Angel Face (15 page)

A series of concentric circles, the wheel is held by Yama, a fanged, three-eyed demon tasked with judging the dead. The wheel's outer circle depicts the Twelve Causes and Effects, among them birth, conditioning, ignorance and desire. The next circle is divided into six sections and illustrates the six realms, the Realm of the Gods on top, the Hell World on the bottom. Between them, to the left and right, are the Realm of the Asuras, demigods burdened with every human vice, the Worlds of Humans and Animals, and the World of Hungry Ghosts. From the painting's upper corners, two Bodhisattvas look down at the wheel. Finally enlightened after lifetimes of effort, the wheel no longer turns for them. Which probably accounts for their serene expressions.

Angel puts her notebook away and steps back, for the first time immersing herself in the painting. The colors are bold, the glaring demon, Yama, ferocious enough, with his tiara of human skulls, to thoroughly impress. This is no joke – that's the message any Tibetan, even the most humble peasant, would understand. Since they'd instantly associate the three figures at the center of the wheel, a rooster, a pig and a snake, with the three poisons, greed, hatred and delusion.

After a few moments, Angel lifts a camera from her purse, a Nikon SLR, then meticulously photographs the painting's every detail. She takes more than fifty shots before returning the camera to its case. Angel's thinking, as she heads off to the lobby, that the
bhavacakra
perfectly illustrates all the points she hoped to make.
Bhavacakras
are ubiquitous, as well. A simple computer search will turn up hundreds of examples. No surprise. Transmitting a consistent set of ideas to an illiterate population was the whole point. Or so she intends to claim.

For just a moment, Angel toys with the idea of using twenty-first century symbols to illustrate a swing from religious concerns to a culture obsessed with consumption, a world of hungry ghosts. Then she shakes her head as she tells herself not to be a jerk. She's already got an ‘A' paper. There's nothing to be gained by injecting armchair sociology into the equation, no reason to search the bush when the bird in her hand is already made of gold.

Angel spots Vincent Graham in the museum's lobby. He's standing with his back to her and his hands in his pockets, contemplating a Buddha carved from gray stone. He turns at her approach, his expression wary, as well it should be. Angel didn't explain her mission when she arranged the meeting and Graham is a client, a repeat client whose fantasy boiled down to kidnapped-princess-sold-into-slavery. This is a script he certainly wants to keep from his wife and two adolescent daughters, a script Angel can reveal. But Angel hasn't come with blackmail on her mind, far from it. Although he's not Donald Trump or Bruce Ratner, Vincent's a player in the city's ongoing real estate game.

‘Angel, it's good to see you again, though I have to admit I was surprised to hear from you.' In his forties, Vincent Graham is short and round. Ordinarily a jolly sort, he's not jolly now.

‘Believe me, Vincent, I never would have called you if I wasn't desperate. But I've got a big problem and I know you can help me out.'

Angel's deliberately cryptic statement does nothing to reassure Vincent Graham, but he doesn't object when she takes his arm and leads him up the museum's spiral staircase to a statue of the sleeping Buddha on the second floor.

‘Have you heard about Pierre?' she asks.

‘Pierre?'

The suspicious note in Graham's voice doesn't surprise Angel. He'd put a move on her at their last meeting, offering to fly her to Costa Rica for a five-star vacation. When she declined, he handed over his business card, just in case she changed her mind. Now he's afraid, and quite reasonably, that she might be recording the conversation.

‘Do you want to pat me down, Vincent? Would you like to do a strip search?' Angel allows her smile to expand, revealing the edges of her teeth, the tip of her tongue. It's obvious that good old Vincent would like nothing better, frightened though he is. ‘If you recall, Pierre ran Pigalle Studios. He's the man you spoke to when you arranged our dates. Now he's dead, Vincent. Somebody murdered him.'

‘I wasn't aware of that. Why was he killed?'

‘Well, that's just it. I don't have the faintest idea, and the police don't, either. But I got a call two days ago, a man's voice saying that I know what I did and I have to pay for it. But I don't know what I did and neither do the other girls he's contacted.' Angel tightens her grip on Graham's arm as she leans into him. ‘I think the guy's making it up as he goes along. I think he's
beyond
crazy.'

