From the Corner of His Eye (61 page)

Two high-quality deadbolt locks. Sufficient protection against the average intruder, but inadequate to keep out a self-improved man with channeled anger.

Junior held the silencer-fitted 9-mm pistol under his left arm, clamped against his side, freeing both hands to use the automatic pick.

He felt lightheaded again. But this time he knew why. Not an oncoming case of the flu. He was straining against the cocoon of his life to date, straining to be born in a new and better form. He had been a pupa, encased in a chrysalis of fear and confusion, but now he was an imago, a fully evolved butterfly, because he had used the power of his beautiful rage to improve himself. When Bartholomew was dead, Junior Cain would at last spread his wings and
fly.

He pressed his right ear to the door, held his breath, heard nothing, and addressed the top lock first. Quietly, he slid the thin pick of the lock-release gun into the key channel, under the pin tumblers.

Now came a slight but real risk of being heard inside: He pulled the trigger. The flat steel spring in the lock-release gun caused the pick to jump upward, lodging some of the pins at the shear line. The snap of the hammer against the spring and the click of the pick against the pin tumblers were soft sounds, but anyone near the other side of the door would more likely than not hear them; if she was one room removed, however, the noise would not reach her.

Not all of the pins were knocked to the shear line with a single pull of the trigger. Three pulls were the minimum required, sometimes as many as six, depending on the lock.

He decided to use the tool just three times on each deadbolt before trying the door. The less noise the better. Maybe luck would be with him.

Tick, tick, tick. Tick, tick, tick.

He turned the knob. The door eased inward, but he pushed it open only a fraction of an inch.

The fully evolved man never has to rely on the gods of fortune, Zedd tells us, because he
makes
his luck with such reliability that he can spit in the faces of the gods with impunity.

Junior tucked the lock-release gun into a pocket of his leather jacket.

In his right hand again, the real gun, loaded with ten hollow-point rounds, felt charged with supernatural power: to Bartholomew as a crucifix to Dracula, as holy water to a demon, as kryptonite to Superman.

As red as Angel had been for her evening outing, she was that yellow for retirement to bed in her own home. Two-piece yellow jersey pajamas. Yellow socks. At the girl’s request, Celestina had tied a soft yellow bow in her mass of springy hair.

The bow business had started a few months ago. Angel said she wanted to look pretty in her sleep, in case she met a handsome prince in her dreams.

“Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow,” Angel said with satisfaction as she examined herself in the mirrored closet door.

“Still my little MM.”

“I’m gonna dream about baby chickens,” she told Celestina, “and if I’m all yellow, they’ll think I’m one of them.”

“You could also dream of bananas,” Celestina suggested as she turned down the bedclothes.

“Don’t want to be a banana.”

Because of her occasional bad dreams, Angel chose to sleep now and then in her mother’s bed instead of in her own room, and this was one of those nights.

“Why do you want to be a baby chicken?”

“’Cause I never been one. Mommy, are you and Uncle Wally married now?”

Astonished, Celestina said, “Where did
that
come from?”

“You’ve got a ring like Mrs. Moller across the hall.”

Gifted with unusual powers of visual observation, the girl was quick to notice the slightest changes in her world. The sparkling engagement ring on Celestina’s left hand had not escaped her notice.

“He kissed you messy,” Angel added, “like mushy movie kisses.”

“You’re a regular little detective.”

“Will we change my name?”

“Maybe.”

“Will I be Angel Wally?”

“Angel Lipscomb, though that doesn’t sound as good as White, does it now?”

“I want to be called Wally.”

“Won’t happen. Here, into bed with you.”

Angel sprang-flapped-fluttered as quick as a baby chick into her mother’s bed.

Bartholomew was dead but didn’t know it yet. Pistol in hand, cocoon in tatters, ready to spread his butterfly wings, Junior pushed the door to the apartment inward, saw a deserted living room, softly lighted and pleasantly furnished, and was about to step across the threshold when the street door opened and into the hall came Ichabod.

