I won’t. You can have the money. I don’t care about it,” Roy sounded a lot more sober as he pleaded for his life.

  “He says that now, but we leave, he’ll start to care, Mick. It’s a lot of money. He’ll care and he’ll call the cops. You know he will.”

  I knew it, despite the vehement way Roy was shaking his chins at me. Still, killing people—even ones who maybe could do with killing—wasn’t my style. Not back then anyway. We had his money. We’d given him a beating. It was enough.

  “We’ll tie him up,” I said. “We’ll go to Mexico. By the time he works himself free we’ll be across the border.”

  “I don’t want to live in Mexico,” Coraline said.

  “Canada then.”

  Coraline shook her head. “Not there either. I like it right here.” She looked highly satisfied about things as she cocked the gun.

  Roy went all pie-eyed. I didn’t know eyes could get that wide.

  “You promised you wouldn’t hurt me if I went along,” he said. “You promised.”

  Coraline shook her head and smiled like a teacher speaking to a confused student. “No, Roy. What I promised was that I wouldn’t let Mick do it,” she said sweetly.

  The crack of the gun left a ringing like alarm bells in my ears.

  6

  Next night I awaken with a severe hemoglobin hangover. Old blood has a way of doing that to you. Maybe the binging I did wasn’t such a great idea. In fact I’m sure of it.

  I go to the mini-fridge. I pry the door open. I take stock. It doesn’t take long. Only two measly vials left. Damn. Two vials would be a modest nightly allotment, but now I’m going to have to stretch them. I curse my weakness. Then I decide to forgive myself and fix. I’m not one to hold a grudge, especially against someone I like as much as me.

  I gather my tools together and sort myself out. Better. I might not be feeling like a million bucks, but at least I’m drawing interest again. I go get dressed. On the way past, I punch the play messages button on my machine. There is a message waiting for me from a Detective Coombs. He wants to talk to me. Just a few routine questions about a case he’s working on. Give him a call back at my convenience. Yada, yada, yada.

  I’m not in the habit of talking to cops. They make me uneasy. Always have. If he wants me, he’ll just have to run me down. I erase the message and turn my attention to picking out an ensemble.

  A sharp rap sounds at the door as I re-knot my tie for the fourth and final time. I stash my kit and go answer it. A familiar-looking rumpled Schmo in an off-the-rack suit stands there. He’s about my height, but fatter, balder, and has the look and smell of bacon about him.

  “Detective Coombs.”

  “That’s right. Good guess. You Michael Angel?”

>   I nod. I’m not in the habit of talking to cops.

  “Can I come in?”

  I nod again. Then I step aside to let him enter and shut the door and point him to a chair. He sits, and rubs his arms together for warmth.

  “Kinda cold in here, isn’t it?”

  “I like it,” I say, sinking like depression into my own chair across the desk from him. I don’t bother to explain that as a vampire I keep it that way to slow my decay. I figure that information is need-to-know only and he don’t need to know.

  Coombs is irritated, but gives me a suit-yourself shrug. He stares across the desk at me a minute, then cocks his head, and gives me a puzzled look. “Have we met somewhere?”

  “Oh I think I’d remember that,” I say.

  Coombs has been a homicide detective for more years than he has chins and the truth is we’ve met on two previous occasions. This makes three. Another thing he don’t need to know.

  He nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Anyway, uh, I called earlier but you didn’t get back to me. Hope you don’t mind my just dropping by like this.”

  I do, but I don’t bother to mention it.

  “Oh, yeah, well I didn’t get your message until now. I just got in.”

  “That so? You sure about that?”

  “Yeah, sure I’m sure.”

  “Well, the reason I ask is I’ve been parked out front for a while now. You know, filling out paperwork and such, an’ I didn’t see you come in. I only came up because I figured I ought at least knock before I left.”

  “Yeah well, there’s a back way. I use it to avoid bill collectors. And cops.” He looks at my smile like it’s a new undiscovered species of expression. “That was a joke.”

  “Oh, I gotcha. Funny.”

  I light a cigarette, offer him the pack, but he shakes me off. “So what is it I can do for you, Detective?”

  “Oh, well, see, like I said, I’m just running down some details on a case I’m working on.”

  “Interesting case?”