Angels in Heaven

withering
retort when Willing Boy pulled up outside on his beloved Yamaha, cut the motor,
and then gave us a wave through the reinforced glass of my front picture
window, which I noticed still needed washing. He’d no sooner come in when Elroy
went jogging past, disappeared out of sight, then came back again, looked in
the window, did a take, disappeared again, then reappeared again running
backward. I don’t know—some days everyone thinks he’s a comic.
    After he’d finally come in, I
introduced everyone to everyone and asked them to kindly settle down so we
could get on with it. Sara perched by my shoulder on the corner of the desk, as
was her wont, but not mine. Elroy took the spare chair facing me, and Willing
Boy propped his lanky frame against the wall and tried to appear attentive,
which was difficult with the amount of leg, albeit spindly, that Sara was
showing.
    Willing Boy was a tall, tanned,
handsome youth with shoulder-length blond hair that he was addicted to coiffing
with a foot-long plastic affair he kept tucked in the back pocket of his
leathers. He had done many a chore for me in the past, some of them legal.
    The ponytailed Elroy was not much
older than Willing ' Boy. He’d come into his real estate empire some years
before, when his parents, two uncles, and an aunt or two died in a horrific car
crash one rainy night outside Riverside. To everyone’s amazement but his own
(since he had a well-founded reputation for being a total space cadet), he had
f done extremely well. He too was a good-looking young man, r although not the
knockout that Willing Boy was. Despite his riches, it was Elroy’s fancy to
dress down, way down, usually in tom cutoffs, $1.99 K-mart T-shirts, and the
cheapest flip-flops on the market, but that day he had for jogging purposes put
on a disgraceful pair of tattered sneakers instead.
    I looked them over—ah, my brave boys
and my bonny I tomboy lass—once more into the breach we go.
    “Everyone got a watch?” I said.
    Everyone did but Sara. I sighed and lent
her mine.
    “Please ensure that all your
timepieces are in working order.”
    They all did.
    “Everyone know where the corner of
Roscoe and Lanker-shim is?”
    Everyone knew but Sara. I sighed, got
out my Rand McNally, and pointed it out to her.
    “Point A,” I said, “is an apartment
building at 1116½ Roscoe. Point B is a Mexican beer bar called Tony’s at 52005
Lankershim. We will proceed in convoy to point A, me and Sara and Elroy in my
car, Willing Boy on that death trap of his. When I say go, we all head for Tony’s
in our various ways and means, making a precise note of the time we get there.
Everyone got a pen and paper?”
    Everyone did but Elroy. I sighed and
handed them over. “Then we go back to point A and do it all over again as a
double check. All clear so far, troops, any questions?”
    “I got one, Prof,” said Sara,
lighting up a long, thin, nasty-looking cheroot with a kitchen match. “Why?”
    I told them why.
    Then Sara said, “How much?”
    I told them how much. Sara said I had
to be joking. Willing Boy said OK by him. Elroy said as far as he was
concerned, he was insulted by the question—what were friends for after all? And
anyway, he ran an hour a day, so who cared where?
    “Thank you, Elroy,” I said with
dignity. “According to the map, the shortest way is east on Roscoe and then
south on Lankershim, but keep your eyes open for anything that might save you
time on the rerun—an alley, or cutting through a gas station, or whatever—as
what we are after is the fastest possible time one of us can get from A to B.”
    “Does that mean running the lights?”
Willing Boy asked with poorly concealed eagerness.
    “It does not,” I said sternly. “This
isn’t a case of a guy who is sitting at home suddenly deciding to kill some
other guy he hates, so much so that he leaps up and tears out and bums up the
macadam to get to the place where the other guy is. According to the cops, this
is a case of a guy who went out in a normal way to go to a bar and meet his
pals and have a beer or two, and then the trouble started. But let us not
dawdle, either, Sara, let us not stop for a joint or two and a peanut butter
and red currant jelly sandwich and a large Cherry Coke.”
    “Ha-ha,” said Sara. “Prof.”
    I had them all sign blank sheets of
paper, on which I would later type their statements; then I locked up and off
we went. We made our way to point A, then off we went to