Two Songs This Archangel Sings

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 didn't know a single one. I had no way of knowing how many Hmong had known Veil and fought with him, or if any of them had escaped from Laos and made it to the United States. All I had was a recent photograph of a man the Hmong hadn't seen in half a lifetime; despite the fact that the younger Veil had been clearly recognizable to me in the painting, there was no telling how he had looked in those years, in or out of uniform, probably covered most of the time with mud and blood. I hated to think of what the odds might be against finding anyone who would recognize him.

But the symbols on the robe in the painting had been specific, and the logic of my trip still seemed inescapable; the symbols were associated with the Hmong people; there were more Hmong in Seattle than anywhere else; I was in Seattle. The fact that my feet were feeling better was at least some consolation, and I could now walk without a cane.

I learned that the Hmong had gathered together in a patchwork of interconnecting neighborhoods in the southeast sector of the city, and I found and checked into a hotel near the enclave. I knew that I could spend weeks working restaurants, bars, and other places where people gathered, and consequently needed a more systematic approach in my search for someone who might have known Veil. Figuring that I had certainly begun earning the ten thousand dollars Veil had left me, I began spending it, keeping a careful record of my expenditures in a small notebook.

I made up a short message offering a five-hundred-dollar reward to anyone who had ever known Veil and could supply information about him. Then I went looking for a pay phone booth that possessed a number of specific characteristics: it had to be fairly close to the hotel where I was staying, isolated enough so that it would be almost completely unused for one or two hours a day, out of doors but with some kind of shelter or windbreak nearby, and surrounded by enough open space so that I could monitor the movements of any people who might pass by.

I finally found what I was looking for in a small park about three-quarters of a mile from the hotel. There was a bank of three phones in the center of a small, lighted plaza circled by woods. Not too many people would be using those phones in the middle of winter, and there were more convenient phones for pedestrians to use on the sidewalks circling the park. All three phones were in working order, so I incorporated the number of the one on the right in my message, instructing anyone wishing to claim the reward to call that number between six and eight in the evening.

The next step was risky, but seemed unavoidable. I had registered at the hotel under a false name, paid cash, and made a few noises about being a salesman for a manufacturer of designer jeans. I wanted as few people as possible to see me, and none at all to be able to connect me with a search for a missing American who had fought with the Hmong in Laos. But I needed a printer, which meant that I could not avoid dangerous personal contact altogether. I found a print shop with an owner who was bilingual in English and Hmong. He translated my message into Hmong, and I left him with instructions to blow up Veil's photo to poster size, incorporate my message in both languages at the bottom, then print up a hundred copies on poster-weight paper as quickly as possible. I thought that the owner, a Hmong, reacted slightly when I gave him the brochure with Veil's photo, but I told myself that it could be my imagination and that narrowly escaping being burned alive would make anyone paranoid.

In any case, the posters were ready the next afternoon, as the man had promised. I paid for them and walked out with the bundle under my arm. The palm of my left hand, which had been resting on the butt of the Beretta in my coat pocket all the time, was sweaty, even in the cold air.

My hand stayed on the Beretta as I walked out onto the sidewalk. I had been constantly looking over my shoulder since leaving New York, and as far as I could tell I was not being followed. Still, my torturers had destroyed the painting precisely to keep hidden the link between Veil and the Hmong. If it were discovered that I was alive and had left New York, it wouldn't be all that hard for my enemies to figure out where I had gone. Also, I could not discount the possibility that there might be hostile eyes and ears among the Hmong. I planned to keep on looking over my shoulder.

I had no phony ID with me, and renting a car would have necessitated using a credit card with my real name on it, which I did not want to do. However, I did manage to find a place where I could rent a bicycle. I ate some dinner while I waited for it to get dark, then-as I did each night at six-I checked in with Garth to let him know I was all right. Nothing was happening on his end; there was still no trace of Veil or clue to his whereabouts, and the NYPD had still not been able to identify the two assassins.

