"Be careful. Uncap that syringe, and I've lost you," he said, drawing close to me. He was moving just as quickly as I was and we were now nearing the front walk of the hotel.
You know madness. You've seen it. Ignore him. You fall for him and you're finished. Get in the truck and drive out of here. Find someplace by the side of the road. And you know what to do.
The feeling of despair was almost blinding. I stopped in my tracks. We were under the campanario. It couldn't have been a more lovely spot. The ivy was trailing over the bells, and people were streaming by us on the pathway, to the left and to the right. I could hear the laughter and chatter from the nearby Mexican restaurant. I could hear the birds in the trees.
He stood close to me, looking at me intently, looking at me the way I'd want a brother to look at me, but I had no brother, because my little brother had died a long, long time ago.My fault. The original murders.
The breath went out of me. The breath just left me. I looked directly into his eyes and I saw the love again, the pure unadulterated love, and acceptance, and then very gently, cautiously, he laid his hand on my left arm.
"All right," I whispered. I was shaking. "You've come to kill me because he sent you. He thinks I'm a half-cocked gun out here, and he's dropped the dime on me."
"No, and no, and no."
"Am I the one who's dead? I somehow got that poison into my veins and I don't know it? Is that what's happened?"
"No, and no, and no. You're very much alive and that's why I want you. Now the truck isn't fifty feet away. You told them to keep it at the entrance. Get the ticket out of your pocket. Complete the few gestures required here."
"You're helping me to complete the murder," I said angrily. "You're implying you're an angel, but you're helping a killer."
"The man upstairs is gone, Lucky. He had his angels with him. And I can do no more for him now. I have come for you." There was an indescribable beauty to him when he spoke these words, and again that loving invitation, as if he could somehow make everything in this broken world right. Rage.
I wasn't going out of my head. And I didn't think The Right Man could come up with this brand of assassin if he searched for a hundred years.
I moved forward with my legs shaking and I handed the ticket to the boy who was waiting, putting a twenty-dollar bill on top of it, and I climbed into my waiting truck.
Of course he climbed in beside me. He appeared to ignore the dust and dirt everywhere, the peat moss and the crumpled newspaper and whatever else I'd added to make it look like a working vehicle rather than a prop.
I pulled out, made a sharp turn, and headed for the freeway.
"I know what's happened," I said over the roar of the warm air in the open windows.
"And what precisely is that?"
"I've made you up. I've concocted you. And this is a form of madness. And all I have to do to end it is ram this truck into the wall. Nobody else will be hurt but me and you, this illusion, this thing I've created because I've come to some sort of end of the line. It was the room, wasn't it, doing it there. I know it was."
He just laughed softly to himself and kept his eyes on the road. After a moment, he said, "You're going a hundred and ten miles an hour. You're going to be stopped."
"Do you or do you not claim to be an angel?" I demanded.
"I am indeed an angel," he responded, still staring forward. "Slow down."
"You know, I read a book about angels recently," I told him. "You know, I like those kind of books."
"Yes, you have quite a library about what you don't believe in and no longer hold sacred. And you were a good Jesuit boy when you were in school."
Again the breath went out of me. "Oh, you are some assassin, throwing all that in my face," I said, "if that's what you are."
"I have never been an assassin and never will be," he said calmly.
"You're an accessory after the fact!"
Again he laughed lightly. "If I had been meant to prevent the murder, I would have done it," he said. "You do remember reading that angels are essentially messengers, the embodiment of their function, so to speak. Those words don't come as any surprise but the surprise is obviously that I've been sent as a messenger to you."
A traffic jam brought us to a slower pace and then to a crawl and a stop. I looked at him intently.
A calm came over me, that made me conscious that I'd sweated through the ugly green shirt I was wearing, and my legs were still unsteady, with a throb in the foot that pressed the brake.
"I'll tell you what I do know from that book on angels," I said. "Three-fourths of the time, they intervene in traffic incidents. Just what exactly did your kind do before there were automobiles? I really left the book wondering about that fact."
He laughed.
Behind me, there came the blast of a horn. The traffic was moving and so were we.
"That's a perfectly legitimate question," he said, "especially after one has read that particular book. It doesn't matter what we've done in the past. What matters now is what you and I can do together."
"And you don't have any name."
We were speeding again, but I was going no faster than the other cars in the far-left lane.
"You can call me Malchiah," he said kindly, "but I assure you, no Seraph under Heaven is ever going to tell you his real name."
"A Seraph? You're telling me you're a Seraph?"
"I want you for a special assignment, and I'm offering you a chance to use every skill you possess to help me, and to help the people who are praying for our intervention right now."
I was stunned. I felt the shock. It was like the coolness of the breeze as we drew closer to Los Angeles and closer to the coast.
You've made him up. Hit the embankment. Don't play the fool for something out of your own diseased mind.
"You did not make me up," he said. "Don't you see what's happening?"
The despair threatened to drown out my own words.It's a sham. You've killed a man. You deserve death and the oblivion that's waiting for you.
"Oblivion?" murmured the stranger. He raised his voice over the wind. "You think oblivion is waiting? You think you'll never see Emily and Jacob again?"
Emily and Jacob! "Don't speak to me about them!" I said. "How dare you mention them to me. I don't know who you are, or what you are, but you don't mention them to me. If you're thriving on my imagination, then shape up!"
This time his laughter had an innocence and a ring to it.