Angel's Inferno Read online

  PRAISE FOR FALLING ANGEL

  ‘Masterfully shocking’ – Observer

  ‘One of the greatest mysteries ever written’ – Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Independent

  ‘A terrific book… I’ve never read anything remotely like it. Trying to imagine what might have happened if Raymond Chandler had written The Exorcist is as close as I can come’ – Stephen King

  ‘A sort of ultimate detective story… it is one breathless read in high paced prose’ – Thomas Keneally

  ‘Brilliant and frightening’ – Thomas McGuane

  ‘A spellbinding adventure in suspense that rollercoasters the reader towards an ending that is the equivalent of hitting a brick wall at 90 mph. This is a book that you don’t walk away from’ – Richard Brautigan

  ‘A book to read with the doors locked and every light in the house burning’ – Richmond Review

  ‘One of the best crime novels of the twentieth century’ – Crime Stories & Weird Tales – Rafe McGregor’s Blogspot

  ‘Much scarier than The Exorcist, and makes most of Chandler’s oeuvre feel like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm’ – Robert Galbraith, Crime Time

  For my lovely, devoted wife,

  Janie Camp

  And

  In memory of my mentor,

  Alexander Laing

  1903-1976

  Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n

  John Milton, Paradise Lost

  1

  When the Devil laughs the whole damn world laughs with Him. Everyone gets a kick from another man’s bad luck. Do unto others, not unto me. The cops wisecracking over my lover’s corpse were all in on the joke. They dug Satan’s eternal punchline. This bitch croaked and we’re still alive enjoying the show. I slumped on the couch, staring down at my manacled hands. The coarse laughter in the bedroom echoed from another universe. A numb chill gripped me. I zipped my leather jacket up over the camera hanging around my neck, locking my fingers together. Looked like I was praying. A complete sham. There were no prayers left.

  ‘Hey, Angel!’ Lieutenant Sterne leaned out the bedroom doorway, big head blunt as a battering ram. A flashbulb popped behind him. ‘Got your guns mixed up. The rod between your legs is for screwing. Stuck the wrong one into that bitch’s pussy.’

  Flashbulbs flared like lightning. Epiphany’s bloody body gleamed in their lurid light. Wedged between her legs, my Smith & Wesson reflected the flashing Speed Graphics. A wave of hatred rose from the numbness in my gut. I choked it back, keeping things deadpan. Anger at these crooked cops and at the man who’d killed Epiphany and set me up to take the rap warmed my icy soul. Raw as a double shot of cheap bourbon. This square asshole Sterne with his dumb black shoes and white athletic socks should’ve shackled me from behind like some mad-dog killer.

  Sergeant Deimos strolled in from the hallway. A smug smile brightened his five o’clock shadow. Looked like a cheap B-movie gangster. Black overcoat. Wide-brimmed fedora. I’d first laid eyes on him five days ago. Deimos had been dressed like a longshoreman then. I wore the work clothes now. Dungarees, knitted wool cap, war-surplus aviator jacket. Pair of handcuffs for that cool outlaw touch.

  ‘What’s the word, Eddie?’ Sterne barked.

  ‘Wagon’s on the way.’

  ‘Sooner the better. I want this bastard locked up tight. He snuffed out three people in the last week.’

  ‘Six feet under sounds better.’

  My gorge rose like a bad case of stage fright. ‘I’m sick!’ I yelled, hurrying for the bathroom close to the front door. ‘Gonna throw up!’

  Nothing like getting puked on to make the toughest cop duck aside. I slid on my knees across the tile floor to the toilet, heaving a gut-bucket of sour swill into the bowl. Deimos looked away. Policemen learn to live with the sight of blood. Vomit makes them queasy just like everybody else.

  A second wave of nausea provided additional moments of privacy. I looked up under the ancient porcelain sink at the derringer secured with duct tape to the drain pipe high and out of sight. A.38 caliber Great Western copy of the classic Remington over-and-under. I’d taped it there a couple years ago after a heavyweight torpedo roughed me up and pushed me on my ass onto the john floor. The gorilla worked for a pair of Wall Street shysters who didn’t like me snooping into their grift. I swore the next time trouble came knocking I’d have a secret surprise. Hitmen always let their marks take one last piss.

