A Guardian Angel Read online

  A

  Guardian

  Angel

  Phoenix Williams

  All characters in this book are fictitious

  and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead

  is purely coincidental.

  A Guardian Angel

  Copyright © 2014 by Phoenix Williams

  All Rights Reserved.

  Published by Phoenix Williams

  To Everyone

  CONTENTS

  PART I – WHERE THE BLADE BALANCES

  1. St. Petersburg

  2. Chicago

  3. Lumnin

  4. Haley

  5. Circumstance

  6. Why

  7. Dinner

  8. Lumnin's Finest

  9. True Intentions

  10. Deadline

  11. Max

  12. Verdict

  PART II – FORTY-TON ANGEL

  13. Crash

  14. Barney

  15. Fifteen Minutes

  16. Suggestion

  17. Proposition

  18. Inspection

  19. The Dead of Night

  20. This House

  21. Heaven's Crusade

  PART III – KNIGHTS OF THE PROLETARIAT

  22. The Davey Tolmes Show

  23. Denver

  24. The Decree Anti-Vagrancy Bill

  25. Retaliation

  26. Knights of the Proletariat

  27. Rosa

  28. The Expert

  29. Decree Tower

  30. Graves

  PART IV – HARBINGER

  31. Days Gone By

  32. Heart of the Valley

  33. Davey

  34. The Warning

  35. Harbinger

  36. Intervention

  37. The Trial

  38. American Prevailers

  39. City of Angels

  40. Evil

  Epilogue

  PART I

  -----------------------

  WHERE THE BLADE BALANCES

  -Chapter One-

  St. Petersburg

  Andy couldn't ignore the large fist that battered against his jaw. Andy kept his hands moving toward their task rather than leaping up and rubbing the center of throbbing pain over his mouth. Blood dribbled from his lax lips as he tightened his fingers, folding them tighter over Marchel Shivolinrid's throat. It was a beefy throat at that and needed Andy's concentration were he to close it. His only desire was to prevent further flow of air into the man's lungs. The defining task of his trade.

  Shivolinrid was by no means a man of weak stature. He towered a full head above Andy and swung with melon sized fists at his attacker. Another decent blow to the side of Andy's head sent him tumbling off of the Siberian. The situation dangled out of his control and he found himself in far more danger than he preferred. The defining problem of his trade.

  Porcelain stopped Andy from hitting the floor. It cracked and made a sharp rattle which the ringing in his ears drowned out in an instant. Despite the sheer shock of pain and the graduating ebb of clarity and darkness in his eyes, Andy rose on one knee. Shivolinrid got up now, grunting as he tried to regain his breath.

  In all the places for a noisy exchange, a public bathroom? This public bathroom?

  Andy snapped to his senses and charged his shoulder into the rising hulk, throwing him off his balance and into one of the stall doors. It opened inwards and Shivolinrid fell back through it, thrashing his arms out in front of him in order to strike or grab at Andy. Most of the incoming fingers were deflected, but two still grasped onto the attacker's wrist and dragged him into the stall after the Siberian.

  It would have been another sharp meeting with porcelain if Andy's tuned reflexes didn't send out his leg first. He stepped onto the rim of the toilet and used his other leg to ram straight into the man's face. Too soft of a blow. The gigantic man's resistance still gathered strength. Andy kicked again, but Shivolinrid clutched onto the offending leg so he could not retract it. Andy bit his lower lip to stifle a yelp as sharp pain radiated from his calf. The bastard! He thought. He's biting me!

  He rammed his knee into the biting Siberian's mouth, further and further. He interpreted every crunch and every snap as a painful lesson that Shivolinrid learned about biting others. The slobbery cloth of his trousers muffled the screams coming from the large man.

  Good, Andy thought. Be silent.

  As if hearing his thoughts, Shivolinrid's internal fight-or-flight meter screamed toward “Fight!” and his fists shot upwards into the assailant's stomach and groin. With the increasing combat came increasing volume. Noise worried Andy more than the violently retaliating behemoth on the floor did.

  Perspiring, Andy looked to the door. Any second someone could come in and ruin everything. There was no more time to waste. Deciding that the fight endured longer than he liked, the customary fifteen seconds, he retracted and rammed his knee into Shivolinrid's nose again, hopped onto both feet, drew his silenced three-eighty auto and emptied the chamber.

  He looked up from the body to the door of the restaurant. The music being played in the lobby reached a brief pause in between songs. The clatters and clangs of dishes and silverware bled its way through the space beneath the door.

  Any second now, Andy thought. Hurry.

  He tried his best to prop up the corpse against the wall as he concealed his firearm. He secured the stall door behind him, delaying the inevitable detection of Shivolinrid's body. It wasn't the form itself that he could conceal, just its lack of vitality. Not that the Siberian was a warm man, thought Andy, but he was hardly a candidate for one now.

  He dispatched him in an ideal location, the assailant noted. As bad as it had gone, a silver lining existed. He didn't have the time to over think it, though. He had to act without hesitation. He snatched a paper towel from the dispenser, covered his face, then burst out the door into the restaurant.

