Angel Time (The Songs of the Seraphim 1)

The lawyer was petrified.

There were clanging noises from outside, and huge reverberating shocks as if heavy loads of material were being dropped to the street. Toby saw a big white painted crane when he looked out the window.

"Call the bank now," Toby whispered, struggling over the lisp. "And you'll find out what I'm talking about." Again he almost laughed to himself. And it came across as a smile to this man, who instantly punched in a number on his cell phone.

The lawyer cursed. "You guys think I'm some kind of Einstein." His face changed. The man at the bank had answered.

Toby took the cell phone out of the lawyer's hand. He said into the phone, "I want to see you. I want to see you outside the bank. I want you to be waiting for me."

On the other end the man gave his consent immediately. The number in the little digital window on the phone was the same as the number on one of the business cards in Toby's pocket. Toby closed the phone and slipped it in his briefcase.

"What are you doing?" asked the lawyer.

Toby felt total power over the man. He felt invincible. Some vagrant wisp of romance prompted him to say, "You are a liar and a thief."

He took the small gun out of his pocket and shot the man. The sound was swallowed by the booms and clatters from the street.

He looked at the laptop computer on the desk. He couldn't leave it. Awkwardly he jammed it into the shoulder bag with the others. He was loaded down, but he was very strong with good broad shoulders.

He found himself laughing again under his breath as he stared at the dead man. He felt wonderful. He felt marvelous. He felt as he had felt when he imagined himself playing the lute on a world-famous stage. Only this was better.

He was deliciously giddy, as giddy as he'd been when he'd first thought of all these things, these bits and pieces of things which he'd garnered from television crime dramas and occasional novels, and he forced himself not to laugh but to move on quickly.

He took all the money in the man's wallet, some fifteen hundred dollars.

In the outer office, he smiled lovingly at the young woman. "Listen to me," he said, leaning over the desk. "He wants you to leave now. He's expecting, well, some people."

"Ah, yes, I know," she said, trying to look very clever and very approving and very calm, "but how long should I be out?"

"The day, take the day," said Toby. "No, believe me, he wants you to." He gave her several of the man's twenty-dollar bills. "Take a taxi home. Enjoy yourself. And call in the morning, you understand? Don't come in before calling."

She was charmed by him.

She went out with him to the elevator, very elated to be with him, such a tall young man, such a mysterious and handsome young man, he knew this, and she told him again that his yellow scarf was gorgeous. She noticed his limp but pretended not to notice.

Before the elevator doors closed, he gazed down at her through the dark glasses, smiling as brightly as she smiled, and said, "Think of me as Lord Byron."

He walked the few blocks to the bank, but stopped a few yards from the entrance. The thickening crowd almost knocked him aside. He moved to the wall, and he punched in the number of the banker on the phone he'd stolen from the lawyer.

"Come outside now," he said in his now practiced lisping whisper, as his eyes moved over the crowd before the bank's entrance.

"I am outside," the man said gruffly and angrily. "Where the Hell are you?"

Toby easily spotted him as the man shoved the phone back into his pocket.

Toby stood looking about himself in amazement at the speed of those moving in both directions. The roar of the traffic was deafening. Bicycles whizzed through the sluggish rumble of trucks and taxis. The noise rolled up the walls as if to Heaven. Horns blared and the air was full of gray smoke. He looked up at the slice of blue sky which gave no light whatsoever to this crevice of the giant city, and he thought to himself he had never been so alive. Not even in Liona's arms had he felt this vigor.

He punched the number again, this time listening for the ring and watching for the man, almost lost in this ever-shifting glut of people, to answer.

Yes, he had his man, gray haired, heavy, red faced now with fury. The victim stepped to the curb. "How long do you want me to stand out here?" he barked into the phone. He turned and walked back to the granite wall of the bank and stood to the left of the revolving door, looking around coldly.

The man glared at everybody passing him, except the lean bent-over young man who limped as if because of his heavy shoulder bag and briefcase.

This man he didn't notice at all.

As soon as Toby moved behind him, Toby shot the man in the head. Quickly he shoved the gun back in his coat and, with his right hand, helped the man slide down the wall to the pavement, with his legs out in front of him. Toby knelt solicitously right beside him.

He took out the man's linen handkerchief and wiped his face. The man was dead, obviously. Then in plain sight of the unseeing crowd, he took the man's phone, his wallet, and a small notebook from his breast pocket.

Not a single person passing had paused, not even those who were stepping over the banker's outstretched legs.

A flash of memory surprised Toby. He saw his brother and sister, wet and dead in the bathtub.

Emphatically, he rejected this memory. He told himself it was meaningless. He folded the linen handkerchief as best he could with one gloved hand, and laid it across the man's moist forehead.

He walked three blocks before catching a cab, and left the taxi three blocks from his apartment.

Toby went upstairs, his fingers shaking as he held the gun in his pocket. When he knocked on the door, he heard Alonso's voice. "Vincenzo?"

"You're alone in there?" he asked.

Alonso opened the door, and pulled him in. "Where have you been, what's happened to you?" He stared at the darkened hair, the tinted glasses.

Toby searched the apartment.

Then he turned to Alonso and told him, "They're all dead, the people who were bothering you. But this is not finished. There was no time to get to the restaurant and I don't know what's going on there." "I do," said Alonso. "They fired all my people and closed the place up. What in Hell are you telling me?"

"Ah, well," said Toby, "that's not so bad."

"What in the world do you mean they're all dead?" Alonso asked.

Toby told him everything that had happened. Then he said, "You have to take me to people who know how to finish this. You have to take me to your friends who wouldn't help you. They'll help you now. They'll want these computers. They'll want these cell phones. They'll want this little notebook. There's data here, tons of data about these criminals and what they want and what they're doing."