***
“Goodbye, Angel,” I mumbled around the .44’s cold barrel.
Angel’s soft female voice drifted from across the room. “Are you sure you want to do this, John?”
“I’m sure.”
I gazed into the dark corner, beyond the opened-out and unmade futon, to the cage on the shelf high against the wall. The white rat’s eyes shone red, and I wondered for an instant if Angel’s eyes were actually glowing, or if it was an illusion supplied by my sleep-deprived brain.
I had quit drinking five days ago in order to clear my mind. I wanted to make certain that what I was about to do was the product of a rational decision. But I hadn’t slept in as many nights and part of me knew my thoughts were far from rational.
My thumb rested on the revolver’s trigger, the weapon turned around in my hand, the bite of metal mixing with the light taste of gun oil to gag me. Images of Sylvia flashed through my mind. Sylvia slim and athletic. Sylvia all in white on our wedding day. Sylvia large with child, a soft smile on her face as she slept beside me before my final op.
Then I thought of those I would leave behind. Chester. My mother. My sister and my nephew in Seattle. Frank Nelson. And, of course, Angel.
But would I miss them? After what I planned was completed, I doubted that would even be possible. And would any of them miss me?
Almost on cue, Angel rustled in her cage. “You still have much to do, John. Your work with Father Albright....”
“Chester can get by without me. He was doing all right before I arrived on the scene, and he’ll do just fine after I’m gone.”
The rat was silent for a few seconds, then said, “But you have accomplished so much, and there is still much you can do.”
“Right. In fact, I’ve done too much—too damned much harm. If I hang around any longer, I’ll only pile more harm on top of it.”
“You’ve done good, too, John. You know you have.”
“And I’ve done a great deal of evil.”
Again there was silence. Angel couldn’t muster an argument for that. She knew only too well the pain and suffering I had caused the past three years.
The rat sighed, an eerily human sound. “Very well. If you feel you must do this, I know there is nothing I can say that will stop you.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Then... goodbye, John.”
I tightened my thumb on the trigger and closed my eyes, attempting to clear my mind of all thought.
The knock on the door was weak and timid, but enough to jar me, forcing me to pull the barrel from my mouth. I winced in pain as the forward sight chipped a jagged arch out of my two upper front teeth.
My eyes snapped open and I waited. After a few seconds the knock came again, with a bit more urgency.
“Aren’t you going to answer the door, John?” Angel said from across the room.
“Probably just some idiot kid selling magazine subscriptions,” I answered.
“At this hour? Besides, it might be important.”
Few knew where I lived, and they wouldn’t bother me unless they had to. Certainly not this late. Still...
The knock came again, and I removed my thumb from the revolver’s trigger. I placed the .44 on the small table beside the battery-powered radio, covering it with the front section of The Denver Post, then got up from the easy chair and went to the door. I unlocked it, pulled it open. Snow blew cold around a small black woman standing in the dark doorway before me. A woman I didn’t know.
The first thing to strike me was that she wasn’t wearing a coat in the sub-zero weather. She was no taller than five feet two or three inches, and extremely thin. Her hair was dirty and matted, her clothing—jeans, a green marijuana t-shirt, red high-tops with holes in them and no laces or socks—was soiled. Her nipples showed prominently through the t-shirt, emphasizing her small breasts, and her breath came in rapid pants of condensation.
She looked thirty-five or forty. Maybe she had been pretty once, but now she had a street-hardened and haunted look. Her cheeks were hollow, her eyes shadowed. There were a few small open sores on her face and her teeth showed a couple brown spots, indicating the beginning of decay.
One look at her soft brown eyes and I knew she was on something. That, and the amped-up way she moved—jerkily, scratching nervously at her neck, darting her head about as if someone was chasing her. Meth, I thought as she shivered in the doorway.
I came close to slamming the door in her face, but stopped myself. “What do you want?”
