The Naked Angel Page 2

  Nodding curtly, Shannon shouldered past her into the shabby living room.

  “Se habla ingles?” Sergeant Holmes asked on Shannon’s heels.

  “Yes … I speak English.”

  “They all do,” Mike growled, “when they want to.”

  Ignoring his companion, Al Holmes removed his hat and asked, “Do you know a man called Paco Sanches?”

  “Si,” admitted Rubia Sepulveda, “I know Paco.” In the back of the house, a child was wailing.

  “How well do you know him?” Shannon threw the words roughly, his light blue eyes as fixed as marbles.

  “He is a friend of my son, Miguel,” Mrs. Sepulveda answered simply.

  “O.K., and where is this Miguel?” Mike Shannon thrust his jaw as well as his words in the direction of the small woman.

  “Who wishes to know?” Rubia inquired.

  “We are police officers,” Al Holmes answered quickly. He found his badge and showed it. The woman’s dark eyes widened with alarm she strove to conceal.

  A dark, slender girl came into the room, stopping abruptly on the threshold, as poised and lovely as a frightened doe. “Mamacita, quienes?”

  “La policia!”

  “Yeah, the policia,” Shannon mimicked. “Where’s your brother?”

  “Why?” Suspicion like frightened wingbeats marked the rise and fall of her breasts beneath a gay cotton wrapper.

  “Never mind why. Where is Miguel?” Shannon’s voice crackled.

  “Here, mister.” A boy in his early twenties moved his sister gently aside and quietly stepped past her into the room.

  In a slim, dark, Indian fashion the young man was extremely handsome. The well-knit body, erect carriage, and black, hawk-bright eyes, however, were lost on Sergeant Shannon. For the policeman saw cordovan red shoes polished until you could see your face in them, chartreuse nylon socks of the sort that shine in the dark, blue jeans folded to large cuffs above the ankles, a big belt buckle with a skull-and-cross-bones upon it, an army surplus shirt with officer’s epaulettes on the shoulders, jet-black hair, long and greased and combed straight back from the temples until it met in a curious part at the back of the head.

  “Com’ere,” Shannon ordered.

  The young man advanced until he stood before him.

  “Pull up your left shirt sleeve.”

  “Why?” Miguel asked.

  “Because I say so.”

  “Easy, Mike,” Holmes said quickly.

  “You handled the last two houses,” Shannon snapped. “We didn’t learn a damned thing. This one’s on me.”

  Miguel had his cuff unbuttoned. Shannon’s right hand shot forward, grabbed his wrist, and twisted it outward. With his left hand he pushed up the shirt sleeve. The arm was clean.

  Holmes said, “Look at his eyes, Mike, the kid’s not on the stuff.”

  “Maybe he’s handling it.” Shannon dropped Miguel’s arm and demanded, “Where’s your room, kid?”

  “You got a warrant?”

  “Yeah,” said Shannon, “I got five warrants. Want to see ‘em?” He doubled his fingers into a fist, cocked his right elbow, and cracked out at the boy’s face. As unexpected as the blow was, Miguel Sepulveda was faster. Rolling his head sideways, he let the fist slide over a shoulder slanted downward and moved in close to clinch. He made no effort to hit the detective.

  Shannon brought a knee up hard between the kid’s legs. Miguel let go of him, doubling forward with pain. The detective caught a handful of the long black hair, jerked his head up and went to work on it with his open hand.

  The girl darted forward to grab at Shannon’s swinging arm. Al Holmes caught her with both arms and pulled her back. Bare brown legs flashed as she kicked out at Shannon’s calves with the toes of her slippers. Holmes dragged her out of range.

  “For the love of Christ, Mike,” he shouted at his partner.

  Mama Rubia stifled a scream and fled to the rear of the house. The child back there was wailing in earnest.

  Miguel flayed wildly with both arms. Neither of his fists could reach the detective. Shannon laughed at him, strong and cocksure. He was slapping now methodically, the blows moving back and forth, flat of hand, back of hand. The kid’s nose was beginning to bleed.

  The girl in Al’s arms ceased struggling. Tears flowed down her cheeks. “You dirty bastards,” she cried helplessly. “You dirty, lousy bastards!”

