Angel Face (11 page)

‘Why don't you describe your needs,' he concludes, ‘and I'll tell you whether or not we can meet them.'

‘And you'll guarantee confidentiality, right?'

‘Absolutely. We never compromise a client.'

‘No, you just sell government secrets.'

Chin spreads his hands and shrugs. Someone's got his fingers wrapped around Bobby Ditto's balls and the gangster lacks the capacity to unwrap those fingers on his own. That's why he's called on Xao Investigations.

‘What about money? What about your . . . your fee?'

‘One thousand dollars for this consultation, which you've already paid. The rest depends on what you need.' Chin smiles for the first time, a thin smile that's gone in an instant. ‘Which, I suppose, brings us back to square one. I can't very well price our services without knowing what they'll be.'

Louis Chin's wearing tan slacks, an off-white linen jacket and a copper-colored golf shirt. To Bobby Ditto, the clothing looks expensive and sophisticated, which annoys him all the more. He's thinking Chin (whose forebears in America reach back to the California gold rush) should be serving him wonton soup and egg rolls.

‘I need a minute to talk it over.' Bobby stands up and motions for the Blade to follow as he walks out of the bunker and closes the door behind him. They're now standing in the warehouse's storage area, surrounded by rolls of substandard carpet that Bobby expects to unload on the New York Housing Authority. ‘Whatta ya think, Marco? Is the asshole legit?'

The Blade rubs his nose, an annoying habit that he simply can't break, no matter how much it pisses off his boss. ‘What I'm thinkin', Bobby, is that we gotta do somethin'. We can't afford to have this Carter gunnin' for us, not right now.'

The Blade's referring to an upcoming deal, the biggest in the short history of Bobby Ditto's crew, seven kilos of pure heroin at $71,000 per kilo. Bobby's in the process of putting the $497,000 together and he's still got time – the dope won't reach the US for another week or so – but the last thing he needs is some crazed mercenary out to kill him. And for what? To protect a whore?

‘I feel like I stepped into a world where nothing makes sense,' he tells the Blade. ‘Like I'm on fuckin' Mars.'

‘Ditto that,' the Blade responds. ‘But here's somethin' to dream about when you go to sleep tonight. You pay this slant-eyes a few grand, which is chump change, and he tells us where to find this Carter guy. Then we snatch Carter, along with his fuckin' whore, and spend a week givin' 'em exactly what they got comin'.'

‘A week?'

‘A week.'

Bobby Ditto smiles for the first time in days. ‘Ya know why I pay you the big bucks?' he asks as he opens the door to the bunker. ‘Because you're worth every penny.'

Chin nods when Bobby Ditto resumes his seat. He's come to sell his services and he knows he's succeeded before his client says a word. A good thing, too, because Xao Investigations' entire workforce is limited to a single man with a good front and better connections, a man named Louis Chin who's pretty much surviving day to day.

‘All right,' Bobby Ditto says, ‘here's what I know. The asshole's an American named Carter. And don't ask me if Carter's a first or a last name, it could be either. What's definite is that he was a mercenary – or still is – and that he hung out with a former British officer, also turned mercenary, by the name of Montgomery Thorpe.'

‘That's it?'

‘Yeah, that's it.'

‘Well, mercenary's a big category. It covers everything from private contractors like Halliburton to rogue units buying opium from the Taliban.' Chin clears his throat. ‘Still, from what you've told me about Carter's skills, he has to be ex-military. That means he also has to be in a DOD database.'

‘What's DOD?'

‘The Department of Defense.'

‘And you can get into their computers?'

‘Much more than that. The people I use can access parts of the CIA's many databases, and the National Security Agency's, and others besides.'

‘And these people, they don't work for the government?'

‘They work for private companies under contract to the government. But the important thing, for you, is that if Carter left the military to become a merc, some agency most likely tracked him. That would also hold true for Montgomery Thorpe.' Chin shuts down abruptly, the message plain. No more freebies. The ball's in Bobby Ditto's court.

‘OK,' Bobby says, ‘how much?'

‘Fifteen thousand to do an investigation. No guarantee on the results.'