Far from scared, Vincent is noticeably relieved. There's no blackmail scheme happening here. There's only the pressure of Angel's breast against his ribs and a state of arousal that will become painfully obvious if pursued even a little further.

‘What do you want from me, Angel?' He raises an apologetic palm before making an obvious point. ‘I'm not a tough guy.'

‘All I need is a place to go, a room or an apartment, if things get really bad. And I have money, Vincent. I'm not asking for a handout. If you can set me up with a place, I'll be more than happy to pay you whatever it's worth. But I need the keys today. I have to be ready to move.'

Graham waits for a troop of Buddhist monks to pass before he speaks again. The monks wear saffron robes and their shaved heads glisten. They smile and bow as they go by, their hands steepled together on their chests.

‘So, where were we?' he asks.

‘We were talking about an apartment.' Angel turns to face her benefactor. She stares into his eyes and finds them rapidly filling with a lust she doesn't begrudge. Angel's traded sex for money in the past and there's no good reason for him to think she won't trade sex for some other benefit. ‘Like I said, money's not a problem. But I need the key right now.'

‘Does that mean you'll be moving in?'

‘No, not today, and if I don't use the apartment within the next two weeks, I won't use it at all. But I have to be ready.'

‘Then what about my . . . my special place? The studio on Thirty-Seventh Street? Otherwise, I'll have to call Varrier Management and have someone check the inventory. I don't keep track of individual apartments. I own too many.'

The one-room apartment in question is dominated by a gigantic bed and a collection of sexual aids large enough to stock a small porno shop. Angel knows she's not the first woman he's taken there, and that she won't be the last.

‘How much do you want?' she asks.

‘How long will you need it?'

‘No more than a few days.'

Vincent pauses for a moment, then says, ‘Let me see if I understand. You're telling me that if you do need the place, you'll need it within two weeks and you won't be staying more than a few days. Do I have that right?'

‘Exactly right.'

‘Then I can't charge you, not when you're in trouble.'

‘Please, Vincent, I'd rather pay.'

‘No, I won't hear of it.' Vincent reaches into his back pocket. He removes his wallet and takes a key card from an inner slot. ‘This card works the lock on the outer door and the apartment door. Take possession whenever you're ready, but call me as soon as you get settled. Otherwise, I might walk in at a bad moment.'

Angel rises on her toes to offer Graham a kiss that rocks him back on his heels. As she turns away, she thinks of Carter, of his life being little more than an endless preparation for the battlefield. Angel will never acquire Carter's skills. That's a given. But it doesn't mean she's without weapons of her own. Angel's hoping with all her heart that everything works out, that she and Carter emerge triumphant to split Bobby Ditto's money. But Angel's not her father's daughter. She will not put her faith in her hopes. And as for Vincent Graham, there's always the little gun nestled in the toe of a boot, the one that fits her hand so nicely.

EIGHTEEN

L
ouis Chin's in good spirits as he makes his way along Roosevelt Avenue in the Queens neighborhood of Flushing. For once, he doesn't feel out of place, a sixth generation Chinese-American living in a Chinese-Korean neighborhood dominated by new immigrants. Louis doesn't understand a word of Mandarin or Korean, the languages commonly addressed to him when he enters a shop or a restaurant, and he's truly sick of the contemptuous looks bestowed upon him when he confesses his ignorance. As if the color of his skin and the shape of his eyes somehow binds him to a heritage in which he has zero interest.

Chin's spent the last two hours in a bar with a war buddy, Nelson Flanagan. Flanagan's in the private security business, running a start-up company in a hostile economic climate.

‘Every day's another firefight, Louis. That's the beauty of it.'

Nelson doesn't march with the real players. He's not Kroll Associates. L&L Security's clients manage third-tier office buildings in obscure, outer-borough neighborhoods. Their needs are commonly limited to a single security guard stationed behind a table in the lobby, a guard whose main function is to prevent the homeless from taking up residence in the hallways.