  Feeling Miguel begin to go limp in his grasp, feeling the whole weight of him under a handful of hair, Shannon let go. The kid fell to the floor, stayed there, swaying on hands and knees.

  “O.K., chum,” Mike Shannon said, “let’s have a look at your room.”

  Miguel shook his head slowly. “Love your mother,” he told the detective in Spanish.

  Shannon kicked him below the arch of ribs. The breath went out of him then, and he rolled on the floor, his arms caught double around his stomach. Beads of cold sweat stood out on a sick face as he gasped for breath.

  The girl in Al Holmes’s arms began to moan, dreadfully and quietly.

  “Now,” said Shannon, “I think we’ll have a look at the house.”

  Holmes let go of the girl. “Get a wet towel,” he instructed her tonelessly. “Wet with cold water and a dishpan or something in case he gets sick.”

  “A real nice guy,” Shannon said ominously. “A real nice guy I got me for a sidekick.”

  Holmes ignored the remark. “So, we’ll look at the house,” he said. “We’re here and we’ll look at the house because you showed your warrant.” He followed his partner out of the living room and down a dark hall.

  “What are you kicking about?” Shannon demanded over his shoulder.

  “That rough stuff can make trouble,” Holmes answered. “The kid wasn’t trying to make trouble, Mike. None of these people was.”

  Shannon shrugged. “There won’t be any trouble. Not from a Mexican. Not in this town.”

  In the kitchen, the baby had stopped crying. He was asleep in his highchair with chubby hands sprawled on the tray, his dark curly head nestled between a shoulder and the back of the chair. A rim of sticky mush framed a pink mouth and the cheeks were flushed and still moist from tears.

  “Cute kid,” Mike Shannon announced.

  Holmes dogged his worry a little further. “Maybe these people won’t make trouble, but what about that priest?”

  Shannon opened a cupboard door and swept the shelves with an experienced glance. “Priests don’t make trouble. They just spread oil on troubled waters so it’s easier to walk on.” He moved to the next pair of cupboard doors, grinning at his own good humor.

  Holmes was opening a stack of drawers beneath the kitchen sink. “I take it you don’t remember this Father Shanley, Mike?”

  Shannon stopped his inspection and swung around with his hands on his hips and his feet apart. “What the hell’s eating you, Al?”

  “When I went over to the parish house with him to phone the station, he had me ask for Sammy Golden.”

  “I’ll be damned!” Shannon exploded.

  “You might at that,” Al Holmes agreed.

  WHEN THE BELL RANG into their conversation, Father Shanley excused himself to go to the front of the house. And though the priest had closed the study door behind him, Sammy could hear the accents of the language he did not understand, meaningless as words but fraught with the high brittle breaking point of hysteria.

  These women, he thought, these damned, emotional, dark-skinned women. Perhaps it was the food they ate: sprinkle on the red hot chili; set out the bowl of yellow peppers pickled in fire; shake on the red pepper! No wonder they were like a cauldron when they blew up. Food must have something to do with it, he decided. Absolutely, it must be something like heat in the stomach that made a woman flip her lid on Father Shanley’s front porch. Not in time to cover a tremendous yawn, he got a hand halfway to his mouth. Good lord, he was sleepy. What had the woman been involved in, what had happened to her to draw holy joe out into the early morni
ng? He remembered his tour in the patrol cars, the calls that had come out of the dashboard the nights he had driven this district: wife beating, drunk and disorderly, assault, attempted rape, rape, disturbing the peace, vag, vag-lewd … Or, he could do it by the numbers, all the misdemeanors, all the felonies, all by the numbers so it was only some of the smart boys on the papers who knew what the police calls meant, whether it was worth the trip to “Proceed to two-one-eight Argo Street, a two-oh-one… . Poor Padre Shanley, he didn’t have a discreet number to warn him what was ahead. He only had a hysterical woman on the front porch. What a flock to shepherd … what a lovely flock to shepherd … ah well, and what the hell … Sammy’s head sagged forward, his hands fell loosely over the edge of the limp leather arms of the chair, and he sank into his first sleep in twenty-six hours without ever dreaming how far afield his speculation had gone from the fine swift thoughtful consideration that had sent Father Joseph Shanley down the front steps alone with Rubia Sepulveda to charge two detectives from Homicide with unmitigated brutality.

