The Snow Angel (8 page)

Kane sat alone in the dark, watching the flashing Christmas tree in the two-flat across the street. The Beretta lay on his lap. He took the last deep drag on a joint, then crushed the roach in an ash tray.

Kane lifted the gun, hefting its weight, inspecting it. Then he tossed it on the bed. He hoped he'd still have the courage to pull the trigger once this job was done.

He sat there feeling the dope work its magic, and took another belt from a pint of whiskey. He tried to visualize a long-ago Christmas Day, back when he and Billy were little.

It was futile. All detail was lost. All he could conjure up were fragments.

Kane pulled back the hair on his wrist and examined the ancient scar. He did remember the old man flinging the butcher knife at his mother. But his drunken aim was way off. Full-force, the knife hit little Ralph, who fortunately had covered his face with his hands.

When had that happened? Kane couldn't remember for sure, but it seemed it happened around then—he did remember a Christmas tree. Christmas always brought out the savage in his father.

He realized with a start that he didn't even have a picture of Billy—or anyone else in his family, for that matter. Including Pete.
What kind of an asshole doesn't even have a picture of his own son?

Kane staggered to the window and stared at the tree in the apartment across the street. He wondered what kind of people lived there, whether or not there was love in that home.

He pulled down the blind so he wouldn't have to look at the goddamned tree any more. In the distance, he heard fire sirens. He lurched back to the bed and lay down, fully clothed.

As soon as he closed his eyes, the little girl in Saigon came to visit him again—just as he knew she would.

It was April 30, 1975. Although not yet twenty-two, Kane was a
Sergeant, an E-5. Like most fighters in that war, he had aged long before his time. After his first bloody battle experience in ‘72, then months of training in an Okinawan jungle, he figured embassy duty would be cushy, almost a vacation. Instead, it had turned into a surreal nightmare.

Kane could picture the hordes of terrified Vietnamese civilians trying to enter the embassy vehicle gate that last day, or attempting to scale the concrete wall protecting the compound. The wall, between twelve and eighteen feet high, was itself protected by concertina wire and topped with broken glass. Outside, thousands of panic-stricken Vietnamese were crying for help, desperate to escape the approaching Communist forces closing in on the city.

Kane was among four dozen Marines under orders to hold back the throng. Some were on the rooftop, others were at the gate. Several Vietnamese women lifted up their children and held them out to the Marines, begging the Americans to take the kids to safety.

The Marines, of course, were powerless to help, and could only hold the people back. Behind them, one packed helicopter after the next left the embassy for a flotilla of U.S. Navy ships waiting a few miles offshore.

On the ground, Kane and the others carried M-16s at port arms as the swarm of begging people pressed against the fence. The rifles were locked and loaded, but they had orders not to shoot.

CIA officers inside the compound pointed out faces they knew in the crowd, civilians who had helped them, and who were terrified of reprisals from the NVA forces. Marines were sent outside the gate to escort those “sensitive people” inside, to be led to the waiting helos. The rest were refused entrance.

At one point, it was Kane's turn to leave the compound to fetch two of the lucky ones. In the crowd on the other side of the wall was a young mother dressed in blue, barely out of her teens, holding her three-year-old daughter. When she spotted Kane, she held out her child to him. Even with the language barrier, it was clear that she was begging him to take the terrified little girl to safety. “She can't come!” he shouted over the din of the panicky crowd, knowing the mother did not speak English. “She can't come!”

As Kane reached his designated evacuees, he heard the young mother wailing in anguish. For all these years, he had been haunted by that sound, and by the face of her crying daughter. He did not know why
it was that particular mother and that particular child; there were dozens of them. But ever since, with great regularity, these two would visit Kane in the night. In that sense, the little girl had come to America.

What had become of them? Why wouldn't they leave him alone so late at night?
Maybe they were the reason the phone rang this morning…

Kane instantly scoffed at that notion.
Things don't work like that in this life. The only reasonable thing to believe in was the random cruelty of the universe…

But still another thought kept nagging at him:
Maybe, maybe just maybe, this job can somehow even the score.

