Angel Face (10 page)

Carter's about to concede the point when Ruby Amaroso, still toting the gym bag, exits the Wilson Arms and dashes to his car. When he pulls away from the curb, Carter works his way into the front seat and starts the van.

‘So, what do you think, Angel? Is he bringing money in or taking it out?'

‘Why? Are you going to steal the bag?'

Carter shakes his head. ‘We're not giving up the element of surprise for an unknown reward. Did Ricky say anything about what he did for a living?'

‘He hinted that he was some kind of gangster.'

‘Gangster covers a lot of ground, but if he was dealing drugs, especially on a wholesale level, he'd have money stashed somewhere, a lot of money. And that stash would most likely be in a place nobody would suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We need more information.'

‘Does that mean you're going to do it? You're going to rip them off?'

‘It means I'm real interested.'

Carter turns on to Broadway, giving the BMW plenty of room. He drops his hand to Angel's knee and runs a finger along the inside of her thigh. She responds by kissing the side of his neck.

‘Tell me more about your gold digger scheme,' he says. ‘Tell me why you need capital.'

‘OK, my plan is to go to the Caribbean once I have my stake in place – to St Barts or Tobago where you get an international crowd – and open a small art gallery. But suppose I went there broke. How long would I last before I became somebody's mistress? These men, the ones I'm talking about, they know how to play rough, especially if a girl doesn't have options. That's what having your own money really does. It gives you options.'

‘I won't argue the point, but I have one question. Have you ever considered a plan B?'

‘Which is?'

‘Hard work, education?'

Angel doesn't respond and they follow the BMW over the Broadway Bridge and into Manhattan. By the time they pass Columbia University, Carter knows exactly where the gangster's headed. He's on his way to Angel's apartment where he finally pulls to the curb beside a fire hydrant and settles in to watch the entrance to her building. Carter drives on past, makes a right on to West End Avenue, then double-parks.

‘What are you going to do?' Angel asks.

‘Send a message.'

‘A message.'

‘I want to concentrate Bobby Ditto's attention. I want him to be more worried about his own skin than his money in the Bronx.'

‘Are you going to take the bag?'

‘Absolutely not.'

A car slides away from the curb and Carter pulls the van into the open slot. Angel can almost see the neurons firing away in his brain. Without warning, a single thought grabs her own attention: Get away from this man. Even if you have to sleep in the goddamned subway, even if you have to go home with the first jerk you meet in a corner bar. Carter's traveling a road that has nothing to do with Angel Tamanaka and her plans for the future.

‘OK, Angel, here's the way I want it to go down. We circle around the block so that we come up behind him. I want you to walk ahead of me, understand? You walk right past him, turn the corner, jump into the back of the van and stay down. I'll take care of the rest.'

‘Which is exactly what?'

‘That depends. If there are witnesses, I'll have to settle for a beating. If we're alone on the block, I'm going to kill him. You understand, Angel. When he picked up the gun, he lost his right to live. He became a warrior and all wars have casualties.'

Angel doesn't mistake the warning. If she helps him now, she'll be picking up a gun of her own. And she understands what he means about the right to live. You can't take human life and claim your own life to be somehow sacred. And there's one other thing. If she goes along, she becomes an accomplice, an outlaw, in her own eyes and in the eyes of the police.

‘Why do you want me to walk past him?'

‘First, to distract him. Beyond that? Look, he fucked up last time out. Now he has a shot at redemption. I think he'll try to force you into the car. With a little luck, he won't notice me until I'm on top of him.'

The conflicts ricochet through her mind, the pros and cons, the costs and benefits, the risks and the rewards. Much too fast to be weighed. Angel feels only the ascension of some wild piece of herself, a chained demon suddenly freed and all the more powerful for its long imprisonment.

‘Just walk past him, right? Walk past and keep on going?'

‘That's right.' Carter leans forward to detach the knife strapped to his left calf. He slides it behind the waistband of his khaki pants. ‘Just walk past him and keep on going no matter what. Even if he somehow takes me out, you'll be safe.'

