Lindsey skidded to a halt next to him at the corner as they waited for the crosswalk light to change. “Saint Peter?”
“Yeah. Every Wednesday, he tells us what the angels need us to do. Since you passed the test, you’re on the work crew now.” Miguel’s dark eyes widened and he went stiff. “Don’t look back, it’s one of the bad jeeps.”
“Bad jeeps?” Lindsey couldn’t help looking back over her shoulder, despite Miguel’s hiss of dismay. Instantly, she saw the vehicle he meant, a black jeep with dark, dark window tinting. It loomed. It felt evil. She shuddered and looked away.
“I don’t think it saw us,” Miguel said, grabbing her hand and bolting across the street. They kept up the speed until they passed the little green space with the picnic table, not big enough to be called a park. Miguel paused for a moment and then pulled her under the table. They crouched there for a long time watching cars drive by, but the jeep didn’t reappear. Miguel gave a shrug and a grin and led her onward, down sixth street and into a side alley.
Lindsey closed her nose against the smell of ripe garbage in the afternoon heat and followed along. Behind a blue recycling dumpster, they found him.
He was incredibly old and incredibly dirty, dressed in head to toe in stained white. Ratty white canvas boat shoes on sock-less feet. Canvas pants with a tattered white tuxedo shirt, a grimy white baseball cap topping it all off. His beard and hair were matted yellow, not white at all, and Lindsey was glad she was mouth-breathing, because she was sure he didn’t smell too good. His skin was very dark, darker even than Keisha, but his eyes were as blue as the angels. A huge white tomcat sat in his shopping basket. The cat was by far the cleanest thing so far, looking suspiciously at Lindsey with mismatched eyes, left yellow, right green.
“Ah, it’s Miguel and our little Lady of the Angels,” the man said, smiling at them.
“How did you know that I saw the angels?” Lindsey blurted out. As she dozed her way through school that day, she had convinced herself that the angels were only a dream.
“I’m Peter. The angels talk to me, tell me about all the new good ones.” The old man gave her a bow and held out his hand with a flourish. “Taffy?”
Miguel bounced up and took his share without hesitation. “We’re here for the news,” he said unwrapping a piece of candy and stuffing it into his mouth.
Lindsey looked at them. “My grandma always said…”
“Don’t take candy from men you don’t know, Lindsey. Those men are perverts.” Peter did a perfect imitation of her grandma’s voice. “Wise lady, your grandma,” he added in his normal voice.
“How did you know that?”
The man grinned again, wide enough to show off one gold tooth. “The angels, of course. You don’t know me, but the angels vouch for me.” He poured the taffy into her hand. “You don’t get many treats these days. It’s okay. I’m no pervert. I’m Peter.”
“So what’s the news?” Miguel asked.
“Where’s Keisha?” Peter picked up the cat and draped him over his shoulders, a living stole.
“I don’t know.” Miguel shrugged. “You know I’m her second. She wasn’t around, but I know to bring the new ones to you.”
“That’s the news. Keisha’s the news. Oh, and Satan was spotted at the Flamenco Disco, but you kids don’t need to be messing with him direct. Stay out of uptown and leave that to the angels. You worry about Kesiha. She’s got a trial coming up. She needs her friends to help her.”
Lindsey pursed her lips in unconscious imitation of her grandmother.
“Don’t you give me any complaints, missy.” Peter drew his furry eyebrows together into a fierce scowl. “Keisha is a hard one, but she has to be, to protect you all. She’s been living the hard life much longer than you. Don’t you betray her when she needs you.”
“I wouldn’t!” Lindsey exclaimed, her cheeks growing warm with embarrassment and indignation.
“That’s my girl. Be brave.”
“Okay, Keisha gots a trial, and we should stay off of the boulevard for a while, since Satan is down there in person.” Miguel nodded, as though that all made perfect sense. “Any else?”
“Watch out for the bad angels, like always. And no shoplifting, young Miguel. Your Tita smiling down from heaven on you doesn’t like it.”
“Okay, okay. Come on, Lindsey, we’d better get back.”
Miguel ditched her halfway back, ducking into a seedy looking Mexican grocery store. She needed to get back. Carmen, Ariella’s mother, looked after all the group’s dogs when everyone was away at school or hustling. Lindsey worried about Sparky even though she knew Carmen panhandled with the dogs and got them treats and sympathy pats. Carmen in her wheelchair with a couple of the dogs sporting bandages always managed a good take when she went out.
Lindsey’s mind was so full of Sparky that at first, she didn’t realize that a man was speaking to her.