  I lurched to my feet, grabbing the drain for balance. Played my ace in the hole, yanking the sneak piece free. Hunched over the sink, back turned on Deimos, I made a show of slurping cold water. Stupid flatfoot. Not interested in a sick man cleaning himself up. Pressed my cuffed hands to my stomach, concealing the derringer. Three quick steps took me to the open bathroom door.

  I stepped close to Deimos, showing him my heat. ‘Try any cowboy shit,’ I hissed, pressing the two-shot tight to his middle. ‘I blow a hole through your liver.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he whispered. A couple uniforms loitered in my living room, rubbernecking at what was lying on the bed.

  ‘Out the door. Slow and easy.’

  We were in the hallway. Not a second glance from two medical attendants bullshitting by a sheet-covered gurney. I guided Deimos past the central staircase to the fire exit. The door closed behind us on the landing. Told him to shrug off his overcoat.

  ‘You’ll never get away with it, Angel,’ the detective sergeant said.

  ‘Already have,’ I said, frisking him down two-handed. Found his service revolver and pulled it free. I gripped the .38 caliber Smith & Wesson Bodyguard in my left hand and put the derringer into a side pocket where I found my own pair of lightweight aluminum cuffs. I yanked them out. ‘Hands behind your back.’ I jabbed him with the Bodyguard, getting my message across.

  No more jive-ass back talk from Deimos. I snapped on the bracelets. Never trust a cop. Playing it safe, I ran my chained hands down his pant legs. He wore no ankle rig. I scooped up Deimos’s heavy woolen overcoat and draped it over my manacled mitts, concealing the pistol that made me boss. ‘Let’s head downstairs,’ I said.

  We drifted down seven flights to the basement with no more gassing. The Chelsea Hotel’s cavernous cellar housed ancient furnaces and boilers. Easy to imagine rodents roaming the shadows in this dank crypt. I’d never seen any but the super had told me horror stories about cat-sized monsters prowling the dark corners.

  Scattered islands of light pooled under bare hanging bulbs. I knew my way around. Monthly lease-holding tenants stored things in obscure corners: old steamer trunks, unwanted luggage, cardboard boxes. Quick prods with the Smith & Wesson moved Deimos forward. I intended to gag him so he didn’t scream his head off and give me up to the boys upstairs.

  ‘Kneel!’ I barked. Deimos didn’t move. I smacked him upside the head with his own .38 and he bent to the floor easy as a choirboy settling at the altar rail. A grunted curse was the closest thing to a supplication he had in him. Dim bulbs cast blurred silhouettes in the gloom. I pulled up a dented footlocker and sat. Set the gun down, fishing my key ring from a jacket pocket. A standard handcuff key hung among the twirls. I had the bracelets unlocked in seconds. Snapped them on Deimos above my pair of S&W Peerless Model 4s.

  ‘Do yourself a favor, Angel,’ Deimos said. ‘Give up while you’re still breathing.’

  I’d had enough of his lip. I shoved his pocket square deep into his mouth. He tried to spit it out then lunged back, almost throwing me off balance. I stuck the .38 in his back. ‘Calm down, Sergeant. I’m holding the gun now.’ I unfastened his ugly cop necktie and laid down the gun so I could wrap the tie around his ya
p. As I knotted it, a brick wall exploded in my face, the footlocker sliding out from beneath me. My head slammed against the concrete floor as the .38 skittered across the hard surface. Deimos who outweighed me by at least fifty pounds lay on top of me, his heavy shoulders and chest pinning my legs. He used his fat head as a battering ram on my kidneys. The tie had fallen off him and his enraged face looked grotesque as he tried to spit out the gag. Trying to kick free of him, I punched his head, his neck, his shoulders, but he just bore down on me. Sitting up, I landed a blow to his right eye and pulled free, springing to my feet.

  Instinctively, I reached for the derringer in my pocket even though I knew I couldn’t use it. The thunder of a gunshot in this windowless cavern would bring down all the cops, if they weren’t already on their way to the basement looking for me. A kick from Deimos had me stumbling. I grabbed the cord from the light bulb socket above me, yanking it from the ceiling in a spray of sparks as I went down, dropping the derringer. Deimos had me pinned again, more securely now, and was slamming his head into my neck and jaw. Pain shot through me. I couldn’t move. He could keep me there until his friends arrived. I managed to move my hands from beneath the gorilla-cop. I still had the socket cord. Pulling both ends tight, I slipped it around his neck when he raised his head and pulled the garrote tight. He leaned back, looking surprised, his eyes bulging as I twisted the cord tighter and tighter. He bucked like a bronco but the handkerchief still jammed in his mouth made things easier, muffling his gargled protests. I kept tightening the cord until he fell on top of me.

