Warrior Angel Read online

  No one paid him attention in the basement kitchen, and then he was out in the night, jogging along the Strip, weaving around clumps of tourists and couples holding hands and families with babies in strollers. The crowd thinned, disappeared. The neon river was behind him. He ran through clusters of suburban homes, and then he was on a two-lane blacktop, the only light from moon and stars.

  Sonny ran.

  The headlights of approaching cars and trucks blinded him. Sprayed pebbles hit him like buckshot. Even so, the darkness of the desert comforted him, the cool of the night was a blanket. Animals scurried over the sandy rocks. Friends running with him.

  He loved to run. It was the best part of training. Especially running alone. Early in the morning or late at night, body still stiff from sleep or sore from a tense day, he would start slow, anticipating the warmth rising from his feet, drowning the aches, finally reaching his brain and flushing the thoughts away.

  He pulled the bands off his ponytail, felt his hair fall loose on his shoulders, then lift as the air flowed past his face. He imagined the strands of his hair spread out behind him, the flaps of the tent free from the stakes.

  He was no longer alone. He heard a familiar whirring noise. A wheelchair pulled up alongside him.

  “You blew it, Sonny,” said Alfred. “You had it all, and you blew it.”

  “I had to be free,” said Sonny.

  “From people who cared about you?”

  “Nobody really cares about me, just use me ’cause I’m the champ.”

  On the other side of him, Marty said, “Now you’re free? To do what Hubbard wants? To hang around with those two jerks and that phony Indian?”

  “I should hang around with you? So you can write another book?”

  Sonny ran away from them.

  What did they know, a crippled black cop who never made it as a boxer and a fat black college boy who wrote about life instead of living it? What did they know about what was inside him, the monster he had to tame and the dark shadow he couldn’t always push away? They always thought all I had to do was show up and train and listen to them and everything would be all right.

  Once I thought so, too.

  It was easier to get to be champion than to stay champion, all these people pulling at you, telling you what to do, where to be, how to dress, now that you’re a role model, a money machine, the king. King of what?

  Nobody knows what I feel inside.

  “I knew,” said Jake. “When you were a Running Brave.”

  “I was never a Running Brave.”

  “In your heart.” He couldn’t believe the old man was keeping up with him. Jake was dead. His heart had given out one day while he was working in his auto junkyard on the reservation. Just a few months ago. Seemed like years. “Not no more. Running Braves run to something. You just running away.”

  Sonny ran away from him.

  He was alone again in the night. He had had it and he had blown it. So what, who cares? Just run. Keep running until you can’t run anymore, then lie down in the desert and go to sleep. Forever. Nobody cares. Hubbard’s got contracts with the Reggae King and The Wall. Promotors always make money. He’ll take care of Malik and Boyd, and Red Eagle can go back to suckering rich people in his phony sweat lodges. Never miss me.

  Nobody’ll miss me.

  Except Warrior Angel. Some nutcase fan out there, drunk, maybe whacked out on Warrior Angel Dust. That’s funny. Warrior Angel Dust. Marty always told people, Sonny’ll surprise you with a great line now and then. Sonny’s smarter than you think. Marty was all right. But he’s gone. Ran away from him, too.

  The sky exploded, a dazzling beam of light and a metallic clatter. He was staggered by a sandstorm. It took him a moment to realize that a helicopter was hovering overhead. Booming voices calling him to stop.

  Ahead, flashing red lights. Police cars. Somebody had missed him. Too late. Doesn’t matter anymore.

  He jumped a drainage ditch and cut into the desert, stepping high to avoid rocks and weeds. The chopper followed, trapping him in its beam of light. He looked for hiding places in rock formations or groves of trees, but the land was tabletop flat here. He couldn’t shake free of the light.

  One of the police vehicles was bumping over the desert toward him now, its siren screaming through the clattering rotors.

  The monster rose. Go for it, Sonny, you can beat ’em, outrun them all, go, Sonny, go, and then the dark shadow beat its wings and the murk returned and he stopped and fell to his knees.

