Blood of Angels
Tense and suspense-filled thriller from the author of The Straw Men and The Lonely Dead.Notorious serial killer the Upright Man has escaped from a supermax prison. The FBI have no idea how it happened, or where to start looking. Ex-CIA agent Ward Hopkins suspects the Straw Men, a shadowy conspiracy of killers with a macabre agenda.But apart from Ward’s girlfriend Nina, a discredited federal agent, the only person who believes the Straw Men even exist is John Zandt, a homicide detective obsessed with tracking down his daughter’s killers- and who is now wanted for murder himself.The terrifying thing is that Ward’s right- his brother was broken out for a reason. The Straw Men are planning something big.And now only Ward, Nina and Zandt stand between them and a spectacular act of carnage…
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MICHAEL MARSHALL
BLOOD OF ANGELS
For Ralph Vicinanza
Table of Contents
How speedily shall time hide all things in darkness!
How many has it hidden already!
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations VI â 59
They came for him where he worked. They came on a good, hot afternoon when business was brisk and Jim was thinking he'd give it another hour at most and then call it quits and start the evening early. The dock was awash with tourists of all shapes and sizes, cruising like a school of brightly coloured fish with no particular destination in mind. Meanwhile they ate. They munched. They wolfed down everything the cafés and strolling vendors of Key West had to offer, from burgers and burritos to ice cream and sugar-dusted churros still hot from the fryer. Those with a spare hand drank, too, sucking frapps and iced teas and sodas large enough for small children to swim in. It was just after three in the afternoon. The food being consumed couldn't be a late lunch or an early dinner. Jim was confident all of these people would have taken a meal at midday: he was equally sure they'd be hunkered down again at seven, moving up to linguine and grilled swordfish and fancier burgers washed down with cold glasses of Chardonnay. Meanwhile they browsed, like huge, affable locusts; like lucky cows in an endless, reasonably priced pasture. Their dedication was striking. If you let your mind wander you could believe these bodies were merely transportation devices for roving digestive systems capped by mowing teeth. You wondered what would happen if the food supply suddenly ran out; you wondered if, after a pause, the heads that housed these voracious mouths would slowly turn to take in the people around them, and decide they must be the next course.
Or Jim did, anyhow. He tried not to, but the thought still came. He was leaning against the rail on the north side of Mallory Square, an expanse of terrace and promenade which linked the hotels and restaurants of that side of the island with the sea. The cruise liners docked here overnight, multi-storey behemoths which dwarfed the hotels, disgorging further herds of credit card-holding grazing stock. A scant but welcome breeze came in off the shallow waters behind him. Jim held a camera loosely in his right hand. A bag over his shoulder carried packs of Polaroid film and a flat box of the folding cards he'd had printed up to hold his pictures.
Jim Westlake took photographs of tourists. He'd been doing it for years. There was a licence he was supposed to hold but he'd never got one and it didn't seem to be a problem. He didn't bother anyone at their tables or walk up and down hollering, jumping in front of strollers with a cheesy grin. He'd never been a salesman and didn't look like trouble. He was sixty-one years old, just starting to sag a little in the cheeks but still broad-shouldered and tall. He wore pale blue slacks and a white short-sleeved shirt, which he hated, but looked the part. His hair was mostly grey and swept back and he wore sunglasses against the glare off all the decking. He spent his days around Mallory, or walking up and down Duval Street, and when he saw the right kind of people he simply offered to take a photograph. Many would shake their heads firmly, bothered by the prospect of unplanned expenditure, and some would walk by without even acknowledging his presence. A few would pause, think a moment, and decide what the hey, we're on vacation. They would have toured the Hemingway house by then, stood on the southernmost point and taken a glass-bottomed boat out over the reefs. They'd be having a good time overall, and that's what photographs are for â to prove to others and ourselves that we've enjoyed ourselves, got some sun on our faces, forgotten about the daily grind for a time.
They'd most likely have their own camera around their neck, of course, maybe even a digital one, and Jim understood that the days of his profession were numbered. Pictures were no longer rare, immediacy no longer unusual. If you came to him you could get a shot of the two of you without having to ask some stranger, however, and Jim was good at getting kids to smile. The picture came slipped into a commemorative card with âHaving A Rest In Key Westâ printed on the front, and the stock was heavy and the typeface classy â a great gift for mothers back home, personal and yet effortless. The tourists could see that the photographer took pains, too: if he wasn't happy about the first shot, he'd take another â at no extra charge. He did this gracefully, slipping the first picture into his bag without even making you see it, so you didn't have to confront your bad side. Fifteen bucks wasn't cheap, but Jim had found he got more business at that price than for five. Five bucks was just some guy taking a picture. Fifteen was a genuine souvenir.