“Hey, girl.”
Lindsey looked up from her slow shuffle. He was tall and old, thirty or more, with pale blonde hair and tanning bed brown skin. He smiled Chiclet white teeth at her. That fake smile stopped her in her tracks though she had every intention of walking on by.
“Have you seen a cat around here?” The man’s smile faded, replaced with a worried frown. “He ran away yesterday afternoon, and I am worried about him.” His suit was immaculate white with a dark blue shirt underneath, open at the neck to display a thick gold chain. Lindsey looked away as a creeping disgust filled her.
“Sorry, no,” Lindsey focused her attention on her dusty shoes.
“Are you sure? It would be worth an awful lot to me to find him.”
“I haven’t seen any cats, sorry.” The only cat she had seen lately was Saint Peter’s. A chill hit her. This man seemed bad. Not on the side of the good angels. If Saint Peter’s beautiful white cat belonged to this guy, she was sure Saint Peter was a much better person to have him.
“He’s a baby cat. A kitten. Black all over, with a white tip on his tail.” He looked at her with hopeful, sticky eyes.
Lindsey relaxed. Not Saint Peter’s cat then. “No, I haven’t seen him. I’m sorry.”
The man sighed and held out a fifty dollar bill.
“Sorry, mister. I really haven’t seen your cat. I don’t want your money.” What was he thinking? Where would someone like her get a fifty changed?
The man handed her a business card instead of the fifty. “In case you change your mind. I’ll have that fifty and more besides for you. Please, call me if you see him. Any time, night or day.”
Lindsey stared at the little ivory rectangle. S. Shaitan, followed by a phone number in a curly script she could barely read. “Okay, Mr. Shaitan.”
He grinned again. “Call me Stan.” It seemed as though he was about to say something else. Just then, her momma yelled at her from across the street.
“Hey, Lindsey!” Momma’s voice was hoarse and even from a distance, she looked terrible. Her mouse brown hair was lank and she looked even skinnier than last week.
“Lindsey, is it? Great. Please do call me, about the cat or anything at all. I would be glad to help.” Stan slid away before her mama managed to jaywalk her way over to them.
“Who was that?”
“Just some guy looking for his cat.”
“Be careful who you talk to.”
“I’m being careful of the bad angels, Mama. I promise.”
“Bad angels?” Her mother let out a whoop. “Wow, that Keisha sure has you wound up. Don’t fall for it. There are no angels, Lindsey. So knock it off. And stay away from that Keisha.”
Grandma and Sparky had been her only family for as long as she could remember. Lindsey knew her mother as an occasional figure who showed up to bully Grandma into giving her money. And then social services stepped in. Her grandmother was, they said, old and arthritic and no proper guardian for an active young girl.
Families should always be reunited whenever possible, and her mother was her true “family”. At first they lived in a tiny, dirty apartment. It wasn’t terrible, except when her mother brought loud men over.
Then they lived in a series of horrible hotel rooms. Now they lived under the bridge. Mama blamed Sparky, but in truth it was because the shelter wouldn’t let her have “visitors”, as Mama called the loud men.
Lindsey managed to get Sparky from Carmen before Mama bustled her off to bed before it was even all the way dark. It took hours for Mama to pass out enough so that Lindsey could wiggle away and meet up with the others.
“Keisha is missing!” Miguel said as soon as she joined them. “We’re deciding what to do.”
“Do we know where she is?” an older kid that Lindsey didn’t know asked.
“Skagway hotel.”
Everyone gasped, and the little crowd broke out into anguished little side conversations.
“What’s wrong with Skagway hotel? Mama and I lived there for a week.” Lindsey pulled on Nikkie’s sleeve until she answered.
“That’s where the pimps take their new girls to break them in,” Nikkie hissed. “Now be quiet while we think.”
Lindsey buried her red face in Nikkie’s shoulder. She knew what a pimp was, at least a little. Poor Keisha. This was worse than she thought.
“It’s no good,” Miguel said. He huddled into a little ball. “Shaitan’s got her. We’ll never get her away from him.”
Lindsey pulled the battered business card from her pocket. “This guy?”
Miguel snatched it and the others gathered round, whispering and poking each other.
“Lindsey! You talked to Satan? Why would you do that? You’ll get disappeared next!” Nikkie gave her an outraged shake.
“No, listen. I got a plan. I’ll call him, get him to meet up with me about his cat.”
“There is no cat, Lindsey. Don’t be stupid,” Nikkie said.
“While he’s meeting up with me about the cat, you guys can go to Skagway Hotel and get Keisha out.”
