The Naked Angel Read online

  The priest did a little waltz. He did it all by himself, wide around the slower-moving, pivoting detective. He needed time to clear his head. Relentlessly, Shannon shuffled forward, a walk-in fighter, solid on his feet, sure of his strength.

  There was a drum throbbing between Father Shanley’s temples, but his eyes were in focus once more; and as persistent as the stalking of Shannon, the drumbeat in his head, was the pressure of time. He and Shannon had other jobs to do, jobs more important than this absurd session he had brought upon them. He couldn’t waltz like this forever, keeping away from the big man, wearing him down with a ballroom technique. Father Shanley danced forward, shifting, weaving.

  Then, they were met, and Father Shanley was beautiful to watch: right uppercut, left cross, right smash, breaking through the big man’s guard by the very fury and precision of his attack. Shannon stopped walking forward. Stood still. Gave ground. Swung a wild one over the priest’s right shoulder. Closed into a clinch.

  Automatically, Father Shanley broke from the clinch, snapping up with his forearms and bouncing back. Just for an instant, his body was open, open wide to the piledriver right that plowed into his stomach, popping his eyes half from his head as he crumpled to the floor with the pain in his belly opening petals of shock through his whole body.

  Consciousness came slow and hard. Somehow, his folded coat had come beneath his head, and two strong hands were around his waist, lifting and letting down, lifting and letting down, forcing air back into his lungs while Shannon’s familiar, rough voice demanded, “For the love of Mike, Father, come out of it!”

  So Father Shanley did. Though the love of Mike Shannon had little to do with his recovery.

  • • •

  It was close to eight o’clock in the morning when a pale and still shaken Father Shanley returned to his study and awakened Sammy Golden. “Come along into the kitchen,” he told the yawning detective, “and I’ll fix us some coffee.”

  Sammy washed the sleep from his eyes in the kitchen sink. When he raised his head from the towel, it was to see Father Shanley pouring a thimble-size glass full of brandy the color of clear amber. He held it out to the detective.

  “This will help until the coffee is ready. It’s made by the friars at Los Gatos.”

  Accepting it gratefully, Sammy observed, “You look beat, Father.”

  “I am,” the priest admitted. Curiously, he smiled without pursuing the subject further.

  Over the coffee, Sammy returned to the question of Paco Sanches. “You said he was a fisherman, Father?”

  “So he was.”

  “Then, what’s he doing living up here in your parish?”

  “Oh, he just comes up here to be with his family during the off season for lobsters.”

  Sammy shook his head. “I know how dangerous it is to make a generalization where narcotics are concerned, but somehow I can’t add the drug habit and the spike marks in Paco’s arm, into the hard, healthy life he led. Sure, it’s conceivable he might have smoked a pot now and then for the sake of company or feeling good. But not the refined stuff. Not the hypodermic technique. Where did he do his fishing?”

  Father Shanley found his pipe and pouch and went to work filling the charred brier. “Now, we’re getting down to why I sent for you, Sammy. Sure, I didn’t like Mike Shannon for the way he spoke of my people, but that’s been taken care of, and the real reason I called for you was the death of Paco. It’s touchy, Sammy. Beyond the tragedy of his death, there was more than I cared to tell without a friend in court.” The priest raised his eyes from his pipe and regarded Golden.

  The detective reached the coffeepot from the stove and refilled the two cups. “Go ahead, Father. Spill it.”

  “Before I do, there’s something more I must say. You know how I feel about my parish and my people.”

  Sammy nodded.

  Father Shanley continued, “I’ve worked hard and the work has been good. I came here upon my release from the navy. And, God forgive me, I was a pretty good chaplain. I was young enough and tough enough to get through to some pretty tough characters out in the Pacific. Boys who hadn’t given much of a thought for their God until they got pinned down with mortar shells drifting over them feather slow, or machine-gun bullets setting fire to their packs.

  “Well, that was one thing, a ‘natural’ for a young fellow who sometimes had paid more attention to his work in the college gym than to his apologetics. Then, I was out of the service, away from my wonderful bunch, and assigned to the Church of St. Anne.