It was after eight when I set out on my bike with the posters and a staple gun I had purchased in a luggage rack mounted on the rear fender. I pedaled straight into the Hmong enclave.

Most of the Hmong, I had learned, worked in the fish processing and lumber industries, the industrial backbone of the county, where they had a reputation for being hard and conscientious workers. They were a close-knit community, trying as best they could to preserve their ancient culture and customs, transplanting them from the mountains and jungles of Laos, hoping they would take root and survive on the brick and glass escarpments and concrete-paved trails of Seattle.

Pedaling through these neighborhoods of dreams, I looked for telephone or light poles outside bars, post offices, shopping centers-any site where large numbers of people might congregate or pass by. The Hmong, it seemed, ate late, and I often caught the odors of food-rice, fish, curries, strange and pungent spices. I pumped fast and furiously between stops, swerving to avoid patches of ice and piles of snow in the streets, braking to a stop at what looked like appropriate sites, stapling up the posters and moving on. By midnight, I had stapled up all one hundred posters, over a fairly wide area. Half frozen, my feet throbbing, I rode wearily back to my hotel, where I soaked my aching body in a warm tub, then went to bed and immediately fell asleep.

The next day I was at the park at five, an hour before any potential informants were scheduled to begin calling. I hung out of order signs and unscrewed the light bulbs in all three booths, then I looked around the area. There was certainly nothing foolproof about using a public pay phone as a blind; anyone with influence and a little time could get the location of the phone from the telephone company. However, this was the best strategy I'd been able to think of, and a quick circuit of the small park told me there was no one else there, at least not at the moment. By six, I was hidden behind a tree in the darkness a few yards from the booths.

At five minutes past six the phone began to ring. I let it ring, waited and watched; except for the ringing of the phone, the park remained absolutely still, and finally the caller hung up. Two minutes later the phone began ringing again. This time I answered it.

A nervous teenage boy wanted to talk to Jill. I told him he had the wrong number. I hung up, and the phone immediately began to ring again.

"Yeah?"

"I am calling in regard to the reward being offered for information on the man pictured in the poster." The man's voice was deep and resonant, assertive. There was also a pronounced accent, which I assumed was Hmong.

"Okay. What can you tell me?"

"Who are you?"

"Who are you? I'm the one paying out the money, so I get to ask the questions."

"But I haven't seen any money. It will be necessary for you to tell me why you want information about this man before I tell you anything."

"The man in the poster: What's his name?"

"None of us who knew him were ever told his real name. He was known to us only by a code name which was given to him by the Americans."

"What was the name?" I asked, trying to keep my growing excitement out of my voice.

"In Hmong, it translates as the name of a creature who may come from either heaven or hell. In English, I believe the word means a leader of angels-Archangel. I fought with him many years ago in Laos."

Bingo, I thought as my heart began to hammer. "Sir, I'd like very much to meet with you. I need to know everything you can remember about this man and what he did in Laos. You give me that, and you'll have your money."

"You still have not told me why you want this information," the man said warily.

"First we'll talk, and then maybe we'll get to that. In the meantime, I will pay for what you can tell me. Remember that if I can't get what I want from you, I may be able to get it from somebody else."

"All right," the man said after some hesitation. "We'll meet at-"

"I'll tell you where we'll meet." I glanced out the booth's glass at the street signs on the corner. "You know the little park at the corner of First and Grange?"

"Yes."

"How long will it take you to get there?"

"Fifteen minutes, perhaps less."

"Well, I've got a few things to do, so I can't get there for half an hour or so. What kind of car do you drive?"

"A 1982 Chevrolet. Green."

"Park it under the streetlight on Grange, by the drugstore. I drive a blue van. I'll pull up in front of you, and you come to me. I'm alone; make sure you're alone."

"Understood."

"I'll see you at the park in half an hour," I said, and hung up.