  Interesting how death fills an empty space with its stillness. The body felt warm but nobody was home anymore. I shoved Deimos off me and rose to my feet. Stupid flatfoot. Shouldn’t have fought back. I hadn’t meant to kill him.

  After collecting both guns, putting my derringer in my pocket and tucking the .38 into my waistband, I quickly searched the cop’s clothing, turning up his wallet, a lead-filled leather sap, a pair of cuffs, and a lucky rabbit foot key chain. I shoved the take into his heavy topcoat, tossing Bugs Bunny away into the shadows.

  Yanking Deimos’s waistband sheath off his belt, I pushed in the .38 and hooked the rig inside my Levis. With my bulky flight jacket underneath, Deimos’s overcoat fit just fine. His badge pinned to the wide lapel. I picked up the black fedora and put it on my head over my Navy watch cap.

  I dragged the stiff to a far corner behind a stack of cardboard boxes and empty suitcases. Might be days before somebody found the dead cop. Let the rat feast begin.

  I slipped out a door around the corner from the service entrance. Sheet iron steps led up away from the hotel entrance. Ascending halfway, I stood eye-level with the sidewalk. Two uniformed flatfoots worked on their pensions under the awning twenty feet away. Everything quiet as a hick town.

  I climbed the remaining stairs, standing unnoticed on the landing. The safety gate facing the street was secured by a heavy chain. I waited until the cops looked away toward Seventh Avenue, and then swung a leg over the top rail. One of the uniforms turned his head, glancing in my direction.

  I froze, straddling the fence. The cop stared straight at me, but must have seen nothing but shadows because a second later he looked away when a wailing ambulance raced down Seventh Avenue. I swung my other leg over and walked west on 23rd Street under the awning of the El Quijote restaurant. Halfway down the block, I unpinned Deimos’s buzzer and slipped it into his overcoat pocket. I chanced a look back. No activity outside the Chelsea. The coast, as they like to say, was clear. I slipped off into the night. Just another stray cat on the prowl.

  2

  I caught an uptown cab on Eighth Avenue, telling the driver to drop me at the corner of 42nd and Seventh. A big-ass yellow Checker with folding jump seats and enough room in back for a man to stretch his legs and think. I had a lot to think about. My life had been turned upside down and inside out tonight. I’d just killed a cop. Who would believe I acted in self-defense when New York’s Finest were convinced I’d killed three people in the last week? Who the hell was this client calling himself Louis Cyphre? Why was he setting me up to take the rap for his murder spree?

  My world went to hell the moment Wall Street lawyer Herman Winesap called on behalf of his big-shot client, the elegant and elusive Louis Cyphre. Routine missing person caper that went south right from the start. Johnny Favorite. Superstar. Sang with the Spider Simpson band before the war. Took a powder from the private hospital upstate where he’d been a vegetable warehoused ever since getting hit on a USO stage during a Luftwaffe strafing in Tunisia. Everyone I talked to from his past got bumped off, up to and including his daughter, Epiphany Proudfoot. The investigation led me to a nest of Voodoo-worshipers and Satanists. Now some of them and Cyphre were trying to make me think I was Johnny Favorite. Partial amnesia from a war wound wasn’t much help in the memory department.

  No matter what was true and what was a pack of lies, I had to blow town on the double. To pull it off, I needed stuff from my office. If Cyphre had pinched everything when he’d broken in last night, I was fucked. Big risk going back. Figured the cops would get hip and check the joint out in maybe half an hour. I got nabbed a little after midnight. My Timex read twenty-three past the hour.

  Money topped any get-away checklist. I kept two yards in double sawbucks as backup cash in my safe. With luck, it was still there. I pulled Deimos’s wallet from his overcoat. Forty-seven bucks in greenbacks. Added his dough to the five spot and eight sorry aces in my worn billfold. Two hundred and sixty simoleons. A puny escape fund.

