Angel Face

TWENTY-THREE

Carter 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.

The operation hadn’t been without its discomforts. It had rained all day and the yard, no more than earth covered with a thin layer of gravel, was cold and muddy. Epstein had volunteered to crawl under the car and plant the devices by himself, but Carter had insisted, despite the conditions, on observing what he deemed to be a teaching moment.

Carter drops a pair of night vision goggles into the backpack, along with a coil of rope, a ball of netting, a pair of walkie-talkies, a set of lock picks, a box of shotgun shells and a box of hollow-point 7.62mm cartridges. There are other items he might need in the trunk, and more items in the other trunk. A bar of plastic explosive, Semtex, virtually beckons to him. Carter had used Semtex on a job in Houston, wiring a crude explosive device into the ignition of a 700 Series BMW owned by Samuel Reed, a pedophile who seduced the wrong man’s son.

Carter settles the backpack on to his shoulders, picks up the gun case and walks to the door. He puts his ear to the metal surface and listens for a moment before making his escape. Five minutes later, he’s back in the van and headed north to a Wal-Mart in Westchester County. Carter’s not a Wal-Mart hater. Ordinarily, he enjoys the chain’s industrial slant, the bare bones displays and the sheer magnitude of the stores. But tonight, as he walks the long aisles, his thoughts turn to Angel and a remark she made just before he left.

‘Face it, Carter, if it wasn’t for you riding to the rescue, I’d be decomposing in a New Jersey swamp. No, I take that back. If you were the cold, calculating killer you think you are, you would have shot me along with Ricky Ditto. There are no codes of honor in the Hell World.’

But Carter’s sick of the whole discussion. The Hell World thing was Lo Phet’s idea, not his. Carter doesn’t believe in any world he can’t presently see and touch. He doesn’t believe in rebirth, either. And as to his being cold and calculating, he and Epstein had enjoyed an intimate conversation just before the cop went back to his family. Epstein proposed that they become partners, just as Paulie had a few years before, this time in the business of ripping off drug dealers. He, Epstein, will provide the intelligence. Carter will supply the muscle. If they choose their targets wisely, and leave the narcotics behind, the risks will be minimal.

‘See, Carter, I’m pretty sure that you whacked at least six mob guys over the last few years. Meanwhile, no one’s looking for you. OCCB and the FBI? They’re into these line charts that run from some bullshit don to the capos, to the soldiers, to known associates. I have to admit the charts look nice and neat when you display ’em to a jury, but they’re useless when someone acts outside the box. Like you.’

Carter buys five items at Wal-Mart: an X-Acto knife with a set of blades, a packet of coarse sandpaper, a box of strike-anywhere kitchen matches, a tube of glue and four shrink-wrapped ping-pong balls. He pays in cash, then heads back to Manhattan. His route takes him to the East River where he watches the moon play a game of peek-a-boo with a tattered layer of flat gray cloud, alternately casting a glow on the dark waters, then vanishing. Quite deliberately, as deliberately as he keeps the van within five miles of the speed limit, Carter pushes all consideration of Lo Phet’s cosmic scheme from his mind. The truth is that Carter’s always liked combat – death the ultimate risk, survival the ultimate reward – an unnamed world, however brief, without questions, without conflict, without longing.

A police cruiser’s flashing lights dance in the van’s rear-view and side mirrors. The cruiser’s coming up fast, weaving from lane to lane, siren blaring. When Carter eases the van into the right lane, the cruiser speeds past, then suddenly cuts in front of him to exit at Forty-Ninth Street. Carter’s forced to hit the brakes hard and he wonders, for just a moment, what emergency prompted the two cops in the cruiser to risk the lives of ordinary citizens going about their business. With no ready answer, his mind shifts to something even more unpleasant. Life and death are not the only possible outcomes, not here, not in his particular brand of combat. There’s another outcome that will leave him caged for the rest of his life, a potential outcome he described to Angel Tamanaka, an outcome worse than death.

Carter asks himself what he’d do if surrounded by cops, a heavily armored SWAT Team perhaps, with no hope of escape. Surrender? Fight to the bitter end? Briefly, he imagines charging into the open, guns blazing, a boy soldier embracing his inevitable fate.

Angel shakes her head in wonder. Vincent Graham’s given his love nest a makeover since she last visited. He’s shifted his porn collection from the drawers of a triple-dresser to a cabinet that runs along the wall closest to the bed, a cabinet that must have been custom designed. He’s also broken his collection into categories, from BDSM and BBW to Gang-bang and Swingers. Common to thousands of Internet porn sites, the list goes on and on, leaving Angel to wonder if Vincent believes they excite the women he brings here. In truth, she finds the display pathetic, as she finds Vincent Graham pathetic, as she finds most of her clients (former clients, she reminds herself) pathetic.

Angel glances at a giant TV screen lying flat against the ceiling just beyond the mirror above the bed. At the push of a button, she knows, the screen will descend, at the push of another button, the hi-def show will begin. Angel can’t help but contrast Vincent’s sex life to the one she and Carter share. Talk about losers.

But Angel’s not here to critique Vincent Graham’s sexual predilections. Angel wants to make sure the keys work and that Graham hasn’t installed a security guard in the lobby, or a camera above the lobby door. He hasn’t – probably because he doesn’t want his trysts recorded – and the keys do work. That’s enough for now.

Angel reaches into her purse, sliding her hand through layers of detritus, old letters, crumpled tissues, two wallets, a lipstick and a compact, three combs and a small brush, dozens of store receipts, a mini-umbrella and a pair of scratched, multi-tone sunglasses. At the very bottom, her fingers curl around a small automatic, the one no longer in the toe of a boot at the back of her closet.

Angel replaces the little automatic, sliding the pistol beneath a folded dish towel at the very bottom of the bag. She withdraws her hand, gives the bag a shake, then jabs her hand into the depths, burrowing past the mess, using the towel as a guide, until her fingers once again cradle the weapon and her thumb slides up to engage the safety. How long? Two seconds? Three? Not fast, not by Carter’s standards. She’ll just have to practice.

Back on the street, Angel decides to walk the mile back to the apartment she and Carter share. The air is cool and damp, but it’s finally stopped raining. Angel’s wearing jeans and a scoop-necked top, a cotton pullover, the jeans tight enough and the top low enough to attract the attention of three males in a jumped-up Toyota SUV. Angel’s used to every kind of intrusion, from catcalls to polite good-evenings, but this gang’s persistence digs beneath her skin. The Toyota’s slowed down to match her pace, a bad sign.

‘Get in the car, baby. We’ll give you what you really want. I promise.’

Their crew-cuts, pimples and sleeveless muscleman T-shirts, not to mention the Jersey license plate, mark them as terminal hicks. Their slurred voices mark them as drunk.

‘We’ll use a lubricant,’ the one in the back seat declares. ‘It won’t hurt a bit.’

Angel slides her hand into her bag, slides it through and between the many objects between her fingers and ... and her equalizer. That’s what guns were called in the Old West, equalizers, because they made a little man the equal of a big man. Or a little woman, for that matter.

Angel doesn’t acknowledge the comments. She continues on, placing one foot in front of the other, eyes forward, as though walking on empty streets in one of those post-apocalypse movies, the only human being left on Earth. But her thoughts move in another direction. Angel’s thinking how easy it would be to pull the little automatic, to place it against each of their skulls, to pull the trigger. Bang, bang, bang. In fact, Angel’s hoping they get out of the car.