Last Angel Read online

  “Calm down, Angel. No one’s gonna hurt you. Father Carlos won’t let no one hurt you,” Lamenzo soothed, easing her down beneath the covers.

  “W-what was all the banging?” she asked, sobbing.

  “Just Henry, did he wake you, sugar?”

  “What was he doing?”

  “He tripped on the step and knocked Grampa’s lamp down the stairs. Henry’s real clumsy sometimes. Now you cuddle up, and I’ll make sure nothing disturbs you again, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, wriggling further down, under the blankets.

  “There’s a good girl,” Lamenzo looked down at her, smiled and leaned across to kiss the top of her head. Whispered: “Sleep tight,” as he reached under her head for the pillow. Jerked it around, over her face, his heavy hands pressing it down; smothering the child under their suffocating caress.

  Her hands clawed at his, scratching and raking at his forearms as her legs bucked and thrashed underneath him, and then relaxed, falling away limply as he choked off her will to fight.

  He looked again at the child, barely able to make out her features through the darkness, illuminated as they were by the thinnest shaft of light coming through the mullioned window. She already looked dead, her green eyes open and staring at the ceiling, unable to accept the reality of what had just happened.

  “Goodnight, sweet angel,” he whispered, getting up to leave the room.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Made a piss-poor job of this, didn’t we, Father C?” Barbis called, seeing Lamenzo appear at the head of the stairs.

  “She isn’t going to be a problem anymore, Henry.” Lamenzo said, his voice flat and lacking intonation.

  “Who ain’t?”

  “The girl.”

  “No problem. I like that. We ain’t got no problems you and me Father C, huh? Me an’ you man, we ain’t got no problems… Look, why don’t you take a look see around upstairs, while me an’ Eddie have a dig down here, there’s got to be some fuckin’ money here somewhere… Right?”

  He was in the lounge again, pulling out dresser drawers and dumping the jumbled contents on the floor, his fingers rifling through the scattered heaps of personal papers like some household vulture, scavenging for scraps, when he heard the forlorn wail of the first siren, still a distance away, followed by the distinctive sounds of breaking glass.

  “Henry?” He called out, running onto the landing.

  No answer.

  The sirens were closer, close enough to be a problem.

  He had three choices. Downstairs, side-stepping Manny Bossman’s broken body and out into the street — passing Jimmy Ortega slumped against the cold meats counter, seeing the bloody hole gaping where his right eye ought to have been — and the hail of police gunfire.

  Slipping out of the window, down the fire escape and away the way they’d come, through the gloom of the back alley and out, onto Cicero, back towards the sanctuary of St. Malachi’s and Father Joe.

  Or, sitting tight with the corpses and hitching a ride to the cemetery care of a lethal injection.

  He raced down the first flight of stairs, taking them two at a time, to the halfway landing, and clambered back out through the window, his feet clattering on the metal fire escape as they danced down the rungs. He jumped the last eight bone-jarring feet to the floor, sprawling, staggering, and running, his hands pitted and grazed with minute fragments of loose concrete and shale.

  The yard was empty, the colourless gate swinging in the stygian gloom, its rusted hinges moaning. The night was still, suddenly threatening. The shadows bigger, cast by hulking concrete trees more statuesque than those rooted to the earth along the front street; they blocked out most of the light cast by the gibbous moon. There were a few streetlights, their puddles of amber light too widely spaced, separated by lakes of darkness.

  A police siren.

  Stroboscopic lights, red, black, red, black spun faster and faster.

  Lamenzo charged out between the two gateposts, into the alley, into a patchwork of a thousand shadows, lights and sounds. Too many places to watch, things to see.

  The sirens wailed away, continuously, madly.

  Lamenzo cast a startled glance over his shoulder. Saw four of them.

  They were stood at the entrance to the alley, their legs apart, feet planted and arms raised, guns trained on his retreating back, less than thirty-five feet away. Blocking any hope of escape that way.

  Another was crouched in the mouth of a gateway, a bullhorn held to his lips.

  The end of the alley raced away from him, disappearing into the cavernous jaws of night, taking with it any hope.

