Last Angel Read online

  Ortega paused for a moment, listening, and then swung himself inside.

  The sounds of a distant television crept down the bare flight of stairs, reaching his ears as he lowered himself down onto the boards. He stood on the darkened stairs, waiting for the others to join him.

  Lamenzo was first, Barbis next, Morreno last, manoeuvring with remarkable dexterity for a man of his size. He clambered through the window as Ortega made to move a step further toward the dimly phosphorescent landing. He too could hear the sounds coming from above.

  Henry Barbis chewed on his bottom lip, contemplating the savagery of the next move, his expression of confusion gradually melting into a broad grin of satisfaction. He looked at Ortega and nodded, gesturing silently towards the faint light.

  Lamenzo made to give way, letting both Barbis and Morreno step passed him.

  Both men paused on the landing, Barbis looking left, Morreno right, ignoring the ribbon of grey light seeping under the nearest door. Jimmy Ortega reached for the handle of the door.

  It opened soundlessly, the blue-white light trapped within slithering out to wash over Ortega’s Latino features. The musical call of the television was louder now, droning and muttering, occasionally breathing a whisper of song.

  It was playing to itself.

  The old man was asleep in his chair.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Manny watched the end credits roll, their hypnotic vertical dance drawing The Bold and the Beautiful to a close. He didn’t feel much like moving, even to the point of bearing the bland commercials and the soporific dancing girls selling life assurance.

  There hadn’t been so much as a squeak from Rosie’s room all night, not that he ever had trouble with her. Normally Stephen was the light sleeper, but he was off with his father this time. As ever, Rosie simply collapsed with exhaustion, all played out two minutes after lights out, leaving Manny to tuck her tiny feet under the blankets and smooth the lustrous bangs of thick auburn hair from her untroubled brow; the same lovely shade of dark red-brown, like cherry wood, as her mother. Both children had the same gold-touched skin, but because Rosie’s eyes were a shade greener than her older brother’s, her features were that shade more appealing.

  At six, she was all that he could handle; at sixteen she’d be melting hearts.

  Finally, indulging thoughts of hot cocoa, Manny Bossman dozed off, old bones happy to settle down for the night just where they were…

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  He was only half asleep when the frigid hand grabbed him by the throat and hauled him backwards, strong fingers constricting his windpipe like pincers, killing any attempt at a scream. At least he thought it was a hand. It felt like the flesh of a week dead eel, cold and damp with the first dank touch of decay. It stank, too. Not much, but enough. The redolent musk of too much cheap cologne, so bitter and sharp that even in small whiffs it was too much to take.

  Still dazed and half sleep-blind, Manny Bossman was yanked upright, the strength behind the hands almost lifting him out of the seat.

  Something felt cold against his cheek.

  More fingers?

  No.

  Henry Barbis pressed the serrated edge of the razor-sharp blade against the concertinaed folds of old man’s flesh gathered beneath Manny’s jaw and breathed in his ear: “So much as breath, Jewboy, and I’ll cut you fuckin’ head off, comprende?”

  Manny tried to swallow but his throat was as dry and burned out as the Mojave. He closed his eyes, dark crow’s feet creasing in the papyrus-parched skin. Sniffed, trying to fight back the tears but losing.

  There was laughter now, slow, cold and cynical. Manny Bossman blinked his teary eyes open, mustering his defiance, and looked up biting down the urge to whimper and plead.

  There were three that he could see, with the hands around his throat that made four. He held the eyes of each, his gaze level, searching for some trace of compassion.

  There was none.

  “Got a message from Tony Rodriguez,” Barbis whispered in his ear, his breath a low, rattling wheeze. “Eddie, if you’d be so kind…” Releasing his hold on the old man’s throat, Barbis grabbed a handful of silver-grey hair and yanked his head back, the point of the knife never straying far from his cheekbone.

  Sadness and fear warred within him. He wished for death, right then, rather than the realisation of things to come, but death didn’t have a place in the delicatessen; not yet.

  Eddie Morreno took a slow step forward, staring directly into the old man’s face, his brutish eyes a void lacking expression beyond the simple need, hunger.

  Manny’s guts cramped as Morreno’s fist smashed into his left side, pulled back, hammered in again. And again.

