Max Collins - Angel in black

He was in his T-shirt and stained, threadbare brown trousers, a toe with an in-grown nail sticking through one of the frayed socks he wore. His bony frame was covered with loose flesh the color of a fish’s belly, mottled with sores and scars. His left leg was scarred and shriveled and shorter than the other.

His features hadn’t changed that much: same Indian-ish high cheekbones, brown eyes peering out of slits, pointed nose, balled dimpled chin. The Ichabod Crane face was grooved with years, with hard living, but not-I would wager-lines etched by a conscience.

“Jesus Christ,” Arnold Wilson said thickly. “Is that who I think it is?”

He seemed a little surprised, a lot drunk, but not at all frightened or even concerned.

“Hello, Arnold,” I said.

I pulled the armchair up next to the bed where he sat propped up by a flat pillow, using the wall as his headboard. He had an empty bottle of Muscatel limp in his lap.

His grin was yellow and green and black. “Wondered if you’d ever find me.”

“Pretty tough tracing a guy who’s willing to burn fifteen, sixteen people to a crisp, to cover his tracks.”

“Shit-fuckin’ lowlifes. Put ’em outa their misery… So you talked to Gil Johnson, huh?”

I nodded. “He’s researching the Dahlia. Of course he called me.”

“And then he mentioned ‘Arnold Smith,’ and you put two and two together.”

“I’m a detective. I hear about a six-four skid row alcoholic, and I’m able to deduce it might just be my old friend, Arnold Wilson.”

He laughed, once-or was it a cough? “You look good. Christ, how old are you?”

“I’ll be seventy-seven.”

“Christ, I’m just sixty-six and I look like Methuselah!” Shaking his head, he said, “Shit, guy lived as hard as you-you don’t look a day over fuckin’ sixty!”

“I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I got good genes. That’s all it takes, Arnold.”

“Funny… seein’ you makes me feel good.”

“It does?”

“Remembering those days. Great days. I was in my prime!”

I grinned. “Playing all of us like a cheap kazoo. Sending me in Jack Dragna’s direction, knowing it would get me killed. If it wasn’t for Mickey Cohen, I mighta been.”

He laughed, and coughed, and laughed. “And now I’m set to get out of this dump-finish out my life living a little better, for a change. God, four years of this! Worse than fuckin’ stir.”

“Don’t kid me, Arnold. You and Lloyd always liked skid row-easy pickings, plenty of ass to hustle, male and female.”

Wilson made a farting sound with his lips. “Too old for such foolishness. I wanna retire. Johnson’s gonna pay me to hear all about the murder.”

“And you’re going to tell him about Lloyd?”

His grimace was grotesque; it was as if his face was trying to turn itself inside out. “Of course not! I made up some guy named Morrison. But I’m gonna give Johnson all the good, gory details. Would you like to hear it, Heller? Just how we did it?”

“Sure. Why not?… You mind if I bum a cigarette?”

He nodded toward the nightstand. “No, help yourself… I thought you didn’t smoke.”

“Not regularly. I smoked overseas.”

“Guadalcanal-I remember… Gimme one.”

I held out the pack of Chesties and he plucked one out; then I lit him up with one of the kitchen matches, asking, “Were you really in the Army, Arnold?”

“Sure.” He sucked on the cigarette, then exhaled slowly. “Got my leg bayonetted overseas; that was no bullshit.”

“I quit the cigs when I got back in the States… only, now and then, I get the urge. You know all about giving in to urges, don’t you, Arnold?”

“I guess I do.”

I helped myself to a Chesterfield and lighted it up.

“Uh… that bottle… is that for me?”

“Let’s hear the story first.”

Wilson began to talk, an elderly man sharing precious memories. He told how the girl (he never referred to her by name) had needed a place to stay, since shacking at Hassau’s was awkward with Bobby’s wife downstairs. That had allowed him to lure her to Lloyd’s apartment on East 31st Street, where the fun began.

“But you’re going to be disappointed,” Wilson said.

“Oh?”

“If you want gruesome shit. Hell, most of what we did to her was after she died. All we did before she died was fuck her in the ass and just kind of… you know, party. I think she drowned on her own blood-I mean we didn’t strangle her, but she was alive when we cut the smile in her face, and that’s the blood, you know, she choked on.”

I unsealed the cap on the bourbon bottle and screwed it open. I reached for the bathroom glass on the nightstand and poured the dark liquid into it, right to the top.

Arnold was salivating. He held out his hand.

But I didn’t give it to him. Instead I asked, “You and Lloyd didn’t happen to do that other girl, did you? That socialite?”

“Bauer-what’s-it? Yeah, we did her, had her in the tub to cut her up, but we got interrupted and had to duck out the back way. Hell, we did lots of ’em you don’t know about. You bring me a bottle like that every night, and I’ll tell you a new story every night.”

I splashed the bourbon in his face; some of it splashed on the pillow and sheets.

“Hey! You fucker!” He sat up, the liquid streaming down the nooks and crannies of his pockmarked face.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I lost my temper… I’ll pour you another…”

And I emptied the bourbon bottle all over him, down his T-shirt, and his trousers, dumping it everywhere. He was too drunk and weak to do anything-he just lay there, looking at me astounded.

“What are you wasting that shit for?”

I reached for the kitchen matches.

Then he understood… and yet he just grinned at me-with those teeth that were yellow, green-caked decayed things, plus a few gaps. “You wouldn’t, you fuckin’ candyass. You don’t have the balls.”

I lit the match.

And now, finally his eyes showed fear-some small fraction of the fear his victims had felt. Soaked with the booze, he began to tremble, as if a chill had overtaken him.

I was holding up the match, flame dancing like a little orange-and-blue demon. “What are you afraid of? You already died in a hotel fire once, Arnold.”

“What do you want, Heller? You want me to come forward? Want me to confess? Well, fuck you!”

He threw the wine bottle and I easily ducked it; it shattered on the wall behind me. I straightened-the match was still burning bright, had burned about halfway down.

“Do you believe in heaven, Arnold? Do you believe in hell?”

“No!”

“I’m not sure about that, either-but I do know you deserve hell.”

The flame was fat now, burning within a quarter inch of my fingers, leaping orange, jumping blue.

“What the fuck are you doing, Heller? We’re just a couple of old men!”

“You’re old enough,” I said.

And tossed the match.

The next morning I received a call from Gil Johnson. I was staying at my son’s house in Malibu; I was out on the deck, watching young women (they apparently weren’t called “girls” anymore) bob around in bikinis down on the beach.

“Mr. Heller,” Gilmore said, his tone grave, “I have something terrible to report.”

“Oh?”

“Seems Arnold Smith was burned to death last night, in his hotel room.”

“Really?”

“No one else was injured-fire was confined to the tiny room that Smith lived in for the last four years. Horrible, horrible… Somebody went up and down the halls banging on doors, yelling fire-over the sound of Smith screaming, apparently… Everybody was evacuated.”

“Everybody but Smith?”