Of Love and Evil (3 page)

We sat down together at the iron-and-glass table, and I ordered some wine for Liona, and a Coke for Toby because he admitted that now and then, bad as it was for you, he did drink a Coke.

He took out his Apple iPhone and showed me all the things it could do. He had filed all the pictures of me in it and now, if it was all right with me, he was going to take a bunch more.

“Absolutely,” I said, and he instantly became the professional photographer, backing up, holding the phone out the way an old painter might have held out his thumb, and photographed us from numerous angles as he moved around the table.

At this point, as Toby took picture after picture, a chilling realization descended on me. I’d done murder in the Amistad Suite. I’d done murder here at the Mission Inn, and yet I had brought these two people here as if this had never happened.

Of course Malchiah had come to me here, a Seraph who asked me why in the name of God I didn’t repent of the miserable life I’d been living. And I had repented, and my entire existence had been forever altered.

He’d lifted me out of the twenty-first century, and sent me back in time to avert disaster for am imperiled community in medieval England. And when I’d finished that first assignment for my new angelic boss, I’d awakened here, at the Mission Inn,
and it was here that I’d written out my entire account of that first journey into Angel Time. The manuscript was in the room. It was on the desk where I’d killed my last victim with a needle to the neck. And it was here that I’d called my old boss, The Right Man, and told him I would never kill for him again.

Notwithstanding, I’d done murder here. And it had been cold, calculated murder, the kind for which Lucky the Fox was justly famous. I shuddered inwardly, murmuring a prayer that no shadow of that evil would ever touch Liona or Toby, that no consequence of that evil would ever harm them.

This place had been my solace before that murder. It had been the one place where I felt at ease, and it was for this reason surely that I’d brought Liona and my son to this very spot, this very table where Malchiah and I had talked together. It seemed natural that they should be here, it seemed natural that I should experience this new joy of having them both, in this place where my grim, sarcastic prayers for redemption had actually been answered.

All right, my own ways made some sense to me. And what safer place was there for Lucky the Fox than the scene of his most recent crime? Who would ever expect a hired killer to go back to the scene of the crime? No one. I was confident of that. After all, I’d been a contract assassin for ten years and I’d never gone back to the scene of a single crime, until now.

But I had to admit, I’d brought these beloved innocents to a place of remarkable significance.

I was so unworthy of my long-ago love, and my newfound son, so utterly unworthy, and they had no conception of it.

And you had better make sure they never know, because if they do know who you were and what you did, if they ever glimpse the blood on your hands, you will have done them the most unspeakable harm and you know it.

I felt I heard a small voice, not very far away, say distinctly. “That’s right. Not a word that could harm them.”

I looked up to see a young man passing by, making his way along the wall, past the door of the Amistad Suite and off out of my vision. It was that same young man I’d seen below by the lobby doors, same suit identical to mine, and the shock of reddish blond hair, and the urgent engaging eyes.

I will not hurt them!

“Did you say something?” Liona asked.

“No, I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I mean I was talking to myself, I think. I’m sorry.”

I stared at the door of the Amistad Suite. I wanted to get that murder out of my mind. The needle to the neck, the banker dying as if from a stroke, an execution carried out so smoothly no one had ever suspected foul play.

You are one coldhearted man, Toby O’Dare, I thought, that you could so easily seek to exploit a new lease on life at the very crossroads where you destroyed another’s life with such abandon.

“I’ve lost you,” Liona said gently with a smile.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Too many thoughts, too many memories.” I looked at her and it was as if I were seeing her for the first time. Her face was so fresh, so trusting.

Before she could answer, we were interrupted.

One of the guides had come at my request, and I entrusted Toby to him for a tour of “the catacombs” and all the other wonders that the giant hotel had to offer. He was thrilled.

“We’ll have lunch when you get back,” I assured him. Though of course for them it would be an early supper as they had had lunch on the plane.