  • • •

  The priest sat on the shabby sofa in the Sepulveda living room and faced Shannon and Holmes. His arm was around the slim, hard shoulders of Miguel. Mama Rubia and her daughter, Maria, were seated in stiff-backed chairs with their ankles crossed and their hands folded, motionless and infinitely patient as is the way where ancient blood runs clean through the soul.

  The two detectives were standing because Father Shanley had willed that they should. This was not their home and they had no place in it. That was important.

  Ignoring the tense, thoroughly ashamed presence of Al Holmes, Joseph Shanley addressed his remarks to the larger, more brutal man. His words were soft and clearly defined, but there was a sureness and toughness in the way they came forth that left little doubt as to the fighter’s heart from which they came.

  “I’m going to call you a great many things, Michael Shannon, and coward is the least of them …”

  “Easy, Father, easy with them names.” Mike Shannon’s big, barrel chest moved with his words, with his heavy, angry breathing.

  Father Shanley held up his hand. “You’ll hear me out, Sergeant, because if you don’t your superior officer will. But before I go on, let’s make one thing clear. As a badge is presumed to shield a policeman with honor, so it may be said that my ‘collar-on-backward’ is supposed to evidence a spirit both gentle and meek. Someday, God willing, those virtues may be mine entirely. But now, Shannon, I’m as Irish as you, and it’s that temper in me talking to you this minute. And if fists are the only language you understand, God forgive me, we’ll remove the badges of our professions and speak in that language.”

  Miguel raised his head and slanted his glance sideways. What a padrecito, what a little father, Father Joseph was! Much of the bitterness had gone from his eyes.

  Mike Shannon began to smile; the twist of his lips was ugly. “You’re kidding, Father.”

  “Mike, listen …” Holmes’s voice was shocked.

  “Shut up, Al. Father’s got a big mouth. It’s doing a lot of talking. He’s sounding off because he knows what would happen to my job on the force if I struck a priest …”

  Father Shanley stood. His eyes were blazing. “I knew you had a fat Irish head and a rotten Irish tongue the moment you walked in my church this morning. I also have come to the conclusion that you respect no man, no words of reason, you can smash your way through with physical violence. So, it’s my intention to make you first respect me as a man, then as a priest.” He glanced at his watch, and continued, “The dining room of the annex has been cleared for a children’s party this afternoon. The custodian isn’t due for another hour. So what do you say to walking across the street with me?”

  Incredulously, Mike Shannon stared at the priest. “Damned if I don’t think you mean it!”

  “I do.”

  “For the love of Pete, you two!” exclaimed Holmes, and then, changing his tack desperately, “Look, Father, maybe we were a little rough on the kid here. We’re sorry. We’ll get out, both of us. We’ll forget all about it.”

  The priest shook his head. “Quite to the contrary, Sergeant Holmes, you’re investigating a murder. I’m certain that regardless of your reprehensible tactics, you had some reason to come into the Sepulveda home. Some reason concerned with the death of Paco Sanches. Therefore, while Sergeant Shannon and I step across the street for our ‘private little conference,’ I suggest that you continue your investigation alone. I can assure you that the Sepulvedas are fine, law-abiding citizens. I know they’ll be most happy to co-operate with you in every way.” He turned to Shannon whose mouth hung open, slack on a jaw usually so pugnacious. “Shall we take that walk?”

  As they crossed the street together, Father Shanley pulled a key ring from his pocket, selected a key and proffered it to the policeman. “This’ll take care of the door to the annex. You’ll find it down that walk between the church and the parish house. I’m going to step into the house to speak to a friend and pick up a couple of pairs of gloves.”

  “Boxing gloves, you keep boxing gloves in the parish house?” Shannon’s hard blue eyes were popping.