She blinked twice, then took a step back. “Are you Scar?” she asked in a light Southern drawl.
“’Course I am.” All she had to do was look at my face—the livid slash, pink against my dark-tanned skin, running from the outside corner of my right eye to the right side of my mouth. What else would my street name be?
“I need your help. Father Albright sent me.”
The wind blew more snow in the doorway around her. “I’m into something just now—something important.” I ran my tongue over my newly-roughened front teeth.
“Father Albright said you would help me.”
There was something odd about the way she spoke. Her speech pattern was too clear, too precise—not at all what I would have expected from someone who’d spent time on the streets.
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s something I can’t put off.”
Tears filled her eyes, and she shook her head in frustration and disbelief. “I don’t know....” She stopped, scratching again at her neck. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I... I need help.”
And suddenly I knew she was as bad off as I was. Maybe worse.
I ran a hand over the stubble atop my head and sighed, then waved her in. “Hurry up. I don’t want to heat the whole damned outdoors.”
She stepped in and I slammed the door against the dark and storm. It was too late. The meager heat had already escaped the apartment.
We stood in the middle of the room, neither of us knowing what to do or say. I waved a hand toward the futon and she went to it and moved the faded blue comforter to cover the sheet. The futon’s springs complained lightly as she sat and shivered.
I returned to the easy chair and sat, reached down to the space heater at my feet and turned it up a few notches. Angel rustled in her bedding and the woman looked over her shoulder at the rat’s cage. Angel remained predictably silent.
The woman’s body shook with more than cold as she glanced around the room. Her gaze finally centered on me. “This place is hard to find. No apartment number.”
My grunt was noncommittal. “There are reasons for that.”
It was an unmarked, windowless basement room with a kitchenette and a small bathroom beneath a rundown liquor store I occasionally watched for a few dollars or, more often, a bottle of cheap whiskey. I paid two hundred a month rent in cash to Tony, the liquor store owner, and I maintained a minimal mail drop under an assumed name downtown on the Sixteenth Street Mall. I generated no traceable income, neither declared nor paid taxes, held no current driver’s license, and did not maintain a savings account or credit card. There was no cable or television—only the radio. It amounted to a bare bones existence without a paper trail.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Crystal.”
I stifled a laugh. Last name Meth? I almost said. Instead: “Your last name.”
She didn’t respond.
“You’re not going to tell me.”
She shook her head, then shrugged.
“Crystal’s okay, for now. I’m John Point.”
She nodded. Chester would have told her that much.
I chewed on something hard and it crumbled. Debris from my ruined front teeth.
“Just a minute,” I said. I got up, went to the kitchen sink and filled a plastic tumbler with water, then rinsed out my mouth. The cold water sent a renewed lance of pain through my top front teeth.
I returned to the chair and sat. “Now, what happened? Why did Father Albright send you to me?”
“He said you’d help.”
“Not until I know what happened to you. Maybe not even then.”
When she finally spoke, her voice trembled with fear. “I saw... something.”
“What did you see?”
“I saw someone killed.”
“When?”
“Tonight,” she said, and again her gaze traveled the room, as if she feared someone might overhear.
“You’re sure about that?”
“I’m sure.” She shivered again, more violently than before.
“And you didn’t go to the cops?”
“One of the killers was a cop.”
“How do you know that?”
“He wore a uniform.”
“A cop’s uniform?” She nodded. “How sure are you that it was a cop’s uniform?”
“Pretty sure—it looked like one. And I think they saw me.”
“The killers saw you?”
She nodded again.
“Did they get a good look at you?”
“I didn’t hang around long enough to find out. I just ran.”
I took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “What did you see?”
“Like I said, someone was killed.”
“Do you know him—the guy who was killed?”
“I know him. It was Billy Simpson.”
It was my turn to fall silent. I knew that name. Billy Simpson was a large black man of somewhere between forty-five and fifty years, a small-time drug dealer operating in and around Denver.