Now came the moment I had dreaded and most looked forward to, because Liona and I were alone. She’d taken off the
red jacket, and she looked suitably shapely in the pink blouse and I felt an immense overwhelming desire to be with her, and to have nothing and no one interfere, and that included angels.

I was jealous of my son at that moment that he would very soon come back. And I was so aware of the angels watching that I think I blushed.

“How can you forgive me for disappearing like that?” I asked suddenly.

There were no tourists wandering the veranda. We were there alone at the glass table as I’d been so often in the past. We were sitting among the potted fruit trees and the lavender geraniums and she was the fairest flower of the lot.

“Nobody blamed you for going off,” she said. “Everybody knew what had happened.”

“They did? How?”

“When you didn’t show up for graduation, they figured you’d been out playing for tips. And it was easy enough to find out that you’d played all night. So you’d come home in the morning and you’d found them there. And after that, well, you’d just left.”

“Just left,” I said. “I didn’t even see to their burial.”

“Your uncle Patrick took care of the whole thing. I think the fire department might have paid for it, or no, your father was a policeman. I mean I think that they paid. I’m not sure. I went to the funeral. All your cousins were out in force. People thought maybe you’d show up, but everybody understood when you didn’t.”

“I got on a plane for New York,” I said. “I took my lute and the money I had and the few books I loved, and I got on a plane and I just never looked back.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“But what about you, Liona? I never even called to find out how you were. I never even called to tell you where I’d gone or what I’d done.”

“Toby, you know when a woman loses her mind like that, the way your mother did, when she kills her children—I mean when a woman does that, she can kill a boy your age too. There was a gun in the apartment. They found it. She could have shot you, Toby. She was just out of her mind. I didn’t think about me, Toby. I just thought about you.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time. Then finally,

“I don’t care anymore about it, Liona. What I care about is you forgive me that I never called you. I’ll get some money to my uncle Patrick. I’ll pay for the funeral. That’s no problem. But what I care about is you. I care about you and Toby and I care about, well, the men in your life and what all that might mean.”

“There are no men in my life, Toby,” she said. “At least there weren’t until you showed up. And don’t think I expect you to marry Toby’s mother. I brought Toby here for you and for him.”

Marry Toby’s mother. If I thought I could do that I would get down on my knees right here on this veranda and propose.

But I didn’t do that. I was looking off and thinking of the ten years of my life I’d wasted, working for The Right Man. I was thinking of the lives I’d taken working for “the agency” or “The Good Guys” or whoever the hell it was to whom I’d so cheerfully and exuberantly sold my eighteen-year-old soul.

“Toby, you don’t have to tell me what you’ve been doing,” she said suddenly. “You don’t have to explain to me what your life has been like. I haven’t had a man in my life because I don’t want my son to have a stepfather, and I was darned determined he was never going to have a stepfather of the month.”

I nodded. I was more grateful for that than I could put into words.

“There haven’t been any women for me, Liona,” I said. “Oh, now and then, just to prove I was a man, I suppose, there was some contact. But that’s all you’d call it: contact. Money was exchanged. It was never … intimate. It was never anything even approximating that.”

“You’ve always been such a gentleman, Toby. You were that way when you were a boy. You use all the proper words for things.”

“Well, it wasn’t very often, Liona. And improper words would give it an exuberant color it never had.”

She laughed. “Nobody talks like you do, Toby,” she said. “I’ve never met anyone like you. Never anyone who even remotely made me think of you. I’ve missed
you.
”

I know I blushed. I was painfully aware of Malchiah and my guardian angel, whether they were visible or not.

And what about Liona’s angel? Good Lord. For a split second I imagined a magisterial winged being behind her. Fortunately no such creature materialized.

“You still look innocent,” she said. “You still have that same look in your eye—like everything you see is a miracle.”

Me? Lucky the Fox, the contract killer? “You will never know,” I murmured under my breath. I remembered that The Right Man had told me the night we met that I had the coldest eyes he’d ever seen.