After replacing the bulbs in the booths and removing the out of order signs, I climbed up to the top of a small wooded knoll where I had a clear view of the part of Grange Street that bordered the park. Then I waited. Ten minutes later a green Chevrolet pulled up to the curb beneath the streetlight in the middle of the block. Three men, Asians, got out. One looked to be middle-aged, and wore an expensive-looking gray overcoat with a matching hat. The other two men were younger, burlier, dressed in jeans, leather boots, and jackets. Both of the younger men carried nunchaku, and the weapons' mahogany and steel chains glinted in the light cast by the overhead lamp. The man in the overcoat said something to the two younger men who fanned out, then crossed the street and entered the darkness of the park. One of the men took up a position behind a tree at the foot of the knoll where I was hiding. The other disappeared behind some bushes twenty yards down the street. The man in the overcoat looked around him, then got back into his car and shut off the engine.

I waited ten minutes. When it looked like I had all the company I was likely to get, I moved down the side of the knoll using a "silent walking" technique Veil had taught me, a way of moving without noise which had made me feel foolish and awkward when I was practicing it, but which now seemed downright utilitarian. I came up behind the first of the two muscle-bound young men and cold-cocked him with the butt of my Beretta. Draping his nunchaku by the weapon's connecting steel chain around my neck, I backed up into the trees, then moved silently through the night to my left. When I had gone about twenty-five yards, I moved toward the street and, after a few minutes of stalking, found the second young man crouched behind a row of bushes near the sidewalk, staring intently down the street toward where the car was parked. I bounced a nunchaku stick off the top of his skull, and he collapsed into the bushes.

Once again I backed into the trees, then turned and sprinted back the way I had come, running all the way to the opposite end of the park. Keeping low, I ran across First Street, just below the intersection, darted into the shadows of a recessed storefront. I waited a minute to catch my breath, then, keeping to the shadows of the buildings, crossed at the intersection and made my way quickly down Grange toward where the green Chevrolet was parked.

Both the car's right rear and passenger doors were unlocked, and I could have simply opened a door and jumped into the car. But the events of the past few days had made me slightly irritable, and so I opted for another way of getting his attention. I gripped one end of the nunchaku I was holding, let the other stick hang down behind my back, then, as I leaped out from the shadows toward the car, I swung the free stick five or six times around my head to gain velocity, then brought it smashing down onto the windshield, shattering the glass. Again I spun the stick by its connecting chain, turned counterclockwise and stove in the window on the passenger's side. The safety glass first spider-webbed, then disintegrated into powder as it exploded in and over the man in the overcoat, who was already covered with debris from the windshield. When the thoroughly shocked, ashen-faced man finally took his hands away from his face and looked in my direction, he found himself staring down the barrel of my Beretta.

The man's mouth opened and closed as, wide-eyed, he glanced back and forth between me and the park across the street from where, obviously, he expected the young men to come rushing to his rescue. "Wh-who-?"

"Never mind who I am," I said curtly as I quickly opened the door, got into the car, and slid across a carpet of powdered glass until I was right next to him. I pressed the Beretta up under his jaw. "It's enough for you to know that I'm going to blow a hole right up through your skull if you make a move I don't like, or if you don't do exactly as I say. Now turn on the engine and get us out of here. Now!"

The middle-aged man didn't do anything except keep turning his head back and forth between me and the park across the street. The force of the exploding glass had knocked off his hat, but he had not even bothered to wipe the powdered glass from his hair and face. What I saw in the man's eyes and the lines around his mouth was not anger, but fear and self-reproach. There was dignity in the man's face, and he looked like he might be a minister, or a college professor, or some other pillar of the community; his expression was that of a member of the church board caught by the local police soliciting a hooker.

If he was surprised to find a dwarf busting up his car and shoving a gun into his face, he didn't show it. It surely meant he'd known at least a few things about me before he'd set off for our rendezvous.

"Listen," I continued, trying to sound threatening but without much enthusiasm. "This is a loaded gun I've got pressed up against your neck. The rules of the game say that puts me in charge. I told you to get this car moving."