  6

  THEY CAME DOWN to get him in a green Land Rover, not Mom’s red Beemer, not the step-mobile, which was what Starkey called his stepfather’s big blue Benz. The Land Rover. Did they think they were setting out on a dangerous jungle journey, psychos leaping out of the bushes and landing on the hood?

  PJ was watching from the front window. “Are they coming in?” She was wearing pajamas as usual. It was why they called her PJ. “I’d like to meet them.”

  “We’re in kind of a hurry.” Starkey wondered why she would want to meet them.

  “We could be special friends, Starkey.”

  The Archangels go ballistic when Warrior Angels get involved with Live Ones without their permission. It happens, of course, but it’s a conflict of interest. Worse than that, it almost always interferes with the Mission.

  He tried to cut them off at the door so they wouldn’t snoop around the house, wouldn’t see PJ.

  “Richard!” Mom had her arms out. Starkey couldn’t stop her from wrapping him up.

  Stepdad was a step behind her. He was dressed all in black, as usual these days. Big phony smile revealed pointy teeth. His eyes changed from blue to purple to red back to blue. Starkey had bagged the morning meds again.

  “You look terrific.” Everything was always about looks with him. I could be rotting inside, Starkey thought, but if my hair is combed, everything’s fine. “This place must agree with you. Ready to roll?”

  “Sure.” He hoisted his backpack and started for the door, but Mom spotted PJ.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi. You must be Starkey’s mother,” said PJ. “I’m his friend Allysse.”

  Starkey got right in between them. “We’re running late, Mom.”

  “Excuse my appearance,” said PJ, “but I’ve gained a lot of weight lately and I haven’t been able to shop.”

  Mom’s face fell apart at that. PJ was slim, so it was clear to her that PJ had an eating problem. “Congratulations, sweetheart. I know how hard it is to gain weight when you have a…food issues.”

  “I wish my parents were as understanding as you,” said PJ. “Starkey has told me all about you and your husband.”

  Starkey was surprised at her moves. He hadn’t told her anything. What was she angling for?

  “We’re very proud of Richard.” Stepdad moved closer to PJ. She didn’t move away. What is her game? Starkey felt helpless. Their voices began to fade in and out, as if bubbling up from the bottom of a toilet.

  “Weee’re going to the mawllllllll,” said Mom, “to get Richard a new shirt and tie. Come with ussssss….”

  “That’s so nye-ssssssssssssss, but I cooon’t innnnn-troooood….”

  “Yooooooo muuuuuust….” Mom had PJ’sarm and was steering her toward the office.

  Nooooooo. They would get permission for PJ to come, ruin his plan.

  Stepdad was pushing him out the door. “You all right, Richard? Look a little shaky.”

  “You don’t have to hold me. I’m not crazy.”

  “I know that. You have a chemical imbalance that makes you do crazy things, Richard, and we’re working on it.”

  “Work on this.” He gave Stepdad the finger salute.

  Stepdad ignored the gesture and guided him into the back of the Land Rover with his hand on top of his head, the way cops did it. Inside, the Land Rover smelled of leather, air-conditioning, perfume, after-shave.

  “That’s a foxy lady, Allysse. What’s she in for?” Stepdad watched hi
mself in the rearview mirror as he slipped on little round dark glasses.

  “Biting off her father’s nose.”

  That shut him up. Stepdad slipped in a CD, probably one of the new groups he was pushing. They just listened to the lame music until Mom reappeared, holding PJ’s hand. Stepdad whistled. PJ did look good. Boots, tight black jeans, a black leather jacket, her hair pulled back. Lipstick and eyeliner. She climbed in next to Starkey and smiled at him.

  “Nothing fits, huh?” said Starkey.

  “Doesn’t Allysse look wonderful,” said Mom, settling into the front passenger seat.

  “It’s so nice of you to include me,” said PJ.

  “Your mother seemed very happy to give permission,” said Mom. “She sounded lovely on the phone.”

  “Your dad?” Stepdad pulled slowly out of the parking lot, squinting at PJ in the rearview. Starkey thought his nose was twitching.

  “My dad? He’s on TV, travels a lot.”

