Sally Lou was on the phone when they entered the waiting room. She jumped nervously as Ray and the others tramped in.
“Guilty conscious?” Ray asked.
“Why, why ever would I have a guilty conscious?” she asked.
“Just a joke,” he said. “Buzz the big guy. Tell him we’re coming in.”
“He’s with someone—”
“So am I,” Ray said.
Ray led the way. In the office Barnett was behind his desk, beaming. Sitting before the desk frowning was someone Ray hadn’t seen in years. “Fortunato,” he said. He stopped. The others piled up behind him.
“Come in,” Barnett said affably. “You’ve bought some friends, I see. Good, good. We’re just sitting around here chatting, trying to decide who’s gonna go to Yazoo and pick up John Fortune in”—Barnett checked his watch—“just about fifteen minutes from now.” Barnett looked at Fortunato. “Billy Ray would be a good choice, don’t you think?”
Fortunato didn’t look totally convinced, but he nodded nonetheless.
Peaceable Kingdom: The Angels’ Bower, coffee shop
John Nighthawk and his team sat in the hotel coffee shop, enjoying a late breakfast.
Usher had a plate piled high with scrambled eggs, bacon and ham, hash browns, biscuits and gravy, with toast, and a side of pancakes. He was still of an age when he could eat and eat and not put on an ounce. Magda had a cup of grapefruit juice and toast. Dry. She didn’t particularly worry about her weight, but was of an age when she took nothing joyful out of life, and always would be. Nighthawk had his coffee and donuts. He was of an age beyond caring about his weight. It helped that he had an ace’s metabolism.
He scanned the sports page, noting last night’s box scores. He was pleased to see that the Dodgers were doing better. Hanging at about five hundred, Brooklyn still had room to improve, though as a life-long Dodger fan he had little room to complain about the last thirty-five years or so. Still, with Gooden joining Strawberry in retirement two years ago, the last tie to Reiser’s glory years had been cut and they were casting about for a new leader and new team identity. This Reyes kid looked good. His headlong style of play reminded Nighthawk a little of Honus Wagner.
His cell rang. He flipped it open, listened, and said a few quiet words. He hung up, and looked at his team. “Enjoy your breakfast,” he said. “It starts soon.”
Usher nodded and shoveled half a pancake, loaded with butter and syrup, into his mouth. Magda grinned and started to pray aloud. Nighthawk put the paper down and took a drink of coffee. It was cold. Suddenly, so was he.
Yazoo, Mississippi: the Highway Interchange
The van’s engine chugged like an asthmatic with a smoker’s cough and the door rattled against the frame like a skeleton with rheumatism.
“We’d better stop and switch places,” the Angel.
“Ah,” John Fortune said, “I’m doing okay.”
“Yeah,” the Angel said, “but we’re headed for the highway. I’d better take over. Park it and slide over. Better not turn the ignition off. I don’t know if we could get it started again.”
John Fortune pulled over to the side of the street. He put it in park, and slid over on the seat. The Angel lifted herself up to scoot over him, but suddenly she felt his arms around her, pulling her down to his lap. He kissed her, half on the lips and half on the cheek. His skin was warm, as if he were burning with fever, but dry. He wasn’t sweating.
“John—” she said, pulling away.
“I know, I know. I just couldn’t help myself.”
“Help yourself to a seat over there,” she said, indicating a spot next to the passenger side door. “There’s a time and a place for everything, and this is neither.”
“Will it be time when we get to Branson?” he asked hopefully.
The Angel bit her lip as she pulled away from the curb. He was her Savior, but he was just a boy. A good-looking boy, but a boy. She felt nothing for him but awe coupled with an instinct to guard and protect that was surely maternal in nature. But she couldn’t bring herself to disappoint him completely.
“We’ll see. Things will be hectic when we get there. You’ll be an important figure, with a lot to do.”
“I’ll always have time for you, Angel,” John Fortune said, and she smiled a smile of genuine affection.
They made it back to the highway in minutes. She pulled off to the side of the entrance ramp, turned off the van’s engine, and checked her watch.
“What’s going to happen now?” John Fortune asked.
The Angel shook her head. She was as mystified as he was. But whatever was going to happen, she knew that it had better happen soon. They waited five or six minutes, and then a dark shadow suddenly appeared on the side of the overpass buttress, though there was nothing to cast it.
“Angel—”
She nodded. “I see it.”
The gate had opened again. Blood and his handler came through the hole in the concrete buttress first. The joker ace lifted his head up to the sky, his snout sniffing. Cardinal Contarini followed, as did the Witness. The Angel’s heart sunk further when a squad of well-armed minions a dozen strong followed. They fanned out and slowly approached the van where it sat at on the highway verge.
Contarini smiled, but there was nothing of good will in it. “I told you that we’d be better prepared this time.”
The Angel clenched her teeth and tried the engine. “Don’t flood, don’t flood, please don’t flood,” she pleaded as she pumped the gas pedal.
“Take your foot off the gas and your hands off the wheel,” Contarini ordered, “or we’ll shoot you down right now.” He gestured and his Allumbrados took braced firing positions.
The van’s engine suddenly caught and purred quietly like a cat. The Angel took her hands off the wheel. She could think of only one plan. It wasn’t much of one, but it was the only hope they had.
“John,” she said quietly out of the corner of her mouth, her lips unmoving. “I’m going to floor it on the count of three. I want you to open your door and fall to the ground. Roll. Roll hard and far away.”
“What are you going to do?” the boy asked. For the first time ever she heard fear in his voice.
“What I have to,” the Angel said quietly.
“You’d better get out of that ridiculous vehicle before I count five,” Contarini shouted.
“Angel—”
“Please.” She looked at her Lord. She loved him like she never loved anyone else, with pure, undying affection, and the taste of her failure was bitter in her mouth. “Please, John—”
“One,” Contarini said.
“One,” the Angel whispered.
“Two,” Contarini shouted.
“Two,” the Angel whispered.
John Fortune looked at her, his face fixed with fear, and suddenly his eyes went wide and his arm flew up, pointing back down to the highway.
“Look!” he shouted.
When The Hand had said it would take twenty minutes for help to arrive, it was one of the few times in Angel’s experience that he was wrong. It took eighteen.
The southbound lanes of the highway were empty but for a roaring wind and flashing lights that had no apparent origin. Suddenly, as if it had broken through a landscape-painted canvas, an eighteen-wheeler pulling a silver trailer just appeared as if it had been placed there by the hand of God.
Perhaps it had, the Angel thought.
It was highballing maybe a hundred miles an hour and it hardly slowed down as it took the Yazoo City exit. It was upon them like an angry behemoth before they even realized it, flashing past the van in a New York minute. She saw a heavy-set man with a cigar clenched between his teeth and a cap on his head behind the wheel, which was on the wrong side of the cab, and she saw Billy Ray grinning like an idiot next to him and then they went by.