And then there was Shel. To think she’d had a hand in all that, his shiny white nurse. He realized he was hard to live with at times, nobody’s idea of a prince, but even so. He’d gotten even, he supposed. But so had she. His crotch still throbbed, his head throbbed, too. He winced, thinking about it, but at the same time he felt grateful she’d gotten away. At the time he would have killed her, yes, but now, thinking back, that wasn’t what he’d wanted at all. He wanted her to see how he felt. See me for who I am, he thought. The whole number. That so much to ask?
A fast hard knocking came at the door. It sent Frank down to his knees beside the bed. He began to retch, thinking: They found me, the fuckers, they’re here.
Through the door, the bellhop called out, “Skip, Skip, it’s me. Got the fifth. Hey, Skip?”
Frank knelt there, blinking. Street noise filtered in quietly through the window. He rubbed his face, got up one leg at a time and sat on the bed for a second to get his breath, trying to swallow. He collected his money, pocketed it, then worked his way along the wall, chained the door and cracked it open.
“You nod off or what?” the bellhop snapped. His face bristled with Hey Hey Hey. He held up the bottle of gin like it was a chicken.
“Righteous,” Frank murmured. “We’re even.” He took the bottle and closed the door.
Within ten minutes he’d drained half the bottle. He patrolled the room, checking under the bed, inside the closet, paranoia ticking in his head. He put his ear to one wall, then the other, detecting sounds. The clarity he’d felt earlier abandoned him. He clutched the gin bottle to his chest. You’re lucky to be alive, he told himself. That’s why you’re scared.
Life is luck and the lucky are scared.
He indulged in a little more crank. Surfaces bristled. Lamplight made sounds. I’m sorry, he thought. There, I said it, I’m sorry. He got up and went to the bathroom. We must, he thought, get a grip on our drugs. He turned on the hot water spigots to warm his hands, found a towel, drank from the gin bottle. Overhead, the fluorescent ceiling light hovered like a little spaceship. He ran his hands down his arms. Shards of glass nestled in each pore. His hair felt tired.
He found his way back to the bed and turned on the television, craving sound, any sound. It had to be better than listening to his own head. The twenty-four-hour news channel rebroadcast a speech the president had made earlier that morning on the East Coast. The president’s face, in the constant eruption of a camera flash, looked twitchy and false. Nice suit, Frank thought, drinking. The man in the nice suit sounded the old familiar calclass="underline" Get tough. Get tough on crime. From a piece of paper in front of him, he recited: “We will not rest until this menace is crushed.”
Abatangelo drove across town to a photomat near the Opera House. The morning rain had created a bristling winter clarity. Buildings shimmered. Windshields flared. Outside the photomat, two secretaries leaned against the brick facade, one enjoying a quick smoke, the other a frozen yogurt, both lifting their faces to the sun. A panhandler stood in the doorway, one hand shading his eyes as the other moved in a constant gimme motion. Abatangelo brushed past him through the door.
With a little financial encouragement he got the girl at the counter to run his prints at once. The girl had the face of a ten-year-old, part of her head was shaved, and she breathed through her mouth. A button on her smock read: WHY COMPLAIN? THE WORST IS YET TO COME.
Abatangelo moved to the glass wall dividing the waiting room from the developing area to watch the process. He’d shot his frames of Shel in color, and the darkroom he’d rigged up in his apartment was set up only for black and white. Within a minute the color prints emerged on the vertical conveyor, rising one by one. Shel with her back exposed, revealing the bloody gashes, the bruises and welts. A close-up of her battered face. The bloodred eyes. Another close-up, this one of her neck. Now the girl was looking, too. She closed her mouth.
“I wasn’t the one who did it,” Abatangelo told her when he paid.
His next stop was within walking distance. Across the street from the I-80 skyway, the words ANTHONY J. COHN, ESQ., ATTORNEY-AT-LAW appeared in black Doric lettering upon the frosted glass door pane of a renovated Victorian.
Except for car keys and cash, the only thing in Abatangelo’s pocket at the time of his arrest in Oregon ten years earlier had been a slip of paper with Tony Cohn’s phone number on it. Cohn, though expensive, earned his fee. For three days at the preliminary hearing, the lawyer badgered the arresting agents into a squall of contradictions. They claimed an Anonymous Tipster had led them to Abatangelo and the others, when in fact one of the mutts on the beach crew had been their informant. The reason for the deceit was that an Anonymous Tipster, if he’s not a coconspirator, can remain anonymous forever. They didn’t want their snitch burned since he was working another grand jury out of Portland. The more they lied, the more Cohn hounded them. The government fished around for a good excuse, then just pointed fingers down the chain of command. Cohn, arguing fruit of the poisonous tree, managed to quash most of the informant’s testimony. But not all. Cohn explained the arbitrary nature of the ruling made for a good appeal issue, but at trial they stood to get hammered. This was, after all, rural Oregon, and rumors of the liberal northwest were greatly exaggerated. The jury pool was righteous and inbred. Worse, the defendants were Californian. Abatangelo didn’t need it explained twice. For the sake of reducing the heat on everyone else, he told Cohn to plead out, and Cohn got the best deal he could: a ten-and-five- ten years in prison, with five years probation tagged on because the U.S. Attorney deemed the defendant Of Malignant Character. As bad as it was, it beat risking the twenty-five-year stint he faced at trial, and gave everyone else the break he wanted. Especially Shel. Despite her limited involvement in the Company, the prosecutors were making her out as a full conspirator, using this as leverage against Abatangelo. Through Cohn, he tried to get her a single year, meaning with time served a few more months in prison at best. The feds would hear none of it. She gets three and a half like everybody else, they said, or we go to trial.
Cohn’s receptionist did not look up as Abatangelo entered the law office. The woman’s name was Joanna, an obese, compulsive woman who’d been fresh from community college when he’d seen her last, accompanying Cohn to hearings. She was adrift in her thirties now, and looking older still. As he recalled, she talked to herself. Conversing With The One Who Ought To Know, she called it.
He stood there several moments until finally, still looking down at her desktop, she said: “If you don’t state your business soon, I’m going to ask you to leave.” Her work area reeked of talcum powder. Abatangelo foresaw her developing a passion for cats, cutting her hair just a little bit shorter every year.
“It’s Dan,” he said. “Dan Abatangelo. I stopped by to tell Tony hello.”
Joanna jumped back in her seat as though bitten. “Good God.” She tried to compose herself, but an awkward, wincing smile lingered as she eyed him up and down. “Why didn’t you call first?” She made a fluttering upward gesture with her hand. The stairs. “Go on up. Tony will want to see you, I’m sure.”
Climbing the stairs, Abatangelo detected a new severity to the decor. The rugs were Persian. Tapestries lined the corridor. The track lighting was soft, discreet. Cohn had disclosed in his last few bits of legal correspondence that he was through with drug cases. The counterculture overtones were gone. No aging hippie élan, no Politics of the Mind, no laughs. Now spooks and professional paranoids were involved, only the small-fry got popped, thugs prevailed. There was a lot of death going around.