Angel Face

FOURTEEN

Carter’s been sitting on Lieutenant Solly Epstein’s house all evening, scrunched into the van’s back seat, munching on bag of a Granny Smith apples, drinking cans of Red Bull to stay alert, peeing into an empty bottle when necessary. Carter and Epstein have a history, a past in which Epstein twice attempted to take Carter’s life. Epstein hadn’t been up to the job, not even close, but Carter let the man live, a favor that now has to be repaid. There are no freebies in Carter’s world.

Epstein finally drives up to his small home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, at eight o’clock. He parks his Taurus against the curb, shuts the engine and gets out of the car. Before he can lock up, the screen door on his house opens and a little boy, a toddler, runs out to stumble across the grass and into his father’s arms.

‘Daddy, daddy, daddy.’

Carter’s touched, no doubt, and not a little jealous. He will never have this for himself, this simple pleasure. Lo Phet would have laughed if he’d even raised the subject.

‘No daddies in Hell World. Only sires.’

Carter watches father and son disappear into the house. If there are no moms and dads in Lo Phet’s universe, he thinks, there are definitely men and women. He’s smitten and he knows it, his mind instantly calling up the rise and fall of Angel’s breasts, the hiss of her drawn breath, an image and a sound, so clear she might as well be in the van. And they’d done that, too, in the cargo area by the rear doors. The windows had fogged over long before they finished.

All of which is not to say that Carter trusts Angel Tamanaka. No, Carter doesn’t trust Angel because he doesn’t trust anyone. Trust, as Angel might put it, is not Carter’s thing. It’s not what he does.

Carter settles a little deeper into the seat. There are folks about, dog walkers, a jogger or two, and he doesn’t want to be noticed. The address he had for Epstein, now four years old, is still good. That’s enough for now.

Carter needs intelligence and Epstein’s long-standing assignment to the NYPD’s Organized Crime Control Bureau makes him the perfect candidate to supply it. Epstein’s sold information in the past. There’s no reason to suppose he won’t go that route again. The trick is to get him alone, the woman and child being, of course, innocent civilians.

The lights in the upstairs bedrooms, as they’re turned on and off, mark the family’s progress. First in a room at the east side of the house. The curtains in the room’s single window are open, the shade drawn up, and Carter assumes he’s looking at the boy’s room, that Solly’s putting his child to sleep. In any event, the light goes out twenty minutes later.

Another hour passes, with the lights on the lower floor, in the living room and the kitchen, remaining lit. Then the lights go out, the kitchen light first, as lights come on, in an upstairs bedroom and in the bathroom, more or less simultaneously. Carter’s thinking he might leave at this point. Tomorrow’s another day and there’s Angel back in Woodhaven. Hopefully.

But Carter doesn’t move, and his patience is finally rewarded at eleven o’clock when the bedroom goes dark as a light comes on downstairs. Epstein emerges a moment later. He ambles to his car, jingling his keys, whistling to himself. Then he’s off and running, with Carter following shortly behind.

The trip isn’t very long, only a few blocks to a pedestrian bridge crossing Shore Parkway. New York’s upper bay is just a hundred yards distant and Carter’s nostrils fill with the odor of the sea, though the harbor is screened by trees and bushes. When Epstein pulls to the curb near the overpass, Carter passes by and drives another block before sliding the van into a parking space. By the time he gets out, Epstein has crossed the bridge and disappeared.

Carter jogs to the overpass and takes the steps two at a time. Epstein’s nowhere in sight when he reaches the top, and he crosses the bridge quickly, the traffic zinging along beneath him. Carter intends to pursue Epstein, to run him down – this is Carter’s big chance to engage the cop in a long, pointed conversation – but the scene before him is too compelling and he stops for a moment. To his right, the towers of lower Manhattan rise like the phalanx of some great advancing army. Lady Liberty, alone on her island and lit from top to bottom, holds her torch aloft as if leading the charge. Across the harbor on Staten Island, single-family homes run in parallel lines across low shadowy hills. To his left, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, with its lit cables and towers, unites Staten Island with Brooklyn. The Verrazano is the most slender and graceful of the city’s suspension bridges, at least in Carter’s opinion, despite it being the longest by far.

Carter has been here before, to walk the promenade running between the highway and the water on a bright fall afternoon. When he spots Epstein sitting on a bench nearby, the faint glow of a cigarette in his right hand, he knows exactly why the man has come to this spot. The view is stunning.

Carter drops on to the bench next to Epstein a moment later, but Epstein doesn’t flinch. ‘I was hoping you were dead,’ he says.

‘Sorry to disappoint.’

