The Devil’s Redhead Read online

  The Devil’s Redhead

  David Corbett

  Freelance photographer and wildcat smuggler Dan Abatangelo blows into Vegas to hit the tables and taste the nightlife. In his path waits Shel Beaudry, a knockout redhead with a smile that says Gentlemen, start your engines. The attraction is instant – and soon the two are living the gypsy life on the West Coast, where Dan captains a distribution ring for premium Thai marijuana. His credo: "No guns, no gangsters, it's only money."

  But the trade is changing. Eager to get out, Dan plans one last run, judges poorly, and is betrayed by an underling and caught by the DEA. To secure light time for Shel and his crew, Dan takes the fall and pleads to ten years. Now, having served the full term, he emerges from prison a man with a hardened will but an unchanged heart. Though probation guidelines forbid any contact with Shel, a convicted felon, he sets his focus on one thing: finding her.

  Shel's life has taken a different turn since her release from prison. She has met Frank Maas, a recovering addict whose son died a merciless death. Driven by pity, Shel dedicates herself to nursing Frank back from grief and saving him from madness. But his weaknesses push him into the grip of a homegrown crime syndicate in command of the local methamphetamine trade. Mexicans are stealing the syndicate's territory, setting in motion a brutal chain of events that engulf Frank, Shel, and Dan in a race-fueled drug war from which none will escape unscathed.

  David Corbett

  The Devil’s Redhead

  © 2002

  This book is dedicated to

  Cesidia Therese Tessicini.

  My Terribones, my goony-bird.

  My bride.

  You died too young. Too hard.

  Who is this coming up from the desert…

  … stern as death is love,

  relentless as the nether world is devotion;

  its flames are a blazing fire.

  – THE SONG OF SONGS

  Acknowledgments

  This book was purchased at the same time my wife learned her chemotherapy for ovarian cancer had failed. The bravest person I’ve ever known, she lived little more than a month after that, nearly all of which was spent at the Petersen Cancer Center at Stanford Medical Center. I would like to extend my first words of thanks, then, to the doctors and nurses and staff who kept vigil with me and Terri’s loved ones during those final weeks. I learned a great deal about decency and kindness and strength in that place, among those people. Learned something about hope, too. It’s a lesson I vow never to forget.

  As for the book itself, first and foremost, thanks are due to Laurie Fox of Linda Chester and Associates, who saw promise in the manuscript, devoted to it an unflagging advocacy, and became a cherished friend.

  Thanks go out as well to Leona Nevler, Anita Diggs, Michelle Aielli, Maria Coolman, and everyone at Ballantine who has worked so arduously on the author’s behalf. Jacqueline Green, Judi Farkas, Teresa Cavanaugh, and Linda Michaels have also earned my deepest appreciation. I’m lucky and grateful to have such people in my corner.

  Thanks as well to Peter Winter, who graciously permitted use of his sculpture, Phoenix Rising, as the backdrop for the author’s jacket photo.

  Assistance on technical matters came from a number of people: Stephanie Voss, Paul Palladino, Loreto Tessicini, Elly Sturm, Ana Bertha Ramirez, and David Stauffer deserve particular mention. If errors remain in the final text they are entirely the fault of the author.

  Several people read portions of the manuscript prior to publication, and their comments were invaluable: Tom Jenks, Laura Glen Louis, Donna Levin, Brad Newsham, and Waimea Williams, among others. Michael Croft deserves an especially profound note of gratitude in this regard. Thanks are due as well to Oakley Hall, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and the staff of Truckee Meadows Community College Writers’ Conference.

  Last and most importantly, this book would not exist if not for the continuous devotion, encouragement, editorial advice, and technical assistance of my late wife. The sight of her bundled up in our lamplit bed, surrounded by the dogs as she pored through the manuscript, making her notations- I’ll treasure that memory long after any praise this book garners fades away. Her ear for pacing, her contempt for pretense, her big, strong heart, her constant reminders to “tell the love story”: they resonate on every page of this book. It feels like a curse, knowing she will never hold it in her hands, or read these words of gratitude.

