Whistler's Angel (5 page)

“Not to you. I know that. But in any case, it’s finished.”

“And just so I’m clear…you’re all government people? You’re telling me
my
government does this kind of crap?”

“No. Well, not exactly. It’s not what you think.”

“But you do frame people. And you take away their homes. And if they give you any trouble, you kill them. Am I close?”

“Mrs. Geller…”

“What ever happened to the good old days, Adam, when we only had the IRS after us?”

He answered, “Mrs. Geller, I will tell you this much. At the outset, the people this unit went after were people with a great deal of blood on their hands. They were people who deserved to be dead or in prison, but who couldn’t be touched by legal means.”

She stared. “A death squad?”

“A punitive unit.”

“Death is pretty damned punitive, Adam.”

“Mrs. Geller, many governments have units such as this one. For the most part, what they do is track laundered money and identify its source and destination.”

“Now you’re saying you’re accountants.”

“Accountants and attorneys do go after that money. One of their weapons is financial ruin through seizures and endless litigation. The search itself can be dangerous work. There are people, high up, who will readily commit murder to avoid exposure and the loss of position. That leads, now and then, to the need for stronger action beyond what accountants and attorneys are trained for. Now and then, there’s a case of an eye for eye, but…no, not a death squad. That was not the idea.”

“It was not? Past tense?”

He rubbed his chin. “These…things sometimes get out of hand.”

He could hear his father saying, “
No, Adam. Not sometimes. It almost never fails. Any anti-drug unit that’s run off the books becomes corrupt sooner or later. Any punitive unit that gets into killing tends to solve all its problems by killing
.”

Whistler chewed his lip. He waved off the subject. He said, “As for Claudia, let’s give her time. She’ll realize that her white light was only a dream. She’ll be glad I left quietly. You’ll see.”

A sad little smile. A shake of the head. “Did you talk to her doctor about the white light?”

“He never mentioned that part of it.”

“He’s had other patients who’ve had near-death experiences. Not a one could be
convinced that what they went through wasn’t real. He thinks this might not go away.”

“All the same...”

“She’s so very young, Adam. She’s only twenty-four.”

“Agreed. I’m too old for her. I know that.”

“That’s not what I meant. A little older is okay. But you’re older in a different way, aren’t you.”

He said nothing.

“And your father…he’s full of surprises himself. A criminal? A renegade? He taught you how to kill?”

“Not a word of that is true, Mrs. Geller.”

“Not a word? Or not exactly? Look me in the eye.”

“Mrs. Geller, my father is the best man I know. If you liked him, you should try to trust your instincts.”

She nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll wait and hear it from him. In the meantime, Adam, you speak for yourself. I want to hear your side of the story.”

“It’s not much of a story. One thing leading to another.”

She folded her arms. “I think you owe me that much. I think the both of you do.”

“Mrs. Geller...”

“Try not to get her shot again, Adam. Okay?”

“Mrs. Geller...you’re not listening. It’s over between us.”

She was still pacing. She gritted her teeth. “I want to despise you. But I can’t and I don’t. I wish Claudia did, but she doesn’t.”

Again, he was silent. He looked at his shoes.

“On the contrary, Adam, she thinks she’s supposed to love you. Do you want to know something? She was almost there already. I think she could have handled the truth.”

Still nothing.

“She’s very special, Adam. She was special before this. And you…no matter what you think of yourself…have a decency about you that keeps showing through. Maybe she can really save you. You think?”

“I have to go.”

“Adam…I can’t tell you how I hate saying this. Do you know what I’d tell you if I weren’t her mother?”

Whistler let out a sigh. He waited.

“I’d tell you pretty much what she asked me say. That you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

He did leave that day, intending never to return. He tried to put Claudia out of his mind. For what he meant to do, there was every chance that he might not live to see her again anyway.

But Whistler couldn’t make her face go away. The way she looked up at him. Those wonderful eyes. Explaining with total and absolute certainty that she was his guardian angel.

And then her mother. Another surprise. Her mother should have said, “Get out of here, Adam. Come near her again and I’ll clobber you. She isn’t an angel; she’s not going save you. She’s not even going to save you from me, so get lost while you still have the chance.”

But she didn’t. What she said was, in essence, “Don’t blow this.”