Once upon a time, Louis and Nelson were responsible for a combat unit operating near Kandahar, Louis an officer, Nelson his sergeant. They'd shared the same foxhole, ducked the same bullets, mourned the same dead.

‘This business, it's like another war. It's combat all over again. Only now you fight with money instead of bullets.'

Chin responded with an appropriate ‘S
emper Fi
', but his thoughts had already shifted to another factor. The dollars Nelson put in his pocket, week by week and month by month, were a hundred percent legit. He wasn't looking over his shoulder, waiting for the cops to snatch him off the street. At worst, he'll end up in bankruptcy court. Instead of a prison cell.

Chin's thinking that the law of averages will catch up with him if he trades in secrets long enough. He's thinking the Feds will come down on him like a ton of bricks. He's thinking he needs to find another way.

The good news is that Nelson's landed a top-tier client in the form of Grantham Management. Grantham wants L&L Security to staff a ten-story commercial property about to open near City Hall in lower Manhattan. The contract, according to Nelson, is all but signed.

‘Come in now, Louis. I'm talking about partners. See, you've got a presence that clients are definitely gonna love. It's that officer thing, right? People not only respect you, they assume you're smart because you're Asian. Me, I'm a jarhead and I always will be. I take orders. I get the job done. With you out front and me watching your back, we can't fail.'

Chin hesitates as he turns from Kissena Boulevard on to Barclay Avenue. For just a moment, he stares at a six-story apartment building halfway up the block, his building, home sweet home. A red-brick cube devoid of architectural detail, the building's as plain as a low-income housing project, as plain as a prison. Chin figures that's only reasonable because the structure was originally built for working-class New Yorkers a paycheck away from poverty.

Nelson asked Louis for an answer by the end of the week, but Chin's already made up his mind. The encounter with the cop has him spooked. The bulge under the arm, the handcuffs dangling from a belt loop. Louis's parents would die if he got himself arrested. His father's an engineer, for Christ's sake. His mother's an accountant.

So, that's it. Chin heads for home, imagining himself a businessman fretting over the accounts receivable, wondering how in the world he'll make the next payroll. Maybe ten years from now, if he works enough seventy hour weeks, he'll be reasonably compensated. Maybe.

Chin hesitates before the inner lobby door. The lock is broken, the door slightly ajar, a common occurrence that never fails to annoy Chin. The lock wasn't damaged by vandals or thieves. Pragmatists to the core, the residents are themselves responsible. The intercom hasn't worked in six months, which means you have to come to the lobby when you have a visitor or receive a delivery. Or you would if the lock wasn't broken.

There's a bottle of white wine in Chin's refrigerator, a half-assed decent Chardonnay that calls to him as he presses the button for the elevator, as the door opens and he steps inside. Only when the elevator begins to move do his thoughts turn to Leonard Carter. Another ten grand and he'll have the cushion he suspects he'll need for his transition to legitimacy. Chin's not suicidal. He's not intending to confront Carter one on one. But there's that warehouse two blocks away, the one he noticed while the cop examined his ID. Chin had driven past the building on his way out of the neighborhood, a matter of pure chance. The structure was vacant, its doors and windows covered with sheets of plywood. Late at night, access to the roof would involve only a minimum of risk. Chin's almost certain the roof overlooks the windows of Carter's apartment, all of them.

If Carter believes himself to be safe, Chin thinks, if he fails to take elementary precautions like keeping the shades drawn, if he foolishly exposes himself . . .

Chin keys the two locks protecting his door, steps inside his apartment, locks the doors behind him and flips on the light. Big mistake. If he'd reversed the last two steps, if he'd turned on the light first, if he'd seen Leonard Carter standing in the kitchen before he locked the door behind him, he might have had a chance. Maybe not, though. Carter's holding a gun in his right hand, a silenced, .22 caliber semi-automatic, an assassin's weapon. His eyes are calm and cool, his stare unwavering.

‘Walk further into the apartment,' he says.