Epstein tugs on his cigarette. He’s a short man, barely five-eight, and bald on top, with a barrel chest and heavily muscled shoulders. ‘You’ll have to excuse me,’ he says, ‘Maybe I’m dense. But I don’t think I’m in your debt. I think we had a deal and I kept my end.’

Carter had exacted a price when he allowed Epstein to survive the second attempt on his life. Yes, I’ll let you live. But only if you put a gun to your partner’s head and pull the trigger. With his wife about to give birth any minute, Epstein had complied.

‘Benedetti,’ Carter says. ‘Bobby and Ricky, the Ditto brothers.’

‘Like I said, Carter, I don’t owe you a thing.’

The cop rises, grinds his cigarette into the pavement and begins to walk south, toward the bridge. Carter follows, not yet ready to pull out the big guns. He will, though, if it comes to that. From their right, the pulsating roar of high-speed traffic assaults their ears, reducing the splash of the waves against the boulders protecting the shoreline to an insinuating murmur.

‘How have you been, Solly?’ Carter asks.

Epstein laughs. ‘I got a kid now, a boy, and another on the way, and then Mr Death shows up. That would be you, in case you’re interested. So, how good can I be?’ Epstein hesitates, then lowers his voice. ‘I know you hit Ricky Ditto. The way it happened, inside the house, the alarms defeated, no sign of forced entry, one shot through the forehead? It had to be you.’ Epstein stops suddenly, but doesn’t meet Carter’s gaze. ‘And there were others. A Polish gangster shot through the head from three hundred yards away. A Russian dead from a single knife wound just below his sternum. You already used that one, Carter, in Macy’s a few days before Christmas. I thought you were more creative.’

Carter thinks he’s now supposed to ask the cop if he, Carter, is a suspect in any of these cases, if his name has come to the attention of the authorities. He doesn’t.

‘I’m gonna have to invoke my constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination,’ he says. ‘Mum’s the word.’

‘Yeah, well I wouldn’t sweat it. The FBI and the NYPD are places where nobody knows your name.’

Carter stares for a moment at a line of oil tankers and container ships anchored in the harbor. He wonders if they’re waiting to unload, or if they’re off to some faraway port with the turn of the tide. ‘I’ve been sitting in the van for the last eight hours. You mind if we keep walking?’

They continue on for several minutes, Carter watching headlights flicker in the superstructure joining the bridge’s upper and lower decks. Epstein needs time to adjust and Carter’s a patient man. He will not be the first to speak.

‘Are you married?’ Epstein finally asks. ‘You got any kids?’

‘No.’

‘So, you’re completely on your own? Nobody to report to at the end of the day?’

Carter smiles to himself. Only a few days before, he would have responded without hesitation. Now there’s Angel Tamanaka.

‘What’s your point, Solly?’

‘I can’t make ends meet. That’s the point. I can’t make the numbers add up, no matter what I do.’ He ticks the points off on the middle finger of his left hand. ‘The job’s cut back on overtime, so I have to make due on my base pay. Sofia’s been working for the last year, but child care eats up most of her salary. Now she’s pregnant again and she’ll be gainfully unemployed for a year, even if she works into her ninth month.’

Epstein glances at Carter, who’s staring at the bridge. ‘I work in a gas station on my off-days,’ he continues. ‘I’m the monkey in the booth you have to pay if you don’t have a credit card. I make twelve dollars an hour, but only because I carry a gun. The other monkeys get eight.’ He shrugs. ‘Between the house payments and the car payments – we need two cars now – and the payments for the loan I took out with the credit union ... Let’s just say I’m in over my head, Carter. Let’s just say that when Sofia quits her job, me and my little family are gonna sink beneath the waves. Glug, glug, glug.’

Epstein’s complaint reminds Carter of Angel’s cautionary tale about her father’s doomed attempt to save his lumber yard. Hideki Tamanaka had given his all to the struggle, but the forces arrayed against him were too powerful to resist. He’d found a way out, though, by firing a bullet into his head. Epstein, or so it seems to Carter, has other plans.

They walk past a couple, teenagers by the look of them, making out on a bench. Lost in lust, the young lovers appear not to notice the intrusion. Epstein smiles and nudges Carter with an elbow. ‘You remember when you were that young?’ he asks. ‘There was no such thing as enough.’

Carter returns Epstein’s smile, though his sexual experiences, before and after joining the military, have been sporadic and brief. ‘I’m not out to kill Bobby Ditto,’ he says.

‘Is he out to kill you?’

‘Sure, but he doesn’t know who I am, or where to find me, or how to fight me if he did.’

‘Then why come to me?’