  “Enough?” Barbis drawled into Manny’s ear, easing his grip on the old man’s hair, letting an inch slip through his fingers as the old man’s head sagged, lolling and rolling on his neck. The little resistance offered by his body sapped by body blows. Barbis jerked his head up again, for Eddie Morreno to pummel his fist into, bludgeoning bone and cartilage into submission under a torrential rain of merciless blows.

  “What… what do you want?” He lisped the words dully, between swollen lips and bloodied teeth.

  “Everything, man,” Barbis leered. “But for now, money. You give us the money coming to Rodriguez and we won’t hurt you anymore. It’s that simple, grandpa.”

  The knife was back at his cheek, pressing harder than before, betraying the lie beneath Henry Barbis’ sugar-coated words.

  “Oh, oh Jesus… There isn’t any money. Please, you’ve got to believe me. There isn’t any money…”

  “I don’t know… You believe him, Jimmy?” Barbis asked mildly.

  “Uh-hunh,” Ortega shook his head, playing along to Barbis’ tune.

  “How about you, Eddie? You believe the Jewboy?”

  “Uh-hunh,” Morreno echoed Ortega, shaking his head.

  “That only leaves Father Carlos. You think he’s shittin’ us, Father C?”

  “Sure seems that way to me,” Lamenzo said thoughtfully.

  “Sure does, don’t it,” Barbis agreed, his tone bordering on contempt. “You want to see if you can’t persuade him to be a bit more co-operative, Eddie?”

  “Anything you say, Henry.” Stepping forward again, Eddie Morreno interlaced his bulldog fingers and, one by one, cracked his knuckles for effect before ramming a blow into Manny Bossman’s brittle ribs; cracking at least two, maybe as many as four.

  The old man doubled up, gagging and gasping for breath.

  Just like the fuckin’ movies, Lamenzo thought bitterly.

  “Now,” Barbis hissed, “You aren’t gonna be a dumbfuck and give us any more trouble, are ya?”

  Manny tried to shake his head but it was as if the last punch had severed the nerve endings along his spine and left him paralysed from the waist up. He felt himself swoon and thought he was going to pass out.

  “Grampa?” came a plaintive call from down the hall.

  All five of them heard it.

  “Who else is in the house,” Barbis snarled, a bewildered crease curling his lips into a frown.

  “She’s only a child,” Manny Bossman sobbed.

  “Go get her, Father C,” he ordered.

  Lamenzo moved out into the unlit hall.

  “Please… don’t hurt her,” the old man pleaded before Barbis clamped a hand across his mouth. The overbearing stench of cologne dragged a gagged retch from his constricted throat.

  “Don’t worry, he’s good with kids.” Barbis sneered, touching the point of the knife to the sack under his eye, allowing a salty droplet to dribble onto the blade. “Especially little ones…”

  Lamenzo paused on the landing, listening for more calls, then, slowly, he began to move towards the only door standing slightly ajar. He saw the little girl sitting upright in bed as he opened the door, the blue-white backlight silhouetting him like a cheap cinema effect. “Hello,” he said softly.

  “Who are you?”
Rosie asked, smiling up at him with all the innocence he could stand, her green eyes haunting him.

  “A friend of your Grampa’s,” he soothed, kneeling beside her, “What’s your name, Angel?”

  “Rosie,” she told him.

  “That’s a pretty name, Angel. A real pretty name.”

  “What’s Grampa doing?” Rosie asked, folding her legs up and tucking them in under her small bottom so she sat higher in the bed.

  “Nothing, Angel. “He’s just having a chat with a few friends, you know how he is once he gets going. I’m sorry if we woke you.”

  “Okay,” she said sleepily. “Will you get Grampa to come in and give me a kiss please?”

  “Sure, Angel. You sit tight, snuggle down and I’ll get him to come in. Okay?”

  “Yeah,” she yawned, stretching and cuddling down beneath the covers again.

  Lamenzo leaned down, brushed an errant strand of cherry wood hair away and planted a soft kiss on her forehead.

  “Night-night,” Rosie mumbled, her eyes already closed.

  “Goodnight, Angel.”

  Smiling, Lamenzo backed out of the room.

