Christopher Hebert - Angels of Detroit

She’d been in the parking garage for four hours. But those four hours had begun to feel like something more, like days at the bottom of a mine shaft. All she could see of the sky was the rough trapezoid framed between the descending ramp and the concrete headers hanging above. That sliver of sky had been blue when she arrived. Now it was black.

It was nine o’clock. For the last forty-five minutes, not a single person had arrived. No one had left. The elevator and the stairwell doors remained mute before her. The half-dozen cars still parked here were all luxurious compared to hers.

The truck was Michael Boni’s. That the radio functioned at all was nothing short of a miracle. She’d spent the first hour sitting in silence. It wasn’t just the six levels of cement above her head that made her assume she’d get no signal. Nothing in Michael Boni’s truck looked as if it could possibly work. There was duct tape holding together the dashboard and the mirrors were missing and the windshield looked like it had caught a brick. One of the window cranks lay on the floor mats, and the tape deck was vomiting ribbon. On the radio itself there wasn’t a single knob. What had Michael Boni done with them? What had he done to the truck? She couldn’t dream up explanations for anywhere near this much wreckage. He was temperamental; she was aware of that. But if she’d realized before what a gift he had for destruction, would she still be here now?

The antenna was about the only thing on the truck that remained intact. Higher up on the dial there was country and pop and Motown and pop and country and pop and Christian and pop. Then back down again to the bottom for the news.

At least Michael Boni kept a pair of pliers in the cup holder. With them it was possible to turn the tuner stem. Possible, but not easy, and the longer she spent waiting, the harder it got. Her body had grown tired of sitting still. A restless twitch was running up and down the backs of both knees. She needed two hands to steady the jaws of the pliers, making the orange band lurch slowly ahead.

minimizing the threat of an attack by rogue nations already developing weapons of mass mailing and other fund-raising strategies that appeal to a higher power, and if that happens there’s little question from a caller, go ahead caller, yes you’re on the air

Followed by sports scores and oil prices again and weather, weather, and even more weather. Why all this mania for weather? Did it really matter, sixty-four degrees or sixty-eight? Were there oddsmakers taking bets on the probability of rain? And traffic! She’d been sitting here so long she could’ve mapped the flow in and around the city. At rush hour, cars had been jammed heading out of downtown. She’d been just about the only one coming in.

In the next aisle over, a reserved spot beside the elevator doors, was the shiny black Cadillac, the one Darius — before he’d abandoned them — had told her about. The car hadn’t moved in four hours. She’d had all the time in the world to study the lines on the trunk, the tread on the tires, the numbers on the license plate, the way the overhead fluorescent lights puddled on the finish. That the old woman drove a Cadillac was something Darius had mentioned in passing, not knowing how the information might come to be useful. McGee hadn’t known either, but she’d made a point of remembering.

None of this was what she’d expected.

and rain increasing interest rates another quarter of an hour we’ll be talking with the head of the American Way, a think-tank with close ties and two losses leading into the play-offs but the team doctors say

Oh, what do they say? she wondered with extravagant indifference.

She was reaching out again for the pliers, to turn them once more, when she happened to notice, out of the corner of her eye, the light above the elevator door. It was moving.

McGee reached for the ignition, but she turned the key the wrong way. Instead of silencing the radio, she nearly started the engine, catching herself just as the few working dashboard lights flashed on.

She slipped out of the truck as the elevator doors were parting. After four hours of waiting, everything suddenly seemed to be happening all at once, before she was ready.

Out of the elevator stepped a gray-haired woman with her head in her purse, searching for her keys.

“Mrs. Freeman? Ruth Freeman?”

The old woman stopped, lifting her head from the mouth of her bag. She didn’t answer, but she stopped. And as she watched McGee come toward her, she seemed to tense. If McGee had been a man, she wondered, would the old woman have kept moving, instead?

It was strange seeing Mrs. Freeman like this, in the flesh. McGee had been obsessed with her for so long that she’d come to feel as though she actually knew her, as if they’d met a lifetime ago. All the arguments McGee had had in her head, it was as if Mrs. Freeman had been there, too, taking part.

“What is it?” Mrs. Freeman said.

The good thing about the radio, the distraction, was that it had kept McGee from rehearsing this moment over and over, deadening it, turning it rote. The problem was, now the moment itself had arrived, and McGee found she didn’t know what to say.

Mrs. Freeman shifted her weight, coming one cautious step closer to her car. “Who are you?”

“I need you to come with me,” McGee said. She tried not to think about how she must sound, how all this must look. A parking garage, of all places.

The old woman hitched the purse higher up on her shoulder. “I don’t suppose this can wait until tomorrow?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Mrs. Freeman had her keys clenched in her fist. McGee wondered what the old woman might be prepared to do. The elevator doors had already shut behind her. The elevator itself was rising back up into the building. The Cadillac was still several yards away.

McGee had never thought to wonder, What if she didn’t come? What if she refused? What if she resisted somehow? What in the world was McGee going to do then? In the old woman’s place, what would McGee have done?

“Is this an abduction?” Mrs. Freeman said.

“No.”

McGee could hear the edges of the metal keys grinding against one another in the old woman’s palm.

“I’d like to know what your intentions are,” Mrs. Freeman said. “Is this about a ransom?”

“I don’t want your money.”

“No,” Mrs. Freeman said, “I didn’t think you would.”

McGee realized she’d forgotten all about stuffing her hands in her pockets, pretending she was armed.

What a joke this must seem to the old woman. McGee had managed to summon more rage toward the radio than she could right now. Fearing she was losing her nerve, she took another step forward, not certain what she intended to do.

Mrs. Freeman didn’t budge. The only thing on her that moved was her eyes, darting over McGee’s shoulder. McGee let her own eyes turn in the same direction, and she instantly saw what the old lady had seen: the elevator was moving again. And she noticed something else, too: the security camera tucked up among the girders, aiming straight at her.

How had she not thought of that before?

“Give me the keys.”

Mrs. Freeman released the ring without a struggle. On the back of the remote opener was a red panic button, untouched.

McGee took the old woman’s hand and helped her into the backseat. Then she circled around to the driver’s side and slid in behind the wheel.

The engine came alive the instant she turned the key. The dashboard lit up like a cockpit.

The car glided backward, and just as McGee was about to throw it into drive and race up the ramp, the elevator doors parted.

Darius was already running when he appeared, as if he’d somehow known exactly what was happening, precisely where they would be. And maybe he did. Maybe his partner was at the other end of the camera, directing his every move.