‘I’m coming to you, Solly, because I want everything in the files you cops undoubtedly keep on the Ditto brothers. I want every known associate, every address, what they do, their connections ... hell, I want the names of their children and grandchildren. I want to be buried in information.’

They continue on for a time, until they’re standing in the shadow of the bridge. The towers on this side, the Brooklyn side, rise seven hundred feet above their heads.

‘What do you think they did first?’ Carter asks. ‘I’m talking about the people who built the bridge. What was the very first step they took?’

‘Convince the politicians to give them money. Look, it’s gettin’ late and I need a few hours’ sleep. I’m working tomorrow.’

‘My cards are on the table. I’ve got nothing to add.’

‘Fair enough, so let me put my own cards on the table. I’m not an idiot, Carter, so I know you’re gonna pull a rip-off. Bobby doesn’t do hijackings or commercial burglaries. He doesn’t run whores or make book or lend money. Bobby Ditto’s in the drug business and that means cash, cash, cash.’

Epstein turns suddenly and begins to retrace his steps. Intrigued, Carter follows, certain of only one thing. Something in the cop has changed and the good lieutenant’s no longer afraid of him.

‘There a bottom line here?’ Carter asks.

‘Two bottom lines. The first one has you cutting me in, which would definitely be in your interest if you need manpower. The second one has you paying me ten grand for the files.’

Out on the water, an ocean-going tug out-pushes a loaded barge toward the narrow passage between the upper and lower bays. Beyond, the Atlantic Ocean runs all the way to Europe. The barge carries an EPA logo on the side and a cargo of sludge from one of the city’s waste treatment plants, a cargo to be dumped long before England comes into view.

Carter nods to himself when the tugboat sounds its foghorn. He’s intrigued by Epstein’s proposal, but far from ready to make a commitment. He has no idea what resources the operation will call for. That’s why he’s after the files.

‘I can’t choose without the files and I’m not giving you ten thousand dollars. The way I see it, you’re in my debt.’

‘Even though I kept my end of the deal?’

‘There was no deal, Solly. What you did was more in the nature of an insurance policy. But the fact is I don’t know what I’m going to do with the information, which may or may not answer the questions that need answering. I’m willing to go to a grand to cover the risk you’d be taking, but that’s it.’

‘What about the first part?’

‘Bringing you in?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I like to work alone, for obvious reasons. But I’ll think about it.’

Now Epstein takes a moment to think. He stares across the water at the low Staten Island hills, his lips slightly parted, eyes fixed. Then his expression hardens as he turns to Carter.

‘Four,’ he says. ‘Four grand. I gotta get at least four.’

Carter walks into the bedroom he shares with Angel to find two votive candles burning in ruby-red jars on a dresser. An opened book lies between the candles: Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art. Angel’s sleeping atop the bed’s comforter. She’s lying on her stomach, her right arm stretched out beneath the pillow, her dark hair flowing over her shoulders, one leg drawn up. Carter traces the length of her legs, the curve of her buttocks, the dimples along her spine. He’s wondering what she’ll do if he wakes her up – Angel’s a sound sleeper – when she rolls on to her back and opens her eyes.

‘Whenever you leave, I think maybe this time you won’t come back,’ she tells him as she rubs the sleep from her eyes.

‘You worried that I’m gonna leave you?’

‘Leave me?’ Angel gestures at the bulge in Carter’s pants. ‘No, what I think is that you might be killed. Nobody’s invincible.’

Carter takes off his shoes and socks, then unbuttons his shirt. ‘Does that mean you’d miss me?’

‘Missing is part of the deal. Sooner or later.’

‘Inevitably?’ Carter drops his shirt and tugs at his belt. He’s asking himself what Lo Phet would make of this world he’s stumbled into, if there’s a name for it. ‘No escape?’

Angel’s eyes slide over Carter’s body, the slope of his shoulders, the humped biceps, the wormy veins that criss-cross his forearms. The skin on Carter’s chest is stretched tight and her hand rises from the comforter just a bit, as though she’s already feeling that skin on the tips of her fingers.

‘You need to move a little faster,’ she says.

‘And why’s that?’

‘Because I hate to squirm.’ Her smile is wicked. ‘It’s sooooooo unladylike.’

An hour later, they’re sharing a pint of mango ice cream, sitting atop the covers, when Carter says, ‘We’ll be moving out of here tomorrow.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I have another apartment, in Manhattan.’ Carter dips the spoon into the ice cream, places it before Angel’s lips and watches her pink tongue capture the offering. ‘I can be traced to this address,’ he explains. ‘Not easily, but it’s possible.’

‘Then why live here at all?’

‘To leave a trail, a false trail. Just in case.’