Last Angel Read online

  “Thirty five cents,” she muttered matter-of-factly, replacing the balled up piece of gum and chewing.

  Ashley pulled a rumpled bill out of her tight hip-pocket and handed it over. “Keep the change.”

  The girl’s face mellowed as she pocketed the sixty-five cents change; the stranger walking into and out of her life.

  Gabriel hadn’t so much as stirred.

  As she sipped at the steam wreathing liquid, Ashley reached across and, keeping the volume low, turned on the radio. The last few words of the midnight news bulletin before the intrusion of the station’s tuneless jingle. She killed the noise, and opened the door again to throw the empty cup out through the crack.

  They made Syracuse in good time, passing the city limits sign a little after 3 a.m… Twenty minutes later, she took the Studebaker up onto the fine gravelled path that crawled around the edge of a shimmering moonlit lake, the tires crunching on the stone chips covering the track. She eased the car to a stop beside a gatepost, a short way from a dark-shrouded hunter’s cabin. A finger-thin sliver of moonlight reflected on the ripples of shallow water lapping against the shoreline.

  Ashley leaned across to wake Gabriel.

  “We’re here, Gabe,” she whispered, shaking his shoulder gently until he groaned and opened his eyes. “We’re here,” she repeated, quietly, as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and stretched.

  Chapter Fifty

  A banked up log fire crackled and spat in the grate, the glow of its flickering dance the only light; its smell, a heavy oaken musk, was a small slice of heaven.

  Gabriel stretched, the roll of his shoulder sheened with the fragrant sweat of sex, his back stippled with beads of it, like a cool beer bottle on a hot dog day. “Feels good,” he said, running his fingers through the unfastened tangle of his matted hair, savouring the warmth of the fire.

  Beside him, Ashley murmured her contented agreement.

  Ashley had laid a plaid blanket out before the unmade fire while Gabriel scavenged the woodpile for a few sturdy chunks of dried timber before rooting through the cupboards for the firelighters, coke and tinder to ignite the blaze.

  Then together, on the blanket: at first neither one of them dared to so much as move for fear that the spell of perfection might shatter, leaving them alone again. To end that awkwardness Gabriel leaned forward and kissed the hollow of her bare neck, his tongue savouring her taste. His hands moved in gentle caress, fingers walking down the cotton-smooth ladder of her spine until they touched the rough edge of denim and began gently working loose the hem of her blouse, gathering in the folds of cotton and lifting.

  Ashley’s hands worked clumsily at undoing his belt, fingers fumbling.

  It was like the first time for both of them; the first time they’d suffered the uncertainty of undressing, of laying themselves bare. Neither knew the other well enough to know what might come next, how they might respond to a certain touch, but they worked with a singularity of purpose born of need, two people who had found each other in the dark, shedding clothes like skin as the orange flames danced in the hearth, snapping and crackling with their tentative explorations, and layer, as the air around them filled with the heady perfume of their eventual lovemaking.

  “No,” Gabriel said, arching his back as he stretched. “It feels better than that.” He reached out and prodded at the fire with a gnarled wooden poker, watching the logs shift uncomfortably under his inspection, the face of Carlos Lamenzo forming in his thoughts.

  Ashley sat up, her fingers massaging the knots out of his tight shoulders. Waiting for him to say what was weighing on him so heavily.

  “I’ve felt like running away before,” he said without turning his gaze from the sporadic dance of the flames. Her hands shifted, kneading the bunched muscle around his neck.

  “Everyone thinks about running away some time, Gabe. It’s not a crime. The thing is you stayed.”

  We’re the same, you and me… We’re the same…

  Gabriel moved his hands up to cup Ashley’s as they worked on his spirit. “I should be out there looking for him. I don’t think I could forgive myself if someone else died because I wasn’t there to stop him.”

  “Relax,” she soothed, her hands moving back across his shoulders and down his back, touching, rubbing, probing and pushing gently. Always gently. “You’re a bundle of knots, Gabriel. You’re going to have to relax. Forget about the real world. It doesn’t exist anymore, okay?”