  “Certainly,” Father Shanley replied, and then forgetful for a moment of the unpleasant task he had in mind, “I’ve trained several of my boys for Golden Gloves. And though you may not have known, it was a priest who began boxing as we know it, a thing of rounds and of rules with emphasis—the first recorded in history—on defensive fist fighting. Just for the records, Sergeant, in case you care to look it up, his name was Bernadinus, and he taught boxing in Sienna about seven and a half centuries ago. He’s a saint now, by the way. Though I doubt that a good right or left was what got him into heaven.”

  They parted company before the parish house, the priest going up the front steps and Sergeant Shannon continuing along the picket fence with its border of roses to the walk between the church and the parish house.

  With the door of the study opening under the pressure of his hand, Father Shanley paused. There was no mistaking the sound emerging from the depth of the great leather chair, Sammy Golden was snoring. Smiling, the priest reversed his movement and closed the door gently.

  In his bedroom, Father Shanley obtained the gloves from a closet shelf. Then, crossing the room, he dropped down beside the straight oak chair where it was his custom to pray. He stayed there on his knees with his head bowed for two long moments. He did not ask for victory or that the Lord should guide his really quite extraordinary left hand, but only that he be forgiven for the act in which he was about to indulge, for the anger that had been in his heart at the blind injustice of Sergeant Shannon’s actions in the Sepulveda home, and most of all, that this coming encounter should not close Michael Shannon’s eyes, but open them and cause him to gaze inward at himself.

  Mike Shannon was waiting in the long bare room of the annex. He had not turned on the lights and he stood in the middle of the floor in the dull gray light, uncertain and a little lost, like a boy who plays tough, faced with a short cut through the cemetery.

  Brusquely, Father Shanley tossed him a pair of gloves. “Eight ounces, Sergeant. This time we’ll fight a little more in keeping with Queensberry than you did with Miguel.”

  Slowly, Shannon began to shrug from his coat. He was at work on his shoulder holster when he suddenly blurted, “Look, Father, when I was a kid, I had a try at the ring. Didn’t make a go of it. But—well, damn it, I got twenty pounds on you.”

  Father Shanley folded his coat carefully and laid it over the back of a chair along the wall. He said without looking at the detective, “That would give you fifty pounds on Miguel. More than a third of his weight.”

  Shannon dropped his holster and pulled the knot of his tie away from his thick neck.

  Stripped to trousers and T-shirt, Father Shanley tugged on his left glove and secured it deftly with his right hand.

  The detective was beginning to worry. The small pigeon hole in his solid head where his not
es on priests were filed had nothing to explain the corner into which he had been maneuvered, all the angles he couldn’t figure. He pulled on his gloves.

  Finally, the two men faced each other. Father Shanley said, “We’ll fight to a knockdown, then talk. All right with you?”

  “Just talk is O.K. with me.”

  The priest shook his head soberly. “You should have thought of that with Miguel. You’re a little ashamed, now. That’s not enough. What’s important is for you to know that when you take the punishment of my people into your own hands, you have me to deal with as a man as well as a priest.” Surprisingly, Father Shanley grinned, caught the vagrant thought and put it into words. “Now, lest you think it’s the jawbone of this ass that’ll slay you, I’ll stop talking and we’ll have at it.”

  He ceased speaking, rocked to balance on the balls of his feet, and with his left covering, flicked his right fist forward to crack sharply against the point of Mike Shannon’s big nose.

  Shannon blinked with surprise, settled his chin along the angle of his right shoulder and shuffled forward.

  Though two bricks in his hip pocket would have moved Father Shanley into the light-heavyweight class, it was clear he had been trained to box in one of the lighter, faster categories.

  Shannon parried a slashing blow at his midriff, brought his guard up fast and took a left, smacking hard against his right glove.

  Then, Father Shanley rode backward off the drive of a strong right. They had taken measure of each other in this first, brief, light exchange, and each knew that his opponent was no stranger to the waltz of the square-circle.

  Father Shanley danced in from the left, circling Shannon’s cocked right. He jabbed fast, one, two, three times, all with his left, all against a stone wall. Shannon’s right smashed along his ribs, a glancing blow, spinning him half around. Shannon’s left flicked forward, caught the priest’s chin and snapped his head back. Father Shanley went flat on his heels and slid away from the withering artillery of the attack. Shannon began to grin, began to enjoy the fight.