Free On Broken Wings by Francis Porretto Page B

it into his pocket, and undid the three top buttons of his shirt. As he strode toward the car he had borrowed, a laugh rose through his chest, and he did not repress it. Jake Bonham had been one hundred percent correct.
    "Kindred spirits. Hah!"
    ***
    Although it was after ten in the evening, Angel Ortiz was only just home from work. It was a late return even for a man known to be absorbed in his business, but Angel believed that one worked when there was work to be done and until it was done, whenever that happened to be.
    Maria had pouted at him over the phone. He had expected it, and had promised her his undivided attention for the whole of the weekend in recompense. She had giggled in her special way, the one that said I know better than to believe your sweet talk. After she'd stopped giggling, she'd delivered the news of a lifetime. Now she was brushing her hair while he mixed them the cocktails with which they would toast the future that lay before them.
    I am finally to be a father. His joy was difficult to contain.
    He had finished with the drinks and was about to bring them into the bedroom when he heard a commotion in the hallway outside his apartment. He frowned. Vallares Arms was a choice residence, the finest condominium complex in the Hispanic part of Buffalo. Part of what one bought by paying its high apartment prices and commons charges was supposed to be freedom from this kind of irritation. For two years, he and Maria had lived there in gracious tranquillity. But, he supposed, there was no way for building management to exclude strife completely. Domestic quarrels would occur sooner or later in any family, except his.
    The disturbance in the hallway was growing quite loud. Someone was shrieking. There was an unmistakable percussion; it sounded like repeated blows of metal against wood. He turned from the bar and went to his door to see if there was something he could do to put an end to it. Maria wouldn't mind waiting a moment or two longer for her Blue Horizon.
    As he opened the door, Angel Ortiz's last thoughts were of his wife.
    ***
    Tiny was standing back from the action, fondling his bicycle chain, content to watch as Rusty hammered the apartment door to flinders with a tire iron. Half a dozen blows more and they would be through. Then they'd give the occupant something to scream about.
    He sensed rather than heard the door open behind him. As he spun about, a man's head poked around the doorjamb. Tiny swung; the chain wrapped itself around the interloper's neck. One sharp yank, and the man was down and motionless on the hallway floor. A flip of the wrist and the chain came free again, coiling sinuously in its master's hand.
    He nudged the body with the toe of his boot. There was no reaction. The man's eyes were open, staring at nothing.
    Should have minded your own business, asshole. We'd have gotten to you soon enough.
    The adrenaline rush of sudden violence brought a savage grin to Tiny's face. He was done with watching. He left Rusty to his hacking and slipped through the open apartment door. No one else was in evidence. The place reeked of money: deep pile carpets, leather furniture, heavy, gold-embossed drapes, and ceramic figurines and spun-glass ornaments all arranged just so. Not a speck of dust on anything.
    He scanned the apartment for the master bedroom. That was where they always kept the good stuff, the cash and the easily carried, easily fenced items.
    He shoved open the likeliest door and found himself on top of a gorgeous Hispanic woman in a satin negligee. There was a hairbrush in her hand and an expression of outrage on her face.
    Something to spend the rush on.
    His grin widened. He closed the door behind him and depressed the button-style latch on the knob.
    He bumped her backwards, into the room and against the edge of the bed. She tottered and sat. She screamed and tried to rise, and would have tried to flee, but he was upon her, his legs pinning hers against the side of the