  Gabriel sighed. It felt good. Her practised hands roaming his skin, working the clusters of stubborn muscles, but he couldn’t forget about the real world. Lamenzo was out there, possible or impossible, it didn’t matter. The truth mocked everything he believed in. All he had, all he could trust, his own eyes. We’re the same, you and me… The dead man’s voice reared in his mind’s ear.

  Things were happening, a long way from taking photographs and tracking down bail jumpers, things were happening inside and outside and Bill Stern was wrong, there was still space in this brave new world for the Spirit Magic of the older one. He’d seen Lamenzo go down beneath the twisted waltz of their guns.

  “Ash?”

  “Yes, Gabe?”

  “I’ve got something kind of important to tell you,” he shifted his weight onto one elbow, bottom lip caught between teeth as he looked her in the eye.

  “Better tell me then,” she couldn’t keep the smile out of her eyes, his face was so serious. “Not an alien from Z’bob 3 this time?”

  “I think I love you,” he said simply, shrugging away the embarrassment with a sheepish smile. “I mean with all this other stuff, I don’t know… I just feel it here,” he tapped his heart.

  Without saying a word, Ashley stood, holding out her hand for him to take. She led him to the door.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, eyes following the patterns of flexing muscle and the graceful motion of her body, and the glitter of her oiled skin in the shifting light. Turning, Ashley smiled, while her hands worked the deadbolt free.

  “For a swim,”

  “A swim? As in in the lake? Now? Are you crazy?” He cupped a protective hand around his testicles. “It’d ruin me.”

  Ashley laughed. “Come on fishboy, it’ll be good for you.” She opened the door and slipped out into the dark night, bare footsteps echoing her run down to the water’s edge.

  The cold night air closed around Gabriel’s body like an icy hand. He ran after her, watching her flit through the moonlight, bare feet dancing across the wide bole of the cinder track, carrying her ever closer to the water. Ragged chips of gravel dug into his feet. Her laughter, the distant call of a whippoorwill, the gentle rush of water lapping against the shoreline and then the splash of Ashley diving into the black expanse echoed back to him. Not even the sound of a car, he thought, realising the truth of silence as he reached the bank.

  “How’s the water?”

  “Fucking freezing… You coming in?” She submerged, letting the water close over her head until her hair spread out like a finely feathered peacock’s tail, catching and twisting the moonbeams with their subtle ripple.

  The chill wind puckered his skin. Shivering, Gabriel hugged himself and turned away from the lake. Behind him, Ashley shot from the murky depths, gasping as the frigid air closed around her naked body like second, crystal skin. A great spume of water fountained from her mouth.

  “I hope you are going to warm me up,” she shouted, splashing her way out of the water.

  Gabriel turned and blew her a kiss. “Maybe,” he called. “But then again, maybe not.”

  “Bastard,” she laughed and raced him back to the fire.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Fingers tapped softly against the veil of his dream.

  And another sound: like the tumbling of empty cans down a wet gutter. A figure, dark, ragged and faceless under the dull red cast of the blood moon shuffled towards his bed, palsied limbs twitching and jerking as they reached for him. He lay still, eyes closed against the horror
in the vain hope it would pass him by

  A smell came to him, a rancid, long since turned smell.

  A floorboard creaked as the pressure on it shifted.

  He felt his muscles tightening, the small hairs on his scalp prickling beneath the electricity of fear.

  Touches against his skin, by turn dry, cold, hard, wet.

  Another sound, a deflating sigh.

  He wanted to open his eyes, to look at the dead man in the chair, but what if… what if… what if he wasn’t in the chair anymore? What if it was the dead man’s breath he felt on his cheek, the dead man leaning over him like his mother, fingertips brushing the hair from his forehead?

  His eyes flickered, fighting the instinct that begged them to stay closed, and opened.

  A face, dead-eyed and blanched pale, smiled down at him.