I
t was the solstice, the first official day of winter. Isaiah Bell drove the unmarked Ford through the pre-dawn darkness downtown to police headquarters. He had slept only fitfully, and decided to get in early. He kept trying to change the pictures in his head, but the face of Darryl Childress wouldn't leave.

At this hour, the expressway was nearly deserted. No new snow had fallen, so the going was smooth. Bell reached for a cigarette, then remembered his pledge to Vera. He'd try to tough it out this time.

When he'd left, Vera and the kids were still sleeping. Bell had checked the muted television for any news of the kidnapping, but had found none. Now he searched the car's A.M. dial, and still there was no mention of it. He hoped that was a good sign.

He stopped on an all-news station. “The Butler Commission, investigating allegations of police brutality in the raid of a suspected drug house last month, has subpoenaed seven officers to testify,” the announcer said. “The officers, all white, have been accused by community activists of beating four African American prisoners…”

Bell pushed another button: “…Mayor Webster said the charges against him are racially motivated.” The mayor's voice came on the air: “I say to you, none of these complaints is worth the paper it's printed on. I'm being singled out for attack by the U.S. Attorney and the white-run media. As for the patronage issue, I have done nothing more than carry on the tradition of my white predecessors.”

Bell pushed another button and found rap music.
At five in the morning, for God's sake!
He turned the radio off.

Now he was in a really foul mood. He visualized that white motherfucker, Kane. He reached in his pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes. He studied the pack for a long moment, then took one out and lit it.

What was it about this American culture that bred so much hatred on both sides? Were whites and blacks so different in their perceptions that they never would see things the same way?

He recalled the way his mother had reacted to Big Ed's death, nearly going mad herself. Without the kindness of her church friends she might have. She had never been the same since.

The old bitterness welled up again.
Those are the genes I have in me, the hand I was dealt.
Vera always counseled forgiveness. She was convinced Bell could never be spiritually free until he forgave—really forgave—Big Ed for sending that round through the roof of his mouth.

Bell knew she was right. After he had sobered up and faced his past, he had come to understand that it wasn't Big Ed he really resented. It was those white terrorists who had destroyed the Bell family.

But then that left Bell with a spiritual dilemma—how to forgive the murderers? So far, he had found that impossible.

Ralph Kane awoke to a headache and thoughts of Darryl Childress. He forced his feet to the floor, leaned forward and cupped his head in his hands. He hoped to God that the kid was still alive. To his own astonishment, he realized that the thought was almost a prayer. He instantly dismissed that notion.
That's just crap from childhood.

But then he sat for several more minutes, trying to make sense of a surreal dream he'd had about Billy. His brother, in a prison cell, kept beckoning to him, waving to him to come closer. But every time Ralph approached, Billy disappeared into thin air. It happened over and over, seemingly all night.

It was the first time in his life that Ralph had ever dreamed about his brother, at least that he remembered.
That was very strange. Why now?
Finally he shrugged it off.
Shit happens.

He crossed the room and turned on the stove to make instant coffee. He reached up on the shelf and found a pint of whiskey, unscrewed the cap and belted down two quick blasts. Then he found his bag of weed and rolled up two more joints. He lit one and took two slow hits.

Kane turned on another burner for breakfast. Then, as the dope hit him, he decided against it. What the hell, he'd buy himself a meal. He was going to be a dead man soon. Why not spend a little money?

Kane turned on the television for any news of the kidnapping. Instead he found a stock market analyst in love with his own voice, babbling about the latest corporate merger and personnel “downsizing.”
This asshole makes it sound like eliminatingjobs is a good thing.

Disgusted by his own species, Kane turned off the television and went in to take a shower. He decided not to shave again today.

Easterly was deep in some nightmare of her own when Stan Jablonski awakened her. The nightmare instantly vanished. Within five seconds, she could not even remember which one it had been.

She sat up on her office couch and focused her eyes. “God, Stan, what time is it?”

“Five,” said the old detective. “Our esteemed Chief of Police wants to see you in half an hour.”

“What's he doing in this early?”

“Getting ready to brief the FBI.”

“FBI? Did something happen I don't know about?”

“Inspector, you're going to love this one. The kid's parents went to the Bureau on their own. The father decided we needed their quote, ‘expertise'.”