If Angels Fall (44 page)

Slices of turkey and roast beef were heaped on Shook’s
plate next to a mountain range of mashed potatoes.

“Welcome, friend,” a young woman volunteer said.

Shook was cold to her kindness. Moving down the
serving table, he grimaced. His pain was nearly unbearable, his need to love
again was overwhelming and this other player, New Fuck, made it too hot to
hunt. The letters, the game with the priest were poor substitutes for the real
thing. He couldn’t’ stand it any longer. He had to do something.

Kindhart.

They could hunt together. Shook could plan something
like he did with Wallace. Grab a little prostitute, enjoy her, and turn up the
heat. It would be rapturous. But where was Kindhart these days? He seemed to be
scarce. Fuck him. Shook could do it himself. He grabbed a couple of buns and it
hit him again. Who was that twitching dwarf gaping at him back there? She was
familiar, yet he couldn’t place her. Why had she acted so strange? Pious little
cunt. Maybe he would give her a lesson in humility.

Shook bit savagely into a bun and headed for a
solitary table.

***

Florence was hysterical.

“It’s him! It’s him! Sweet Lord, he saw me!”

“Listen to me, Florence! Take a deep breath!” Sydowski
said.

Turgeon was on the cellular phone. “Have the units
move in to the church exits now! No lights, no screamers!”

Florence was sobbing. Sydowski was bent over, holding
her shoulders in his big hands, comforting her. Turgeon pinpointed Shook from
the kitchen door.

“I’ve got him, Walt. Doesn’t look like he suspects
anything yet—yes.” Turgeon described Shook over the phone, “Caucasian, white
T-shirt, beard.”

“Good work, Florence. It will be over with soon.”

Curious kitchen staff had gathered in a circle.

“Folks, this is San Francisco Police business. It is a
matter of life and death that you tell no one we are here.” Sydowski flashed
his shield. “Please. It’s important that you carry on.

“What exactly is going on, officer?” one man asked.

“Sir, we will tell you later. Please. Your help is
vital now.”

“Walt, dispatch called the TAC Team.”

“We’ll sit on him until they get here.”

“And if he runs, Walt?”

Sydowski didn’t answer. He went to the door for a look
at Shook.

He sat alone, back close to the wall, stabbing at his
food with his right hand, his left forearm draped defensively around his plate,
displaying his tattoos, letting the world know he was a motherfucker. He
scanned the hall continuously, trusting nothing. It was the way you ate inside.
Old habits died hard. But he never faced trouble here. It was one of the things
he liked about Our Lady. That, and the fact that it was clean. The hall was
clean and the church was clean, smelling of candle wax and lemon furniture
polish. Pure and clean.

That was it.

Shook stopped chewing.

She cleaned upstairs. Polished the pews. And she was
always there when he visited the priest! He had a clear line to the kitchen
door as a thin young man carrying a tub of dirty dishes entered. In the half
second the door opened, Shook saw a professional-looking woman in a blazer
talking on a phone. And he saw that little slut talking to a man in a suit,
with gray hair, tanned face—he recognized him from TV news.

He was a fucking cop!

Shook’s pulse rate exploded. The little bitch was
telling them about him.

They had come for him!

Shook heard the squeak of brakes, an engine idling.
Through a cracked basement window, he saw the car’s rocket panels, it’s
black-and-white paint scheme. The window was too small to get through.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Uniformed officer Gary Crockett joined Sydowski and
Turgeon in the kitchen, a radio in his hand.

“Use your earpiece,” Sydowski demanded. “Tell the
others.”

Crockett relayed their order through his radio.

“You got bodies at all the exits?” Turgeon asked him.

Crockett nodded. “Who’ve we got?”

“Suspect in the child abductions—shit!”

Sydowski saw the Channel 5 Live News van pull up to
the rear.

“Crockett, have somebody keep the press back!”

“TAC is rolling, Walt,” Turgeon said from her phone.
“Yes. Patch him through—Walt, it’s Lieutenant Gonzales.”

He took the phone. “Leo. It’s our boy.” His eyes were
on Shook.

“We need him, Walt. Sit on him ‘til TAC gets there.”

“I know my job, Leo.”

“I’m ten minutes from you. Rust and Ditmire are on
their way.”

“Jesus!” Sydowski tossed the phone to Crockett. “He’s
made us. Linda, come on! Crockett have your people move in when I shout.”

Shook rose, walking calmly to the door. He heard their
footsteps on the hardwood floor behind him.

“One moment please!” It was the male pig.

Shook’s stomach tightened. He kept walking. He was not
going back inside. Never going back. He reached down into his boot. “Police!
Stop right there!”

The economy had cost Dolores Lopez her job cleaning
toilets in the office towers of the financial district. Her boss, Mr. Weems,
was a born-again Christian who cried when he let Dolores go. She was a single
mother with four children. She didn’t know what she was going to do. In one
month, she would lose her apartment on Potrero Hill. Every day she prayed to
the Virgin who smiled upon her. They had found Our Lady’s shelter last week and
Mr. Weems had arranged a job interview tomorrow with a cleaning firm in
Oakland. Dolores was telling her children to never abandon hope, to always pay
homage to the Mother of Jesus, when she felt her hair being torn from her head,
as she was lifted by an arm crushing her neck.

The steel point of a knife was pressed solidly below
her eye.

She heard shouting, but did not scream.

