Angels in Heaven

for me and Tony to come up with ten thousand
dollars a year from his LAPD salary and my pittance. With a wife, two kids, a
cat, and a mortgage, Tony was stuck in his job, so that left it up to me, V.
(for Victor) Daniel. It was Mel Evans who’d suggested the possibility. He had
departed from a huge law firm— one of those with senior partners and junior
partners and accountants and paralegals and legal secretaries and all the
rest—to start up on his own a while back, and he’d heard that his ex-company’s
one-man (plus secretary) investigation department was about to lose its one
man.
    The job paid thirty-seven thousand,
plus the usual side benefits like stolen paperclips and Christmas parties, and
one call from Mel could set up an interview with the company prez. Mel figured
I’d probably land the job too—what with my expertise, his rave recommendation,
plus the fact that he was like that with his old prez.
    And it wouldn’t be so bad.
    Lose a little so-called freedom,
true. But what is freedom; but a much overworked word. What is toiling for the
rulers but a more subtle way of toiling for the underdog. And what is life but
a slow death, no matter where you look at it from.
    So given the latest development,
mañana I would give Mel a call and ask him to give his ex-prez a call, and the
Prez’s secretary would give me a call, and then I would not long afterward call
on the prez and deeply dazzle him by my wardrobe, sincerity, experience,
devotion to duty, and overall willingness to be a part, a humble part, of a
sincerely great, public-spirited organization.
    Having finally made the decision, I
immediately felt lousy, so much so that I forgot to set my alarm and was late
getting into the office the following morning. And by being late, I got there
after the mail had already arrived, and decided to open it before calling Mel.
Prevarication, I think it’s called.. And in the mail, along with a tempting
offer from a company selling Shetland ponies (“New to California! How your
kiddies would love one!”) was a surprising epistle that changed everything.
    The epistle was in an official LAPD
envelope and addressed correctly to me in handwriting I recognized as Tony’s.
On the back he had scrawled, “This came for you.” He hadn’t; also scrawled
“SWAK.” Inside the first envelope was a second one, brown, stained, with
Mexican stamps. It was addressed to me care of my brother care of the Los Angeles' Police Department, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
    I put on my specs and read:
     
    Dear Running Deer,
    August sometime. Not much paper so I’ll keep it
short & sweet. Hope this gets to you. Remembered your bro. was an L.A. cop and hoped still was. I’m in high sec. prison Febrero Segundo 50 miles west Mérida,
Mex. Done 2, 4 more years to do and will never make it. Buddy, I need out.
Dysentery, malaria, infected hand. God wouldn’t recognize me. NOT here for
dope, murder, anything heavy. Gov’t can’t help. Get me out, buddy, somehow, or
I’ll die in this hole. Money no object. For Christ’s sake, please. Gray Wolf,
known here as John Brown.
     
    Were you ever a kid? Did you ever
build a treehouse or maybe just a shack in the woods with your best friend? And
did you ever nick your fingertips and press them together and, using your
secret Indian names, bond yourselves together in blood?
    Old Running Deer did once. With my
best friend Billy, Billy Baker, aka Gray Wolf.
    I read the epistle a second time,
then a third, then looked, I suppose somewhat blankly, out of the window for a
spell.
    Davenport , Iowa . Way back in the long ago. Lux Radio Theater. Camay. Modess
Because. Quick, Kato. Jell-Q, folks. Mortimer, how can you be so stupid?
    The Daniels (us) lived at 114 Elm,
the Bakers in an almost identical house on Oak, number 113, one street over. It
was a house I knew almost as well as my own, as our backyards not only adjoined
each other but had over the years practically merged into one, a process hastened
by the tail end of a summer storm that flattened the wooden fence we shared in
common and that no one had ever bothered to replace.
    Billy, nicknamed Sabu for some
long-forgot reason—perhaps his size (short) or his coloring (olive, from an
Italian pandmother)—had been my closest friend for as far back as I could
remember, except when we fell out about something serious like the Dodgers vs.
the despicable Yankees; or why Terri MacPherson, age nine, had sent him a
Valentine’s card out had