George Chesbro: Two Songs This Archangel Sings

If it had missed its mark.

The bullet had to have been fired from the roof of the factory building across the alley, which was some two stories higher that the loft. That gave me an approximate downward angle, but it wasn't much help in allowing me to determine the exact trajectory of the bullet into the loft.

The canvases on the one wall hadn't been damaged, which meant that the bullet hadn't entered there. Slowly, eyes on the floor, I began to walk back and forth across the work area, looking for a bullet hole or bloodstain. I gave up after a couple of minutes; if there were bloodstains on the wrinkled tarpaulins that covered the floor, they would be indistinguishable from the innumerable splotches of red paint.

The good news, I thought, was that there had been no bloodstains in the elevator; but then, Veil, if he had been hurt, could always have bandaged the wound. Whatever had happened to Veil, the answer to where he had gone, and why, did not seem to be in this part of the loft.

Which did not mean that there might not be answers somewhere else in the loft.

I went back into the living quarters, through the kitchen into the area where Veil slept. I'd been in this area before, but only now did it strike me how very little there was to see. After the vast expanse of the work area, the living quarters seemed excessively cramped and ascetic, like a monk's cell. It was all strictly functional. Just to the right of the kitchen entrance was a neatly made bed covered by a thick brown quilt that matched the color of the walls and ceiling. There was a bathroom with toilet and shower, and next to the bed a leather reclining chair with a reading lamp behind it. There was a bookshelf filled with books that looked well worn. Judging from the titles of the books, his reading was thoroughly eclectic, from Carlos Castaneda to Proust to Melville to Ross Macdonald, in addition to lots of history, philosophy, and science. A separate bookcase held dozens of back issues of magazines and newspapers- Scientific American, Newsweek, Time, The New York Review of Books, and various martial arts journals. Next to the wall on the opposite side of the kitchen entrance was a writing desk-bare except for a lead paperweight and a letter opener. There was also a small television set and stacked stereo components. His record collection, like his books, was eclectic, and his tastes ranged from classical to rock, from folk to vintage blues and jazz. There was a dresser and mirror flanked by two wardrobes, both filled with clothes.

Wherever Veil had gone, he was traveling light.

It struck me that, aside from the shards of personality that can always be extracted from a person's book and record collections, there was absolutely nothing personal in the living quarters-no pictures, no photographs, no mementos of any kind. The walls, like the surfaces of the desk and dresser, were bare of personal statement or reflection, making the living quarters as silent about Veil Kendry as the man himself. It was as if Veil had gone to great lengths to erase all traces of his past.

Once, soon after I'd met the painter, I'd asked him where he had been and what he had done before coming to New York City. His reply had been flat and simple; there was no offense intended, but his past, all of it, was something he preferred not to discuss. That had been fine with me. I'd liked Veil Kendry for who and what he was, and who and what he might once have been had been irrelevant to me. Indeed, after that initial conversation I hadn't given the matter further thought-until now, eleven years later, standing in this spiritually stripped cell.

Not bothering to glance at my watch because I knew it would only make me nauseated, I walked quickly to the desk and opened the middle drawer. Inside were invoices and receipts for art supplies, a checkbook, a few pens and pencils. There were no entries in the checkbook that seemed unusual, and there were no personal letters.

I closed that drawer, opened the single, deep drawer to the left. There was nothing in the front of the drawer, and as I bent over to look in the back my eye caught something mounted beneath the desk, high on a back leg: a switch. I hesitated just a moment, then reached back and flipped it. I heard a sharp click behind me, spun around, and saw that a section of the floor about the size of a door had popped up an inch or so.

At once excited by my discovery and embarrassed at just how far I was intruding into a very private man's private space and affairs, I walked quickly over to the raised section of floor, got down on my hands and knees. I pushed the panel back off its spring-loaded supports, grunted with surprise when I looked down into the hidden compartment, which was perhaps a foot and a half deep. There was a sharp odor of machine oil, and in one corner were bottles of gun oil, gun cleaning equipment, and a number of soft, oil-soaked rags. Around the edges of the compartment were brackets-now ominously empty-obviously intended to hold guns; judging from the configuration of the brackets, one of those weapons could well be a submachine gun.

At the bottom of the compartment, directly in the center, was a fairly large oil painting, obviously by Veil but painted in the kind of dark, rich, vibrant colors he had employed at the beginning of his career, but which he hadn't used for years. The style, the brushstrokes, were undeniably Veil's, but this painting was unlike any of his other work I had ever seen. To begin with, the single canvas was complete in itself and painted in a totally realistic style.

It was also jarring. In the painting, black-pajama-clad and uniformed Asiatics armed with carbines and semiautomatic weapons moved stealthily along a narrow trail winding through thick jungle growing over the foothills of a cloud-shrouded mountain range that rose in the distance. Hovering over the entire scene, rising over the misted mountains and suspended above the armed figures, was what could only be described as an angel, albeit a most unusual one. The suggestion of wings on its back and a halo around its head were composed of fire and dark smoke. The angel wore a long, flowing white robe covered with strange, mystical symbols colored magenta, crimson, and brown. Bullet-choked bandoleros crisscrossed the angel's chest, and he brandished a submachine gun. Long, thick yellow hair was whipped by a fierce wind that apparently affected nothing and nobody else in the painting. The angel had pale blue eyes, handsome features, unusually high cheekbones, and a strong chin. His lips were drawn back in a grimace of pain or rage, or both.

That long, yellow hair of the figure in the painting was now liberally streaked with gray, and the flesh over the high cheekbones was no longer stretched quite so taut; there were more shadows under the eyes that remained a kind of glacial blue, but the face was nevertheless unmistakably that of Veil Kendry as he must have looked more than twenty years before.

When I lightly touched the surface of the painting, I found it still tacky; it had been painted recently, within the past twenty-four hours. I gripped the canvas by the edges of its woooden stretch frame, carefully lifted it up and out. As I did so, I was startled to find a large, bulky manila envelope beneath it. My name, in black oil paint and written in Veil's familiar hand, was printed in large block letters across the face of the envelope.

Setting down the painting, I picked up the envelope, ripped open one end, and dumped the contents on the floor. A quick count with trembling fingers told me there was ten thousand dollars, in hundreds and fifties, spread out before me. I shook the envelope, but nothing else came out, and a look inside confirmed that the envelope was empty. There was no note.

After stuffing the money back into the envelope, I rose and hurried to the phone extension in the kitchen. This time I reached Garth at his apartment.