for their school board candidates, the usual Creationist mob, with some militia kooks thrown in for good measure. There were protestors outside, and this being the north end of the county, this drew out the neo-Nazis, skinheads, and just floor-model rednecks. Armed and ready for the Great Uprising. Fucking melee. I titled the piece ‘A Catfight for Christ’ and said it was a pretty good preview of the next Republican Convention.” He gestured toward his mail. “This stuff’s been sailing in by the truckload ever since.”
Abatangelo turned one letter around, read a little. “Any death threats?”
Waxman looked off with a sort of dreamy smugness. “Nothing so glamorous.” He rolled his glass across his chest and, feigning a grand manner, intoned, “ ‘You spent hack. Take it to the tabs, Jew.’ ”
Abatangelo pushed the letter away. “Tabloids take this kind of thing?”
Waxman waved the question off. “The best of the bunch, or the worst, take your pick, accused me of”- Waxman snapped his fingers- “how did he put it- ’hand-feeding the paranoid delusions of a disturbed and gullible minority.’ ”
It seemed strangely apropos that Waxman would have memorized the invective. “They mean liberals,” Abatangelo guessed.
Waxman gestured for the waitress and when she arrived he handed her a ten, telling her, “Given the crowd, why not bring me two, dear, save you a second trip.” The waitress turned to Abatangelo then and he noticed the weary eyes, the cheerless smile, the heavy rouge. The kind of woman Shel feared becoming, he thought. He ordered Myers neat with a water back, and once she was gone, Waxman said, “So what brings you to this particular watering hole? Lost?”
Abatangelo withdrew his photographs of Shel and set them on the table. Waxman eyed the packet warily.
“Take a look, Wax. Let me tell you a story.”
Waxman reluctantly reached out, collected the plasticine envelope and bent back the fold. He fished the pictures out and sighed, turning them right side up. He made it seem a monstrous chore.
“This is your sort of story, Wax. I’ve been following your work since I got out, and when this thing came my way, your name was the first that came to mind.” He checked Waxman’s eyes for suspicion. “Christians scare me too, Wax. And yet, when all’s said and done, they aren’t half as scary as some of their friends.”
Waxman punctuated his review of the photographs with a laborious sigh. Abatangelo leaned closer.
“I was in the tank ten years. When I first got in, the Aryans were cartoons. A sideshow in the yard. But over time, you know? They held their little conclaves. They went to school, they studied the IRA and the Whitecaps, they read
The waitress returned with their drinks. Abatangelo waited till she was gone before resuming. “People in this country think drugs, Wax, they think bangers. Spades, pachucos. It’s bullshit. The white underground, the militias, without crank they’re nothing but a rumor. Crystal’s how they bankroll their ordnance. Which brings us to the pictures you’ve been looking at. You remember the face, right?”
Waxman glanced down at the photographs of Shel he was holding. He nodded.
“She only did three and change, wandered around for four years, then bumped into your average cranker. Some garden variety mutt, low chump on the totem pole, didn’t-know-what-I-was-getting-into sort of guy. The gang he ran with, based out in east CoCo County, they were heavy folks. Biker equivalent of
He paused to judge the effect he was making. Waxman refused to look at him.
“You heard about the Briscoe family, bigwigs up in Lodi. Lost a pair of twins. Whacked. Guess who: same guy we’re talking about here. Same guy who did what you’re looking at.” He picked up one of the photographs and flicked it with his finger. “You’re going to hear word in the next day or two of some shoot-’em-up over in the Delta, too. Some kind of gunfight gone wrong. Again, guess who. Think like a prosecutor, Wax. Start with the little guy, the mutt who did this. Snap that link, then move up the chain. You’ll have the story of your career.” Abatangelo put the picture back down. “I’ve got some other pictures, too. One of a sixteen-wheeler rolling out of a compound at midnight from the property where these guys operate. What do you think the driver was carrying, Wax? Maybe we should trace the license, go ask him.”
Waxman reached up beneath his glasses and pinched his eyes, letting go with a long, burdened groan. “You talk the most incredible trash.”
“Make a few calls on your own,” Abatangelo urged. “Check it out.”
Waxman flinched, uttered a scoffing laugh, then seemed to suffer the inner onslaught of a dozen competing voices. Abatangelo inferred from this he was thinking it over. After a moment, returning his attention to the pictures, Waxman said, “This woman,” raising his hand to his glasses again, this time to lift them onto his brow, the better to study a close-up, “she has haunted eyes.” He ran his fingertip around her face. “I remember her better now.” Rubbing his hand across his mouth, he closed his eyes and said with forced irony, “It’s tawdry. It’s timely.”
“Don’t talk like that, Wax.”
“You’ll never see it out front.” Waxman shook his head, waved his hand. “Buried in back. Below the fold. Maybe just a column inch in the briefs.”
“I can live with that. For now. Come on, Wax. I know what you can do. This isn’t some chickenshit sidebar passed down through six other guys who don’t want it. It has your name all over it. And I’ll be right there with you. I’m no stranger to a camera. Look at these. I can do your art.”
Waxman frowned uneasily. And yet a certain willingness animated his eyes. Abatangelo felt something turn. He glanced at his watch. Shel had been alone for hours, but he couldn’t leave Waxman sitting there without a draft down on paper. Devoid of record, the impulse would die.
“Let’s hash something out right now, Wax.” There were paper place mats stacked atop a nearby piano. He pulled one down and took out a pen. “What’s our tag? Wax, hey.”
Waxman hugged his drink. He looked down at Shel’s pictures.
“If we are going to use this woman as bait for the reader’s sympathy,” he said, “we will have to make her a little less the moll.”
Abatangelo, poised to write, said, “Bait?”
“It’s the yuppie factor,” Waxman explained. “The new wealth, the young folks earning it, they’re sneakily conservative. Fallen women do not appeal to sentiment quite the way they used to. And these days one must, above all else, appeal to sentiment. Trust me.”
“Wax, you’re driving at what, exactly?”
Waxman shrugged. “I mean, well, not to be morbid. It’s just ironic. She needs to be human to be sympathetic. And she would be human instantly if she were dead.”
Chapter 15
Asleep in Abatangelo’s bed, Shel dreamed she stood alone in an abandoned foundry, her reflection gazing back at her from a rust-spotted washroom mirror. The cement floor, sooty and broken, grated against the soles of her bare feet. The sink was dry and flecked with cold ash. She felt a terrifying premonition that It was about to happen. And yet, in her paralysis, she felt ready. Sunlight broke through a grainy skylight. A sharp, rattled banging rushed toward her through the silence.
She convulsed, bolting upright. Instantly her head rang in pain, worse than before. Taking in gulps of air, she blinked her eyes open, staring through tears. The walls drifted around as sleep gave way to a grating half-sleep. The sense she was returning from a distance lingered, and for a moment the room seemed more remembered than seen.
Light from a streetlamp filtered in through wafting blinds. A smell of winter rain seeped into the room through a
