The Black Angel

“The hell have you done with the paper?” he said. “It ain’t fit for nothin but the bottom of a birdcage now you been at it.”

“Forget the damn newspaper,” she said. “Read this.”

She handed the letter to him.

He stood, puffing a little and tugging his pants up over his meager paunch.

“I can’t read without my glasses.”

She produced his glasses and watched impatiently while he examined the lenses and wiped them on the filthy edge of his shirt before putting them on.

“What is this?” he asked. “What’s so important you had to turn my newspaper into an asswipe to bring it to me?”

Her finger pointed to the piece in question.

“Holy shit,” said Larry.

And for the first time in over a decade, Larry and Sandy Crane enjoyed a moment of shared pleasure.

Larry Crane had been keeping things from his wife. It had always been his way. Early in their relationship, for example, Larry hadn’t bothered to mention the times that he’d cheated on her, for obvious reasons, and thereafter tended to apply to most of his dealings with Sandy the maxim that a little knowledge was a dangerous thing. But one of Larry’s few remaining vices, the horses, had gotten a little out of hand, and he currently owed money to the kind of people who didn’t take a long view on such matters. They had informed him of their position just two days before, when Larry made a big payment significant enough to allow him to hold on to all ten of his digits for another couple of weeks. It was now at the point where his house was the only asset he could readily turn to cash because even disposing of the car wouldn’t cover what he owed, and he didn’t see how Sandy would approve of his selling their home and moving them into a doghouse in order to pay his gambling debts.

He could try turning to Mark Hall, of course, but that was a reservoir that had well and truly tapped out a couple of years back, and only absolute desperation would take him back to it again. In any case, Larry would be playing a dangerous game if he used the blackmail card on Old King Hall, because Hall might just call his bluff, and Larry Crane had no desire to see out the remainder of his life in a jail cell. He figured Hall knew this. Old Hallie might be a lot of things, but stupid was not one of them.

And so Larry Crane had been wrestling with the garden hose, wondering if there might not be a way to turn Sandy to some use by strangling her with it, dumping the body, and claiming the insurance, when the lady in question cast her shadow upon him. Larry knew then that he had about as much chance of successfully killing his wife as he had of looking after the Playboy Mansion on the days when Hugh Hefner was feeling a little under the weather. She was big and strong, and mean with it. If he even tried to lay a hand on her, she’d break him like he was a swizzle stick in one of her cheap cocktails.

But as he read and reread the letter, it quickly became apparent to him that he might not have to resort to such desperate measures after all. Larry had seen something like the item described in the photocopies, but he had never suspected that it might be worth money, and now here was a story informing him that it could bring in tens of thousands of dollars, maybe more. That “could” was an important caveat, though. What was being sought was not actually in the possession of Larry Crane. Instead, it rested in the ownership of one Marcus E. Hall, the Auto King.

While the face of the Auto King remained that of Mark Hall, the old man had become little more than a figurehead. His sons, Craig and Mark Jr., had taken over the day-to-day ru

The King was standing outside the office of the main lot on Route 17, sipping coffee from a big cup emblazoned with a gold crown. He still liked to put in a couple of days each month, and the other salesmen didn’t object because any money he earned in commission was put back into a communal pot. At the end of every month, one salesman’s name was drawn from a hat over beers in Artie’s Shack, and all of the money went to him, or to her, for two women now worked on the King’s lots, and they sold a bunch of cars to the kind of men who had wires ru

It was four in the afternoon, dead time, and since it was a week-day in the middle of the month, the King didn’t expect it to pick up much before closing. While they might get a few walk-ins once the office workers finished up, the only thing most of them would have in their pockets would be their hands.

Then, right at the end of the lot, he saw a man leaning into the windshield of a 2001 Volvo V70 Turbo Wagon, 2.4 auto, leather interior, AM/FM/cassette/CD player, sunroof, forty-five thousand miles. Thing had been driven like it was made of eggshells, so there wasn’t a scratch on the paintwork. The King’s boys had it tagged at twenty thousand, with plenty of room for maneuver. The guy was wearing a sun visor and dark glasses, but the King couldn’t tell much else about him other than that he looked a little old and beat-up. The King’s eyesight wasn’t so good these days, but once he got his marks in focus he could tell more about them in thirty seconds than most psychologists could learn in a year of sessions.

The King put his cup down on the windowsill, straightened his tie, slipped the keys to the Volvo from the lockup box, and headed out into the lot. Someone asked him if he needed any help. There was a burst of laughter. The King knew what they were doing: looking out for him while pretending that they weren’t.

“Guy is older than I am,” he said. “I’m only worried that he don’t die before I get him to sign the papers.”

There was more laughter. The King could see that the old man at the Volvo had opened the driver’s door and slipped into the seat. That was a good sign. Getting them into the damn car was the hardest part, and once they were test-driving, then guilt started to kick in. The salesman, a nice guy, was taking time out of his busy schedule to go for a ride with them. He knew a little about sport, maybe liked the same music once he’d taken a flip through the dial and found something that made the mark smile. After he’d gone to all that trouble, well, what could a decent human being do but listen to what the man had to say about this beautiful automobile? And hey, it was hot out there, right, so better to do it in the cool of the office with a cold can of soda in one hand, huh? What do you mean, talk to your wife first? She’s go