In the Shadow of Angels (2 page)

As he tilted his head back to down his fifth mug, Devin saw the
something stupid
Beth mentioned; Jezebel Anders. He briefly wondered if Beth saw her, but he knew she had.

“God damn it.” He said, lowering his glass. “Jez is here.”

BrentandJimmy lowered their mugs in unison and looked up to see her. Jezebel was the Betty Paige to Beth’s Marilyn Monroe. Dark hair, dark skin and no inhibitions to speak of. She had a reputation as the town bike, but that wasn’t an accurate assessment. Anyone can ride a bike, but you had to have money to go on this ride. She wasn’t a prostitute - at least not overtly. She liked shiny things and if you gave her enough of the shiny things she wanted, she would give you anything you wanted in return.
Anything.

Tonight she was wearing a tiny little black dress. It fit to her skin so tightly that it might as well have been paint. As they watched her walk up to the bar, they could see it was just barely too short to cover her ass completely. With each step, the bottom of one of her cheeks would peek out. When she saw them looking at her, she leaned over the bar, lifting the back of the skirt up a couple inches to give them a show. She clearly wasn’t wearing panties. She was also wearing a set of heels at least six inches high. They are what Beth would refer to as
come-fuck-me
heels. In fact, the whole Jezebel Anders package seemed to convey that very message. If you were somehow too stupid to read those not-so-subtle signs, Jez had no problem just walking up to you and saying, “Come fuck me.”

“Damn, Devin, I still can’t believe you’re hittin’ that.” Brent said, but Devin didn’t hear it.

Jezebel took her drink from the bartender, something foofy with a little umbrella and a cherry in it. She was walking directly toward their table.

Not tonight, Devin thought to himself. Why does she have to be here tonight?

She stopped at their table and leaned down to whisper to Devin, “We need to talk. Get these losers out of here.”

So it started. He knew it would be better to get this over with than to not give her what she wanted. Jezebel Anders always got what she wanted.

“Hey, guys, why don’t you head up to the bar and get another round? Get me another, too. I’ll meet you up there in a minute.”

BrentandJimmy got up from the table and, once they got behind Jezebel, started making all forms of lewd gestures.

Once they were gone, Devin turned his attention to Jezebel. She was currently sucking on the cherry that topped her drink. When she saw Devin’s eyes on her, she slowly pulled it out of her mouth, licked it seductively, then, just as slowly, slid it back in.

“Look, Jez, I told you I can’t see you anymore.” Devin said, hoping he could end this whole encounter.

She pulled the cherry back out of her mouth seductively. “I know,” She paused and continued licking the cherry, watching his eyes for a hint of desire “but the thing is … I’m pregnant.”

Devin stared at her in stone silence. Of course she was. Why wouldn’t she be? He thought he had this whole business behind him and his life could get back to normal. Something had to screw it up.

“But how do you know it’s mine?” Devin asked a legitimate question here. Based on her reputation, it could have belonged to very nearly anyone.

“Let’s not talk here,” she said, sliding out from the table, making sure to spread her legs far enough to flash him. “Meet me at The Place in an hour.”

“Jez, I can’t go to…”

“You better just meet me there,” Jez interrupted, walking away, her ass peeking out with every step she took. It was no wonder she was so damned hard to resist.

All Devin could do was watch her walk away. He knew he would meet her later. If he didn’t, he would surely regret it. Not that there was much left she could do to him. He met her in this very bar only a few months before and in that time, she almost managed to destroy his life.

She had an uncanny knack for showing up at the right place and time to catch her prey when their inhibitions were low enough to fall for her ploys, but their morals still high enough to regret it later. Once snared, she would have her way with them and somehow make them think it was the other way around. They would think that was the end of it. Nothing more than a one-night stand. Then she would start showing up asking for things. Favors. Usually the favors would be simple. In Devin’s case, it had been a bit of pro-bono legal advice, but there didn’t seem to be much of a limit to what she would trade her body for. Years earlier, she even slept her way through the city council to get approved to open a hair salon in a residential neighborhood. If you tried to say no, as some did, she would always say the same thing: ‘
It’d be a shame if your wife found out about us,’
and she would always say it with such a calm, sincere smile that you could almost believe she wasn’t blackmailing you. Almost. No one had called her bluff yet, so there was no way to be sure.

