Angel Face (7 page)

If Janie were still alive, she'd tell him to warn Angel Tamanaka, the opportunity to save a life somehow becoming an obligation to save a life. Maybe that's why he'd taken to the army. In the army, the only obligations were to your comrades and the mission.

Inside his apartment, he kicks off his shoes, lowers himself on to a sectional couch and settles in to watch a Military Channel documentary on Roman battle tactics. Though he rarely has a chance to use them in his line of work, Carter's skilled with knives. Close-up killing of the kind practiced by all armies until the invention of the gun normally commands his attention. Not this time, though. This time Angel Tamanaka tumbles through his thoughts, invasive as an Iraqi dust storm.

Carter finally gives up at seven thirty, a few minutes before sunset. He decides to visit Angel's neighborhood and take a look around. But there's no way he's going to knock on Angel's door – not without knowing who's behind it. And there's no way he's going up there unprepared. He crosses the apartment, to a walk-in closet in the larger of the two bedrooms. At the darkest end of the closet, he removes a section of floorboard to reveal a metal box nestled between the joists. He takes a .38 caliber revolver, a Colt, from the box, along with a holster, and a Rhode Island license plate stolen from an auto graveyard. Carter likes revolvers for street work because the cartridge casings aren't expelled, as they would be if he used a semi-automatic.

When Carter leaves the apartment, the holstered revolver is positioned just inside his left hip with the handle facing to the right. An unlined denim jacket covers both, though it's not really cool enough for a jacket. The license plate is for the van and Carter attaches it in a few seconds with a handful of magnets. Then he's off, acutely aware of the risks he's taking. New York City's gun laws are draconian. The minimum penalty for carrying an illegal handgun is three years in prison.

Carter takes Fourteenth Street to Tenth Avenue and heads uptown. He runs into heavy traffic near the Lincoln Tunnel, even at eight o'clock, but once past Forty-Second Street, the traffic moves along and he parks the van facing Angel's apartment at eight fifteen.

Carter settles into the back of the van and carefully checks his surroundings, using the windshield and the side mirrors. He's on a block in the very early stages of gentrification. A few doors in from the far corner, a drug crew services cars and pedestrians. In the middle of the block, four Hispanic teenagers, three boys and a girl, lean against a car parked in front of the low-income project on the south side of the street. They're sharing a forty-ounce malt wrapped in a brown paper bag, clowning around, the girl shrieking from time to time. Across the road, Angel's building is one of the block's few bright spots, three tenements renovated to form a single building, its central entrance protected by a wrought-iron gate heavy enough to fend off the Mongol hordes.

Carter's prepared to wait for hours if necessary. He's looking as much for Bobby Ditto as for Angel. He's thinking Bobby, or whoever he sends, will initially do what Carter's done, which is put the apartment under surveillance. But Carter's overestimated the patience of New York mobsters. Not ten minutes after he settles down, the wrought-iron gate swings open to reveal Angel Tamanaka accompanied by two men. The younger of the two walks on Angel's left. He's got a jacket, a woman's jacket, folded over his left arm, which is pointed at Angel's ribcage. His right hand grips the back of her neck.

Fish or cut bait, engage or withdraw. Carter has no more than a few seconds to decide. Then the second man, much the older of the two, reaches out to squeeze Angel's ass, his thin lips parting in a grin as cruel as it is narcissistic. He's got the power, the juice. He can do anything he wants to this disposable human being. Can and will.

Carter exits through the side door of the van. Angel and her escorts, still fifty feet away, are walking right toward him. He ambles in their direction, moving to the outside of the man presumably holding a gun. When he comes within striking distance, he steps in front of the man and pulls the left side of his jacket away from his body, revealing his own weapon. Instinctively, the man brings his gun to bear on the threat.

Carter waits until the gangster's hand moves a few inches before driving his foot into the man's crotch with all the considerable force at his command, a snap kick against which the man has no defense. Almost in the same motion, he draws his Colt and slams it into the side of the man's head.

One down and one to go. Carter levels the gun at the second man, who stands frozen in place, immobile as a department store manikin.