  Prologue

  1980

  He blew into Las Vegas the first week of spring, primed to hit the tables, sniff the wildlife and, basically, cat around. Given his focus was pleasure, not business, he saw no need for an alias. His real name was safe enough- though, like many accidents of birth, it created problems all its own. He stood there waiting at the hotel desk as the girl working check-in struggled with pronunciation.

  “Old Italian tongue twister,” he offered finally. “Try emphasizing the third syllable. Abba Tan Jel-O.”

  The girl nodded, squinting as she tried again. “Daniel… Sebastian… Abatangelo…”

  He shot her an encouraging wink. “We have ourselves a winner.”

  Her eyes lit up and she broke into a helpless smile, swiveling a little at the hip. “Sounds pretty,” she said, holding out his room key. “I mean, not when I say it, when you do. Bet a lot of people just call you Dan.”

  “Oh, people call me all sorts of things,” he said, smiling back as he took the key from her.

  He went up to his room- the usual decor, meant to set your teeth on edge- and showered off the road dust, hoping to relax a little from the trip and order a light dinner from room service before heading back out. After a prawn cocktail and a fruit plate chased by Heineken, he hit the Strip, searching out luck- the right house, the right table- plying his way through the bus-delivered crowds and the metallic clamor and the popping lights, a deafening maze of kitschy pandemonium dedicated to full-throttle indulgence: chance, a little flesh, the mighty buck. Years later, he would reflect that the only thing louder than a Vegas casino at night is the inside of a prison.

  About eight o’clock, he took a seat at a twenty-one table at Caesar’s, picking this one out among all the rest because of the woman dealing the cards. Her hair was red, her eyes green, and she had the kind of smile that said: Gentlemen, start your engines. She had that tomboy build he had a thing for, too. Maybe she’ll let me break even, he thought, settling into his chair.

  “Good evening, Lachelle,” he said, reading her name tag: LACHELLE MAUREEN BEAUDRY- ODESSA, TEXAS. “Five thousand in fifties, please.” Licking his thumb, he counted out the cash for his chips.

  Four hours later, they stumbled through the casino’s massive plate-glass doors and onto the Strip, sides aching from laughter, each of them gripping the bottle neck of an empty magnum of Taittinger Brut. Their hair, their skin, their clothes were soaked and sticky, and as they stood there, taking stock of the situation and gathering their breath, a small posse of flinty, helmet-haired security guards glared at them through the dark-tinted glass, barring reentry. They’d just been thrown out for playing hide-and-seek in the casino, chasing each other around the slots, screaming through the crowd and across the vast red gaming floor, spraying each other with champagne whenever “It” found “Guess Who.”

  Out on the sidewalk in the open air, a thinning crowd of tourists, lucklorn and numb, tramped past amid the riot of neon. Shel, still in her dealer’s uniform, unclipped her barrette and shook out her thick red hair.

  “Unless I’m sorely mistaken,” she said, “showing up for my shift tomorrow would be a major waste of time.”

  It’s midnight in Las Vegas, he thought, watching her. The witching hour. In the town that never sleeps. She shot him a knockdown smile, standin
g before him like a dare- You will love me forever, she seemed to say, or die trying. He reached across the space between them to remove a strand of hair which was glued to her cheek with champagne. Sensing an opening, she moved in and landed that first kiss. He felt her lips move against his own- warm, soft, like high school- the taste of her lipstick mingling with the smell of her hair and her breath and her sticky skin. Then came that liquid heart-stopping thing not even movies get right.

  He made a few calls, and from a nameless friend wangled access to a condo up north, near the ski resort on Mt. Charleston. On the drive Shel put her feet up on the dash and let the desert wind run riot through her hair as she told him a little about herself. It was her second year in Vegas, she said, after ten years wandering around the desert southwest- El Paso, Tucson, Flagstaff, Lake Havasu, Bullhead City. She’d fled Odessa as a teenager, running away from what she called “a small-town roach campaign.” Then came the long hard haul of working her way up from waffle houses to roadside diners, cocktail lounges, racketeer-run deadfalls and the bleakest nightclubs on earth, a few of the topless variety- where dusty men came out of the desert at night to drink hard, say nothing and stare at you, like you were an angel, or a curse- starting as a skinny kid at minimum wage and ending a wise old woman of twenty-eight at a fifty-dollar table at Caesar’s.

