Angel Time (The Songs of the Seraphim 1)

He felt powerful as he walked along the street, and he felt invincible.

When he came back to the apartment, Alonso was sitting there anxiously, and the music was Callas singingCarmen. "You know," Alonso said, "I'm afraid to leave."

"You should be," said Toby. He began polishing his nails and filing them.

"What on earth are you doing?" Alonso asked him.

"I'm not certain yet," said Toby, "but I notice when there are men in the restaurant who have polished nails, people notice it, especially women."

Alonso shrugged.

Toby went out to get some lunch and several bottles of excellent wine so that they could make it through another day.

"They might be killing people at the restaurant now," said Alonso. "I should have warned everyone to get out." He sighed and put his heavy head in his hands. "I didn't lock up the restaurant. What if they go there and gun down everybody?"

Toby merely nodded.

Then he went out, walked a couple of blocks, and called the restaurant. No one answered. This was a terrible sign. The restaurant should have been crowded for dinner, with people grabbing for the phone and jotting down evening reservations.

Toby reflected that he'd been wise to keep his apartment a secret, to make friends with no one but Alonso, to trust no one just as he had trusted no one when he was growing up.

Early morning came.

Toby showered and put the black tint in his hair.

The employer slept in his clothes on top of Toby's bed.

Toby put on a fine Italian suit that Alonso had bought for him, and then he added the accoutrements so that he didn't look like himself at all.

The plastic bite device changed the shape of his mouth. The heavy frames of the tinted glasses gave his face an expression that was alien to it. The gloves were dove gray and beautiful. He wrapped the yellow scarf around his neck. He put on his only and best black cashmere overcoat.

He'd fitted his shoes with plenty of material to make him look taller than he was, but not by much. He put the two automatic weapons in his briefcase, and the small handgun he put in his pocket.

He looked at his employer's knapsack. It was black leather, very fine. So he slung it over his shoulder.

He went to the house before the sun came up. A woman he'd never seen before opened the front door. She smiled at him and welcomed him in. No one else was in sight.

He took the automatic weapon from his briefcase and shot her, and he shot the men who came running down the hall towards him. He shot the people who thundered down the stairs. He shot the people who seemed to run right into the gunfire as if they did not believe it was happening.

He heard screaming upstairs and he went up, stepping over one body after another, and shot through the doors, breaking big holes in them until everything was silence.

He stood at the very end of the hall and waited. Out came one man cautiously, gun visible before his arm and then his shoulder. Toby shot him immediately.

Twenty minutes passed. Maybe more. Nothing stirred in the house. Slowly, he made his way through every room of it. All dead.

He gathered up every cell phone he could find, and put them in the leather shoulder bag. There was a laptop computer there, and he folded it up and took it too, though it was a little heavier than he wanted it to be. He cut the wires to the computer desk, and to the landline phone.

As he was leaving, he heard the sound of someone crying and talking in a low pathetic voice. He kicked open the door and found a very young girl there, blond with red lipstick, crouched down on her knees with a cell phone to her ear. She dropped the phone in terror when she saw him. She shook her head, she begged in some language he couldn't understand.

He killed her. She fell down dead instantly and lay there as his mother had lain on her bloody mattress. Dead.

He picked up her phone. A gruff voice demanded of him, "What's happening?"

"Nothing," he said in a whisper. "She was out of her mind." He slammed the phone shut. The blood coursed hot through his veins. He felt powerful.

Now he made his way again very fast through every room. He found one man wounded and moaning and he shot him. He found a woman bleeding to death and he shot her too. He collected more phones. His knapsack was bulging.

Then he went out, walked several blocks, and caught a taxi.

It took him uptown to the office of the lawyer who had handled the transfer of the property.

Affecting a limp as he walked and sighing as if the briefcase weighed too much, and the shoulder bag were dragging him down, he made his way into the office.

The receptionist had just unlocked the door, and smiling, she explained her boss had not come in yet, but would come any minute. She said the yellow scarf around his neck was beautiful.

He slumped down on the leather couch and, carefully removing one glove, he wiped his forehead as though a terrible ache were bothering him. She looked at him tenderly.

"Beautiful hands," she said, "like those of a musician."

He laughed under his breath. In a whisper, he said, "All I want to do is go back to Switzerland." He was very excited. He knew that he was lisping as he whispered because of the plastic bite plate in his mouth. It made him laugh, but only to himself. He had never been so tantalized in all his life. He thought for one split second that he understood the old words, "the glamour of evil."

She offered him coffee. He put back on his glove. He said, "No, it will keep me awake on the plane. I want to sleep over the Atlantic."

"I can't recognize your accent. What is it?"

"Swiss," he whispered, lisping effortlessly because of the device in his mouth. "I'm so eager to go home. I loathe this city."

A sudden noise from the street startled him. It was a pile driver beginning the day's work on a construction site. The noise was repetitive and shook the office fiercely. He winced in pain, and she told him how sorry she was that he had to endure this.

In came the lawyer.

Toby stood up to his full commanding height and said in the same lisping whisper, "I've come on an important matter."

The man was immediately afraid, as he let Toby into his office.

"Look, I'm moving as fast as I can," said the man, "but that old Italian's a fool. And he's stubborn. Your employer expects miracles." He rummaged through the papers on his desk. "I have found out this. He's sitting on a teardown just a few blocks from the restaurant, and the place is worth millions."

Again, Toby almost laughed, but he didn't. He took the papers from the man, glancing at the address, which was that of his hotel, and shoved them in his briefcase.