  “I've been assaulted!” he wailed in Russian. “There's a thug in the bathroom! He's in a rage!” He let one hand trail behind him as an indication back toward the restroom.

  The entire room bustled with overconfident men excusing themselves from wide-eyed women as a crowd assembled around the bathroom. From this crowd peeled Andy, out of the restaurant and down the street.

  He hesitated before removing the paper towels clutched over his face. He couldn't be sure he was far enough away. He winced as he peeled them off his wounded features.

  Andy had been in the city for five days straight. Each and every day he waited for long hours at a seat besides the window. He wore different outfits each day, making sure no one noticed his continued presence. Until the fifth day, Andy found himself in an uncomfortable cycle of acting like he was completely oblivious while paying sharp attention to everything around him. His target possessed only a name and a face. He knew little about why his corpse was a valued product. He cared little, as well. Andy meant only to produce as expected.

  They had discovered his body by now, he noted. He had no doubt. Someone must have gotten too close, too curious as to why the large man “in a rage” wasn't responding to him. Someone spotted the gunshot wound. It wasn't a gory mess like most head shots, but there was a curious pool of blood by now. Andy felt sorry for whoever truly discovered the dead man in the bathroom.

  All over the restaurant, people were looking for him. “Do you see him? Do you see the man who just came out?” they would ask each other. “What did he look like?” one might ask back. The first one would be stumped. “All I remember is paper towels,” he'd say and shrug.

  No one in this country would know that Andy Winter killed Marchel Shivolinrid.

  Andy sighed as he tapped on a cut on his face and straightened out his tie. The w
alk home was always the best part.

  -Chapter Two-

  Chicago

  “Is that the last one in St. Petersburg?” Andy asked as soon as he boarded the small private aircraft with his employer and trusted staff. The middle-aged man in the seat across from him gave a quiet chuckle before nodding in reply.

  “Good,” Andy commented. “Too cold for Hitler, too cold for me.”

  Again the man laughed.

  “It's nice to see you in such a good mood,” he said as he and Andy both accepted thick, pungent bourbons from the on board stewardess. He watched Andy drink. “How did you appreciate the accommodations?”

  Andy recalled the lavish hotel at which he had stayed for the last five days. Large platters of hand prepared entrees were brought up to him but he found it difficult to touch after spending dozens of hours in a diner. Instead, he packaged it and brought the leftovers with him. Most of the food came in from international markets, Andy less than a fan of Russian cuisine. The one thing he did consume locally was the vodka from a distillery two miles from his hotel.

  The sheets were woven of fine, decorative thread and the blankets were thick and soft. The beds were tucked and made for tourists to burrow up in and forget exactly how cold the city was. One joke he'd always make to his Russian-native housekeeper as she took the dirty sheets and replaced them with clean ones was, “It's a good thing you change your Lenins this often,” which he only made for his own benefit. She couldn't speak English.

  Along with the rooming, his food and his transportation were complimentary. That ended up being a godsend as no moment in St. Petersburg was enjoyable to the warm-blooded American when spent outside. Nothing fancy, but it didn't need to be. He was a hitman, not a celebrity. As long as he was as warm as his employer wanted his gun to be, he was content.

  The huge piles of money accumulating in his bank account helped, as well.

  “I find it very interesting that people build up their lives, going in and out of education to make some sort of decent pittance. To put a roof over their head and feed their children and purchase whatever they imagine happiness to be. All the while, I am compensated so well, performing a task so simple that it is as old as Man himself.” With that, Andy emptied his glass. It was filled again.

  “Things did not go so well with Marchel?” the man asked after taking a drink from his own glass. He indicated Andy's healing wounds.

  Andy felt them himself. “I took over eighteen seconds,” he paused as he observed his employer. “I thought the firearm wouldn't be necessary, that I could make it look like a mugging--”

  “It did look like a mugging,” the elder man interrupted. “That's what police reports say.”

  “Still, bullets leave questions,” Andy commented. “I could have been better.”

  “Stop worrying,” his boss commanded in a warm voice. “Nothing went wrong that can't be fixed.”

  Andy stopped his commenting to stare out the window. He sipped from his drink.

  After a moment of silence, his employer asked him, “Eighteen seconds?”

  “Yes sir.”

  The man chuckled. “That must be a record for your worst,” he commented. Andy agreed.

  Andy finished his second drink and stopped the stewardess from refilling it again. “I do not want to be sent here again,” he said once he was rid of his glass.

  “St. Petersburg?”

  “Russia.”

  “Your need in this part of the world is gone,” his employer stated. “Should it resume again, I can assure you, I will not call.”

  “Thank you.”

  Again, he stared out of the window in silence, rubbing the cut next to his left eye where he had hit the urinal.

  “Are you getting that looked at in Chicago?” his boss asked. He had watched him.

  “Treated?” Andy asked, then scoffed.

  His employer continued to watch him as he resumed his gaze out of the porthole.

  “We'll need you again,” he said to Andy. “Very soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “Two weeks. At the latest.”

  Andy looked back over from the window. “So you already have the next one picked out?” He buzzed for the stewardess. “I didn't realize my work was so popular. It should get its own department like marketing.”

  His employer laughed.