  “You know The Music Man?” she said. “There’s this song Professor Harold Hill sings, ‘The Sadder but Wiser Girl for Me.’ Always been my favorite part of the movie.”

  Abatangelo let that sit for a moment, studying her in sidelong glances. Did I mention she was perfect, he thought, like a jailer whispering to the prisoner caged inside his heart. And her hair smells great.

  “So what’s that make me?” he asked finally. “Some out-o’-town jasper?”

  He gave it his best Robert Preston. Her brow furrowed as she tried to place the line.

  “Oh, we got trouble,” she said at last, vamping.

  “Terrible, terrible trouble,” he confirmed.

  She dropped her head, giggling, and hugged her knees. “Oh please please please,” she shrieked, stamping her bare feet on the dash, “please don’t tell me you’re gonna fall for the fussy little librarian.”

  The laughter in her voice, it was heat lightning, goofy, who-the-hell-cares. Like everything else about her.

  “Librarian?” he said, coming back to it. “God, no. Might as well chase after my sister.”

  He turned east off the highway toward the mountain and they pulled up to the condo just after two in the morning. The place was woodsy, plush and remote, with the forest dissolving on all sides into moonless black. Abatangelo retrieved a key from the hiding place he’d been told about, opened the door and switched on the light. Shel ventured inside on tiptoe, like a nymph in some French ballet, and glanced around.

  “You could do terrible things to me here,” she said. “Cut me up like a chicken. Nobody’d ever know.”

  Abatangelo, following her in, closed the door and tossed her the key- gently, so she’d catch it. “Gee,” he said. “We’ve only just met and you already know me so well.”

  They spent the next three days holed up alone, curtains drawn, door locked, phone off the hook. Outside, in a freak spring heat wave, desert temperatures rose to record levels. Inside, they tumbled, roiled, laughed, clinging to each other, their sweat running milky and slick. Later, naked and tasting of each other, they’d lay there bleary on drenched sheets, staring at the ceiling fan in wonder.

  From Vegas they flew to San Diego for the sake of the ocean breeze, taking a room at the Hotel Americana on Shelter Island. Here at last they began to show themselves in public, taking in the sights, the nightlife. From time to time Shel found herself glancing sidelong at this new man in her life, wondering, Who is this creature? How did he make it all happen so fast? In the looks department he was better than average, but not so slick he could gloat. He was tall, though, always a plus, with the kind of build only swimming provides. And my, but the man could swim. In the mornings she’d sit poolside in a hotel lounge chair as he swam laps, fanning herself with the breakfast menu and marveling not only at how gorgeous and strong he looked in the water, but how much she enjoyed just sitting there, watching him. I’m a schoolgirl at summer camp, she thought, lusting after the lifeguard.

  Truth be told, she liked everything about him. He could be shy as a boy one minute and then click, the eyes came on, the mind snapped to and nothing got past him. They entered a room and heads turned, not because of one or the other, but the two of them together. Never happened like that before, she thought- maybe your luck’s changed, with men at any rate.

  He had with him some serious-looking cameras, and Shel assumed he was a photographer of some sort. One with money to spare. He was generous with it, too, spending it on her with the giddy finesse of a man embarked on a winning streak. When she pressed him once- You do this for a living?- he offered a demented little grin and called himself an artiste mauvais.

  “Oh, gee, well- doesn’t that just clear the whole thing up,” she said.

  “Like Rimbaud,” he explained. When she just stared at him, he added, “French poet, disciple of Baudelaire. He gave up poetry and ended up running guns in Abyssinia.”

  She sensed something in his voice. “You gonna tell me that’s what you do?”

  It took him a moment to answer, and all he said was, “I don’t like guns. Don’t like what they do to people.” Smiling finally, he added, “And Abyssinia no longer exists.”

  To change the subject, he told her he’d had gallery shows in Mendocino, Carmel; he’d joined a few group exhibits in Tahoe and San Francisco. He had a carrying case with him for his prints, and he took it out and showed her his work.

  “Jesus,” she said, looking. He had a real knack for faces, an eye for contrast. He could capture the riddle in an empty street, an old man’s hat, a woman alone at a bus stop. “You’ve really got something,” she said. “These are good.”