I no longer use drugs, and I’m doing my damnedest to stay away from them. Whiskey’s my current poison of choice, applied in quantity and often. I’d quit drugs more than a year ago, but I knew Billy from when I used. He was my supplier back then, and I’d seen him on the street a handful of times since I’d quit buying from him. He was still around town. Or had been, if what Crystal was saying turned out to be true.
“How did you know Billy?”
“He was my ant. I got my stuff from him.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Glass.”
I was right—a meth head.
“How do you know Father Albright?” I figured I knew the answer to that question, too, but her response might give me something.
“I’ve been going to his church for food for the past year.”
Father Chester Albright took care of the homeless around Holy Sacrament Catholic Church in lower downtown Denver. He ran a sandwich line most days, handed out socks, hats and coats, and saw that those who needed medical care got it. I’d had considerable contact with the priest over the past three years. We attended local mixed martial arts contests together where I competed about once a month—not trying for a title, just feeding my addiction, although I won more than I lost. We worked out together at the downtown YMCA gym four times a week, and met for an occasional handball game. In special cases, when someone needed a place to stay for a week or two, Chester sent them to me.
But this was the first time he’d sent a woman to my apartment, and that bothered me.
“What exactly did you see?” I asked.
“I saw a short man pull a knife from his pocket, while the policeman held a gun on Billy.”
“What was the short guy wearing?”
“Jeans, a gray sweatshirt, a Rockies ball cap.”
“Was he white or black?”
“White.”
“And the cop?”
“He was white, too.”
“What else happened?”
“The third man—a large white man in a suit—held Billy’s arms from behind.”
“Was he large, or just fat?”
“Both. He wasn’t as tall as you—maybe six-one or two—but he was fat.”
“About Billy’s size?”
She nodded.
“What color was his suit?”
“Does it matter?"
“It might.”
Crystal frowned, thinking, then said, “Black, I guess. It looked black in the alley’s dim light.”
“Did Billy have a weapon?”
“He always carries a gun.”
That was true enough. I, too, had seen Billy’s gun on a number of occasions—a small nine millimeter Beretta. He had no problem waving it in everyone’s face. But he knew better than to wave it in my direction. Had he ever done that, it would have become a permanent part of his anatomy.
“He didn’t use his gun tonight?”
“He didn’t have a chance to pull it.”
“So, the guy in the sweatshirt and jeans stabbed Billy.”
Crystal nodded. “Twice. Once in the stomach, then once in the chest.”
“The cop didn’t shoot him.”
“No. And the other two were taking orders from the man in the suit.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The man in the suit told the man in the sweatshirt to stab Billy, and he did.”
“Then what happened?”
“The man in the sweatshirt wiped his knife on Billy’s hoodie and put it away.” There was something strange about that, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.
“And...?”
“He picked up a sledgehammer.” She stopped and shivered.
***
It took nearly half an hour to get her started talking again. She became incoherent for a while, then began to cry. We ended up sitting together on the futon. Holding her awkwardly, I let her sob herself out against my chest. I flashed back to the many times I’d held Sylvia, and again wondered why Chester had sent a woman.
When she finally calmed down I made coffee—instant. I kept a jar of decaf and a jar of regular in the apartment. I made two mugs of decaf; I figured neither of us needed the caffeine.
I handed her a mug, then sat in the easy chair. “What happened after the guy in the sweatshirt picked up the sledgehammer?”
She blew across the top of her coffee. “The man in the suit spotted me and pointed. The policeman turned toward me and I ran.”
“To Father Albright’s church.”
“That’s right.”
I took a tentative sip of my coffee. It was still too hot. “Why did you run to the church?”
“That’s all I could think to do. I couldn’t go to the police.”
“Did you get a look at their faces?”
“No. It was too dark.”
I waited until she drank some coffee, then asked, “Where did all this happen?”
“In an alley somewhere north of the mall on Blake Street.”