  “POLICE!” the static-distorted voice of the bullhorn holder hollered. “STOP RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE!”

  Suppressing the nausea welling up from the pit of his stomach, Lamenzo made to run. He’d gone maybe five feet, veering left and right in a crazy zigzag across the blacktop when the muffled voice of the bullhorn shrieked again: “STOP RUNNING OR WE’LL SHOOT!”

  Breathless, Lamenzo put his head down, running for all he was worth, passed the middle of the alley, out of the shadows, finding the vapour-thin sheen of moon-dappled light scattered across the street, expecting to hear the abrupt burst of gunfire come out of the dark, and feel the slugs punching into his back.

  “REPEAT, STOP OR WE’LL SHOOT!”

  Sounds.

  Fear didn’t allow him to slow his frantic pace.

  When the first volley of gunfire ripped through the night, he instinctively ducked, felt something, like an autumnal breeze brush lightly over his head, and screamed as lead slammed into his shoulder.

  He staggered away, moving blindly down the alley, finding another cluster of darkness, clawing at the thick, humid air with hooked fingers, his desperate veering run mirroring the mad capering of a rubber man.

  “LAST TIME! STOP THROWING YOUR LIFE AWAY!”

  Already have!

  Damn you…

  Already have…

  Ignoring the stinging pain in his shoulder, Carlos Lamenzo ran on as best he could. The entrance onto Cicero was less than thirty paces, the end of the alley the same.

  He only managed a few metres more before pulling up to an abrupt halt. Two bullets passed through his left leg, ripping open a ragged exit wound, one high in the thigh the other just above the knee; his dark, viscous blood spreading like a sunburst, darkening and staining the denim. His hands dropped, his knees buckling as he pitched forwards another jerky step, his legs moving erratically under their own steam, pulling this way and that as if they were being manipulated by some drunken puppet master. He didn’t crumple and fall to the ground but somehow straightened, his damaged knee locking and propelling him forward again.

  Another bullet ripped into his right arm, leaving it hanging slackly at his side, his hand flopping and fluttering weakly.

  The entrance onto Cicero waited less than fifteen steps away.

  A slug took him low in the back, jerking his shoulders abruptly back. He lurched on another step, shuddering and convulsing as if a violent electric current flashed through his whole body.

  Five steps from the Cicero road he weaved and slammed into a security fence, his knees giving out under him and pitching him towards the moon-splashed blacktop.

  The pain superseded agony.

  Sounds swarmed him, rushing through his watery eyes, bathing, lulling, like the swell of some midnight tide; his mother’s voice, Father Joe’s nasal burr, the thrumming vibration of cicadas wings, the chirping of starlings, the mindless roar of engines, the bark of gunshots, screams; somewhere in there, Rosie Bossman’s screams…

  Little Rosie…

  Oblivion threatened to overwhelm him, to undo him, but somehow he kept going, his legs lurching mechanically out onto Cicero.

  Come on, Carlos, he screamed mentally, forcing himself onwards. It doesn’t hurt! It doesn’t hurt!

  But it did hurt.

  The pain in his left leg and lower back was incredible. He thought
he could feel the blood running down his leg. He could definitely feel the slug in his spine squirming under his skin.

  Screvin Avenue passed in a vortex of dizziness and nausea.

  He must have blacked out on his feet because the next thing he knew, he was rounding off Barrett and onto Hart Street. Less than a hundred metres from St. Malachi’s, his left leg flashed him a warning, just seconds before giving out on him. He could hear shouts somewhere, far away, and growing ever more distant beneath the swell of noise filling his ears.

  Not long.

  His vision swam in and out of focus. His lips were swollen, tongue stuck to the roof of his dry mouth and his throat burned. The muscles in his legs began to cramp, each footstep a giant step by feet encased in the frigid grip of concrete boots.

  Somehow, he made it to the red brick steps of St. Malachi’s. He had no recollection of the last hundred metres. Gasping, doubled over, with fire burning through his back, his arm and leg, lightheaded and leaking precious blood he managed to haul open the huge oaken door.