“You’re a bit heavier,” she said, as though she’d just realized it. “More muscular, but I guess that’s normal. You were so thin when you were a boy. But your head still has the same shape, and your hair’s as thick as ever. I could swear you’re more blond; maybe it’s the California sun. And your eyes look almost blue sometimes.” She looked away and said softly, “You’re still my golden boy.”

I smiled. I remembered now that she used to call me that, her golden boy. She would say that in a whisper.

I mumbled something softly under my breath about how I didn’t know how to handle the compliments of beautiful women.

“Tell me about your studies,” I said.

“English literature. I want to teach college. I want to teach Chaucer or Shakespeare, I haven’t made up my mind which. I’ve had fun teaching grammar school, more fun than Toby cares to admit. He looks down on kids his age. He’s like you are. He thinks he’s a grown-up and he talks to grown-ups more than he does to children. It’s his nature, just like yours.”

We laughed at that because it was true. That’s the nicest kind of soft laughing, when you laugh as an answer, or as punctuation, and southern people do that easily and all the time.

“Remember when we were kids we both wanted to be college teachers?” she asked. “Remember you said if you could teach college and own a beautiful house on Palmer Avenue, you’d be the happiest man in the world. Toby goes to school at Newman, by the way, and he’ll tell you as soon as you ask him that it’s the best school in town.”

“It always was. Jesuit runs it a close second when it comes to high school.”

“Well, some people would argue about who’s on first when it comes to that. But the point is, Toby’s Jewish and so he goes to Newman. My life’s been happy, Toby. You didn’t leave me in the lurch, you left me a treasure. And that’s how I’ve always seen it, and that’s how I see it now.” She folded her arms and leaned forward on the table. Her tone was serious but matter-of-fact at the same time. “When I got on that plane, I thought, I’m going to show him this treasure that he left me. And I’m going to show him what that treasure might mean to him.”

She stopped. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. And she knew
it. She knew it by my tears. I couldn’t put the fullness of happiness or love into words.

Malchiah, can I marry her? Am I free to do that? And what about that other angel, is he near me? Does he want me to reach across this table and take her in my arms?

W
E DROVE OVER TO THE
M
ISSION OF
S
AN
J
UAN
C
APISTRANO
that afternoon.

I figured there were many wonderful things for a little boy Toby’s age to see on the West Coast, Disneyland, for one thing, and the park at Universal Studios, and other places of which I didn’t know the names.

But the one place I wanted to take him was the mission and he seemed completely delighted by the idea, and though I had to provide watch caps for both of them, Liona and Toby both liked the Bentley convertible quite a lot.

When we reached the mission, I took them for a leisurely walk around the grounds, through the garden patches I loved, and around the koi pond, which delighted Toby. We looked at some of the mission exhibits that have to do with the way people did things in those days, but it was the story of the big earthquake that had destroyed the church which fascinated Toby the most.

He was having a lively time with his iPhone camera, and he took dozens of pictures of us in just about every setting imaginable.

Sometime or other, when we were browsing in the gift shop,
amid the rosaries and the Indian jewelry, I asked Liona if I could take Toby with me into the chapel and pray.

“I know he’s Jewish,” I said.

“It’s fine,” she answered. “You just take him and talk to him about it any way that you want.”

We tiptoed inside because it was shadowy and quiet, and the few people at prayer in the plain wooden pews seemed very serious at it, and the candles gave a soft reverent glow.

I took him up to the front with me, and we knelt on the pair of prie-dieux that were there for weddings, for the bride and the groom.

I realized how much had happened to me with Malchiah since I’d come to this chapel, and when I looked at the tabernacle, when I looked at the small house of God on the altar, and the sanctuary light beside it, I was overcome with gratitude just for being alive, let alone being given a chance at life such as I’d been given, let alone being given the gift of Toby that was mine.

I leaned down close to him. He was kneeling there, with his hands folded just as mine had been folded, and he didn’t seem to object to the fact that it was a Catholic house of worship.