“Where north of the mall on Blake?”
“I don’t know—maybe between Seventeenth and Eighteenth. It was just a block or two from the ball park.”
“Were you out to score? Is that why you were there in this weather?” During off-season, the neighborhood around the baseball stadium served as a meeting place for drug dealers, hookers, and their respective customers.
“I was supposed to meet Billy at the main entrance to the ball park. He was going to fix me up.”
I put my cup down on the table beside the easy chair and got to my feet. “I’m going to look at the scene.”
She jumped up from the futon, scratching at her neck and glancing around. “You’re going to the police. I know you are. I told you, one of them was a cop.”
“Calm down. I’m not going to the cops. Like I said, I’m just going to check out what you said you saw.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.” She sat back down.
I took the .44 from beneath the newspaper and her eyes went large with fear. She scratched furiously at her neck, and her breathing became rapid and shallow.
Tucking the pistol inside my belt at my back, I went to the small closet beside the nearly-as-small kitchenette. I pulled my short leather jacket from a wooden hanger, shrugged into it, and zipped it up.
“Take the futon,” I said. “There’s clean sheets in here.” I nodded toward the closet.
Again she scratched at her neck. “I… I can’t take your bed.”
“You can, and you will.” My tone informed her that the discussion was at an end, but I felt a sudden need to moderate it. “I’ll be fine on the chair.”
I went to the apartment door. “Put the deadbolt on when I leave, and don’t open the door for anyone. I’ll knock three times, pause, then knock three more before I use my key. Understand?”
She looked at her hands, folded in her lap. She didn’t respond.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes.” She still didn’t look up.
I opened the door and stepped out into the blowing snow, then pulled the door closed behind me. I heard her set the deadbolt.
***
My eyes stung and watered in the stiff wind blowing snow in eddies around me. I walked east along Seventeenth Street.
It was the third week of December, just six days before Christmas, and already it looked like it would be one damned cold and snowy winter. The National Weather Service and the various almanacs called for a mild one, but I wasn’t so sure. I only hoped there wouldn’t be as much snow as there had been last year. For two weeks solid, just before and after Christmas, Denver had shut down. Only those willing to trudge through four foot drifts went anywhere.
I hurried past stores and bars decorated in red and green Christmas lights. The stores were closed, but the bars were open, and the lights only served to make them appear more forlorn. They did little to improve my mood.
Somehow, those sad lights got me thinking about Chester and why he’d sent Crystal to me. He knew what I was going through—another Christmas without Sylvia. So, why had he sent her? And why in hell had I let her in? She’d interrupted my plans, and that upset me more than I cared to admit.
Of course, I knew the answer to that last question. It was because I’d had to let her in. This was all part of my atonement. Obviously, the universe wasn’t finished messing with me yet. If it had been, and I’d been able to kill myself tonight, it would all be over by now. But I hadn’t, and it was beginning to look like it would never be over.
The universe had more in store for me, and I suspected none of it would be good.
***
I checked my watch in a street lamp’s glow as I crossed against the light on Lawrence Street, heading at a brisk pace through LoDo—lower downtown—for Seventeenth and Blake. It was 12:22. Not many people were out at that hour, certainly not on a night of snow and wind. It was still too early for the bars to let out, and far too late for those not yet in a bar to head for one. The hookers would already have their last Johns for the night, and the only ones about were drug dealers and their customers.
I went down the alley between Lawrence and Blake, toward Eighteenth, my right hand wrapped around the grip of the .44 at my back. I glanced around, making sure I wasn’t being followed. I wasn’t. At the end of the block I continued down the alley toward Nineteenth.
I found what I was looking for about mid-block, beside an overflowing Dumpster. Although at a distance it was too dark to make out the fine details, it ranked among the worst things I had ever seen.
The body was unrecognizable as Billy Simpson’s—the man with the sledgehammer had seen to that. Hands and head were pounded to pulp.
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