In Devin’s case, he was caught in the act, more or less. Beth happened to be driving by The Place late one night and saw his car there. She waited outside until she saw him come out and Jezebel came out with him. That happened only a month before and it nearly cost him his marriage, forcing him to stay in a motel for several weeks and only just being allowed back home. Beth only allowed that after they went to several sessions with a marriage counselor, Dr. Stephens, whom she also required Devin see on his own once a week to work on his ‘sex addiction’. She was also seeing him on her own to try to overcome her newfound trust issues.

Simply put, the timing couldn’t possibly have been any worse.

Devin got up from the table and made his way to the bar. BrentandJimmy were sitting there with their drinks and playing the digital Trivial Pursuit machine on the end of the bar. As Jimmy saw Devin approach, he yelled out, “Hey, Devin, who played Clarice in
Silence of the Lambs
? I’m pretty sure it was Sigourney Weaver, but that isn’t even one of the choices.”

“Yeah and your mom isn’t on there either.” Brent added.

Devin pulled up a stool next to them and sat down. “I don’t get it. You guys went to college for four years and didn’t learn a damn thing. Everything you know is trivial. I’d think you’d be better at this. It was Jodie Foster.”

“No way,” Jimmy said flatly. “She played the kid in
Taxi Driver
.”

“Why do I hang out with you guys?” Devin asked, almost genuinely. “And where’s my beer?”

“We didn’t order you one.” Brent said. “We thought you might be leaving with Jez. Booty call sort of thing.”

“Nah. It’s nothing like that.”

“So what did she want? Jezebel Anders doesn’t walk into a bar, go whispering to you all secretive and then walk out, all in the space of five minutes. Not unless she’s looking for something.” Brent was poking the index finger of his right hand through his left fist as he said this.

“She says she’s pregnant,” Devin replied, but got no reaction.

“So what? That girl takes in more jizz than a sperm bank. There’s no way she could prove it’s yours.”

Devin stared at Brent in disbelief. “Can you really be that stupid? First, a paternity test could prove if it is or isn’t mine. They test with DNA now. Second, whether or not it’s mine, just having a paternity test will probably be enough to make Beth divorce me.”

“Why?” Brent asked. “She knows you fucked her.”

“Heh, yeah, but the thing is, I told her I was wearing a condom. It seemed like it would be an easier sell that way.”

Devin never told BrentandJimmy about it and he didn’t care to elaborate here either. The truth was that Beth couldn’t have children. They tried before and when she didn’t get pregnant, they went to a fertility specialist. Devin was fine, but Beth was not. The fertilized egg would not attach to her uterus. The doctors tried a number of medications try to help it along, but even increasing progesterone and estrogen didn’t help. After months of trying before seeing a specialist and almost a year of trying after, they simply gave up.

“Oh. Well it sucks to be you.”

“Thanks for that.” Devin said, as he motioned for the bartender. “You can always count on your closest friends for a bit of compassion and empathy”.

“So what are you going to do about it?” Brent asked, just before the bartender arrived.

Devin saw the bartender approaching and waited until he was sure he would hear him, then he looked Brent square in the eye and said coldly, “I’m going to have to kill the bitch.”

He turned to the bartender and said, “Mine’s a whiskey. Better make it a double.”

Once the bartender was out of earshot, Brent started laughing. “That bit never gets old.”

Devin was chuckling himself, “Yeah, I did that in a grocery store one time with Beth. There was an old woman there. She must have been seventy. I thought she was going to have a heart attack. She started shaking, grabbed her purse and took off running.”

“That’s classic, man. I bet she still tells people about it.”

The bartender returned with Devin’s drink. He handed him a twenty. “Keep the change, my man. I’m feeling generous tonight.” He said, shooting him a wink. The bartender quickly moved away.

“But seriously,” Brent said, the laughter gone, “what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Devin replied, taking a sip of his whiskey, “there’s got to be more to it than what she’s saying. I don’t think she’s the motherly type, so why drag me off to The Place if she’s just looking for an abortion payoff?”

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound right. Maybe you’ve spoiled her for other men and no one else can make her cum anymore?” Brent questioned, turning toward Jimmy. “What do you think, Jimmy?”

Jimmy looked up from the trivia machine, “Hey, who played Ellen Ripley in
Alien
?” He asked. He clearly hadn’t heard the question.

“Well, I’ll chalk you up as too stupid to matter, then.” Devin said, a bit irritated, but not at all surprised that Jimmy hadn’t been paying attention. “It was Sigourney Weaver, by the way.”