The odd thing was, he could almost believe it. There was Claudia’s
survival. A miracle in itself. She should have been a vegetable at best. And if there really were such things as angels, he’d expect them to look very much like Claudia. They would, like Claudia, have an inner glow about them. A radiance that sets them apart. The first time he’d ever laid eyes on Claudia, he could have believed it right then.

He’d first met her four months before any of this happened. He did not then, however, think in terms of the celestial. He thought in terms of a warm and friendly girl of the sort he wished he’d met ten years before. A girl who, because of what he had become, seemed hopelessly out of his reach. He first saw her on a ski slope at Aspen.

He’d gone to Aspen to meet with his father. His father had flown over from Europe where he’d lived for almost all of Whistler’s life. Whistler first had called him, not to meet, just to talk. He said he’d tried to believe in what he’d been doing, to believe that it was making a difference. But the cure, he’d come to realize, was worse than the disease. The war on drugs, as fought, was unwinnable. It ruined more lives than it saved. And that war, for some, was as profitable as dealing. He’d known traffickers whom he would sooner have trusted than some of the people who opposed them.

“You’ll forgive me for saying I told you so, Adam.”

“I know. I just didn’t want to see it.”

“The first casualty of war is always the truth. What has happened that opened your eyes? Are you in trouble?”

“I might be. You know Felix Aubrey?”

“Know him? I warned you about him, remember?”

“Yes, you did and I heard you. Will you listen?”

“Go ahead.”

“Aubrey keeps a set of records. Or he did. I have them now. And he’s probably guessed that I took them.”

“What’s in them? How hot?”

“They could put him in prison. He would have lots of company.”

The line went silent for a moment. Then, “Get over here, Adam. Get on the first flight you can.”

“If I disappeared, he would know that I’m the one. I’m not sure that Aubrey knows who you are, but that might be the first place he’d look.”

“
Your point?”

“I
don’t want to cause trouble for you.”

“U
m…Adam, not to sound as if I’m full of myself, but I think I can probably

deal with it.”

“Even so, it’s my problem. Could you meet me over here?”

“Name the place. But be careful. Don’t say it straight out.”

“Last Dollar. You remember? I can be there tonight.”

“Last Dollar. I got you. So can we. I’ll buy a ticket.”

His use of “we” meant he’d bring the Beasley twins. He seldom traveled without them. The “I’ll buy a ticket,” meant that he’d fly commercial. He had his own plane and had access to others, but a private jet’s movements were too easily monitored. Sometimes it was better to get lost in the crowd. “Last Dollar” was the name of a ski trail at Aspen. He’d skied that trail with his father many times, beginning when Whistler started college in the States. Before that, they’d skied all over Europe. He and his father had often gone skiing whenever there were problems that needed thinking out. Either skiing the Alps or going for a sail on the boat his father kept on Lake Geneva. There was something about a big stretch of open water, and especially the mountains with their clean air, vast snowfields, that helped put the rest of the world in perspective.

Whistler got to Aspen first. He waited at the airport through several arrivals before spotting one of the twins disembarking from one of the last incoming flights. The twin must have seen him, but did not acknowledge him. About ten people back, his father appeared. Or rather he loomed. A big man, he was wearing a brown Stetson hat and a three-quarter-length shearling coat. Shaggy hair and a beard made him look even bigger. He seemed a bit tired, but no less alert after spending twelve hours on airplanes. He was walking stiffly, however. Bad back. It had troubled his father for the past fifteen years. Although Whistler had found it hard to envision, he claimed he’d injured it doing the Tango.

His father did not acknowledge him either. He proceeded down the concourse to the baggage claim area. Whistler never saw the second twin get off. That meant that he was probably already there and was someplace in the terminal, watching.

The Beasley twins were bodyguards, among other things, but they weren’t the kind who stayed close. One would be here, the other would be there. That way no one would take special notice of them, or even necessarily know that there were two until, one presumed, it was too late.

Whistler left the terminal and walked to the parking lot. There, he got into the car he had rented and waited for his father to come out with his bag. He left the lot and pulled up near his father. His father waited until one or both twins were in a position to follow. Only then did he throw his bag in the back and climb into the passenger seat. Only then did he reach, again stiffly, to embrace him.