Jack Cavanaugh - Death Watch

“Do you know him well?” Sydney asked. “It’s important that we find him. He contacted me.”

“Billy and I go way back,” Lony said. “Billy and me were cellies at Calipatria.”

“State prison,” Overton interpreted.

“Yeah, Billy had two strikes on him for burglary and drugs, same as me, only I stayed away from the nasty stuff. We used to joke about which one of us would be the first to get a third strike and end up at Calipatria forever.” He laughed. “But God had other plans.”

“God?” Hunz said.

“It was God who dumped a whole bucket of Spirit on Billy’s head when he was in prison. Billy ain’t never been the same since. At first, it was real hard on me, you know? It ain’t easy sharin’ a cell with the apostle Paul. But Billy? He was real patient with me. It was him who led me to the Lord. And when I got out a year later, guess who was standin’ out there waitin’ for me. Billy. He’d hitchhiked all the way from LA just to see me get out.”

“Do you know where he is right now?” Hunz asked.

Lony shrugged. “Could be anywhere the Spirit leads him, you know? The guy will do anything to help someone. I seen him give his blanket away on a cold night. And his shoes. That kinda thing just doesn’t happen on the street, you know? Did I tell you angels talk to him?”

“So we’ve heard,” Sydney said.

“It’s the truth. I ain’t seen any of them. They don’t just show themselves to anybody. But Billy sees them. They tell him stuff and he does it. Ooooeee, but he pays for it, let me tell you that.”

“What do you mean?” Sydney asked.

“Well, Billy sees these angels, but that means he sees demons too, and they don’t like being seen. Sometimes they hammer on Billy something awful.”

Hunz had obviously heard enough. He stood. “If you see Billy, tell him we’re looking for him,” he said.

“You gonna interview him? Put Billy on TV?”

“We just want to talk to him,” Hunz said.

“When you see him, tell him to call me on my personal cell phone number,” Sydney said. She wrote it down for him on her card.

Lony fished in his back pocket and produced a worn and crumpled gospel tract. He handed it to Sydney in exchange for her card. “Are you saved, Miss St. James?” he asked.

Sydney looked at Hunz. Her cheeks warmed. “I’m a Midwestern girl,” she said. “I was raised in the church.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Lony said. “I asked if you was saved.”

“Let’s go.” Hunz grabbed Sydney by the arm.

As Sydney and Hunz left the Gospel Rescue Mission, she stuffed the crumpled tract in her pocket.

In the car, Hunz shrugged. “Well, that was a waste of time.”

Daylight was little more than a thin strip on the western horizon when Billy Peppers reached Los Angeles International Airport. It took three hitched rides, but he managed to get to Century Boulevard exit on Interstate 405. He walked from there, still not knowing how he was going to get a flight to Chicago with no money in his pocket.

The Lord will provide, Billy told himself, toting his Nike shoe box. Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Not me. No sir, not me. And so Billy kept his feet moving forward. They were God’s feet now. Billy gave them to God, then asked God to use them to get him to Chicago.

Upon reaching the airport boundaries God’s feet took Billy in an unexpected direction. Instead of heading toward the passenger terminals, they led him down the road toward the cargo hangars. Names of freight companies were displayed prominently on the sides of hangars and on the tails of airplanes—UPS, FedEx, Transworld Freight, Star Courier, Industrial Express, Global Air Freight.

Billy Peppers smiled.

Global Air Freight.

He knew now how he was getting to Chicago.

“One more street, then we have to go,” Sydney said. They’d canvassed the blocks surrounding the Gospel Mission in hopes of finding Billy Peppers. More accurately, in hopes that Billy Peppers would find them, because they had only a general description at best of what he looked like—black, dreadlocks, jeans, gray jacket, maybe light blue, sometimes with a grocery cart, or as Sydney remembered him, carrying a Nike shoe box. At least she thought that was Billy Peppers she’d seen with the shoe box.

Billy, on the other hand, would notice Sydney on sight, so their slow rolling tour of Little Tokyo was more about being seen than searching. But after a while, the passive approach became too taxing and the need to do something took over.

The direct approach proved equally futile. They found the homeless to be skittish about people approaching them. Some ran away. Others cringed and shut their eyes until Sydney and Hunz left them alone. Still others mumbled incoherently. Among those who would talk to them, who spoke intelligibly, they either didn’t know Billy Peppers or hadn’t seen him.

“Would you like me to drop you somewhere?” Sydney said.

Hunz didn’t answer. He was looking down an alley.

Sydney turned onto San Pedro Avenue. It was getting late. She’d told Cheryl she’d pick her up in thirty minutes.

“Hunz?”

He dialed a number on his cell phone.

“Agent Fernandez,” he said into the phone.

On the sidewalk a woman with a brown knit cap pushed a grocery cart overflowing with old rugs. Atop the rug pile, like royalty, sat a Pekingese scratching fleas.

“Fernandez,” Hunz said a little louder. “Vonner. Anything?” He frowned as he listened to the FBI agent. “Yeah. Fine. Thanks.” Hunz snapped shut his cell phone.

“Anything?” Sydney asked.

“No.”

Hunz turned away, presumably to continue looking for Billy Peppers, but before he did, Sydney noticed an odd expression on his face. It was the expression of a man who had just lost a lot of money on the stock market.

“Would you like me to take you back to your hotel?” Sydney said.

“No,” Hunz said.

“The station?”

“No. I’m going with you.”

“To the game show? I thought you said it was a waste of time.”

“It is.” Hunz Vonner’s jaw was set. The Billy Peppers lead hadn’t panned out. All they could do now was wait for the FBI to do their job. And it was obvious that Hunz Vonner was not very good at waiting.

Dwarfed by the size of the cargo planes on the tarmac, Billy Peppers smiled at seeing Buster again. Buster wasn’t smiling back.

“Hey, man, I’m glad to see youse and all,” Buster said, “but what you’re asking me to do is impossible. I could get in a lot of trouble. I could get fired. I know you gots me this job, and I’m grateful for it, believe me I am, but this this is just asking too much.”

“I didn’t get you this job, Buster. God did,” Billy said. “And now it’s time to give back to God.”

A hulk in a gray Global Air Freight jumpsuit, Buster Kozloski’s body resembled an inverted triangle with the sum of his massive shoulders twice that of his hips. Like many cons, he’d spent all his exercise time in the prison weight room. As a result, Buster the parolee was double the size of Buster the defendant.

“I don’t know ” He looked around for his shift supervisor. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

Billy had met Buster a little over a year ago. Having reverted to his old ways, Buster was breaking into a Radio Shack store. It was one of those sweltering LA nights, the kind when you couldn’t buy a breeze, and Billy was looking for a cool place when he happened upon the break-in. Buster threatened Billy with a tire iron. Billy leveled Buster with the Holy Spirit.

“I have to get back to work,” Buster said, apologetically.