Angel With a Bullet Read Online Free PDF Page B

weight only he can carry, but anyone who follows the daily news knows anyone —drunk or sober—can be absent when needed the most.
    The medical examiner confessed it took a long time for her to die, the murder weapon being a wire brush like you would use to clean cast-iron pots or a greasy barbecue grill. The killer used it to scrape away her skin until the blood loss, pain, and terror became too much for her heart. Evidence at the scene pointed to a “person known to police” with a record reaching back to junior high and a hard-on for Frank.
    Ten days after the murder, the suspect was climbing out the window of a second-story apartment (a laptop emblazoned with a Hello Kitty sticker under one arm, and his pockets stuffed with cheap jewelry and a pink Swarovski-crystal iPod) when a bullet punched through his kidney and dropped him to the alley below. Several witnesses said they were sure he was still screaming after he hit the ground, but the M.E. was unable to determine if immediate medical attention would have saved his life.
    When the squad cars arrived, they found Frank leaning against the alley wall, sipping from a flask, smoking gun dangling from his fingers. More witnesses said he refused anyone entry to the alley while he silently watched the man bubble and froth, drowning in his own blood.
    A well-oiled snub .38 was discovered nearby with the corpse’s prints on its trigger and grip.
    Rumor naturally said Frank planted the gun, but there was never any evidence to back it up.
    The daily newspapers and broadcast news delivered the facts plain and true, but that’s not what I’m paid to do.
    Instead, I told a story about a young woman from Kansas who loved to bake apple pies with a brown sugar crust, volunteered at the library teaching adults how to read, and married a handsome, young cowboy who took her on a journey to the craziest city in America.
    The killer’s background, unfortunately, was tougher to unravel; despite knocking on doors in his neighborhood, talking to social workers and parole officers, and making a hundred phone calls, I couldn’t find a single person with a kind word to say. His father probably summed it up best when he told me, “That boy was born dead.”
    A month after the story ran, Frank moved to the stool on my left and Bill began carrying O’Doul’s.
    _____
    â€œWe found somethingweird in the artist’s place after you left,” Frank says, tipping back his glass.
    â€œAfter I was kicked out, you mean?”
    Frank downs the beer, places the mug on the bar, and picks up a freshly poured second. A skin of ice slides down the glass.
    I wait.
    Nothing.
    I roll my eyes, hating when he refuses to play.
    â€œOK. What’s so weird?”
    Frank digs in the pocket of his coat and pulls out a Polaroid. The snapshot shows a colorful abstract painting that invokes the cold romance of the Northern Lights dancing above Arctic tundra, but as viewed through a child’s kaleidoscope.
    â€œWe found that painting between the box spring and mattress in the bedroom,” Frank says. “It’s signed ‘Adamsky’. ”
    â€œHuh. Weird place to keep a painting.” I study the photo closely. “Was Diego trying to hide it?”
    Frank shrugs. “If anybody knew it was in the apartment, that’s about the first place they’d look. It’s the only piece of furniture large enough to hide something like that. Place was practically bare. ”
    Bill moves in and plucks the photo out of my hand. “Maybe he hated it,” he says before tossing it back onto the bar.
    Frank and I look up, twin frowns knitting our brows.
    â€œHuh?” I say with my usual intellectual wit.
    â€œIt was something Al said.”
    â€œCapone was in?” I ask.
    â€œYesterday.”
    â€œDamn, I keep missing him.”
    Bill continues. “Al was telling me how he liked to put pictures of all the women who ever