Two Songs This Archangel Sings

'How are you feeling?'

'Like shit.'

'Well, I want you to come and see something.'

'Garth, my ass is dragging. I've got my heart set on a Scotch or three, a couple of the delicious sandwiches you were so sweet to make for me, and bed. Can it wait?'

'It could, but I don't want it to. Believe me, what I have to show you will give you a real happy heart; you'll love it. It's official business, so I'll send a squad car around to pick you up. Why don't you be down on the sidewalk in ten minutes?'

'Garth, I really-'

'See you in a few minutes.'

'So?' Garth said.

'Holy shit,' I replied.

'Is it them?'

'It's them.'

'What about the hair color?'

'Forget the hair color. It's them.'

In the dim light of the morgue chamber, I stared in something approaching disbelief at the two naked, toe- tagged bodies laid out on separate stone slabs. The faces, and only the faces, of the two men who had tortured and tried to kill me were unmarked, at least in the sense that no blows had been struck there. However, even in death, lines and shadows of unspeakable agony were left in the folds of flesh around the eyes and mouths as indelibly as if they had been etched there with acid; they still looked as if they were screaming. From the neck down, both bodies were blue-black like a single great bruise, the result of innumerable ruptured blood vessels and prolonged internal bleeding. The right thumbs of both men had been severed.

My night visitors had taken a long time to die; their hair had turned bone white.

'Somebody really did a number on these guys,' Garth remarked dryly. 'What we've got here are two fleshbags of broken bones and mushed guts. There'll be an autopsy, of course, but it's a waste of time. The pathologists will find that just about everything inside these men is broken; they'll also find that the men were kept alive while they were being taken apart. I've never seen anything like it.'

'Neither have I,' I said in a hollow voice, numbed by the horror of what I was looking at as well as by the terrible, cold-blooded, and controlled savagery the man I thought of as a friend was capable of. Suddenly I was afraid of Veil Kendry-afraid of finding him, and afraid of his secret.

'It looks like you were right about having a protector.'

'Yeah. It looks that way.'

'Nunchaku?'

'I'd say so. Tap-tap-tap. I told you the man was a master.'

'What do you think of the missing thumbs?'

'I don't know.'

'Trophies?'

'No. Not Veil's style.'

'After seeing this, you still think you're an authority on Veil Kendry's style?'

'Your point is well taken. I just don't think Veil would take trophies.'

'Shit. Why the hell would he cut thumbs off?'

I thought about it, said: 'For the fingerprints. The faces were left unmarked so that we'd have positive identification, and the thumbprints will provide the same for somebody else.'

'You think he sent them to somebody?'

'Just a guess.'

'And probably a good one. It would mean that the person on the other end has access to fingerprint apparatus and a record of those men's prints.'

'Yes. When and where did you find these jokers?'

Garth laughed without humor. 'A patrolman found them this morning, in the alley outside the station house. They were hanging upside down with their ankles wedged into the grating of our fire escape. It seems that Kendry not only takes care of our business for us, he makes free deliveries. Very witty.'

'Speaking of identification, did they have any on them?'

'Loads of it; credit cards, drivers' licenses, Social Security cards. All phony, of course, good work and untraceable. Each had over a thousand in cash in his wallet.'

'I assume you ran a print check from the rest of their fingers?'

'Sure. Nothing.'

'Interpol?'

'Nothing there, either.'

It didn't surprise me. 'So they don't have criminal records. What does that suggest to you, Garth?'

'What does it suggest to you?'

'That in somebody's perception they're good guys, not bad guys. They were thugs, but they were official thugs; not gangsters. They were trained by, and worked for, an agency of some government-probably our own.'

Garth shrugged. 'There are top-flight professional assassins around the world with no criminal records; that's why they're so successful and difficult to defend against. Hell, there's no way to tell if these guys were even Americans.'

'I think they were.'

'Almost all government agencies, at least the kinds that would use men like this, fingerprint their agents.'

'Yes; precisely the reason Veil cut off the thumbs and mailed them in. Some agencies keep their own computer files, so neither Interpol nor the F.B.I, would have any record of their agents. I think there's a good chance these men were C.I. A. operatives. They were working domestic territory, which means that whatever they were involved in is a renegade operation. It wouldn't be the first time.'

'What makes you think they were C.I.A.?'

I told Garth about the information I had gleaned from my trip to the library, stressing the common association between Americans fighting with the Hmong in Laos and the C.I.A. Garth listened attentively, nodded appreciatively when I'd finished.

'You've done good work, Mongo. I'm going to check out some things. For openers, I'll see if I can't get hold of an official, written copy of Kendry's complete service record.'

'Good idea.' Suddenly I could hardly keep my eyes open, and my legs hurt all the way up to my hips. 'Can I get a ride back to the apartment?'

'You've got it. The squad car's waiting outside for you.'

'Good,' I said with a weary wave as I hobbled toward the door. 'I need some sleep. In the morning, I've got to make some travel arrangements.'

'Where you going?'

'Seattle.'

'What's in Seattle?'

'A lot of Hmong, and maybe a few pieces of Veil's past.'

7

Seattle seemed like a city sculpted from wet snow. The skies were leaden when I arrived and looked like they would stay that way for some time. Even more depressing than the dim winter light and biting cold was the realization that I was, in all likelihood, wasting time and money on an impossible task, trying to pick up a trail that was almost two decades cold. While it was true that there were thousands of Hmong in and around this city, I