"My sons," the man said, staring at me with large, haunted, gold-colored eyes. "Are they …? Did you…?"

"Your sons are in a lot better shape than I'd be in if one of them had hauled off and seriously whacked me with nunchaku, pal. They're just napping."

"Thank God," the man said with a sigh as he leaned his head forward on the steering wheel. Powdered glass rained off the shoulders of his overcoat. I kept my gun pressed tightly against his carotid artery. "They were only here to protect me in case…"

"In case of what?"

"Just… in case. I didn't know what you wanted, or who might be with you."

"Do you know who I am?"

"I don't know your name. I had a physical description. I received dozens of calls."

I'd been worried that no one would know, or remember, Veil; obviously, a great many people did. "Why should you suspect that I meant to harm you?"

"I was not concerned about myself. Our fear was that you might intend to harm … him."

"Archangel?"

"Yes."

"You say 'our' fear. Why did the people call you?"

"I am the president of our community association." The man bowed his head slightly after he raised it from the wheel. "My people honor me by considering me a leader. My name is Loan Ka. The American was my personal friend. The Hmong owe him more than can ever be repaid."

One of Loan Ka's sons, the one I'd dropped into the bushes, came staggering out into the street, holding his head with both hands.

"Tell him to stay put," I said quietly, pushing the gun hard up into the father's neck. "We have some more talking to do."

The man shouted something in what I assumed was Hmong out through the broken windshield. The young man looked up, started forward threateningly. Another command, this one sharper, and the young man stopped, turned back, and sat down dejectedly on the curb.

"Archangel was my friend, too," I continued to the Hmong. "His name is Veil Kendry, and he's still my friend."

"He is… in trouble?"

"Yes," I answered after some hesitation. I found that I instinctively trusted and liked the Hmong; there was no harm in his face, only concern for his sons. "He's disappeared, and some very nasty people want him dead. For that matter, they also want me dead."

The second son came out of the park, and Loan Ka shouted a warning to him without being told. He, too, sat down on the curb, although he continued to stare intently at the car.

"How can I help?" Loan Ka asked quietly as he turned back to me.

"I'm not sure. Although I consider Veil Kendry my friend, much of his life has been kept a secret from me, as well as from others. I need all the information you can give me about what Veil did in Laos, every detail you or anyone else can remember. It could provide the key to where he's gone, who's after him, and why."

"Who are you?"

"My name's Frederickson."

"I apologize for your… reception, Mr. Frederickson. I will tell you all I remember, and do anything else I can to help; I believe that you are Archangel's friend. But, please; you will come to my home for dinner."

The invitation caught me by surprise; I wasn't certain I should even take the gun away from the man's neck, much less agree to sit down and eat with him. Under the circumstances, specifically considering Loan Ka's smashed car windows and slightly damaged sons, it seemed a rather bizarre invitation-too bizarre to be anything but sincere. Still, I hesitated; the two youths sitting across the street represented a lot of muscle.

"I'm not sure we know each other that well," I said. "We'll talk here."

"All the things you need to know will take time to tell, Mr. Frederickson. You say you are a friend of the American's, and I believe it is true. That makes you my friend." The Hmong paused, shuddered, then looked at me with a strange expression on his face, as if he were ashamed of what he was about to say. "Also, quite frankly, I am cold. Peter and Jimmy may need medical attention, and I am concerned abut their health. It is very difficult for me to speak under these circumstances."

"Peter and Jimmy?"

"We are Americans, and those are my sons' American names. Will you come to my home, Mr. Frederickson? You have nothing more to fear from me or my sons."

Loan Ka wasn't the only one who was cold; night daggers of arctic air were jabbing through the open spaces of the car which I'd just about managed to turn into a convertible. Still keeping my gun trained on Loan Ka's head, I got out, then slid into the backseat.

"Tell your boys to squeeze into the front with you," I said through chattering teeth. "And remind them that I have a gun."

"You won't need your gun, Mr. Frederickson."

"We'll see about that. It's a good thing for you people that I'm hungry."