  He said nothing, just looked back at her with an impossibly sad smile, the kind to break a girl’s heart.

  The following day, he came clean. They were sitting alone beneath a cloudless sky on the dock outside the hotel. Sipping champagne and nibbling on Korean barbecue, they licked the sauce off each other’s fingers, watching the yachts sail out past Ballast Point. Shel trailed her feet in the water, her back resting against Abatangelo who sat in a deck chair behind her. Using a yawn for subterfuge, he collected something from his pocket, reached around her, opened a black felt box with satin lining and presented his gift- a necklace of fine gold filigree, with an amethyst shaped like a wine-colored teardrop resting in a white gold setting.

  “Holy… cow…,” she whispered, her hands held out, sticky with barbecue. “If that’s not for me, I’m gonna cry.”

  She licked her fingers clean, reached up and gathered her hair away from her neck so he could put it on her. As he fastened the clasp at her nape, he said, “This stone, incidentally, has a story to it.”

  She could tell from his voice there was nothing “incidental” about it, but before she could call him on it, he continued.

  “The maiden Amethyst was wandering through the forest one day, when she stumbled on the tigers of Bacchus, sleeping in the sun. Before she could sneak away, the tigers woke up. She panicked.”

  “Bad idea with tigers,” Shel guessed.

  “You know this story.”

  “Every girl knows this story,” she said. “More or less. Go on.”

  “Amethyst ran. The tigers chased her down. They almost had her when she was spotted by the goddess Diana. Taking pity, and to save Amethyst from being torn to shreds, Diana turned the girl into stone.”

  Shel turned to face him, squinting in the sunlight. “What, this goddess, she couldn’t just wave some kinda magic thingy?”

  Abatangelo sat there a moment, considering it. “There’s no magic thingy in this story. Sorry.”

  There it was again, she thought. That catch in his voi
ce. The necklace wasn’t just a gift. It was a warning.

  “This story,” she said, “you’re gonna get to the ending before you break my heart, right?”

  He clicked the felt box open and shut, nervous. “Bacchus,” he said finally, “in remorse for what his tigers had done, poured wine over Amethyst. It didn’t bring her back to life, but it did turn the stone the color you see there.”

  Shel nodded, then held the stone up to the sunlight to watch it flare. “Great story,” she said finally. “Spooky, but great. And I love my present. Thank you.”

  “You are,” he said, “most definitely welcome.”

  “That’s not the only story goes along with this present, is it.”

  He looked out at the wide blue bay, dotted with sails, taking a moment to frame his thought. “I want to give you the chance to walk away,” he said, “before things get sticky.”

  And that was how the truth came out. He’d been smuggling since college, he told her, turning serious right about the time he lost his scholarship in water polo, the result of blowing out a knee in a motorcycle accident. He’d earned a nickname from his former teammates, some of whom remained customers. He was Bad Dan, The Man Who Can.

  He ran the stateside crews, hiring the boys on the beach and managing distribution, while his partner, Steve Cadaret, worked up the loads in Bangkok. Over the preceding three years, the Cadaret Company had brought in two hundred tons of premium Thai pot. They landed it on remote beaches, in abandoned quarries, along heavily forested riversheds. For transport, they used anything that would float, from garbage scows to an old fruit freighter they’d salvaged from a shipyard in Panama. They’d formed a nexus of dummy companies to hide the money and mastered the ancient art of bribery.

  For all that, he assured her, he and his buddies did their best to avoid the gaudier macho baggage. From the time he and Cadaret had started out, they’d lived by the credo: No guns, no gangsters. It’s only money. Because of that, and a number of other factors- philosophical, socio-legal, what have you- he resisted conceding that what he did made him a criminal. A character, sure, deviant probably, maybe even an outlaw (“Got a nice, old-timey ring, that one,” he said). But criminal, no. He knew criminals. At the age of nine he’d watched his father disappear with three enforcers from a local loan shark. He’d grown up with guys who’d later be in and out of prison like it was a combination trade school and fraternal lodge. And, of course, he dealt with criminals in the business- the worst could be avoided if you used good sense. Regardless, he felt no kinship with such men.