Angel Face (19 page)

‘Look, I don't have much in the way of good news,' he finally says. ‘I was able to enter the warehouse through a skylight shortly after the business closed for the night. By then, Bobby and the man we saw with the suitcase—'

‘That would be Marco Torrino,' Epstein interrupts. ‘He's called “the Blade” because of his nose.'

‘OK, Benedetti and Torrino left together a little before six. But not the three men we saw with Torrino in Kingsbridge. They stayed behind.'

‘How do you know they didn't leave before we got to the warehouse?' Angel asks.

‘Because I came down those narrow stairs that Solly described. There's a locked door at the bottom, a very flimsy door as it turns out, but I could hear a television going, a woman's voice screaming, “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Give it to me. Give it to me.”'

Angel and Solly both laugh, as Carter intended. Then Epstein asks, ‘How did you get into the building?'

‘There are two skylights on the roof, neither locked down.'

‘And you what? Flew down and back up?'

‘Actually, I gave up on superpowers a long time ago.'

‘So, how'd you do it?'

‘I went to a hardware store and bought thirty feet of rope.' Carter pauses, but Epstein's out of questions. ‘Look, I can probably neutralize the men inside the basement, but if the money's locked in a safe, we've shown our cards for nothing.'

‘Maybe it's just sitting there,' Angel suggests. ‘In the suitcase.'

‘A little information,' Solly interrupts. ‘According to Amaroso, the basement's divided in half. The part at the end of the stairs is used for storage. The bunker's at the other end of building. According to Ruby, it's protected by a thick wooden door consisting of two slabs of oak and an electronic lock that reads a bar code imprinted on a key card. I'm not saying the bunker can't be penetrated, but you'd be a long time getting past that door.' Epstein glances at his watch. ‘Time to call it a night. I'm on vacation as far as the job's concerned, but there's no vacation from your family. I better get home.'

‘I'll walk you to your car,' Carter says, already heading for the door.

The East Village sidewalks are quiet, even on Avenue A in the heart of the club scene. It's after midnight and tomorrow's a working day. A few smokers stand outside the clubs, indulging their ten-dollar-a-pack habits. On the street, a horde of empty cabs flies past, reminding Carter of a military convoy double-timing through hostile territory.

‘So, what's up, Carter? What couldn't we talk about in front of your girlfriend?'

‘Your family's up.'

Epstein eyes his companion, but Carter's expression reveals nothing. In his plaid shirt, brown pants and scuffed athletic shoes, he appears entirely inoffensive. ‘Say that again.'

‘Face the facts, Solly, we've lost the element of surprise.' Carter pauses for a moment. ‘This business started as a quick snatch-and-run in Kingsbridge. With a little luck, we could have entered the apartment when the resident . . .'

‘Vincent Pugliese.'

‘Pugliese, yes. We could have stolen the money when he was out of the apartment, there and gone. That's not the case now.'

Epstein leans against his car. There's a slight chill in the air and the skies above are streaked with flat clouds the color of soot in a fireplace. Like any other New York cop, Epstein's spent enough time on the street to predict the weather more accurately than most TV meteorologists. It'll rain tomorrow, all day.

‘How do you think they got on to us?' Epstein asks.

‘I don't know that they have. We saw money delivered to the apartment on several occasions. There were no guards when the deliveries were made, just Torrino. Now we see money coming out, this time guarded. Maybe there's a deal going down and Bobby's concentrating his capital. Or maybe he came to the same conclusion you did. Or maybe both things are happening simultaneously. I'm only sure that it doesn't matter, either way, because the rules have changed. There's no getting to that money without spilling blood.'

Both men pause at the approach of three kids, two boys and a girl, none more than sixteen. The kids are Latino and they toss Epstein and Carter hard looks as they pass by. Epstein answers the challenge with a cop glare of his own, but Carter simply ignores a threat he deems non-existent.

‘You have a family,' he tells the cop, ‘a pregnant wife and a child. Time to walk away.'

Epstein thinks he should be angry, but in fact, having come to the same conclusion about the blood part, he's relieved. ‘That's it? You're dismissing me?'