The guy was carrying a purse, whatever that meant, and when he walked through the door, he had a goofy look on his face, but his expression changed when he saw Junior.

So here it came again, the hateful past, returning when Junior thought he was shed of it. This tall, lanky, Celestina-humping son of a bitch, guardian of Bartholomew, had driven away, gone home, but he couldn’t stay in the past where he belonged, and he was opening his mouth to say
Who are you
or maybe to shout an alarm, so Junior shot him three times.

Tucking the covers around Angel, Celestina said, “Would you like Uncle Wally to be your daddy?”

“That would be the best.”

“I think so, too.”

“I never had a daddy, you know.”

“Getting Wally was worth the wait, huh?”

“Will we move in with Uncle Wally?”

“That’s the way it usually works.”

“Will Mrs. Ornwall leave?”

“All that stuff will need to be worked out.”

“If she leaves, you’ll have to make the cheese.”

The sound-suppressor didn’t render the pistol entirely silent, but the three soft reports, each like a quiet cough muffled by a hand, wouldn’t have carried beyond the hallway.

Round one hit Ichabod in the left thigh, because Junior fired while bringing the weapon up from his side, but the next two were solid torso scores. This was not bad for an amateur, even if the distance to target was nearly short enough to define their encounter as hand-to-hand combat, and Junior decided that if the deformation of his left foot hadn’t prevented him from fighting in Vietnam, he would have acquitted himself exceptionally well in the war.

Clutching the purse as though determined to resist robbery even in death, the guy dropped, sprawled, shuddered, and lay still. He’d gone down with no shout of alarm, with no cry of mortal pain, with so little noise that Junior wanted to kiss him, except that he didn’t kiss men, alive or dead, although a man dressed as a woman had once tricked him, and though a dead pianist had once given him a lick in the dark.

Her voice as bright as her bed ensemble, spiritual sister to baby chicks everywhere, yellow Angel raised her head from the pillow and said, “Will you have a wedding?”

“A wonderful wedding,” Celestina promised her, taking a pair of pajamas from a dresser drawer.

Angel yawned at last. “Cake?”

“Always cake at a wedding.”

“I like cake. I like puppies.”

Unbuttoning her blouse, Celestina said, “Traditionally, puppies don’t have a role in weddings.”

The telephone rang.

“We don’t sell no pizza,” Angel said, because lately they had received a few calls for a new pizzeria with a phone number one digit different from theirs.

Snatching up the phone before the second ring, Celestina said, “Hello?”

“Miss White?”

“Yes?”

“This is Detective Bellini, with the San Francisco Police Department. Is everything all right there?”

“All right? Yes. What—”

“Is anyone with you?”

“My little girl,” she said, and belatedly she realized that this might not be a policeman, after all, but someone trying to determine if she and Angel were alone in the apartment.

“Please try not to be alarmed, Miss White, but I have a patrol car on the way to your address.”

And suddenly Celestina believed that Bellini
was
a cop, not because his voice contained such authority, but because her heart told her that the time had come, that the long-anticipated danger had at last materialized: the dark advent that Phimie had warned her about three years ago.

“We have reason to believe that the man who raped your sister is stalking you.”

He would come. She knew. She had always known, but had half forgotten. There was something special about Angel, and because of that specialness, she lived under a threat as surely as the newborns of Bethlehem under King Herod’s death decree. Long ago, Celestina glimpsed a complex and mysterious pattern in this, and to the eye of the artist, the symmetry of the design required that the father would sooner or later come.

“Are your doors locked?” Bellini asked.

“There’s just the front door. Yes. Locked.”

“Where are you now?”

“My bedroom.”

“Where’s your daughter?”

“Here.”

Angel was sitting up in bed, as alert as she was yellow.

“Is there a lock on your bedroom door?” Bellini asked.

“Not much of one.”

“Lock it anyway. And don’t hang up. Stay on the line until the patrolmen get there.”