  “The priest who preceded me here was a fine man. Did you ever meet him when you were patrolling this district in uniform?”

  “Yeah. I remember him. Bald on top and no bigger than a house.”

  “Father Santana,” Father Shanley continued. “Get the name, Sammy. Fitted the Mexican-American congregation like a glove. They loved him. Know why he was pulled out of here and shipped to Taos?”

  Sammy shook his head simply to fill the expectant pause.

  “Spots in his lungs got active again. He tried to ignore them. Fought as much as he could fight to stay here. His duty was to his people. The breakdown of his health, and his very life were unimportant beside his duty to his children. It was into his shoes I had to step.”

  The detective interrupted, “Look, Father, you didn’t call me to tell me your life story of Father Santana’s. I’m tired and you are, too. What do you say we get to the meat of this sandwich. What’s bothering you about Paco Sanches?”

  Tapping with his fingertips on the white cloth before him, Father Shanley studied his companion for a moment, and then said quietly, “All right, Sammy. All my talk was leading up to one thing. To do God’s work among these people, I had to gain their confidence. Sometimes, the confidence brought knowledge of illegal activities. In God’s name, I’ve dealt with petty thieves, adulterers, bootleggers and with Paco.

  “What I’m trying to tell you is that while I am not betraying the sanctity of the confessional, I do feel that I am slighting the confidence I have worked so hard to build here in Royal Heights when I tell you an open secret of the neighborhood. Paco Sanches was in the country illegally. He came from Baja California, slipped through the fence, so I’m told, at the end of every lobster season. Stayed with cousins until the season opened again.”

  “That means the feds,” Sammy said. “So what?”

  “So, don’t you see?” Father Shanley asked urgently. “It must tie in with this drug business, with this poison that’s come into my parish.”

  Pushing back his chair, the stocky young man came to his feet and looked down at his friend. “I’m going home and go to bed. I should be grateful for the information you’ve handed out, but I can’t say that I am. And I doubt if you know fully what your information means. A few hours ago, a man was found shot to death in your church. Technically, that was a case for Homicide and the crime lab. When you pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and showed us the spike marks, that pulled in our narcotics squad and the Treasury Department. The yarn you’ve just spilled about Paco being a Mexican national brings in another federal agency, the local Mexican consul, and eventually, the Mexican police. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll say thanks for the drink and the coffee, go home to bed like I’ve said, and get up happy with the fact I’m at present assigned to the investigation of the death of one Hilda Dempsy and have nothing more to do when I wake up this afternoon than to discover whether there’s a good reason to believe she did not kill herself, and if she didn’t, who did and why. And if that sounds rough, well, it’s peaches and cream compared to the red tape that’s going to be tied in knots around the death of your boy, Paco Sanches.”

  Father Shanley came to his feet wearily, and as they walked together to the door of the parish house, put his hand on the detective’s shoulder. “You know, Sammy, what I like about you is that you always make the possible sound so impossible.”

  The detective’s dark bright eyes slanted suspiciously in the priest’s direction. “What’d’you mean by that?”

  “That you must search out the roots when you pull up the hemlock,” the priest answered curiously, and then, “that you and I are going to cleanse my people of the blot poor Paco brought to them.”

  “Oh, Lord,” groaned Sammy.

  “When you get home,” Father Shanley advised, “say that on your knees.”

  THEY WERE WORKING the night watch again, Golden and Adams, relieving Carillo and Murray over on Park Avenue. Gerald Dempsy had returned to his apartment at seven o’clock that evening. He was still there. The same station wagon Red and Sammy had tailed all through the night previous was parked before the building. According to Murray, Dempsy had stayed home all day, apparently sleeping. At quarter to six, he had walked a block and a half to eat his dinner at a restaurant that faced on the park. Upon his return from dining, he had stopped in the corner drugstore to purchase two evening papers, a paper-back novel, cigars and a bottle of scotch.