‘OK, I'll do it.'

ELEVEN

C
arter's time with Paulie has taught him that most gangsters, no matter how tough, are poorly trained and unpracticed. Maybe they'll fight at the drop of a hat, maybe they'll kill you and go to lunch afterward, but they lack the skills to effectively defend themselves. He follows Angel down the block, she beneath a blue umbrella, he on the opposite side of the street and slightly behind, moving in the shadows. The rain is falling hard, the entire block deserted. There's not a surveillance camera in sight.

The gangster produces a double take worthy of a silent movie comedian when Angel walks by, his hand already groping for the door's handle. He opens the door, slides out into the rain and takes a step, the possibility that he's the hunted, not the hunter, never entering his mind.

Carter makes contact before his target reaches the end of the BMW's hood, his left hand grabbing the man's shoulder while his thumb probes for the space between two ribs. Then he punches the dagger's blade directly into Ruby Amaroso's heart, the impact so hard and sudden the man barely manages a grunt before his eyes close and his knees give out.

Carter guides the body, as it falls, between the BMW and the car in front. Then he walks off without looking to the right or the left, or even removing the knife, mission accomplished, Carter just another pedestrian going about his business. Thirty seconds later, he's in the van, buckling his seat belt as he starts the engine. He glances in the rear-view mirror as he pulls away, at Angel Tamanaka, at Angel Face, huddled against the side of the van.

Welcome to the Hell World, kid.

Though aware of serial killers and their predilections, Carter never before associated the act of murder with any variety of sexual charge, not until he and Angel come through the door and begin to yank at each other's clothes. Only then, as she lies beneath him, her heels on his shoulders, he thrusting into her, two animals in rut on the carpet in his sister's living room, does he acknowledge the relationship. This is not a marathon, this encounter, it's a sprint; the both of them going all-out. Angel's lips are pressed together, her eyes narrowed, brow furrowed. She seems angry to Carter, and not without reason. But Carter doesn't care. He just knows that he wants her today and he'll want her tomorrow, and that's the end of his life plan.

They feast afterwards, on tapas from a Spanish restaurant on Woodhaven Boulevard. Avocado toast, chickpeas with garlic and parsley oil, farmhouse toast and figs with ham. They stuff themselves, then shower together before Angel's adrenals finally shut down and she flops naked on to their bed. Carter drops down beside her. He's feeling a kind of buyer's remorse, like an animal who's wandered into a dark space and now smells a trap.

‘You want to hear the answer?' Angel says.

‘To what question?'

‘The one about why I don't choose plan B – hard work and education.'

Carter rolls up on to an elbow. ‘You don't have to explain yourself to me. I was only kidding.'

‘No, I want to. I want you to know where I'm coming from.' Angel strokes the side of Carter's face. ‘My grandfather, Yoshi Tamanaka, was born in Seattle in 1928. Like every West Coast Japanese citizen, he spent World War Two in an internment camp – you'll notice that American historians never say
concentration
camp – along with the rest of the family. Grampa was seventeen at the end of the war and he went to school for a couple of years before opening a lumber yard near Green Lake, north of Seattle. You might say he got lucky, because the Interstate Highway System came right past the town and linked him to builders in neighboring counties. His business was still growing when he passed it on to my dad in 1988. That would be Hideki Tamanaka. Dad devoted his life to nurturing his inheritance. Ten hours a day, twelve, fourteen – he didn't run his business, or his life, by the clock. Shoulder to the wheel, nose to grindstone. Dad was a grab-your-bootstraps man. He loved Richard Nixon's favorite saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” In his mind, hard work equated to success, one to one. Every failure in life was a failure of will.'