‘You move, you're dead,' Carter explains. Then he asks, ‘What did I just say?'

‘Don't worry. I'm not packing.'

Carter repeats the question. ‘What did I just say?'

‘If I move, you'll kill me.'

Carter squats and strips the gun, a semi-automatic Glock, from the hand of the first man, who rolls on to his back and groans. Carter ignores the blood running along the man's face and neck. He rummages through the man's jacket and discovers a cellphone. The cellphone goes into his pocket, the gun beneath his waistband.

‘Are you the brother?' he asks the older man as he rises to his feet.

‘Whose brother?'

The man has a narrow face, a hatchet face, dominated by a sharp hollow nose that reminds Carter of a triangular sail on a racing yacht. He stares at Carter through contemptuous eyes, having apparently concluded that Carter's not going to kill him. But not killing and not hurting are two different things. Carter slaps the man across the face with his free hand, the crack loud enough to arouse the kids across the street. They erupt in a chorus of encouraging whoops.

‘Are you the brother?' Carter asks again.

The man's eyes now project rage, impotent rage, helpless rage. But he has no choice. He has to answer. ‘No,' he says, ‘I'm not.'

Carter doesn't dispute the claim. The man looks nothing like Ricky Ditto. He steps close to him, jamming the revolver into his gut, and pats him down. No gun. Carter gestures to the man on the ground, who's managed to rise to his knees and is now vomiting on to the sidewalk.

‘I want you to pick up your buddy and walk to the end of the block. If you turn around before I'm gone, I'll kill you, witnesses or not. And you tell the brother he should heat up the cappuccino. I'll be comin' to visit.'

EIGHT

A
ngel can't stop shaking. She's shaking when Carter takes her hand, when he leads her to the van and puts her inside, when he drives north to 125th Street, then cross-town and over the Triborough Bridge into Queens. She's shaking when he parks at the Pilgrim Diner on Astoria Boulevard, when he takes her inside, when he orders coffee and apple turnovers for both of them. There's a little voice in her head that keeps saying, ‘It's not fair.' There's another little voice that keeps saying, ‘So what?' When she tries to lift her coffee cup, she spills hot coffee on her hand.

‘Are you going to say anything?' she finally demands.

That brings a smile to Carter's face, a somewhat lopsided smile that reveals a chipped incisor on the left side of his mouth. ‘This is what I get for saving your life? Not to mention your honor?'

Angel doesn't rise to the bait. ‘They said they were cops. The older one had a badge.' She shakes her head. ‘I never should have opened the door.'

‘They probably would've kicked it down. Subtlety's not their thing. Patience either.'

Angel cuts through the apple turnover with the edge of her fork, spears a piece and shovels it into her mouth. ‘Damn, this is really good.'

‘They do their own baking.' Carter picks up his turnover with his fingers and takes a bite. The crust flakes off beneath his teeth. ‘The Pilgrim's been feeding the cab drivers who work LaGuardia Airport for fifty years. Sometimes I come here at three o'clock in the morning just for the smell.'

The only thing Angel can smell is her own fear. ‘I don't get it, how you can be so calm? Do you do this every day?'

‘No, not every day. But I've done similar things often enough to use the adrenal rush to my advantage.'

‘Does that mean you weren't afraid?'

‘I was afraid that I'd have to shoot them, which I didn't want to do.'

Angel feels a sudden rush of pure rage. The one with the hatchet face had the cruelest smile she'd ever seen, not to mention the fact that his eyes were filled with lust and he'd threatened to rip her flesh off with a pair of pliers.

‘I wish you had,' she says. ‘I wish you'd killed both of them.'

‘Too many witnesses.' He gestures to her cup. ‘Finish your coffee and I'll drop you off wherever you want. By the way, did they tell you who they were?'

‘They said something about a man named Bobby. Like I was supposed to recognize the name.'

‘That would be a mobster named Bobby Ditto. His brother, the one who's dead, was named Ricky Ditto. Their actual last name is Benedetti. Somehow, Bobby discovered that you and Ricky had a date that afternoon.'