‘Not completely. I still need a tracking unit. And maybe a little help on how to install it. I assume they don't run on batteries.'

‘Yeah, they do, as a matter of fact.'

Finally, some good news. ‘How long do the batteries last?'

‘That depends on how often the vehicle is used. Weeks, for sure, sometimes for months. You can buy these things anywhere, by the way. They cost about four hundred dollars.'

At the corner, a couple in search of a cab slips into a passionate clinch. When the girl attempts to back away, she loses her balance and falls into a sitting position on the sidewalk. Her drunken laughter echoes up and down the block.

‘I can supply the tracking unit, no problem,' Epstein continues, ‘and I think I can bug the Ford, too, even if it is alarmed. But there has to be a bottom line, for the unit and the files. I'm sure this is something you already considered.'

‘Yeah, I have. Five thousand up front, Solly. Another fifteen if I bring it off. But I might take my own advice and walk away. I'm not given to assaulting impregnable positions.'

Epstein offers his hand. ‘I can't figure you out. One minute you're this, the next you're that. But I'm grateful anyway. That wife and kid? I love the hell out of 'em. My favorite home movie is an ultrasound video of the fetus in Sofia's womb.'

Angel doesn't have a ready response when Carter describes his conversation with the cop. After all that talk about blood diamonds and the hell world, Carter's done a good deed. Two good deeds, actually, because now they won't have to split the take with Epstein. So, maybe she underestimated him. Maybe he's not the bad boy she took him for.

‘Am I next on the dismissal list?' she finally asks.

‘No.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because someone has to drive the van.'

‘Ah, there's the Carter I know. Practical, practical, practical.'

Carter proves her doubly right when he adds, ‘Cops are no good in a firefight, Angel. They usually panic and empty their weapons as fast as they can pull the trigger. If Solly had worked on a SWAT team, I would have kept him on, family or not. As it is, except for the technical part, he's pretty much useless.'

‘Like I said, practical, practical, practical.'

They're in the apartment's living room, sitting on a sleek leather couch that mirrors the furniture throughout the apartment. A celebration of glass, chrome and blond wood devoid of adornment, the furnishings are not to Carter's taste, or Angel's, either. But they're not in it for the ambiance.

‘You know we'll never get out of prison if something goes wrong,' Carter says.

‘Like what?'

‘Like if a police cruiser happens to cruise by at just the wrong time, or an unknown witness calls them, or if I should happen to come out on the losing end of a firefight. You can plan all you want, but there's no certainty in war, not for the individual soldier. How old are you, Angel? Twenty-three, twenty-four?'

‘Twenty-three.'

‘I think life expectancy for women is around eighty-three years. That would leave you staring out through prison bars for the next six decades. I told Solly to consider his family. You need to consider the family you might never have.'

Angel snuggles up against Carter. On the one hand, she's touched by his concern. On the other, he's misjudged her badly. For one thing, blood's already been spilled, Ruby Amaroso's blood, and she was there to play her part. Did the gangster have a wife and children, a mother and a father, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces? Angel doesn't really care. She's slipped into a place she's been avoiding for a long time, a walk on the wild side from which (and she knows this, too) she might never return.

‘I'm going to take a bath now, Carter. I need to shave my legs.' Angel runs her fingers along Carter's thigh, producing a satisfying twitch. ‘Unless you want to shave them for me.'

Carter harbors no desire to put a sharp blade to Angel's flesh, even a safety razor, but he agrees to observe the process. The outcome, unfortunately, is less erotic than he hoped. Though Angel pursues the mechanics of bathing and shaving diligently, she speaks mostly about the underdeveloped island of Tobago, part of a two island nation called Trinidad and Tobago.

‘Trinidad and Tobago have lots of oil, Carter. And I mean lots. They have a stable government, too, something like Costa Rica's, so you don't have to worry about rebellions and coups. Trinidad takes care of the oil part and it's fairly industrialized, especially in the south and around the capital, Port of Spain. Tobago's a different story. There's a mountain rainforest in the center, the beaches are all white sand and turquoise waters, the fishing is superb and the reefs are almost pristine. This is exactly what you want in the Caribbean.'