“Really? Man, she was in everything.”

Devin turned back to Brent. “He’s in his own world sometimes.”

“Yeah, he is,” Brent replied. “But what are you going to do about Jez? Are you going to meet her?”

“I don’t think I really have a choice. I wouldn’t put it past Jez to show up at my house tomorrow if I don’t.”

“Are you going to give her money?”

“Well,” Devin said, picking up his whiskey. “I’m going to try to make it clear that I don’t want to see her any more. If the price tag’s not to steep, I’ll pay it.”

“Let us know how it turns out.”

“I sure will,” Devin said. “Well, I better get this over with.”

Devin threw back his whiskey, got up and left the bar.

Jezebel opened the door of O’Halligan’s and stepped out into the parking lot. October brought with it a chill she found particularly uncomfortable in her present attire, but that was the cost of business. She scanned the lot looking for a particular vehicle and, not surprisingly, she found it. It was one of the new model Ford Transit Connect vans, which looks more like a car than a van. Tonight, either side of it proudly advertised:

C
ollectible
A
shwood

  
U
nique
G
ifts
&

   
H
idden
T
reasures

This van belonged to Edward Digby. Even from the door to O’Halligan’s, Jezebel could see him sitting in the driver’s seat scrolling through photos on his ridiculously oversized camera. The camera itself wasn’t really that big; it was a fairly standard-sized Nikon. What made it big was the addition of an AstroScope night vision adapter and a 70-200 telephoto zoom lens. Between the two of them, the lens shot out from this thing, very literally, a foot. Jezebel walked up to the passenger side of the van, completely unnoticed, opened the door and jumped right in. As she was doing this, Jezebel silently mused about how he could probably be reading the driver’s license of someone sitting at the bar a hundred yards away, but couldn’t see someone opening the door of his car right next to him.

Edward looked over when he heard the door open, but wasn’t particularly surprised to see Jez there. It
was
Saturday night, after all.

Edward Digby was a private detective of sorts. At least that was how it started out. He could clearly remember what drove him to choose this profession and he was still very bitter about it. It started in 1985, when he still viewed the world through the large and naïve eyes of a ten year old. He saw a show on CBS called
Magnum, P.I.
and decided he wanted to live that life - driving a Ferrari around Hawaii, solving a murder case once a week, flying in a helicopter with his token black friend, ending each week by bedding a new model in his opulent mansion and cracking wise to his butler. Yes, that was the life for him.

As he would find out only after he pursued it as a profession, that was all complete and utter bullshit. Of course, he knew that going in. It was all too good to be true. He just assumed there was at least an element of truth to it. That element didn’t exist. There was never a time when a forty-year-old model showed up at your door offering you considerably more than your asking rate to solve a murder, which the police already botched horribly. What you actually got was a lot of arbitrary crap - vehicle registration searches, phone number searches, identifying which John Smith was the particular one that you went to high school with forty years ago - that kind of stuff.

On the very rare occasion that someone did show up looking for something more exciting, it was always some pudgy, middle-age man or woman trying to prove that their equally pudgy, middle-age spouse was having an affair. In about ninety percent of these cases, the pudgy, middle-age man or woman would scoff at his, very reasonable, $65 hourly rate and .50 cent per mile fees. He even began requiring a $1,000 retainer in such cases, because if he didn’t, he simply wouldn’t be paid. In these cases, it could take days or weeks to get enough photographic proof of the infidelity and he couldn’t afford to do it free.

He was barely able to eke out a living on what he made from the data searches and extremely rare stakeouts. He was forced to live in a squalid apartment building that was home almost exclusively to meth heads and prostitutes. He hated that hellhole so much that he rarely went home. He opted to spend most nights in his van, and that was back when it was a simple 90s era panel van with absolutely no frills to speak of. There was no Ferrari nor butler.

That all changed when he met Jezebel Anders.

Theirs was a very tumultuous but symbiotic relationship. It started about a year ago when Jezebel approached him with a new twist on an old classic. She wanted him to photograph
her
having sex with someone. He declined at first, citing the fact that he didn’t want to be a pornographer. Yet when she elaborated, he grudgingly accepted. She was going to be having sex with someone very wealthy and then asking him for a cash donation in exchange for her silence. Blackmail. He hadn’t agreed immediately, of course, but when she told him that she would pay him $1000 for one night’s work, he could hardly resist. That was better than he was making in a week of mundane data research.