  And swooped…

  …The Watcher threw himself backwards, fetching the back of his head against the metal bedstead, hands up instinctively to ward off the nightmarish fangs of the dead priest. He could feel his heart in his throat, beating wildly on a collision course with the mortuary slab.

  “Oh, Jesus… Oh, Jesus…”

  Father Joe was still propped in the chair as dead as he had been five hours ago.

  The Watcher flinched as the dead man’s hungry face retreated back into his subconscious, the last vestiges of the nightmare hanging over him. He climbed out of bed, walked over to the dead priest propped in his cabbage patterned lounger, and beat the pallid leer off his face with the full force of his fists.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Again the nightmare awakened him.

  He lay on his back in the dark while an errant shutter banged against the window frame. It was the same dream, where he dreamed he was a dead man who dreamed he was alive. In that tangled web of dreams fragments of memories buzzed like angry fireflies: the dull sepia-toned faces of his children, alive, then dead, then alive again; his mother, father, mother, father, mother… Liz, trapped in a distant photograph. And Father Joseph D’Angelo held the photo album of his life, turning the pages.

  When you are ready, the dead man seemed to say, fleshless lips not so much as twitching.

  He felt the proximity of death and screamed, thrashing wildly, fighting it, flailing, failing, fading.

  D’Angelo’s red eyes faded to brimstone. A dead finger touched the flesh of his eye.

  Soon… Soon… A threat, no, a promise.

  Something scampered over his bare feet in the darkness, and this time The Watcher did not stop screaming, screaming over and over again.

  Chapter Fifty-three

  “Gabe?”

  The darkness split into diamonds, showering such light that he imagined the sun would fall. For long moments he was a mote in the heart of the furnace, then, gradually, the fire subsided and his world drifted back into its place around him.

  A face.

  Through the aureole of light.

  A divine smile, meant for him and him alone.

  “Gabe?”

  The light faded further, the fingers of his dream fading. Raindrops on the window. He saw tears glistening in Ashley’s eyes, saw her lips tremble as she made another attempt to speak, give up, and show her love in a more direct way. She leaned forward and hugged him as tight as she dared.

  Gabriel held her close until her tears had ran their course, asked no questions. As gently as he could, he broke the contact between them, his hands on her shoulders easing her away until he could look into her bleary eyes. “It’s all right, Ash,” he soothed, smoothing away a sleep-matted bang of hair and kissing her forehead tenderly. “Everything’s all right.”

  She tried to speak. “I thought… Oh dear God I thought you were gone…”

  “Shhh, honey. I ain’t going nowhere without you.”

  She stared at him, through him, as if he were a ghost, then began to weep again, her whole body raking with the sobs. “You looked… you looked like you were dead… I felt so sure I’d reach across and you’d be cold… Gabe, I was so frightened…”

  He wanted to say: I’m sorry, Ash. I’m so sorry… I don’t know what’s happening, but I do know it’s bad, whatever it is… I’m scared… I can feel him out there getting closer all the time and I don’t know what to do, how to fight him…

  Instead, rather awkwardly, he said: “Just scary monsters. How about pancakes for breakfast?”

  Ashley smiled. Her face still looked pinched and pulled with ache, but it was a smile.

  “Maple syrup?”

  “You betcha, maple syrup, ice cream, the works. Nothing’s too good for my baby,” he said, taking her delicate, pale hand in his own leathery one, twining her fingers with his. He squeezed her hand and kissed her forehead again. “Some tough guy P.I. I make, huh?”

  “The best,” she agreed. “Now, how about those pancakes?”

  Chapter Fifty-four

  The morning brought rain.

  Not the torrents of winter rain so typical of Syracuse, but a fine drizzle. The day moved on, growing greyer, and so, it seemed, did Gabriel’s mood. Though Ashley made hourly attempts to coax him away from the stone he’d made his lakeside perch, he wouldn’t move.

  All she could do was stand by and watch. And watch and watch, helpless to prevent his fall. Surely dying was like this, she reasoned; losing precious moments and being unable to prevent their passing.

  Yes; this was a kind of death.

  The worst.