  “Where’s the kid?” Barbis wanted to know as he walked into the lounge. The old man was slumped in his chair, a bubble of bloody snot pulsing, smaller and bigger, under a flared nostril. Blue-black welts and bruises marked his chalk-white complexion, reminders of Eddie Morreno’s fists. He looked up at Lamenzo, grief and humiliation swelling in his rheumy eyes.

  “You didn’t… didn’t hurt her?” he pleaded, whimpering and clawing pathetically.

  “Sure is a pretty li’l thing, ain’t she?” Lamenzo snickered, hunkering down beside the old man.

  “Is she…?”

  “She’s sleeping like a babe. Gave me a goodnight kiss, too. Sweet kid.”

  Manny whimpered, the bubble of caked snot bursting over his lip. He turned to Barbis again. “What do you want? I’ll give you anything; please don’t hurt Rosie, please…. She’s only a baby…”

  The girl, the girl, Rosie… The words buzzed frantically inside Lamenzo’s head.

  “The money. All we want is the money.”

  “Oh God… There… There’s no money… You’ve got to believe me…”

  “Man, you fuckin’ Jews are tight…” Barbis tutted, shaking his head. “Don’t jerk me off, fuckhead. Give me the fuckin’ money or so help me God, I’ll rip the fuckin’ kid’s heart out with my fuckin’ teeth!”

  “Please God… You’ve got to believe me… There is no money…”

  “One more time, old man. One more time.” Barbis warned.

  “There isn’t —”

  “GET ME THE FUCKIN’ KID, EDDIE. NOW!”

  It happened so fast Morreno didn’t have time to move. Barbis whirled on the old man and hurled his hunting knife, the hilt catching him above the right eye, the blade plunging into the foam stuffing of the high-backed armchair, quivering.

  Barbis slipped a hand inside his jacket and smoothly drew a gun, training its black eye on one of Manny Bossman’s. “Where’s the money, motherfucker! Where’s the fuckin’ money!” he screamed, spittle flecks spraying with each word. He thrust the pistol under Manny’s chin, pushing it up until the old man whimpered against the pain.

  Somehow, Bossman shook his head.

  “No money…”

  Instead of squeezing off a shot, Barbis backhanded the barrel across his jaw. The pain was immediate, the touch of death close at hand. A second backhanded slap of metal caught him just above the eye, ripping a gash from eyebrow to hairline. A third smashed his eye closed.

  He fell back, the room dissolving under a spray of red, felt himself being kicked and dragged until the floor fell away and he knew he was dead. Wooden daggers slashed out under him while walls bludgeoned him. He tried to cry out but nothing came.

  The cessation of rolling blows told him he had hit the bottom, and then the hands were on him again.

  Blood stung his blind eyes as he tried to see where he was, and what was being done to him. His body burned in a thousand places. Through the bloodied veneer of blindness he heard one of them laugh, another say “Loser,” and another sound, impossible to dislocate from the countless sensations stabbing at him through the dark.

  At the base of the stairs, kneeling over Manny Bossman’s unmoving body, Barbis thumbed back the hammer, jammed the pistol’s fluted muzzle between the chipped, yellow stained teeth in the old man’s gaping mouth and pumped the trigger three times in quick succession.

  The short but deafening cacophony ruptured the delicatessen.

  Manny Bossman lay in a whorish sprawl, legs splayed, trousers kinked up around his thighs; his body looked like a slumped scarecrow, blood and brains leaking in streamers from the rent in the back of his skull, splashing across the tiled floor.

  On the landing, Carlos Lamenzo heard the shots and realised he was screaming. His stomach muscles clenched, the bile in his throat souring at the thought of what kind of damage a .45 calibre bullet would have done to the old man close up. It would literally have taken his head off.

  Behind him, the child was screaming.

  Downstairs, Henry Barbis threw his head back and laughed.

  “What the fuck’d ya wanna go an’ do that for, man?” Lamenzo heard Ortega protesting, his nasal Spanish whine shrill in the suddenly funereal darkness below.

  Outside, the twilight was fading rapidly into night. The remaining lustre a purplish veil clinging to some objects more than others, providing only vague suggestions of the grotesqueries slumped and spilled at the base of the stairs, managing to make the threats below more mysterious and more obscure than they would have been in total darkness.