  Stepdad glared at Starkey in the rearview. Starkey bit his lip so he wouldn’t laugh out loud. He loved to pull the stepchain.

  Mom turned in her seat. Her voice rose and fell in an oscillating wave, the highs like screeching brakes, the lows like the growls of animals trapped in a stinking circus cage. The sounds hammered him against the back of the seat.

  “Yooooooo can help usssssssss find a tiiiiieeeee for Rich-chard.”

  “I’d love toooooooooo.”

  Starkey tried to shake his head, but it felt locked in place. It was getting hard to breathe. He never thought Mom was Legion before, but now he wondered.

  That helped. Wondering.

  Centered him.

  Caught his breath.

  Stepdad said, “Yo! Locs ’n’ Bagels’ newest cut.”

  “He just loves this group.” Mom rolled her eyes until only the whites showed, then they turned black. “He invented them.” She rubbed Stepdad’s thigh while he drove and hummed along.

  Starkey hated to see that. So he thought instead about Sonny on the morning TV shows, hollow eyed when they brought him back from his midnight run. Dad might have looked like that before he crashed.

  If Sonny had been driving instead of running…

  They started talking again once the song was over, but he tuned it out. PJ started rubbing his thigh the same way Mom rubbed Stepdad’s, but he blocked thinking about that by thinking about Sonny.

  Sonny wouldn’t give any interviews, but Elston Hubbard, that fat snake, gave dozens, spinning the same story over and over, how Sonny had been so shamed by his performance against Crockett that he needed to take a ritual cleansing run into the desert to purge the evil spirits in preparation for his next defense, against Floyd (The Wall) Hall. In all the TV interviews, the phony Indian, Red Ugly, was right behind him, nodding all the way. The sportscasters didn’t have the guts to ask them why they had to send helicopters and police cars after Sonny. Or even to follow up on Hubbard’s story that he had been drugged. Hubbard owned them, too.

  Sonny was battling evil spirits all right, but you need more than a little run in the desert to defeat them. Hang in there, Sonny. I’m on my way.

  He felt calmer by the time they got to the bottom of the long driveway, calm enough not to feel the windmill in his chest that usually started turning when the white stone mansion loomed into sight. The first time the town cops drove him home, whacked out of his mind behind the steel grate in the backseat of the cruiser, he’d yelled, “Welcome to the slammer.” He had never again looked at the big house on the reservoir without thinking he was being returned to prison.

  “What a lovely house,” cried PJ.

  The housekeeper opened the door and hugged him—“Reee-chid, I miss you”—and bustled him inside. Lunch was waiting at the pool, plates and silver and linen napkins in ivory rings. At the Family Place they ate like animals, with their hands. Food tastes better when you’re not self-conscious, he thought. Maybe that’s why so many rich girls are anorexic and bulimic, their parents are so hung up on table manners. It screws up the food and then it screws you up.

  PJ hummed and oohed over everything but mostly pushed her food around the plate. Stepdad was on two cell phones through lunch. He kept apologizing, but he was in the process of forcing some record-store chain to put Locs ’n’ Bagels posters in their windows or he’d cut them out of some other deal and maybe eat their children.

  Starkey thought, Why am I here?

  “What an awful question,” said Mom.

  “What?”

  “Why are you here. We’re your family, Richard. We love you and care about you.”

  Starkey began to laugh. “Sorry. I didn’t realize I’d left the microphone on again.”

  Stepdad began yelling into both phones, showing off, and Starkey just nodded as Mom made small talk. She told PJ about Starkey’s sisters, half sisters really, both away at boarding school. Amy made the lacrosse team, blah-blah, Kate has the lead in an original rap opera written by an African-American student that Jeremy’s company was sponsoring. She didn’t tell PJ that the black kids’ scholarship was part of the deal to get their two halfwit daughters into the school. Then there was gossip about neighbors Starkey barely remembered. The husband had run off with the pool boy. PJ nodded as if she were interested.

