George Chesbro - Two Songs This Archangel Sings

Both the car's right rear and passenger doors were unlocked, and I could have simply opened a door and jumped into the car. But the events of the past few days had made me slightly irritable, and so I opted for another way of getting his attention. I gripped one end of the nunchaku I was holding, let the other stick hang down behind my back, then, as I leaped out from the shadows toward the car, I swung the free stick five or six times around my head to gain velocity, then brought it smashing down onto the windshield, shattering the glass. Again I spun the stick by its connecting chain, turned counterclockwise and stove in the window on the passenger's side. The safety glass first spider-webbed, then disintegrated into powder as it exploded in and over the man in the overcoat, who was already covered with debris from the windshield. When the thoroughly shocked, ashen-faced man finally took his hands away from his face and looked in my direction, he found himself staring down the barrel of my Beretta.

The man's mouth opened and closed as, wide-eyed, he glanced back and forth between me and the park across the street from where, obviously, he expected the young men to come rushing to his rescue. "Wh-who-?"

"Never mind who I am," I said curtly as I quickly opened the door, got into the car, and slid across a carpet of powdered glass until I was right next to him. I pressed the Beretta up under his jaw. "It's enough for you to know that I'm going to blow a hole right up through your skull if you make a move I don't like, or if you don't do exactly as I say. Now turn on the engine and get us out of here. Now!"

The middle-aged man didn't do anything except keep turning his head back and forth between me and the park across the street. The force of the exploding glass had knocked off his hat, but he had not even bothered to wipe the powdered glass from his hair and face. What I saw in the man's eyes and the lines around his mouth was not anger, but fear and self-reproach. There was dignity in the man's face, and he looked like he might be a minister, or a college professor, or some other pillar of the community; his expression was that of a member of the church board caught by the local police soliciting a hooker.

If he was surprised to find a dwarf busting up his car and shoving a gun into his face, he didn't show it. It surely meant he'd known at least a few things about me before he'd set off for our rendezvous.

"Listen," I continued, trying to sound threatening but without much enthusiasm. "This is a loaded gun I've got pressed up against your neck. The rules of the game say that puts me in charge. I told you to get this car moving."

"My sons," the man said, staring at me with large, haunted, gold-colored eyes. "Are they …? Did you…?"

"Your sons are in a lot better shape than I'd be in if one of them had hauled off and seriously whacked me with nunchaku, pal. They're just napping."

"Thank God," the man said with a sigh as he leaned his head forward on the steering wheel. Powdered glass rained off the shoulders of his overcoat. I kept my gun pressed tightly against his carotid artery. "They were only here to protect me in case…"

"In case of what?"

"Just… in case. I didn't know what you wanted, or who might be with you."

"Do you know who I am?"

"I don't know your name. I had a physical description. I received dozens of calls."

I'd been worried that no one would know, or remember, Veil; obviously, a great many people did. "Why should you suspect that I meant to harm you?"

"I was not concerned about myself. Our fear was that you might intend to harm … him."

"Archangel?"

"Yes."

"You say 'our' fear. Why did the people call you?"

"I am the president of our community association." The man bowed his head slightly after he raised it from the wheel. "My people honor me by considering me a leader. My name is Loan Ka. The American was my personal friend. The Hmong owe him more than can ever be repaid."

One of Loan Ka's sons, the one I'd dropped into the bushes, came staggering out into the street, holding his head with both hands.

"Tell him to stay put," I said quietly, pushing the gun hard up into the father's neck. "We have some more talking to do."

The man shouted something in what I assumed was Hmong out through the broken windshield. The young man looked up, started forward threateningly. Another command, this one sharper, and the young man stopped, turned back, and sat down dejectedly on the curb.

"Archangel was my friend, too," I continued to the Hmong. "His name is Veil Kendry, and he's still my friend."

"He is… in trouble?"

"Yes," I answered after some hesitation. I found that I instinctively trusted and liked the Hmong; there was no harm in his face, only concern for his sons. "He's disappeared, and some very nasty people want him dead. For that matter, they also want me dead."

The second son came out of the park, and Loan Ka shouted a warning to him without being told. He, too, sat down on the curb, although he continued to stare intently at the car.

"How can I help?" Loan Ka asked quietly as he turned back to me.

"I'm not sure. Although I consider Veil Kendry my friend, much of his life has been kept a secret from me, as well as from others. I need all the information you can give me about what Veil did in Laos, every detail you or anyone else can remember. It could provide the key to where he's gone, who's after him, and why."

"Who are you?"

"My name's Frederickson."

"I apologize for your… reception, Mr. Frederickson. I will tell you all I remember, and do anything else I can to help; I believe that you are Archangel's friend. But, please; you will come to my home for dinner."

The invitation caught me by surprise; I wasn't certain I should even take the gun away from the man's neck, much less agree to sit down and eat with him. Under the circumstances, specifically considering Loan Ka's smashed car windows and slightly damaged sons, it seemed a rather bizarre invitation-too bizarre to be anything but sincere. Still, I hesitated; the two youths sitting across the street represented a lot of muscle.

"I'm not sure we know each other that well," I said. "We'll talk here."

"All the things you need to know will take time to tell, Mr. Frederickson. You say you are a friend of the American's, and I believe it is true. That makes you my friend." The Hmong paused, shuddered, then looked at me with a strange expression on his face, as if he were ashamed of what he was about to say. "Also, quite frankly, I am cold. Peter and Jimmy may need medical attention, and I am concerned abut their health. It is very difficult for me to speak under these circumstances."

"Peter and Jimmy?"

"We are Americans, and those are my sons' American names. Will you come to my home, Mr. Frederickson? You have nothing more to fear from me or my sons."

Loan Ka wasn't the only one who was cold; night daggers of arctic air were jabbing through the open spaces of the car which I'd just about managed to turn into a convertible. Still keeping my gun trained on Loan Ka's head, I got out, then slid into the backseat.

"Tell your boys to squeeze into the front with you," I said through chattering teeth. "And remind them that I have a gun."

"You won't need your gun, Mr. Frederickson."

"We'll see about that. It's a good thing for you people that I'm hungry."

"Many of the ethnic and national enmities in our part of the world go back centuries, Mongo. Not a few of these hatreds predate not only America's decision to go to war there, but even America's birth as a nation. This is a fact about Southeast Asia I find my new countrymen still find it difficult to grasp."

Sometime during the course of the evening Loan Ka, his family, and myself had gotten on a first-name basis. Although I'd kept my Beretta trained on the Hmong and his two sons during the short ride to his home, it had gone into my pocket when we had pulled into the driveway of Loan Ka's modest, two-story frame house on a quiet residential street near the perimeter of the Hmong enclave. Loan Ka's wife, Maru Tai, and an older woman I assumed was a grandmother had been waiting anxiously at the door, and the two women had reacted with some distress to the sight of the car with its shattered window, two sons with bleeding heads, and a decidedly strange stranger in the backseat. I never knew what Loan Ka told the two women, for the hurried family conference had been held in hushed tones, in Hmong. However, after the conference the two boys were led away by their grandmother to have their heads tended to, while Maru Tai began the preparation of a simple but delicious meal of fish and seasoned rice garnished with Laotian sauces and surrounded by braised vegetables. Now Loan Ka and I sat in a small den off the living room, drinking heavy Laotian liqueur and smoking cigars.