Black Wings Has My Angel by Elliott Chaze
Black Wings Has My Angel possesses all the elements I love most about noir: a gutsy broad, a dicey heist, lovers on the lam, excess, madness, and knockout prose. The unforgettable story is told by Tim Sunblade, an ex-con on the run.
But the real star is his accomplice, Virginia.
Virginia is smart, sexy, and in full command of her feminine power. She’s landed down south after some shady dealings in NYC. At first, she appears to have the makings of a classic femme fatale.
But she is more than that — she’s an equal (if not greater) and doesn’t lure Tim to his demise. Much like Bonnie Parker, she helps him successfully execute his plan.
Still, she is punished. They both are.
Virginia meets Tim in his Louisiana hotel room through an arrangement by the bellhop. Tim is taken aback by her class, her spectacular legs, and her blunt honesty.
“Never joke with a tired tramp,” she said. “No one gets as tired as a tired tramp.”
She plays it cool and keeps her distance. He describes her as “the eyes of a gourmet offered a stale chunk of bread.” Still, she spends three days in the hotel with Tim. And when he checks out, she goes along.
There’s no question about their mutual attraction, but the desire for money is the tie that binds them. Naturally, when two lifelong grifters team up, the relationship is destined to be comically fraught. Both are always looking out for number one, and they’ll seize any opportunity to swindle the other.
But Tim and Virginia admire this quality about each other. They’d be disappointed if their counterpart wasn’t trying to pull a fast one. And in fact, the tension and violence are turn-ons.
Only after Tim and Virginia physically fight over stolen money does Virginia give him the passionate love he wanted all the long.
“She pulled me down against her in the strange, tall mountain bushes where I’d tackled her, and for the first time, she loved me the way I’d hoped she would.”
This dynamic is interesting in Black Wings and The Postman Always Rings Twice. Cora and Virginia understand Frank and Tim’s brutish appetites. Rough sex, conquering, and being conquered fan the flames of desire, making their male counterparts delirious and spellbound — to a point.
The obvious argument here is that both female characters are created through a male lens. So, this type of “deviant feminine desire” could be projected by the authors, adopted by women because of a male-dominated culture, or a product of internalized misogyny.
But this limits the spectrum of female desire.
Both of these women represent countercultural females — wild women bucking the societal norms of what’s acceptable for a “lady” and taking deadly risks to improve their stations in life.
Their intense, criminal experiences are intoxicating, stimulating. Who is to say they’re not sexually stimulating as well?
***
After their fiery consummation in the mountains, Tim takes Virginia entirely into his confidence. He knows she has the guts to partner with him in what’s considered a foolhardy heist — stealing an armored car in Denver, Colorado.
The setup is a long game, so Tim can thoroughly case the armored car’s pick-up schedule. They establish residence in a respectable neighborhood and play the role of newlyweds, watering the lawn, chatting with neighbors, and pretending to be upstanding citizens.
Even though it’s a temporary situation, Virginia despises her domestic role. It goes against her nature, and when she challenges Tim to a petulant squabble in the front yard, he takes a gentleman’s approach, mitigating the neighbor’s unwanted attention, which infuriates her even more.
“I can stand anything in the book but gentlemen. . .They decide to be that way after they’ve tried all the real things and flopped at them. . . Be a gentleman. Take life flat on your back, cry in private, and then in a well-modulated voice.”
One night, she flees to the seediest bar in town to spit out the bland taste of the suburbs. Tim finds her drinking with another man and knocks him out. It was just what she wanted.
***
The heist is a success but not without casualties. They drop the armored car and the newly dead driver into an abandoned mine shaft outside of Denver. Now, with “drifts of money, lumps of it,” Tim and Virginia flee to New Orleans.
In New Orleans, Tim has a rude awakening. He’s got the money. He’s got the girl. But he’s as bored and unsatisfied as ever. And he hates what wealth is doing to Virginia.
She’s in with a leisurely crowd — indulging in excessive drinking and sumptuous feasts, sleeping in and swapping partners. She’s on the way to becoming a full-time lush. Her sensualism is dulling her verve.
Tim’s restlessness, frustration, and disgust finally get the best of him.
“…what the money had done to the both of us, changing a tough, elegant adventuress with plenty of guts and imagination into a candy tonguing country club Cleopatra who nested in bed the whole day and thought her feet were too damned good to walk on.”
He decides to leave New Orleans and forces Virginia, at gunpoint, to go with him. However, the real trouble is yet to come.
In Masonville, the police pull them over for an unrelated incident, but it results in a fatal shootout. Virginia manages to get away, but Tim is apprehended. He’s then subjected to the special hell reserved for cop killers.
Virginia is soon caught and placed in a cell a few doors down from Tim. There, she uses her personal brand of deception to turn the tables on the law, springing herself and Tim from jail.
“. . . here she came down the hall, swinging her hips and holding the keys high and to the side in the moonlight where I could see them.”
Again, they flee to Denver, to the mountains, where they were hungry and happy. But being caged birds and having everything to lose finally gets to them. Madness sets in Virginia, and she fixates on the electric chair, on being executed for their crimes.
They are both certain the cure for their spiritual cancer is to face the original evil they buried in the mine shaft.
“I’ve the feeling, Tim, this thing we’re doing now is going to kill us or cure us.”
***
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