  “Shut the fuck up, man. Shut the fuck up or I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off!” Barbis shrieked, wheeling around; the cold black eye of the gun falling level with an invisible point on Jimmy Ortega’s troubled face.

  There was madness in his eyes, cold, pure insanity, blazing.

  Ortega looked deep into those mad eyes and for the first time saw the full effect of the seething hatred that dwelled behind them.

  Lamenzo raised fingers to his face, to wipe the salt tears of sweat from his cheek. Only then did he see that his hand was shaking. He swallowed hard. Numb.

  Rosie shrieked on, louder. Raw.

  Shut up, Rosie, shut up, shut up, shut up…

  “Hey man,” he heard Jimmy Ortega protest a second before Barbis blew him backwards into the cold provisions counter, the weight of his fall shattering the glass frontage of the cabinet. His body slumped like a bloody, disjointed marionette, a raw gash of weeping muscle ripped through the hole where his right eye had stared, limbs collapsing in under themselves until he hit the floor.

  Lamenzo closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Jimmy Ortega was dead.

  “ANYONE ELSE? HUH? ANYONE ELSE GOT A FUCKIN’ PROBLEM?” Barbis howled, wheeling manically this way and that, never allowing the gun’s muzzle to fall below waist height.

  “No, no… I ain’t got no problems, Henry,” Lamenzo heard Eddie Morreno blubbering through the layers of veiled darkness.

  “WHAT ABOUT YOU, FATHER C? YOU GOT A FUCKIN’ PROBLEM WITH THAT?”

  Oh, sweet Jesus…

  “No,” Lamenzo breathed, certain he was at the mercy of a madman. “No, I got no problems, Henry…”

  “THAT’S RIGHT, YOU AIN’T GOT NO FUCKIN’ PROBLEMS WITH UNCLE HENRY! NOW SHUT THAT FUCKIN’ KID UP, SHE’S MAKIN’ ME FUCKIN’ CRAZY.” Lamenzo heard the dry click of the hammer going back. “SHUT THAT FUCKIN’ SCREAMING BITCH UP, MAN, OR I’LL BLOW YOUR FUCKIN’ BALLS OFF! YOU HEAR ME? SHUT THE FUCKIN’ BITCH UP!”

  Lamenzo’s mouth opened, with the exception of a vague gurgling sound nothing came out. His arms hung limply at his sides, fists clenching and relaxing spasmodically as dirt-ingrained fingernails burrowed into the soft pads of his fucked up palms, drawing blood.

  Rosie had almost screamed herself out.

  Almost, but not quite.<
br />
  Not quite enough.

  “SHUT THAT FUCKIN’ KID UP, NOW!”

  People must have heard something by now… even in a place like Crack Alley, gunshots carried… It was only a matter of time — it couldn’t stand still — a matter of time before the mournful wailings of sirens rent the fabric of the night, minutes, seconds.

  He was dead.

  One way or another, he was dead.

  They all were.

  Rosie fell silent for a moment, and he thought he was saved, but she was only gathering a second wind. She continued shrieking, screaming, her burnt-out voice oscillating wildly; loud then soft, loud, then soft, echoing the imagined sirens just a few streets beyond hearing.

  To Lamenzo’s ears her terrified screams swelled beyond fear and confusion, reaching into teeth-jarring, bone-piercing pandemonium. He stood paralysed on the landing, his hands pressed over his ears, waiting for the glasslike windows of his eyes to shatter.

  “IF YOU DON’T SHUT THAT FUCKIN’ KID UP I’M GONNA SHUT YOU UP! YOU HEAR ME CARLOS? YOU HEAR ME? I’M GONNA SHUT YOU UP, FUCKER!”

  “Please, Henry,” he heard Eddie Morreno plead, and pictured the eye of the .45 sighting on the big man, opening a third eye in the centre of his forehead…

  Pictured the .45s bleak eye focusing on him.

  But she’s only a child for God’s sake….

  Don’t think about it…

  Do it…

  Barbis you bastard…

  You motherfucker…

  Do it…

  He reached for the door, easing it open and walked in.

  Rosie was sat up in bed without a tear in her bloodshot eyes. Her cheeks were all puffy and swollen with crying. The girl’s screaming quietened as he knelt by her bedside. She glared at him in anger, confusion and defiance, no hint of fear in her green-red eyes.