  Pausing on the threshold to look back over his shoulder, Lamenzo stumbled inside. His glance didn’t mutate him into a pillar of salt. Through the scattering of streetlights they came, avengers silhouetted against a sky melting from purple to black. The four had become nine, their police uniforms as black as the cloth of night itself.

  The door swung closed behind him, echoing hollowly in the vast chamber. Inside, the cool vault of the old church smelled of myrrh and spikenard and the slightly sweet aroma of burning votive candles. Father Joe was knelt before the grey stone of the second altar, his balding salt and pepper head bowed in prayer.

  The old priest didn’t look around as Lamenzo staggered passed the doorway between the Narthex and the Nave. He hobbled down the aisle, biting his tongue against the flares of molten lead shooting up his leg each time he put his left foot to the floor. It might have taken him an hour to walk the aisle.

  Under the wings of Christ, Carlos Lamenzo finally succumbed to the hateful fire that burned away inside him. Death won the race to be with him. Touched his face, its hand as soft and cold as liquid glass. Claws of molten steel raked across his heart.

  Hearing the slow groan of the double doors swinging open he let out a shaky exhalation. His lungs didn’t have the strength to draw fresh air into them. Delirious, leaning against the sanctuary railing, a silent prayer on his fevered lips, he realised it was his last breath; one drawn as a child killer.

  Taste left him, and smell. Touch. Sight. He heard voices, Father Joe’s and someone else’s, and then sound was gone, too.

  Falling onto his knees before the throne of God, Carlos Lamenzo collapsed, his heart giving in to the inevitable, and passed away into the darkness, the black, to be judged for his sins…

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Half a dozen agile policemen had stormed into St. Malachi’s, three more still coming up the steps behind them, before Father Joseph D’Angelo realised they were heavily armed. They spread out to cover both sides of the Narthex, taking up positions between pillars, the crackle of their radios eerie and threatening in the quiet church.

  To his surprise, D’Angelo found himself facing down the muzzle of a standard issue service revolver.

  “What in God’s name is the meaning of this?” The old priest demanded, rising awkwardly to his feet. Then, seeing Lamenzo slumped on the clammy stone floor, he breathed: “Oh, Sweet Jesus, Mary Mother of God…”

  One of the policemen spoke while another knelt over the young man’s corpse, checking it needlessly for a pulse. The final officers fell into position around the body.

  “No disrespect, Father, but that sonofabitch down there,” he gestured with the barrel of his gun at the body on the floor, “Just pumped a fistful of lead into the owner of a delicatessen over on Randell. Killed him, a six year old girl plus one unknown —”

  “—No, no… I can’t… he couldn’t… No…” The priest breathed, shaken.

  “He could and did, Padre, and right now it’s my job to make sure he’s not about to get up and do the same to you.”

  “Jesus, Mary… He might have had his troubles, but he… He couldn’t.”

  “He’s dead,” the fresh-faced officer leaning over Lamenzo pronounced, standing and re-holstering his pistol as he moved away from the body. According to his plastic lapel badge his name was: S. Lawson. He was a big, gangling youth, all elbows and angles.

  “Christ on a fucking crutch,” another of the nine moaned, J. Bogdanovich, then swallowed, remembering where he was.

  “Oh, Merciful Jesus…” D’Angelo rubbed a trembling hand across his eyes, they were damp with salty tears. “Can you help me move him?”

  “Sorry, Padre. No can do.”

  “But he’s —”

  “Got to wait for forensics and the coroner, can’t move him.”

  “This is a church” You can’t just let him bleed all over the floor…”

  “Sorry.”

  “Can’t we at least cover him?”

  “Certainly,” Bill Stern said softly. “Do you have something? A sheet maybe? To act as a shroud?” He took a thick cigar from his pocket, didn’t light it as he slipped it between his lips.

  “Yes,” D’Angelo said numbly.

  Stern looked genuinely pained. “I’m sorry you had to see this, Padre, sincerely. If it could have happened any other way… but he ran here, like you could save him… Would you mind fetching that sheet, I think the sooner he’s covered up, the better, all things considered.”