Angel rolls up to sit at the edge of the bed, her feet dangling, her back to Carter. She takes a moment before resuming her tale. ‘So, what happens is that Home Depot opens a giant lumber yard twenty miles west of dad's. That's in 2001. Then in 2003, Lowe's opens a store fifteen miles to the north. Dad can't buy lumber at the prices they pay, but he doesn't need their margins to make a profit because he runs his operation more efficiently. So he stumbles along for a few years, holding on to whatever clients he can, until Lowe's and Home Depot decide to increase market share by cutting wholesale prices to the bone. Short-term, they don't care if they lose money at one particular store. They've got a hundred other stores backing them up.

‘My father was a jerk, Carter. He couldn't admit that he was wrong, that you could work your ass off and still be crushed. When the business went into the red, he borrowed from the banks. When the banks cut him off, he refinanced his house. When that money ran out, he sold off his stocks and emptied the bank accounts. And when there was nothing left, he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. My mother was already a hopeless drunk by that time and I don't remember her crying at dad's funeral, though she nearly fell into his grave. What I do remember is spending the next two years, until I graduated high school, with an aunt, then getting my little butt on the first plane out of town.'

Carter sits up and lays a hand on Angel's shoulder. It's not the best story he's ever heard, but it's good enough for a rainy night in New York. ‘There's a moral here, a bottom line. I can smell it.'

‘Yeah, there's a moral. Forget the bullshit about hard work and personal responsibility. That's just propaganda to keep the peasants on the farm. God blesses the child who's got her own and I intend to get mine.'

TWELVE

B
obby Ditto's thinking that it doesn't just pour when it rains. It shits all over your head. Ruby Amaroso was the most responsible of the young kids Bobby recruited two years ago. When you gave him a job, he got it done, plus he kept the rest of the jerks in place. Now he's in the morgue with a tag on his toe, and yours truly, meaning Roberto Benedetti, is the chief suspect. The cops have been to visit twice, even though Bobby referred them to his mouthpiece when they first showed up.

And now this, the final insult, he has to turn for help to the goddamned Russians and they send him a slanty-eyed chink who doesn't weigh more than a hundred and fifty pounds. A little pussy-boy with a flat-nosed face carved from stone. They're in the bunker and he's offering the chink coffee, but the chink's not showing the slightest respect, for Bobby or for the Blade, who's standing with his back against the wall. No, the jerk's actually refusing Bobby's hospitality.

‘See,' Bobby explains, ‘I need to know what you can do for me, if anything. This card?' He holds up Louis Chin's business card: XAO INVESTIGATIONS. ‘It wouldn't mean a thing to me, even if I could pronounce it.'

‘“Zow.” It's pronounced “Zow.” But I understand that we've been recommended by people you trust.' Chin's thoroughly enjoying the gangster's obvious discomfort. He's worked with the guineas before. As self-centered as drag queens, they have a hard time coping with people who aren't afraid of them.

‘Yeah, that's all well and good,' Bobby says, ‘but I gotta know what you can do for me before I tell you my business. And I don't think I need to explain why.'

Chin steeples his fingers. ‘Two basic facts. First, there are nineteen hundred private companies under contract to one or another of the federal government's intelligence arms. Second, more than two hundred and sixty-five thousand individuals working for these companies have a Top Secret clearance, which allows them access to sensitive data. Most of these individuals are honest and hard-working, but not all. For a fee, some are willing to pass along information. A smaller number will actually conduct investigations.'

‘So, these guys, they're like traitors? They sell information to terrorists?'

‘If that's going on, which I very much doubt, it's news to me. What my contacts do is more like what happens at the Motor Vehicle Bureau or the IRS or the various credit agencies. For a fee, they pass data to private investigators.'

Lou Chin recites the pitch more or less from memory. He's a year out of the Marine Corps where he led a company operating in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan. Chin had loved his job and fully expected to make the Marine Corps his permanent home. But then, one cold, moonless night, a mortar round landed two yards from where he crouched on a roof in Kandahar. His three comrades were killed instantly, while he, himself (except for a minor flesh wound tended by a company medic) was uninjured. Four months later, he accepted an honorable discharge and came home, figuring that some higher power had sent him a strongly worded message.