‘Fifteen grand's a lot of money.' Bobby's voice carries a little edge, not quite threatening, but close enough to make a point which the chink apparently doesn't get.

‘First thing, Mr Benedetti, I could go to jail for what I'm doing. Second thing, I have to spread the money around. I don't have access to any of this data. I have to rely on other people. But why don't we do this: Give me ten up front and the other five when I find something useful.'

‘And if you don't?'

‘Then we'll call it even.'

Bobby nods to the Blade who crosses the room to open a small metal box. He removes two packets of hundred dollar bills and passes them to his boss.

‘One more thing before I fork this over,' Bobby says. ‘I can't be waitin' around for an answer. You gotta work fast.'

‘Monday morning fast enough?'

Bobby hands over the bundles. ‘Monday morning, same time, same place. And one more thing. Abe Abramov personally vouched for you, which means I'll go right back to him if you jerk me off. And if I go to Abe, he's gonna come to you.'

Point made, Bobby leads Chin to the foot of the stairs and watches him until he disappears into the showroom. Then he returns to the office and the Blade, who's sitting in the chair formally occupied by Louis Chin.

Bobby drops into his own chair and says, ‘So, where do we stand?'

‘We've got the product eighty percent sold, that's the good news. But we're still negotiating a location for the buy.'

‘What about the money?'

The Blade flashes that little frown he displays whenever he has to pass on bad news. ‘We can't make it on our own. We're gonna have to take front money.'

The front money will come from buyers eager to trade payment in advance for a steep discount. Which, Bobby supposes, makes them investors.

‘So, where do we put the money this time?' Bobby's got money stashed in five locations scattered about the city, an elementary precaution, but now he has to concentrate his capital. He's has to be ready.

‘We did Bensonhurst last time.'

‘And the time before?'

‘Little Neck.'

‘With the lawyer, right?'

‘Yeah, the one who got busted for bribing a juror.'

Bobby runs a finger through his thinning hair. They'd gotten the money out three hours before the cops showed up with a warrant.

‘OK, let's do the Bronx this time. Move the money into the Kingsbridge apartment. Handle it yourself, Marco. I don't want any slip-ups. If we're not ready, the deal's gonna walk away from us.'

THIRTEEN

A
ngel's glad. Glad to be out by herself, glad to be wearing her own clothes, glad for the soft Saturday night. Carter's off on some mission that doesn't include her, this following an afternoon they spent at her apartment where she packed every suitcase she owns with her ‘achiever' wardrobe. Not boutique (that will come later), or even all-designer, her outfits nevertheless mark her as upwardly mobile. Tonight she's wearing skinny jeans, a red blouse that reveals a fashionable line of cleavage, a midnight-blue leather jacket, and Cynthia Vincent wedges that add two inches to the length of her already long legs. The True Religion jeans came from Saks, but the top was bought a year ago at Macy's, while the jacket came from a discount leather shop on Orchard Street. Still, she looks good and she knows it.

Along with dozens of unattached twenty-somethings, Angel's walking along Avenue A on Manhattan's Lower East Side. The clubs in this part of town cater to every taste, from ratty punk bars to slick, neon-lighted pubs designed for bottom-rung Wall Street wannabes. Naturally, on a Saturday night, the hormones are flying, male and female, and Angel, who doesn't fear the competition, is in her element.

The compliments, not to mention the outright propositions, polite and vulgar, come from all sides. Although she occasionally plays the hook-up game, Angel ignores the intrusions. Carter's enough to satisfy her bad-boy appetites. Only the night before, he'd briefly taken her into his world, revealing an entirely unsuspected dimension. He'd stripped down to a pair of gym shorts an hour after dinner, then produced an ebony box with African animals carved into the wood, dozens of them. The box was impressive enough, but then he lifted the cover to reveal a pair of ceremonial jade daggers in the shape of fire-breathing dragons.

Carter had carried box and daggers to a room cleared of furniture at the back of the apartment, then put on a show that was half-dance, half-meditation. He'd covered the entire room, a dagger in either hand, his movements fast, then slow, then fast again, now smooth and fluid, now as stylized as a Maori war dance. Later, after the daggers and the box were stowed in the back of a closet, he explained that his workout, culled from a number of fighting traditions, was as practical as it was unique, every movement designed to ward off an attacker.