  It was well into the last hour of Sunday, the moon scudding across the sky towards midnight, when Gabriel came in from the cold and unburdened himself.

  Ashley was in the kitchen, readying a couple of mugs when he called through.

  “You said you wanted to listen?” he mumbled, looking at the floor.

  “Only if you wanted to talk,” she said, joining him cross-legged on the floor.

  “I want to, I guess.”

  He didn’t move, didn’t say anything. Just sat there, chin resting on his knees, watching the secret dance of the fire drawing to a close.

  “I miss him you know…”

  He was crying now, or trying very hard not to.

  “I miss him so much.”

  Ashley slipped her arm around him, drawing him into a gentle embrace.

  “It’s not fair…”

  “No, it never is.”

  “Why though? What did he do? He was only a child… Three…” Gabriel swallowed, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “Why didn’t I die? Why? WHY?”

  “Gabe, don’t talk like that, please.” Ashley reached out to touch him, to soothe him, but her fingers fell hesitantly short.

  Chapter Fifty-five

  They rolled into New York early on Monday morning, slipping off the I87 and skirting the still quiet of the city streets with their neat little gardens hemmed in by their neat little iron railings.

  A murky haze had banked up city side of the Tappan Zee Bridge, thin candyfloss tendrils licking around the old Studebaker as it picked its path homewards.

  The words had been said lightly, almost as a joke, but with too much honesty to be genuinely hollow. “How about making an honest woman out of me, Tonto?”

  “I’m still married,” Gabriel let his voice trail off. “In here.” He tapped his chest, his heart. And Frankie was back with him, between them, with the sounds of horns and the rumble of engines announcing their return to the city.

  Pulling up outside Ashley’s apartment building, Gabriel killed the idling engine and climbed out. They walked arm in arm to the doorstep. He leaned over, placing a tentative kiss on Ashley’s forehead; a kiss goodbye.

  Ashley balanced on tip-toes, pressed her lips against his, tongue teasing a soft path across his teeth. Her taste, touch, smell, became a heavy cross of feelings. A weight. It had been so very, very long since he had felt this good about anything.

  He backed off a step, looked at her. Held her eyes. Tried to smile. “There’s something I’ve got to do. A ghost I’ve got to exorcise. It’s
been a long time due. I can’t keep putting it off.” It wasn’t quite the truth. “It’ll take a couple of days, but I’ll be back. I promise. You look after yourself, kiddo.”

  “You too, Tonto,” she said, sadness wearing her voice like a halo.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  He drove for hours, hours stretching into a day, a night, another day, leaving Ashley and Frankie far behind. The road and his soul. The song of the blacktop. The feel of it humming beneath the driving wheels. The driving was out of habit, his feet moved, braking and accelerating, his hands steered, changed up and down through the gears and indicated around corners. Weaving in and out of backed up traffic, Gabriel drove, passing from main street to highway and back, out into the country, along the rim of a lake.

  He stopped to use a payphone. To call Ashley. Just to hear the sound of her voice. Looking for some kind of reaffirmation in the real, the solid, the simple. Her machine picked up, bright and breezy: “Leave a message sugar-lips, and I’ll get back to you. You know there’s a beep coming…”

  The same message twenty four hours later. And again the next five times he called over the next three hours. He looked back the way he had come, three days of road between them and nothing he could do, not realistically. Looked on into the future, miles of road unwinding before him. Not knowing what to do, caught by indecision, Gabriel turned to the sky. He took the hunting knife from the glove box and laid it on the white line dissecting the blacktop. Span it, looking for an arbitrary hand to give him an answer he could believe in. The blade glittered in the too-hot-to-be-refreshing sun, caught the light, made it dance silver as it rotated, slowing, wobbling before it stopped to point the way.

  Idaho.

  He went back into the callbox and tried Ashley’s number one last time before sinking back into the drivers’ seat.

  For a while, his right side was clear blue water and lake-bound boulders. Over the horizon, the sun’s valiant attempt to hang on to the heavy, smothering layers of dull steel-grey cloud appeared to be a lost cause.