  “I've often wondered who's work is seedier; yours or mine,” he replied.

  The stewardess appeared. “Yes, sir?” she asked Andy.

  “Another bourbon, please?”

  He stepped off the jet to find the customary arrangement: a taxi with his luggage waiting for him on the runway. The driver had instructions to take him anywhere he needed to go with a blank check waiting for him. Wow, Andy thought, I know the man runs a corporation, but he'll run out of money one day. Andy smirked. Hopefully on me, he concluded.

  Andy owned a studio apartment in the south side of Chicago, a small thing that had four walls and kept him off the streets. He hated the streets. It reminded him of why he could do what he did, year after year. Before he allowed the taxi to take him there, he ordered the driver to drop him off and wait at Rosehill Cemetery.

  With the end of every mission, he came here. He had purchased a large bouquet of flowers from a florist just a block away. Twelve yellow tulips. He had brought them to a slab of stone off in the eastern corner of the graveyard for the last ten years. The tombstone that he visited had carved into it falling tulips, just like the ones he brought. It was one of those bulky gravestones, unlike the thin readings and carved statues the rest of the cemetery was filled with.

  A couple of women walked by on the path behind him, sobbing. No doubt they came from a recent funeral. He felt sorry for them. Coping with recent death is a much harder and delicate skill than the type of mourning he did here, at this particular grave. The corpse in it had last been seen ten years ago. Almost exactly, Andy noted. Watching a fresh body be buried is so much different. So very unnerving. The body without the soul, how strange it looked. Yet it seemed so bizarre not to see them sit up and say something to you. That must be what the Shivolinrids felt about now.

  No, Andy thought, it was too soon for a funeral. However, they no doubt knew by now that their fellow brother, son, maybe even father was gone. And they had no idea who to blame.

  He turned back to the grave. Maxwell Shepard. An old friend. A childhood friend. A dead friend.

  This is important, he told himself. This is necessary in order to keep doing what I do. Without Max, there would be no me. Although his memory stung his eyes to think about, it gave him fuel. Kept him going.

  A memory came to Andy as he studied the etching in the stone once again. A scene from his childhood. Something that always came to mind when he thought of his departed friend Max. In the memory, the sun hung high in the tight blue covering above. The rocky outcroppings along the wilderness sharp and bold against the monotone sky. The two boys struggled to climb over the very last ledge before stepping out onto a clearing. They peered down in exhaustion at the height they had just ascended. They were thirteen.

  “We're above so much,” Andy said. He gazed out over his quiet neighborhood. The sun started the tinge to a darker orange as it made contact with the opposite horizon.

  Max started walking to the trees before Andy felt he had caught his breath. The rough earthen floor gave way to a much softer, vibrant grass. Trees of diverse heights towered from exposed roots. The two boys felt a rush of wonder wash over them as if they had discovered rain for the first time. Max slipped his red and purple backpack off of his shoulders. He dropped it to the ground with the white stitching of a peace symbol facing out to the sun. He always carried that backpack, even on walks to the corner store. Max took off his shoes and stretched his toes. The sensation of the grass in between his toes overjoyed Max. Andy recalled the familiar sight from a thousand memories. Max never wore shoes on grass. He wore them as seldom as possible. Perhaps, s
omething about the gesture symbolized freedom. Other times, Andy believed that Max only wanted to stand out in a sea of shoe-wearing squares.

  Andy hung back while his friend ventured deeper into the woods. Max turned with a puzzled demeanor. “What's the matter, guy?” Max asked.

  “Max, our parents are going to be really mad,” Andy replied.

  Max waved. “They're not gonna know where we were,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “'Cause we're smart,” Max said. He pointed to his head. “Being calm makes you smarter.”

  “Yeah,” Andy replied, peering back behind him as if expecting his mother to catch him.

  Max could still sense the uneasiness in his companion. “Don't you wanna check it out?” he asked. He stopped walking and faced the timid boy.

  “Aren't you afraid?” Andy asked. His eyes darted across the hillside, back to the trees. He worried that Max would make fun of him, or at the very least make it embarrassing for him. The only emotion Max showed though was confusion.

  “Of what?” Max asked. He looked about. “Your mom will just think you're at my house.”

  Andy's eyes dropped to the pebbles at his feet. He kicked at them. “It's not that. Aren't you afraid of the woods? Or getting lost, or something?”

  Max nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Isn't that the fun part?” He turned back around and walked in between the first clump of tree trunks. Andy wanted him to wait for him, wanted him to soothe him some and tell him there was nothing to be afraid of. Instead he walked on, and because of that, Andy followed.

  When they had picked their way in a single direction through the thick of the forest for almost a mile, they came out into a clearing. The treeline ended just before the foot of a small, steep hill. No trees grew from its slope as it jutted up toward the heavens like a rocky beacon. The soft sloshing of water drifted through the trees as the children squeezed past them. A deep and luscious pond swirled at the heart of the clearing. A thin stream ran to the opposite side of the water from a source high behind the hill. While foaming bubbles churned in the young current, the light blues mixed with the darker ones. Wind played like dancing hummingbirds through the leaves of the trees. The rustle was low, the trickle was high.