John Connolly - The Black Angel

“G-Mack,” said Louis.

“Ring any bells?”

“No. Last I heard she was with a pimp called Free Billy.”

“Looks like things changed.”

Louis stood and helped Martha from her chair.

“We need to get you something to eat. You need to rest up now.”

She took his hand and gripped it tightly in her own.

“You find her for me. She’s in trouble. I can feel it. You find her, and bring her back to me”

The fat man stood at the lip of the bathtub. His name was Brightwell, and he was very, very old, far older than he seemed. Sometimes he acted like a man who had recently woken from a deep sleep, but the Mexican, whose name was Garcia, knew better than to question him about his origins. He recognized only that Brightwell was a thing to be obeyed, and to be feared. He had seen what the man had done to the woman, had watched through the glass as Brightwell’s mouth closed on hers. It had seemed to him that some grave knowledge had shown itself in the woman’s eyes at that moment, even as she weakened and died, as though she realized what was about to occur as her body failed her at last. How many others had he taken in this way? Garcia wondered, his lips against theirs as he waited for their essence to pass from them. And even if what Garcia suspected of Brightwell was not true, what kind of man would believe such a thing of himself?

The stench was terrible as the chemicals worked on the remains, but Brightwell made no attempt to cover his face. The Mexican stood behind him, the lower half of his face concealed by a white mask.

“What will you do now?” said Garcia.

Brightwell spit into the tub, then turned his back on the disintegrating body. “I will find the other one, and I will kill her.”

“Before she died, this one spoke of a man. She thought he might come for her.”

“I know. I heard her call his name.”

“She was supposed to be alone. Nobody cared.”

“We were misinformed, but perhaps nobody cares anyway.”

Brightwell swept by him, leaving him with the decaying body of the girl. Garcia did not follow him. Brightwell was wrong, but Garcia did not have the courage to confront him further on the issue. No woman, as death approached, would cry out over and over again a name that meant nothing to her.

Someone did care.

And he would come.

The celebration of Sam’s christening continued around us. I could hear people laughing, and the startled hiss of bottles opening. Somewhere a voice began singing a song. It sounded like Rachel’s father, who tended to sing when he was in his cups. Frank was a lawyer, one of those hearty, hail-fellow-well-met types who liked to be the center of attention wherever he went, the kind who thought that he brightened up people’s lives by being loud and unintentionally intimidating. I had watched him in action at a wedding, forcing shy women to dance on the grounds that he was trying to take them out of their shells, even as they trembled awkwardly across the dance floor like newborn giraffes, casting longing glances back at their chairs. I supposed it could be said of him that he had a good heart, but unfortunately he didn’t have a sensitivity toward others to go with it. Aside from any concerns he might have had about his daughter, Frank seemed to regard my presence at such convivial events as a personal affront, as though at any moment I were going to burst into tears, or beat someone up, or otherwise rain on the parade that Frank was trying so hard to organize. We tried not to be alone together. To be honest, it wasn’t too difficult, as we both put our hearts into the effort.

Joan was the strong one in the marriage, and a soft word from her could usually make Frank take things down a notch. She was a kindergarten teacher, and an old-style liberal Democrat who took very personally the way the country had changed in recent years under both Republicans and Democrats. Unlike Frank, she rarely spoke about her worries for her daughter directly, at least not to me. Only occasionally, usually when we were leaving them at the end of another sometimes awkward, sometimes mildly pleasant visit, would she take me lightly by the hand, and whisper, “Look after her, won’t you?”

And I would assure her that I would take care of her daughter, even as I looked into her eyes and saw her desire to believe me collide with her fear that I would be unable to fulfill that promise. I wondered if, like the missing Alice, there was a taint upon me, a wound left by the past that would somehow always find a way to infect the present and the future. I had tried, in recent months, to discover a means of neutralizing the threat, mainly by declining offers of work that sounded like they could involve any serious form of risk, my recent evening with Jackie Garner being the honorable exception. The trouble was that any job that was worth doing necessitated risk of some kind, and so I was spending time on cases that were progressively sapping my will to live. I had tried to walk this path before, but I was not living with Rachel when I followed it, and I did not last long upon it before I found the lure of the dark woods impossible to ignore.

Now a woman had come to my door, and she had brought with her her own pain, and the misery of another. It was possible that a simple explanation would arise for her daughter’s disappearance. There was little merit in ignoring the realities of Alice’s existence: her life at the Point was dangerous in the extreme, and her habit made her more vulnerable still. The women who worked those streets disappeared regularly. Some were fleeing their pimps or other violent men. Some tried to leave the life before it consumed them entirely, sick of robbery and rape, but few of those women succeeded, and most trudged back to the alleys and the parking lots with their hopes of escape entirely gone. The women tried to look out for one another, and the pimps monitored their movements too, if only to protect their investments, but these were gestures and little more. If someone was determined to hurt one of these women, then he would succeed.

We brought Louis’s aunt into the kitchen and entrusted her to the care of one of Rachel’s relatives. Soon she was eating chicken and pasta and sipping lemonade in a comfortable chair in the living room. When Louis went to check on her a little later, he found her asleep, exhausted by all that she had tried to achieve for her daughter.

Walter Cole joined us. He knew something of Louis’s past and suspected more. He was more knowledgeable about Angel, as Angel had the kind of criminal record that merited a sizable file all to itself, although its details pertained to the relatively distant past. I had asked Louis if we could involve Walter, and he acquiesced, albeit reluctantly. Louis wasn’t the trusting kind, and he most certainly did not like involving the police in his affairs. Nevertheless, Walter, although retired, had connections with the NYPD that I no longer had, and was on better terms with serving officers than I was. Admittedly, that wasn’t difficult. There were those in the department who suspected that I had blood on my hands and would dearly have liked to call me to account for it. Cops on the street were less problematical for me, but Walter still had the respect of those higher up who might be in a position to offer assistance if it was needed.

“You’ll go back to the city tonight?” I asked Louis.

He nodded. “I want to find me that G-Mack.”

I hesitated before I spoke.

“I think you should wait.”

Louis’s head tilted slightly, and his right hand slapped lightly against the arm of his chair. He was a man of few unnecessary movements, and this pretty much qualified as an explosion of emotion.