  Checking Red and Sammy out on the day’s developments before they left the station, Lieutenant Cantrell had informed them of two pertinent facts. Information from the manager of the Park Apartments had revealed that Dempsy had given thirty days’ notice so he might vacate, and had agreed willingly to the forfeit of the last month’s rent on the lease. More important, over in Royal Heights, Johnny Reyes had disappeared from view. Shortly after noon, suspicious of the absolute lack of activity, Sergeants Haggerty and Monaghan had tried to raise someone in the house which Reyes had entered with the girl the night before. When no one answered their knock, Haggerty had left the scene long enough to secure a warrant of search, and a warrant of arrest for Reyes sworn out on a vagrant-lewd charge. Breaking in the house, the officers had found the girl naked on a shabby sofa, sleeping off a drunk,
and no sign of the man they were seeking.

  They sat in the car and thought about these things and began the interminable drag on cigarettes. There were two extra packs in the glove compartment.

  Red asked idly, “What happened with Shannon and your priest friend?”

  “Nothing that I know of, why?”

  “Holmes was still at the station when I got there. He wasn’t saying much, but from what I could gather more went on out in Royal Heights than meets the eye. Seems the two Irishmen had a private session. Seems Shannon got some religion quick.” Adams scratched the end of his nose speculatively. “You were out there when all this was going on. What the hell happened?”

  “I was asleep.”

  “I’ll bet you were.”

  The door to the Park Apartments swung open and a man stood for a moment on the steps lighting a cigar. He was a tall, blond individual in expensive flannels; his hair was trimmed short and brushed upward without benefit of a comb. His square-shouldered way of standing, his extremely boyish haircut and even his stylish clothes were familiar to a far greater audience than the two police officers watching him. Gerald Dempsy was in the used-car business, and he did his own advertising through the medium of television. To be assured that a Dempsy deal was the best deal in town was a small price to pay for “Your Tuesday Night Movie.”

  Red Adams said, “There’s no use calling in until we know which way we’re riding tonight.” He waited until Dempsy had slid into the wagon before pressing the starter button He let him swing around the curve along Park Boulevard before he touched the light switch and swung into the passing traffic.

  • • •

  As the police sedan pulled away from the curb, the young man standing in the shadow of a pine at the Park’s edge resumed his progress along the sidewalk. With an almost animal patience, he had been watching that parked car for half an hour. The police and their methods were no more strange to Johnny Reyes than are the way of farm dogs to a fox who has lived long among them.

  His blue canvas shoes with crepe soles made no noise upon the hard, even concrete of the walk. He stayed away from the street lights and well within the shadows of the tall trees bordering the park. Two hundred yards beyond where the police car had stood, he turned into the park along a path. Through semitropical foliage, the path wound toward the center of the park, meeting with three other paths at an open square which held a rectangle of benches, a drinking fountain, and at one side a lighted public restroom.

  For several moments, Johnny stood quietly in the deep shade of a clump of palmettos, listening and watching. Only his shiny dark eyes seemed to move as he gazed about the square, his eyes and the shadows of moths erratic around the unguarded lights, and once the incredibly swift, silent and soft body of a bat dipped down into the brightness to prey upon an insect.

  When he was certain that no one was in either side of the restroom or approaching by any of the other routes, he glided quickly in through the door marked MEN and approached the large metal waste container which had a gunny sack insert to receive trash. Tilting the can upon two legs, he extracted a wad of gum and its glittering cargo.

  He left the restroom with the tight smile fixed in the corners of his lips framing his thoughts. Those dumb, lovin’ cops! At the edge of darkness beyond the square, he paused and used the point of a blade on a six-inch spring-clasp knife to extract the single fair-sized perfect diamond from its simple platinum setting. With the ring slid onto his little finger, he pulled a large, Zippo lighter from his pocket. Separating the inner and outer casings, he removed the cotton wadding, dropped the bright stone into the inner case and then replaced the cotton. With the lighter back together, he spun the wheel and was rewarded with a bright flame. He blew it out through lips tight with a pleased smile. Then he considered the ring which last had reposed on the hand of Hilda Dempsy. Regretfully, he hid it in a clump of bananas, pushing it well down into the recurving stem of a giant leaf and pressing it in against the stalk until it was buried in the sweet water between the tender fibers.