“And then you get snatched and we’ve done nothing but swap prisoners,” Miguel said, spitting on the sidewalk for emphasis.
“I’ll get him to meet me in front of the tattoo parlor. The angels can guard over me better there.”
Nikkie gave a slow, approving nod. “That almost sounds like it will work.”
“We can borrow a cat from Saint Peter!”
Lindsey handed Sparky off to Ariella once again. “If I don’t come back, tell your mom she can keep him.” She gave Ariella and Sparky a tearful hug and then ran to catch up with the others.
Saint Peter was passed out drunk when they found him, and none of his kittens were black with a white tail. A trio of older girls took over, using a sharpie to color the kitten’s white spots black and white eye-shadow to make the tip of its tail white.
Lindsey was pretty sure that Saint Peter wouldn’t approve of putting marker on his cat. Miguel insisted that he wouldn’t mind. It was an emergency, after all. They left her and the kitten in the cubby of the pawn shop and hurried away. It would have been nice if at least one of them had stayed behind to help her. But what help could there be if the angels didn’t come? She typed a text into her mom’s phone with shaking hands and waited.
“Lindsey! So nice to see you again,” Stan said. He had changed into a black suit with a red shirt, but otherwise looked the same. Creepy. “That’s not my cat, though I will give you an A+ for effort. Resourceful. You should come work for me.”
“I don’t want to.” She shrank away from him, back against the tattoo parlor window. Where were the angels? They needed to come, now!
“Don’t worry. I don’t want to sell you. I only want you to run errands and do little favors for me. For now, anyway. I can make it worth your while.” Stan fanned open a stack of twenty dollar bills, more than she could count.
“No thank you. I’d better be going now.”
Stan’s eyes narrowed. “What is your game, little Lindsey? How much do you think you’re worth?”
“Hey! No loitering or I call the cops!” The meaner of the two tattooists stepped into the doorway of the shop. “Get in here, kid. I told you and told you not to wander out of the shop.”
A flash of angel light surrounded her. The angels wanted her to go to the mean tattooist. Lindsey bolted toward the door and under his arm, kitten squeaking in protest as she hugged it too tight. She skidded to a halt inside the door, surrounded once more by the whisper of wings and the flashes of light.
Behind her, she could hear the tattooist arguing with Stan. After a while, the tattooist came in, alone.
“You have a death wish, kid? That guy is bad news. Stay away from him.”
Lindsey looked up at him. He was tall and muscle bound, with a shaved head. Tattoos covered both his arms and his legs below his black cargo shorts. He wasn’t nice, but somehow he was on the side of the good angels.
He made her sleep in the storeroom. In the morning, he brought her a doughnut and a bottle of chocolate milk and once again told her to “scram”.
Since it was Saturday, she went straight back to the underpass. Carmen had already headed out with Sparky and the rest of the dogs. The kids were waiting for her, full of anxious energy.
“Keisha! She’s here!” Miguel shouted as the whole little group of kids stampeded toward her.
Keisha beat them all to her. As soon as she was in striking distance, she slapped Lindsey’s face hard, harder than mama ever had.
“Don’t you ever do that again!” Keisha grabbed her into the biggest hug on earth and broke into sobs.
After a while, the haunted looking teen girl who usually slept under a hedge at the bus stop came over. She pried the hysterical Keisha off of Lindsey and led her away. Nikkie blotted the blood from Lindsey’s split lip with a mostly clean fast food napkin while everybody spoke at once.
“How did you do it?” Lindsey asked. “How did you find Keisha?”
“We went to your mama, since you said you lived at Skagway for a while,” Miguel explained. “She knows her way around, real good.”
Lindsey stared at them, waiting for them to say that they were joking. To tell how they really got Keisha away. The faces remained solemn. Lindsey’s heart jumped with hope. Her mama working on the side of the good angels was the best news yet.
“Where’s my mom?” Lindsey peered upward, but their spot under the highway looked empty.
“She said she had business there at Skagway,” Nikkie said, not meeting Lindsey’s eyes. “She said for us to look after you for a few days, till she gets back.”
The hope in Lindsey’s heart faded, but didn’t completely die.
Around them, the fall day was heating up as they headed out to return Saint Peter’s kitten. They were going to go for burgers later with some money that Carmen gave them, and bring back a strawberry milkshake for Keisha. Maybe everything was okay for a while, because for once, the good angels had won. Maybe working for the good angels would help her mama. Maybe she could go back to her grandma’s again. Maybe her mama could come too. With the help of the good angels, anything seemed possible.