  He slipped away and went upstairs. His old room was just the way he had left it when the judge had sent him to the Whitmore Hills Juvenile Correctional Facility after that bogus arson bust. When the librarian had stopped him from taking out all three copies of The Tomahawk Kid, he’d had to burn them so The Book wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. He was never trying to burn down the library.

  He hadn’t minded Whitmore too much. Wising off to Capt. Deeks had gotten him a week in solitary but gave him creds in the general population. The skinheads protected him from the blacks and the Latinos until one of them made Redskin jokes while they were watching a documentary on Sonny and he wouldn’t shut up until Starkey put a ballpoint between his ribs. The next time Starkey came out of solitary, the skinheads ambushed him in the latrine and he was lucky to escape with only a slashed arm.

  It worked out fine. Stepdad’s lawyers used that to spring him out of Whitmore and into the hospital. Where they wanted to zap his brains. Electroconvulsive therapy was back in style. It was the only time Starkey felt scared. It would mean not only aborting the Mission but not returning to Heaven. Electroshock breaks communications between a Warrior Angel and the Archies. He would forget he was an angel. He would be stranded on Earth for a natural life, just another Live One.

  Stepdad was all for it, zap the kid, but Mom wasn’t sure. Maybe she’d seen the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Maybe Dad had been zapped. They did it a lot in those days. The hospital came up with an alternative—one of its doctors ran a group home for adolescents, the Family Place. It was near where they lived in Connecticut. Last chance before we microwave your boy.

  And here we are, sports fans, back in the family place, lower case, please.

  The Sonny Bear posters were beginning to curl at the edges—he would have to repin them. The Sonny Bear headbands were made-in-China junk, but you have to support your man.

  “There you are.” Mom came into the room. He could hear Stepdad booming at PJ downstairs. “We wondered where…”

  He pulled the Sonny Bear fringed buckskin jacket out of the closet. “I’ll wear this to the club tonight,” he said.

  His mother’s face tightened; she caught her breath but then decided to smile. “I was hoping you’d let me buy you a new shirt and tie to go with your good blazer. This is really important to your father.”

  “My father’s dead—he won’t care.”

  She sighed, then decided not to go there. “Then for me, Richard, please.”

  “Can I drive?”

  That stopped her. “Well…”

  “The Land Rover.”

  She took a very deep breath. She hated the buckskin jacket. If he wore it to the club tonight, their uptight friends would
think he was still cuckoo. A blue blazer with brassy buttons, well, that’s an obvious proof of sanity.

  “All right, Richard. You can drive, once we’re out of town. If the local police see you…”

  “No problem.”

  He waited until he heard her footsteps going downstairs before he pried open the secret compartment in the back of his closet. Everything was still there: the cap, The Book, and the money belt. He tried the cap on, a red Tomahawk Kid baseball cap, very rare, before he slipped it into the backpack next to the laptop. He didn’t like to wear it unless he really needed to block the Voices—you can’t take a chance of using up its powers.

  He strapped the money belt around his waist. It was stuffed with cash. Smartest thing he’d ever done. The getaway fund, he called it. Stepdad, showing off, was always leaving his money clip around. So long as you didn’t take more than a fifty at a time, he would never notice. He used fifties as tips the way most people used fives.

  His copy of The Tomahawk Kid, by Martin Malcolm Witherspoon, was falling apart, he had read it so many times, marked so many lines. He ran his fingers over the binding. You needed to know exactly where to feel to find the razor blade. He put The Book in an outer pocket by itself.

  He shrugged into the backpack. I’ve got everything I need now to save Sonny.

  Big shot was on both cells and a speakerphone when they left. Still, he managed to wave to them, with an extra pinky wiggle for PJ. She wiggled her pinky back. Mom giggled like a girl. It made Starkey sick.

  “Are you bringing your laptop to the mall?” asked Mom.

  “I never go anywhere without it,” he said. “It’s my security blanket.”

  PJ climbed into the back of the Rover, cooing at the upholstery. What’s her game? Her parents have a Jag and a Hummer.

  He’d never been up front. The command perch was awesome. He wondered if there were psychological studies on what it does to your hormone level. Look down on everything, see what’s going on in other cars, feel superior to everyone.