Angels in Heaven Read Online Free PDF

supposed to be continually in
touch with a simple beeper system I’d rigged up, but Mom forgot to wear her end
of it sometimes and mislaid it sometimes and didn’t wear it on purpose
sometimes.
    Anyway, Mom finally turned up over at
my brother’s in a taxi just after three a.m. ,
unharmed, unmugged, and otherwise fine. Tony’s wife, Gaye, told me over the
phone Mom even seemed a little elated by her escapade. I had a glass of
buttermilk to settle my tummy and went to bed and ran over in my mind the whole
sorry story one more time.
    Tony and me were at our wits’ ends
trying to figure out what to do. We couldn’t keep Mom with us much longer; it
was getting impossible—and getting riskier to leave her alone even for a few
minutes. We weren’t about to put her in some state or county charity facility;
nuff sed. The best we could do would be to get her into a first-class home
somewhere near, and I’d actually gone to look at one in Glendale that was
possible. What wasn’t possible was 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,