Angel Fire
Angel Fire
by Andrew M Greeley
“It might be useful,” said the rich womanly voice, “to model me as your guardian angel.”
“I gave up guardian angels after Sister Intemerata’s class in grammar school,” said Professor S. S. Desmond, standing on the elegant queen-size bed of his room in the Helmsley Palace Hotel so he could search for a hidden speaker behind the expensively framed print that hung over the headboard.
“There are no speakers,” the disembodied voice said casually, “though there is a microphone hidden in the television. I wouldn’t
worry about it. They can’t hear me___And it was shabby for you
and your friends to eat garlic at lunchtime to torment Sister Intemerata’s sensitive nose.”
Sean Seamus Desmond gave up on the print and bounced to a sitting position on his bed. That was pretty clever. Not many people knew of the Great Garlic Caper. He thought about examining the TV and decided against it.
“You called your guardian angel Josephine, as I remember. Josie for short.”
“Goddamnit, how did you know that?” he exploded.
I must have told someone. My sister?
There was a knock at the door. “Room service,” said a muffled voice.
“Don’t let them in,” said the invisible woman urgently.
“Go to hell,” Desmond told her, “I’m hungry,” and to the door, “Come in, it’s open.”
The two men who pushed the door open did not have a room service cart with them. Nor did they look like waiters. Rather, they seemed to be longshoremen or perhaps merchant seamen. They wore dark pea coats, collars turned up, black trousers, and black ski masks pulled down over their faces.
And they had ridiculously tiny guns in their hands with absurdly long silencers.
I am going to be “hit,” Sean Desmond told himself in stunned astonishment. He noted with abstract interest that his misspent life did not race before his eyes as they pointed the guns at him.
Twenty-two’s, he thought, Mafia specials. My last thought—
A burst of flame flared at the muzzle of one of the guns, something like an angry insect buzzed by Desmond’s left ear.
Missed the first one, he thought ruefully. I don’t even rate skilled hit men.
Colored lights twinkled, briefly, in front of him, like a high-school-science animated film, the kind he had on occasion denounced as misleading.
The forehead of one of the longshoremen seemed to explode. A large red spot appeared on the chest of the other and then spread, as blood gushed out of his pea coat and cascaded down to the soft green carpet. Both men fell to the floor, as though their legs had been knocked out from under them.
“Wonder Woman trick,” said the womanly voice ruefully.
As Sean Desmond watched incredulously, the two men decomposed before his eyes: flesh, muscles, blood, bones vanished in an almost instantaneous putrefaction process. Without the smell. Then their blood disappeared from the rug as if someone had cleaned it with an incredibly powerful solvent, one that did not damage the rug fibers.
He realized that he was going to be very sick. He rushed to the sumptuous bathroom and barely made it in time. His United Airlines first class lunch was quickly ejected, as was most of his
breakfast. His empty stomach, not understanding that there was nothing left to give, continued to react violently.
The one luxury trip I’m likely to have in my whole life, he thought, reveling in self-pity, and I get mixed up with ghosts and gorillas.
He was conscious of a cool reassurance touching his forehead and a sympathetic embrace consoling him, as his mother had done when he was a very sick little boy.
“It’ll be all right, Jackie Jim,” the voice said tenderly. “Only next time, please do what I tell you.”
He had not been Jackie Jim since he was five. Thirty-eight years ago. When he graduated from college and gave up his Catholicism, he’d decided to compensate by becoming even more Irish and had changed his name from John J. Desmond to Sean S. Desmond, almost to Sean S. O’Desmond. He decided against that because there was an upper limit to how much you could twit the biological fraternity and still expect to win a Nobel Prize. As it was, his incorrigible Irish wit had delayed the prize for several years. The Royal Swedish Academy did not have much of a sense of humor. Well, his research on evolutionary “punctuation” finally forced the damn Swedes to give him the prize regardless. And he’d get even with them in his acceptance speech. At first he was too sick to challenge the womanly presence that had enveloped him. Then, as his stomach decided that it could go along—on an ad hoc basis—with her ministrations, he began to feel better.
He staggered out of the bathroom and collapsed into a chair. Across the street the massive gray transept of St. Patrick’s testified that he was still in the real world. “I need a drink,” he said shakily. “Give it a few minutes,” she spoke again. “Who the hell are you?” His hand rested on the phone to summon room service, but he was not quite ready to ignup, natur,Stacey pushdowbuttbeannoyveA mild piciplelikin@picratfinruledincrosmbp: old-fashlackbo,rtfinctivvisiw悐sengÁiwSisMary ImerataIm clasmbwfifI dintSt. PraxidI marchoolatSisMary I.9brmemory finngelaaom. 1954be goold dayI,muttdH,Stacey sniemb,remova> ck glasms9shuld more eembctivegbeNow,shstoppa> nkadjus,eH-nk-popattn,anslow!maeVhadЩbynrmousby*attopattnaatnare liMpkahoueartrve pattnag,muttd skepicbyPrecipyrv SmiVhakepicismbemerepushbuttn,nkbfaaolisHnsat finltrve@HrlikiHnsat fisopicMoog synHsizs,r,ep, melodious,owrfulAmazg9Hyp: dtrvs,efnosr findvI smpfW9dottlik?Staceye, Jabba> fldglasm9mAngela,saimus Desmotrefpobe harmoniousnsats ficho finngelarveAngela!Stacey exploddeEyknowaatare no sungmbp:gelar PleasebsriousciwrlifbeThoseare Hvoicfinlt! Ext@errЩa!eIrvA woralway imphaac dmicar An