The physical end – the grace, speed, precision, agility – came as no surprise to Angel. But there was a level of creative sophistication to Leonard Carter that she'd never suspected. The daggers were Burmese and very old – they had to be worth many thousands of dollars. (Carter had only been willing to admit they were paid for in blood.) They were also beautiful, an actual treasure that might have been on display at the Asia Society. And the elaborate dance he'd performed with them, derived or not, was his own creation.

Angel had briefly studied Zen Buddhism at a storefront temple, back when she was a newly arrived immigrant. After only a few weeks, she came to realize that the religion demanded a commitment she wasn't prepared to make, whereupon she dropped out. Now, as she crosses Eleventh Street, she remembers her instructor, a Japanese monk who wasn't above making a pass at her, causally mentioning that Zen's most ardent practitioners in pre-modern Japan were Samurai warriors. Raised a Christian, Angel embraced a gentle-Christ view of religion that didn't include a warrior caste vicious enough to behead peasants for daring to look at them. Carter, apparently, was beyond such delusions, beauty and death playing equal parts in his performance.

Angel's musings are interrupted when five skateboarders in torn jeans and ratty T-shirts fly out of Tompkins Square Park. They tear across the sidewalk and into the street where they play chicken with the traffic on Avenue A. Bemused, Angel watches them for a moment. The Lower East Side is all about diversity, a mix of types that includes Latinos from the housing projects along Avenue D, chess hustlers who dominate the park's south-east corner, ex-patriot Brits who gravitate to faux-pubs like The Clerkenwell. Something for everyone, a new adventure every night. There's even a bar-restaurant, Bondi Road, that caters to Australians.

A few minutes later, Angel walks into Prime Numbers, a dance club on Sixth Street. Barry Martin, the club's owner, stands near a door leading to the basement. Always suspicious, he's supervising a Latino busboy engaged in restocking the bar. The air is filled with techno music piped down from the second-story dance floor.

‘Angel, where you been, girl? Me long time no see.' A Jamaican, Barry's voice runs up and down the octaves, his accent far too thick for the Princeton graduate he is. Nevertheless, his enthusiasm's heartfelt. Attractive women are the lifeblood of bars catering to the young.

‘Been here and there, Barry. Have you seen Milek?'

‘What you want with that boy, Angel? He's no good for nobody.'

‘Then why do you let him in the club?'

A good question. Later on, a bouncer will stand guard at the club's entrance, the better to maintain the joint's exclusive image. But Angel doesn't need an answer. Milek Ostrovsky is Prime Numbers' resident coke and ecstasy dealer, tolerated because dance club patrons drink more booze and dance more dances when they're stoned out of their minds.

‘Milek's playin' billiards, same as always.'

Angel heads for a large alcove in the back of the club. A full-sized pool table covered in red felt occupies most of the space, with just enough room on the sides to wield a cue stick. Milek is doing exactly that, but he stops when he sees Angel. They'd hooked up once upon a time, a weekend affair that temporarily satisfied Angel's bad-boy propensities. Now she instinctively compares Milek to Carter and sees him for what he really is: a rapidly aging man in his mid-thirties, his hair thinning, his paunch growing, a threat only in his own mind.

‘Hey, baby, what's up?'

‘Need to talk, Milek.'

‘Sure.' Milek hands his cue to his sidekick, a bulked-up Latino kid so taciturn he might be a mute. ‘Finish the game for me, Carlos.' He winks at Angel. ‘I'll be back when I'm back.'

Angel follows Milek out the door, on to the sidewalk, then west toward First Avenue. ‘You're looking bummed-out this evening,' Milek observes. Angel has yet to crack a smile. ‘Is something wrong?'

‘I need a gun, Milek. Two, actually, a big one and a small one.'

A short skinny kid walks toward them. His purple hair is moussed into a stiff Mohawk and his bare arms are covered with tattoos. An unleashed pit bull lopes beside him, its pink tongue hanging nearly to the ground. The pit bull outweighs the kid by twenty pounds.