Especially the ones where he had the fly unzipped. In successive frames the jeans were doing a hula down his hips.
Then she double-clicked on the frame where the zipper was three-quarters open and his not-so-little- business was half tumescent, just kind of ready to pop out of its crinkly nest of pubic hair like a just-opened present nestled in excelsior. Clearly, this was a gift waiting to be discovered. And if the boy’s posture didn’t convey the intended message, the expression on his face certainly did; the lower lip sagging, the tongue in motion.
Angel stared at the eyes. The way they absolutely owned the jaded intersection of violation and vulnerability.
Suddenly, she realized that the shower was no longer running. Upstairs, she heard him coming out of the bathroom. Bare feet slapping the hardwood floor, coming down the hall into the dining room. She dragged the mouse up to FILE and selected PRINT. Copies: 5.
Angel reached down, grabbed her beach bag, and set it in her lap. She slid her right hand in and curled her fingers around the pistol. The chair had casters. It was easy to push away from the computer, so he could see the image on the screen as he walked down the stairs.
She half wondered if he’d presume too much and come back down in a bathrobe; but, no, A. J. had on baggy shorts and a tank top. Halfway down the stairs he saw the picture on the screen, heard the printer coughing out the copies. He did not seem alarmed; more alert certainly, but mainly curious.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I don’t know, you tell me. I hit some keys, and this popped up.”
“And the printer?”
“More buttons, I guess.” Angel was willing to hear his argument but she could feel Athena forming in her bones, armored, of the piercing brow, implacable.
A. J. made a reasonable gesture with his hands. “I didn’t invent Madison Avenue, Angela. So maybe I’m a little ahead of the curve, playing with the edges of child erotica. But ads have been published in the
“Looks more like about six inches to me,” she said in a flat, deadly voice.
He misunderstood her comment because he grinned and said, “It’ll be mainstream someday, so I’m getting ready.”
“He’s just a kid, for Christ sake,” Angel protested.
“Really. Did you know how old the shepherd boy was who posed for Michelangelo’s
“So this isn’t pornographic? This is art?” Angel felt the trigger along the pad of her index finger, the trigger guard eased against her knuckle.
“I don’t see any sex act, do you? And the statutes are very specific on that. ‘Clear and convincing’ is the rule. ‘Explicit’ is the governing term,” A. J. said.
Angel rolled back to the computer, reached out with her left hand, and selected another frame.
“Why are you wearing gloves?” he said in a challenging tone, and now the first thin quiver of alarm sounded in his voice.
“So my hands don’t get dirty, asshole. Now tell me about the artistic content of this one.” She clicked twice, and the boy was back except now he was unmistakably limbering up to masturbate for the camera.
“Get the hell out of here,” A. J. said. In fast jerky steps he crossed in front of her, closed out the computer file, and turned off the printer.
“Right after you,” Angel said as she came off the chair and started to swing the gun up out of the bag. For a second the Ruger snagged in the material.
A. J.’s trained eye took it all in immediately. He bolted across the room, through the patio door onto the deck. By the time Angel had the pistol free, he was tearing down the steps. As she came out on the deck, his bare feet failed him on the sharp gravel at the bottom of the stairs.
“Ow, shit,” he yelped, grabbing one of his feet, hopping absurdly.
She was on him and walked behind his weird jumping, waiting until he made it off the gravel and fell on the grass. “C’mon, A. J.; you just can’t take a joke,” she said.
“What, what?” he said, pushing himself up, attempting to run. She tripped him, and he fell heavily and rolled over. That’s when she decided to go for the belly shot.
The muffled
“My God,” he gasped and pawed in disbelief at his belly.
Angel hovered over him, the pistol and its bulbous silencer in plain view. “Hold that thought. Now you get to find out. Is God or isn’t God?”
He tried scuttling away, this painful, ungainly motion on his back. For a few seconds, he was aided slightly by the incline of his property, but after ten yards or so, Angel tired of the routine and swung the pistol on target.
The small rounds tracked up his chest, and the last one apparently missed. Coming closer, she saw that her last shot hadn’t missed. It hit him in the mouth, broke some teeth, and exited his cheek. He was still wet-gargling air when she stuffed the medallion in his wrecked mouth. She returned to the house, collected the printouts, came back out, and pasted one of the pictures over his bloody face.
She put the others in her beach bag. She made sure she had one that was daubed with his blood.
Then she placed the silencer against the soggy print of the boy stripper that was stuck to A. J.’s twitching face and squeezed again.
She watched the physical systems shut down, muscle spasms, breathing; a few last convulsions and then stillness.
As she got ready to go, she remembered the lie she’d told him. About the cancer. In fact it was contagious. It’s just that the doctors looked for the causes in all the wrong places. Angel knew where the disease came from. It accumulated inside some men’s hearts, and, after a certain amount of time, it drained down and was absorbed into their sperm.
Angel absolutely believed that the cancer that killed her twin sister had been cultured in their daddy’s body, that he had transmitted it into her sister’s twelve- and thirteen- and fourteen- and fifteen-year-old uterus, where it rooted and matured into the malignant ovarian tumor that had eventually eaten her up inside and destroyed her body.
Her life had been destroyed much, much earlier on.
So, before turning toward the house, she shot A. J. Scott one last time in the balls just for spite.
Chapter Twenty
Broker drove back to Milt’s with one eye fixed on the rearview mirror. Distracted, he didn’t appreciate the blazing western sky, where it looked like North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska had caught fire along with Colorado and Arizona. He turned off Highway 95 and braked his way down Milt’s winding gravel drive, quadrant- tracking the dusk that filtered in through the trees. There were a thousand places up in this darkening bluff where. .
He spotted the maroon Lexus 300 with smoke-tinted windows tucked in the oaks at the bottom of the drive about twenty yards from the house. Nobody said Harry had to be driving Broker’s truck. So Broker pulled over, killed the engine, grabbed the Ithaca.12-gauge and approached the house at port arms with his right thumb on the safety.
All he needed was Harry staggering around, drunk and armed.
He felt the low, slanting sun come through an opening in the trees and hit his back. He saw his shadow stretch out, preceding him on the gravel drive. Stepping carefully on paving stones so he didn’t make a sound, he