  “Yes, yes…” D’Angelo said, shamed by the look of sympathy and understanding the officer gave him. “What kind of a world is it we live in, Officer? Can you tell me that? What kind of a world..?”

  He turned his back and walked away, returning with the spare altar cloth. “In nomine Patris et Filia et Spiritus Sancti,” whispered the priest, lowering the vestment. “Amen.”

  Lamenzo’s sightless eyes were covered by the white linen. Flowers of red blossomed like the eyeholes in a Halloween lantern on the flawless cloth, one above the arm, two over the left leg. D’Angelo turned away, not bothering to hide his obvious anguish. “Well, I can’t pretend that I like standing here like some vulture, gentlemen. If you don’t mind, I’ve got a service to prepare.”

  “Not tonight, Padre.” Bill Stern said, shaking his head. “I’m gonna have to insist you allow us to secure the church and that means no one comes in until the coroner’s been. Standard operating procedure, I’m afraid. However, if you want to retire somewhere, by all means. The situation’s well in hand. He isn’t gonna cause us any more problems, so it’s just a case of waiting now. If we have any problems we can’t handle, we’ll call for you.”

  “I suppose I am getting old and cynical with it, Officer, but I am becoming more than a little sceptical so far as miracles are concerned.” The priest replied, looking again at the covered corpse, and back to the guns. “I’m sure he, may God bless his eternal soul, won’t be giving you any problems.” Crossing himself instinctively and genuflecting before the altar, the old priest bustled out through the sacristy door and left them to it, missing the first miracle in St. Malachi’s long history…

  Chapter Thirty

  Reeek!

  In the darkened chamber of St. Malachi’s, where Carlos Lamenzo’s body lay on the floor, a sound, as alien as straining metal, echoed.

  Reeek!

  Both Seth Lawson and Al Culpepper heard it, whatever it was. It wasn’t the only sound in the church; there were other noises, mainly voices, soft and low in relieved conversation.

  “Guess we got him good, eh?”

  “Yeah, guess so.”

  But there was that noise, straining in the darkness. Reeek!

  Silence returned, the waiting voices hushed by some primeval instinct coded deep in the genes. Eyes looked furtively, tongues dry and burnt-out by tension stuck to sandpaper palettes.

  “Jesus, I wish it wasn’t so goddamned dark in here…” Someone complained. Jac
kson Carlisle or Jay Bogdanovich. Gabriel Rush?

  In the darkness feet shuffled uncomfortably.

  Someone sniffed. Someone else coughed.

  And then there was light.

  All at once.

  Lights.

  Colours.

  Above the altar.

  Around the head of Jesus, his crown of thorns burst into flames of dancing colour. “Sweet Jesus…” It was Al Culpepper’s voice. He stared at the body of Christ as it melted through the spectrum of colours, flickering, casting its rapidly shifting shroud of light over the congregation of nine below. He stared at the face of Christ, only it wasn’t the face of Christ he saw painted on the wooden statue, it was his own. He was weeping tears of red, the stigmata, hands, ankles and sides bleeding likewise, tears of blood.

  From on high, he grinned at himself and winked, blood smearing the flaking blue paint of his glossy eyes.

  Al Culpepper fell to his knees, clasping both hands together, praying, the half-dozen flames of the votive candles in their red glass containers bathing his face, and Christ’s face, crimson.

  Then they weren’t his eyes.

  He blinked.

  This time he saw the face of Carlos Lamenzo, the man he’d put three of his own bullets into, the dead man under the altar sheet, the killer, then it was no face but red…

  No Face smiled at Culpepper.

  Reeek!

  That sound again. He knew what it was now. No Face had jerked a hand free of the spike crucifying it, tearing a raw edged black hole through the statue’s wooden palm.

  Reeek!

  His other hand wrenched free of the horizontal beam, the nail still piercing the palm. He wrenched his feet free, too, and then the crucified Son of God stepped down and drifted to the floor, his miraculous passage bathing the church in the glory of Red.

  Bill Stern heard screams, desperate shrill voices, men, women, pitched high and low, shrieking like a whirlpool of pain, the forlorn sound of death, rising and falling but always the cacophony of terror drowning out the exhalations of frightened voices.