  And now he was ready to quit the town, to exchange one way of life and of language for another. To go south and fish for a season. No one knew better than he that Paco Sanches’s stretch of coast would be begging for a fisherman. He had only to see a man named Llopis. He had been instructed. He would be taken care of.

  Johnny Reyes left the park, and through an alley began his walk across one corner of town toward the railroad running south.

  • • •

  Where Park Avenue swung away from the Park from which it had taken its name, Gerald Dempsy turned left onto the San-some Freeway and slid into the heavy traffic bound toward the center of town.

  Once on the freeway, Red Adams closed in fast, bringing the police sedan up to within fifteen feet of the fast-running station wagon. Travel where the two center lanes hit fifty allowed no fancy tailing tricks. Sammy Golden talked to the radio, giving their location, direction of travel, and repeating a description of Dempsy’s car and license number.

  Settling back, he remarked to his companion, “Anyhow, it’s a different direction than last night, Red.”

  “It’s a big town.”

  “Yeah, but it’s two nights running now, since he’s been to his car lot. That’s not his usual m.o.”

  “Hell, maybe you wouldn’t think about business either if your woman was in the morgue with a hole in her head and a tag on her big toe.”

  “I’ll bet he’s on hand for his TV show tomorrow night.”

  “I’ve got a buck that says different.”

  “You’re on. Whoever heard of a used-car dealer with a heart?”

  The freeway sped beneath them over a viaduct and then dipped down toward the heart of the city. With the fog moving in and bringing with it the heavy, acrid smoke from the industrial suburbs, the myriad of lights were hazy and dirty. Even the tall rising shaft of the city hall did not seem white. It was not a pretty picture.

  Gerald Dempsy eased the station wagon into the center lane and pointed its nose almost directly at the civic center. Sammy leaned forward and had another talk with the radio.

  At the abrupt end of the freeway, Dempsy signaled left, crossed west past the city hall and turned down Center Street.

  The police car followed, passing the small plaza with the old oaks olive green in the hazy light and the walks gray beneath the trees; then the city hall was behind them and they were going by the Mexican movies, cafés and the music store and the newspaper vendors who sold La Opinion, and Hoy and Vea and La Fiesta and La Lidia and the paper-covered books with hot covers of passion. Then came the Catholic church, and beyond, the Redeemer’s Haven with its inevitable line of loitering, helpless, ragged-faced men; and beyond Third Street, sin row with its hockshops and bars, its all-night theaters, some Western, some gangsters, some on the dangers of dope, the delights of sex, the white slave trade, and always—according to the garish panels under glass—sex, Sex, SEX!

  Below Fifth, Dempsy turned into a Custom Parking Lot. Red glided on, guiding the police sedan into the first white-painted loading zone. He and Sammy were window shopping a loan shop when Gerald Dempsy strode by They watched his reflection on the glass before turning to follow.

  The tail job was short and sweet. Dempsy crossed the street with the signal, and went at once to purchase a ticket beneath the famous marquee.

  NEW STAR BURLESQUE

  THE NAKED ANGEL

  THE ANATOMIC BOMBSHELL

  AND TWELVE NUDIE CUTIES

  TWELVE IN THE BARE FACTS

  “I’ll be damned,” murmured Sammy Golden.

  “Four nights after losing a wife,” muttered Red Adams.

  Even cops cynical enough to expect anything could be surprised. So they followed along in line, paying their way with no show of credentials because they knew what the presence of police could do to a show of this nature.

  In the foyer, they passed between the double bank of almost-life-size come-on photographs of girls minus the net panties and brassieres they would be required to wear on stage. Dempsy glanced at his watch. Sammy did the same. It was nine forty-six.

  Gerald Dempsy disappeared into the cave of darkness that marked the far left aisle and the two detectives followed at a slower pace. “If my wife could see me now,” Red whispered. Sammy grinned at the anticipation in his partner’s voice.