Angel Time (The Songs of the Seraphim 1)

That had really made me laugh, but not at him, just at everything.

"You know, Boss," I'd said more than once, "there are questions I'd like to ask you, like who you really are, and who you work for. But I don't ask you, do I?"

"You'd be surprised at the answers," he said. "I told you once, kid, you're working for The Good Guys." And that's where we left it.

The Good Guys.The good gang or the good organization? How was I to know which? And what did it matter, because I did exactly what he told me to do, so how could I be good?

But I could dream, from time to time, that he was on the good side of things, that government legitimated it, cleaned it up, made me an infantryman, made me okay. That's why I could call him The Right Man, and tell myself,Well, maybe he is FBI, after all, or maybe he's Interpol working in this country. Maybe we're doing something meaningful. But in truth, I didn't believe it. I committed murder. I did it for a living. I did it for no reason at all except to go on living. I killed people. I killed them without warning and without an explanation as to why I did it. The Right Man might have been one of The Good Guys, but I certainly was not.

"You're not afraid of me, are you, Boss?" I asked him once. "That I'm just a little bit out of my mind, and someday, I'll bail on you, or come back at you. Because you don't need to be afraid of me, Boss. I'm the last person who'll ever hurt a hair on your head."

"I'm not afraid of you, no, Son," he said. "But I worry about you out there. I worry because you were a kid when I took you up. I worry ... about how you make it through the night. You're the best I've got, and sometimes it just seems too easy calling you, and your always being there, and things working out perfectly, and me having to say so few words."

"You like to talk, Boss, that's one of your characteristics. I don't. But I'll tell you something. It's not easy. It's thrilling, but it's never easy. And sometimes it takes my breath away."

I don't remember what he'd said to that little confession, except that he'd talked for a long time, saying, among other things, that everybody else who worked for him periodically checked in. He saw them, knew them, visited them.

"It's not going to happen with me, Boss," I'd assured him. "What you hear is what you get."

And now I had to do a job at the Mission Inn.

The call had come last night and woken me up in my Beverly Hills apartment. And I hated it.

Chapter Two - Of Love and Loyalty

ASISAID BEFORE, THERE NEVER WAS A REAL MISSION, like San Juan Capistrano, at the hotel in Riverside called the Mission Inn.

It was one man's dream, a giant hotel full of courtyards, arbors, and Mission-style cloisters, with a chapel for weddings and a multitude of charming Gothic elements, including heavy arched wood doors, and statues of St. Francis in niches, and even bell towers, and the oldest-known bell in Christendom. It was a conglomeration of elements that suggested the world of the Missions from one end of California to the other. It was a tribute to them that people found more dizzying and wonderful sometimes than the Missions themselves, fragments that they were. The Mission Inn was also unfailingly lively and warm and inviting, and throbbing with cheerful voices and gaiety and laughter.

From the beginning, I suspect, it was a labyrinth, but it had developed in the hands of new owners so that now it had the conveniences of a top-notch hotel.

Yet you could easily get lost in it, wandering its many verandas, following its innumerable staircases, drifting from patio to patio, or simply trying to find your room.

People create these extravagant habitats because they have vision, love of beauty, hopes, and dreams.

Many an early evening, the Mission Inn swarmed with happy people, brides being photographed on random balconies, families cheerfully wandering the terraces, the many restaurants lighted and filled with lively parties, pianos playing, voices singing, and even a concert, perhaps in the music room. It was dependably festive, and it enfolded me and gave me peace for just a little while.

I had the love of beauty that drove the owners of the place, and a love of excess as well, a love of a vision carried to near divine extremes.

But I had no plans or dreams. I was strictly a messenger, the embodiment of a purpose,go do this, not a man at all.

But over and over, the homeless one, the nameless one, the dreamless one, returned to the Mission Inn.

You could say I loved the fact that it was rococo and meaningless. Not only was it a tribute to all the Missions of California, it had set the architectural tone for some of the town. There were bells on the lampposts on the streets around it. There were public buildings done in the same "Mission style." I liked that consciously created continuity. It was all made up, the way I was made up. It was a concoction, the way that I myself was a concoction with the accidental name of Lucky the Fox.

I always felt good when I walked under the arched entrance called the campanario, on account of its many bells. I loved the giant tree ferns and the soaring palm trees, their thin trunks wrapped in twinkling light. I loved the flowerbeds of bright petunias that banked the front walk.

On any given pilgrimage, I spent a good deal of time in the public rooms. I often sought out the vast dark lobby to visit its white marble statue of the Roman boy pulling the thorn from his foot. I was soothed by the shadowy interior. I loved the laughter and gaiety of the families. I sat in one of the big comfortable chairs, breathing the dust, and watching people. I loved the friendliness that the place seemed to induce.

I never failed to venture into the Mission Inn restaurant for lunch. The piazza was beautiful, with its multistory walls of rounded windows and bowed terraces, and I propped up theNew York Times to read, as I ate under the shade of the dozens of overlapping red umbrellas.

But the interior of the restaurant was no less enticing, with its lower walls of bright blue tile, and the beige arches above artfully painted with twining green vines. The scored ceiling was painted like a blue sky with clouds and even tiny birds. Rounded interior doors with many mullions were paneled in mirrors, and similar doors to the piazza brought the sunshine inside. The pleasing chatter of others was like the sound of water gurgling from a fountain. Nice.

I wandered the dark corridors and the different areas of decorative and dusty carpet.

I stopped in theatrio before the St. Francis chapel, my eyes moving over the hugely ornate frame of the doorway, a poured-concrete masterpiece of Churrigueresque style. It warmed my heart to glimpse the inevitable lavish and seemingly eternal wedding preparations, with banquets laid out on draped tables, in silver chafing dishes, and eager people darting about.