‘How did he find out my name and address? The old guy, the one with the hatchet face, called me Angel.'

‘Most likely from your pimp . . .'

‘My agent.' Angel sighs. She's finally slowing down and she wonders how far she'll fall. Last time, after Carter shot Dr Rick, she slept for twelve hours straight. She glances around the diner, at all the Pilgrim kitsch. There's a plaster turkey in every corner. ‘I have nowhere to go,' she finally says.

‘How about your folks?'

‘My father's dead and my mother's a drunk. Last I heard, she was living in a shelter.'

‘What do you want me to do? I—'

Angel cuts him off. ‘I want you to do what you said you were going to do. Go after that . . . that Bobby Ditto.'

‘Sorry, Angel, I only meant to worry them. Bobby Ditto's not a threat, not to me.'

‘Then why did you interfere?'

Carter's eyes dart to the diner's entrance. Two men have just come through the door. Thickly built, they wear wife-beater T-shirts that reveal jailhouse tattooing on their upper chests and arms. When they take seats at the counter, he turns back to Angel.

‘I only came to warn you.'

‘But you didn't just warn me. You got involved and I'd like to know why.'

Carter shakes his head. He's not going there. But Angel's not fooled and she's not stupid. He either wants her body or he has a conscience, despite his profession. And it has to be number two because he intends to drop her off. Unless, of course, he wants a quickie in the van. Angel represses a smile. Everything about Carter intrigues her, from his nerdy front, to his stunning (lucky for her) proficiency, to his confidence, to his white-knight heroics.

‘Like I said, I only came to warn you.'

‘OK, but the fact is that you kicked the crap out of one of them and scared the crap out of the other one. I could see it in his eyes. He definitely thought you were gonna kill him. But you didn't, right? And now you and me, we're joined together in their minds. We're joined together and my name is the only one they know, which means they're gonna keep looking for me.'

Carter's trying to think of what to say – her logic is impeccable – when Angel's cell punches out the opening notes to Lady Gaga's ‘Poker Face'. He nods when Angel looks up at him. Her life is no business of his. Then she puts the phone to her ear and her already grim expression darkens.

‘What? What? That can't be.'

But it is, because when she hangs up a minute later, Angel hasn't brightened. She tilts her chin up to meet his gaze and Carter realizes that her eyes aren't black after all. They're an impossible indigo that reminds him of the blue of the sky just before dark in the mountains around Tora Bora.

‘That was Pierre's wife, Jeanne-Marie. Pierre's dead. As in shot, killed, murdered.' Angel looks down at the table. She's shaking again. ‘Holy shit, what the fuck have you done to me? To me and the rest of the girls. Because the only thing they stole was Pierre's computer. And they didn't even take that. They just took the hard drive.'

‘You want some more coffee?'

‘Is that supposed to be funny?'

‘Probably not. So, what about an almond horn? The marzipan filling? It's unbelievable.'

Carter's remembering the first few minutes after a firefight. You were alive and that was enough. Tomorrow morning, you'd wake up on the right side of the grass. Carter's been in dozens of firefights, in Asia and in Africa, and come through uninjured, a blessing he doesn't attribute to his own skills. Better men died before his eyes.

‘Do you have a name?'

‘Carter.'

‘Well, here's the thing, Carter. I left home unexpectedly and I somehow forgot to take my purse. That means I've got nothing, no clothes, no identification, no money, no credit cards, no debit card. I've got nothing and it's your fault.'

‘Actually, I'm blaming the whole thing on Ricky's wife and children.'

‘Say again?'

‘We were both in Ricky Ditto's house because his family was somewhere else. We were there to take advantage of that fact in order to advance our individual interests. Myself, I'd never kill a man in front of his family, and I assume you apply the same principle to your own work.'

‘Actually, one guy snuck me down in the basement while his wife was upstairs. He had this fantasy about a sex slave . . .' Angel stops when Carter begins to laugh. So far, so good. ‘You said something about more coffee.'