  Passport was next on my list. Skipping the Apple meant putting an ocean between me and John Law. Ernie Cavalero, my onetime boss, always kept a passport handy. He took me on as his legman when I wandered into the Crossroads office healing from a war wound. Early am New Year’s Day. Maybe fifteen, sixteen years ago. Can’t remember exactly. A passport issued to Harold R Angel guaranteed putting my ass in the hot seat.

  Ernie Cavalero always kept a blank passport ready for incognito travel. He had a contact on Pell Street in Chinatown. Mr Yin ran a legit import/export business for cover but made his real scratch dealing false identification. All the fake IDs crammed in my extra wallet came from him. Yin’s passport deal included a little do-it-yourself kit in a metal box, tidy as a carved ivory puzzle ball.

  ‘Here we are, Mister,’ the cabby interrupted my musing. I gave him a couple bucks and didn’t ask for change. The hack sped off. I waited out the red light, staring up at Times Tower. CASTRO BARS PLEDGE TO JOIN US IN WAR. The endless light-bulb headline parade wrapped around the triangular building. Everybody lies, I thought. Traffic light turned green.

  Loitering prostitutes and panhandlers ignored me. Not an easy mark. I crossed 42nd, dropping Deimos’s wallet into a wire trash container. Fishing for the key ring, I glanced into the window of the Funny Store, a novelty shop by my office building entrance. A row of cheap rubber masks hung from the edge of the top shelf. Clowns, hobos, pirates, skulls. My all-time favorite, the Devil.

  Ernie Cavalero considered himself a master of disguise. He picked up the art of stage makeup somewhere. Loved gluing on fake beards for stakeouts, posing as a homeless bum. Once, he daubed his mug in blackface for a job up in Harlem. I ribbed him about reading too much Sherlock Holmes as a kid. He returned the favor. Made me don a white wig and fake padded paunch for snooping undercover in a retirement home.

  The door closed behind me, locking. I crossed the worn linoleum lobby and raced up the fire stairs to the third floor. Faster than the creaking elevator. Ernie worked hard teaching me pancake stick and spirit gum. When I took over the business the year before he passed, I had no further use for the stuff but kept his old makeup kit around as a cornball memento. It might save my ass before this caper played out.

  Gold leaf lettering spelled CROSSROADS DETECTIVE AGENCY on the pebbled-glass front door panel. The lights were off inside, the way I’d left things about fifty minutes ago. I n
ever locked the outer office door in case clients came at odd hours. This time, I drew the deadbolt. Wanted an edge if the cops showed up.

  Light from the hallway spilled onto my tan Naugahyde couch and the partition dividing the room where Louis Cyphre had forced the lock on the inner door a couple hours ago. Outside my big window, a carnival neon blaze from Times Square lit up the place. I could find my way around but not well enough to get things done in a hurry. I switched on the overhead fluorescent lights.

  The safe’s heavy iron door hung open like a broken promise. Cyphre had cracked it, taking what he needed to frame me for murdering millionaire businessman Ethan Krusemark’s daughter Margaret, a high-society astrologer. Johnny Favorite had been engaged to her years ago. I’d found her body in her apartment high above Carnegie Hall. Someone had cut out her heart. Yesterday’s news.

  The brown envelope with my last couple centuries lay far back inside the safe. I grabbed it in an adrenalin surge of hope. The bread was all still there along with several fake driving licenses from different states. I stored evidence in an old tin cashbox. Spent pistol shells, fingerprints lifted on transparent tape, drug packets, bullets pried out of plaster walls, that sort of thing. It also contained fifteen tiny film cartridges, shot with a tripod copy stand and a subminiature Minox A the night before last in Krusemark’s fancy office over at the Chrysler Building. I recorded every document I’d dug from his files. A treasure trove of hidden crime.

  Soft as a worn fielder’s mitt, my leather Ghurka bag slumped beside the safe, packed with a change of clothing for whenever I had to blow town on a job with no time to pack. I shoved in the cash envelope, along with Mr Yin’s passport alteration kit. Several green passports bound together with a rubber band gave me a draw to an inside straight. The newest Yin forgery went into the Ghurka bag along with my legit ticket. Never faked a passport before. Wanted to make sure I did it right.