‘You sound like a tourist video.'

Angel doesn't dispute Carter's assessment. To a certain extent, when she compares Tobago with other high-end resort islands, like St Barts or St Kitts, she has to play the advocate. As it turns out, Tobago's low population density is the island's biggest plus. There's plenty of room for villas and yachts and every other accoutrement that might attract the rich.

‘Final points.' Angel leans forward to pull the drain plug, then rises to her feet. She doesn't have to ask for a towel as Carter's already holding one. ‘Tobago's almost on the equator, so when it's summer in the USA, it's winter in Chile and Argentina, and vice versa. You can fly from Buenos Aires or New York to Port of Spain in under seven hours. And did I mention Trinidad's carnival? It puts Rio's to shame. Trinidad is the home of calypso and steel drum bands that play every kind of music from soca to classical.'

Carter wraps Angel in the towel and pulls her against him. The heat of her body runs through him in a nearly painful wave. ‘Didn't you say something about a
final
point? After which we'd revert to sign language?' Carter slides his hand beneath the towel to cup her breast, a gesture that affects him more than it does Angel, though she covers his hand with her own.

‘I want you to come with me,' she tells Carter. ‘When I make my move.'

‘To the Caribbean.'

‘Yes, to the Caribbean.'

‘In exactly what capacity?'

‘Pool boy, with privileges.'

Carter lifts Angel off the floor and carries her toward the bedroom. ‘I don't think pool boy works for me, but I can promise you this. I'm more than comfortable with the privileges.'

TWENTY-THREE

C
arter enters River Avenue Storage in the south Bronx, a 24/7 facility, at one o'clock on Thursday morning. He rides the elevator to the third floor and walks to a door at the end of a long deserted hallway. Dropping to one knee, he works the dials on the two combination locks securing the door, then rolls the door up, steps inside and slides the door back down before turning on the light. Carter rents the ten-by-twenty space under an assumed name, having paid with cash for the one year lease.

The room is empty except for two large trunks pushed against the back wall. Carter approaches the trunk to his left. He keys the padlock securing the lid, opens it wide and removes a flat case that resembles cases designed to carry musical instruments. But there's no guitar inside, no keyboard. The case has been specially fabricated to hold an Israeli sniper rifle, an M89SR. It took Carter a year and several thousand dollars to secure the weapon, but the rifle has virtues he couldn't ignore. The M89 weighs only ten pounds and is less than three feet long. It uses 7.62 NATO rounds, which are easy to acquire. Best of all, it came with a detachable silencer designed specifically for the M89. Unlike home-made silencers, this one actually works.

Rifles are much noisier than handguns – there's no confusing the crack of a long gun with a car backfiring, or a kid setting off a string of firecrackers. That's not a big deal in combat situations. The position of a sniper several hundred yards away simply can't be determined on the basis of sound. The opposite principle applies to assassins operating in an urban environment where potential witnesses might be anywhere. True, gunfire is routinely ignored in some inner city neighborhoods, but Carter has no desire to bet his life on community indifference. Silence being the assassin's best friend, he prefers to rely on a well-engineered suppressor.

As he did on the day he acquired the weapon, Carter brings the M89 to his shoulder, and as on that first day, the stock molds to his shoulder, the pistol grip to his hand, the sights to his eyes.

Smitten, he decides. That's the word for what happened to him, with the gun and with Angel, both equally beautiful in his eyes. There's a difference, though. While Carter doesn't know what to do with Angel Tamanaka, he knows exactly what to do with the rifle. Or what he hopes to do.

Carter returns the M89 to its case and sets the case on the ground. He pulls an empty backpack from the trunk and half-fills it with a variety of materiel that might or might not be useful, depending on the set-up. Only a few hours before, he and Epstein accomplished a pair of ends. Without setting off the alarm, they attached a magnetized tracking unit beneath the Expedition's right rear fender, along with a listening device that reached into the vehicle's interior. Epstein accomplished this last trick by drilling a small hole in the underside of the SUV, then inserting the head of a bug through the hole. As the hole was drilled beneath the front seat and the bug only a quarter-inch wide, the odds against accidental discovery are great.