“Mama! Mama!” Carla, her three-year-old daughter, ran
to her. Someone pushed her back. Dolores pulled weakly at the arm around her
throat. And she prayed because she knew she was going to die.

Please, Holy Mother, watch over my children.

Sydowski pulled his Glock from his hip holster.
Turgeon had her Smith & Wesson trained on Shook’s head.

“Drop the knife, now!” Sydowski was ten feet away.
Turgeon moved to Shook’s side. Shook glanced at her and said nothing.

“Everybody on the floor!” Sydowski locked eyes with
Shook. “Don’t be stupid! Release the woman! We want to talk!”

Two uniformed officers entered the doorway, guns
drawn. Sydowski noticed the eye of a TV news camera peeking through one of the
basement windows. His fingers were sweating on the trigger of his gun. He hated
this. Christ, did he hate this. Shook was encircled, four guns aimed at him.
Sydowski ordered the officers into a pattern to avert crossfire.

“You can leave here dead, or you can leave here alive.
But you are not leaving with the woman. Drop the knife now and release her.”

“Let me out of here or she dies and it’s on you!”

Shook cut Dolores with the knife, blood spurted down
her cheek. Her children screamed.

“Officer!” Sydowski was talking to the uniform fifteen
feet from Shook’s right shoulder. “Do you have a clear head shot?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Don’t try it, pig! You’ll hit her! Let me outta here.
I ain’t going back in the fuckin’ hole.”

“We just want to talk, Virgil.”

“I ain’t going back!”

Dolores’s face was a half mask of blood. Shook twisted
the knife.

Sydowski holstered his gun, raised his open hands, and
eased forward. “We want to talk, Virgil. Please, let her go.”

When Shook relaxed his arm to reposition it across
Dolores throat, she bit into his bicep and stomped on his foot. Shook winced,
and she broke away grabbing Sydowski’s outstretched hand, flinching when she
heard two shots.

They were deafening. The first bullet hit Shook in the
lower neck shredding his internal and external jugulars, exiting into the
ceiling. The next destroyed his trachea and spleen before lodging in his
stomach. The knife went flying. He dropped to the floor.

The uniform officer was frozen, his gun still
extended. There were screams, sirens, and the smell of gun powder. Police
radios crackled. Turgeon called for an ambulance. Dolores Lopez embraced her
children.

Shook was on his back, making gurgling noises, blood
and vomit oozing from his mouth. His white T-shirt was glistening crimson.
Sydowski was on his knees, trying to obtain a dying declaration. Turgeon was
there with him, listening.

“What’s your name?” Sydowski said.

Shook made unintelligible noises.

“Where are the children, Virgil?”

Shook’s mouth moved. Sydowski placed an ear over it.
Nothing.

Sydowski touched his fingers to Shook’s neck. Was
there a pulse?

Gonzales rushed in. “How bad is it?”

Turgeon shook her head. Sydowski bent over Shook’s
mouth again.

Special FBI Agents Rust and Ditmire arrived.

“Oh, this is beautiful,” Ditmire said. “Fucking
beautiful.”

Shook was still making noises when paramedics began
working on him. “It’s bad. We’re losing him,” one of them said.

Sydowski stood, and ran his hand over his face.
Walking away, he grabbed a chair, smashing it against the wall under the
quotation:

IT IS IN DYING THAT WE ARE BORN TO ETERNAL LIFE.

The new note
taped to Reed’s door was scrawled in unforgiving block letters:
‘WHERE IS RENT? NO RENT, NO ROOM. L. Onescu.”

Reed had broken too many promises to Lila. His key
didn’t work. She had changed the lock. He set down the paper bag containing his
supper. Two bottles of Jack Daniels and potato chips. He searched his wallet.
Thirty-five bucks. His checkbook was in the room. Damn.

He walked the two blocks uphill to Lila’s building,
entered the lobby, and leaned on the buzzer to her condo. No answer.

“She’s not home, Reed,” a man’s voice echoed through
the intercom. “Hey, I’m surprised you’re not at work tonight.”

Reed looked into the security camera.

“Long story. I’d rather not talk about it now,
Mickey.”

“Sure.”

“Where’s Lila? She leave a key for me? I have money
for her.”

“Gone to visit a nephew in Tahoe. No key. Sorry, pal.”

Reed walked back, got his supper, sat in his car in
front of Lila’s Edwardian rooming house, overlooking the Marina District, the
Golden Gate, and the Pacific. It was night. He thought of bunking with the
other tenants, or driving to a motel. He was exhausted. Maybe he would call
some of the guys at the paper, ask for a couch. He took a hard hit from the
bottle. Staring at San Francisco’s blinking lights, he searched for the answer
to one question: “How the hell did he get here?”

He was seething. It kept him awake, made him thirsty.
What had happened? He was a professional, married to an exceptional woman,
blessed with a fine son. They had a good life. They were fighting to save it.
They owned a good house in a good neighborhood. He had never intended to hurt
anyone in the world. He worked hard. He worked honestly. Didn’t that count for
anything? Didn’t it? It had to. If it counted for something then why the fuck
was he in the street, swilling whiskey in the back seat of his 1977 Comet,
watching the thread holding his job and sanity slowly unravel?

Wallowing in alcoholic self-pity, he looked at his
situation for what it was: circumstances. Benson had thrown a fit, Reed forgot
to pay his rent, and was too drunk now to go somewhere for the night. No one
was to blame. He chose the car. Quit sucking on the bottle. Call it a bad day
and go to sleep. Deal with it in the morning.