She took the gentleman, and never before had that word been so inappropriately attributed, to The Place. She even made it easy for Edward by telling the mark she wanted to leave the blinds open so she could look at the stars while he nailed her. By that point, of course, she already teased him with her body enough that he was willing to do just about anything, so he readily accepted. The whole process took only about an hour. Then about a week later, Jezebel asked him for the memory card with the illicit photos on it. She took it to her mark and asked for money. The next morning, Edward found a plain manila envelope slid under the door of his office. Inside it was $1,000 in cash. It was the easiest money he ever made. He secretly kept backups of the photos, just in case.

Over the next year, Jezebel and Edward worked out a solid system. They were selling back the photos to most of the marks, but when the circumstances seemed right, as was often the case with politicians or others in the public eye, they would ask for a monthly payment. Edward was able to quadruple his income from this and it was far less work. Since his was mostly a cash business, it was easy enough to insert names and places into his books to avoid scrutiny from the police and since he was still only making about $100,000 a year, he was well off the radar of the IRS as well.

The first thing Edward did with his newfound wealth was upgrade to the new transit van. It was still short on frills, having paneled sides and an open back with no carpeting or seats, but he bought one with some shelving and cubbies to hold the equipment he used to ply his trade. The one feature of his new van that was not stock was a feature to house the memory cards containing the
just in case
images. He had the factory install a 1 cubic foot fireproof safe in the back, welded directly to the frame of the van on the driver’s side, just behind the seat. More of a lockbox than a safe, since it operated with a key instead of a combination, Edward felt much safer with the images in his van than left alone at his office for hours or days at a time. If someone was going to get at those pictures, they were either doing so with a cutting torch or with his keys - which would be over his dead body.

He also upgraded his apartment, but it seemed he was there so rarely that he didn’t even notice. There was less noise late at night when he actually was home. There were no transients sleeping in the halls or addicts strung out and looking for a fix at all hours, but aside from that, he noticed little difference between the new one and the old one.

His equipment also received a major upgrade. His new camera was his pride and joy. With the camera and specialized lenses, he found that he didn’t really need Jezebel at all. If he just showed up at O’Halligan’s on a Saturday night, he could usually find someone doing something they ought not be doing. Then he would follow them to The Place to get some pictures. They always went to The Place. If they were wealthy enough, he would approach them later:
I was doing surveillance of someone in an infidelity case when I happened upon you having sex with a prostitute. Would you care to buy the photos for $1000?
Would be the gist of the conversation he would have with them. Most agreed. Some didn’t. Either way, he would give them the photos and call it a day. Of course, he always kept copies, just in case. But he hated actually approaching the people. It just seemed so dirty.

That was why it was still easier with Jezebel. Edward hated the actual blackmail portion of what he did, but that was where the money was. Jezebel, on the other hand, seemed to love it. He worked with her whenever he had the opportunity. However, she recently jested that if the shit hit the fan, she would come off as blameless. She was right, of course. Edward was the one outside the hotel snapping photos and the photos were what was being exchanged for cash. All she would have to do is claim that she didn’t know anything about it and this whole thing would come crumbling down around him. Since she said it in jest, it seemed better to ignore it than to think about it. So, that is what he did.

When she jumped into his van that Saturday night, he simply turned to her and asked, “Anything good?”

“No.” She replied. “Devin Bryant. I think I can get him to give up $500 for an abortion, but not much more. His wife already knows and he doesn’t seem to want anything more to do with me.”

“That’s unfortunate. Is the pregnancy a scam?”

“Does it matter?”

After an awkward silence, Jezebel got to why she was in his van. “So, do you mind taking a couple pictures, just in case?”

“Eh. Might as well, I’m coming up bust here tonight anyway.”

Jezebel got into her own car and Edward followed her to The Place. No one seemed to see as his Ford Transit Connect van turned into the lot just behind her Fiero. They never did. If it were his old panel van it would have attracted attention, but this one just looked like a delivery van or a caterer. It went unnoticed. People really only see what they want to see sometimes. Just like the acronym currently on the side of his van, which said
CAUGHT - C
ollectible
A
shwood
U
nique
G
ifts &
H
idden
T
reasures, even the most blatant signs are ignored. Especially at The Place, which has a reputation that nothing is ever seen or heard there. The reality is that much is seen and heard, indeed, even recorded and photographed, but enough money can buy silence.