Angel Face

TWENTY-SIX

Angel’s leaning so far forward that her chin almost touches the steering wheel. She’s driving on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, weaving through traffic, her breath coming in short heaves. Carter lets her go, at least for the present. He’s remembering a night he spent at a forward base camp in Afghanistan with two CIA spooks and a merc from Blackwater. Earlier that day, a twenty-year-old Marine had somehow wandered off the base and been captured. Now they can hear his screams in the distance, carried to them on a light breeze, faint enough to be the cries of a night bird.

Carter had wanted to do something – darkness, after all, is the covert operator’s friend – but he was quickly overruled. The team had a mission to perform and the base was only a way station. So, he sat up and listened, along with every other soldier on the post, to the slow, painful death of a brother.

Levi Kupperman’s death, by Carter’s standards, was neither horrific, nor especially painful. Not even as painful as Angel’s naiveté. She wants to do something, anything, to alter a past that can’t be altered. She wants to shed the burden. Kupperman’s death rattle had echoed in the van long after Bobby Ditto yanked the bug.

‘Did we kill him?’ Angel asks.

‘No, we didn’t. But you’re gonna kill us if you don’t stop for this light.’

Angel slams on the brakes and the van fishtails for a moment before coming to a stop. ‘I need to slow down,’ she admits.

‘You’re taking this too hard, Angel.’ Carter lays a hand on Angel’s shoulder. ‘Montgomery Thorpe once told me that human history is a voyage over a river of blood. Blood makes the trip possible, human blood. Thorpe considered himself a deep thinker.’

‘What happened to him?’

‘First I killed him, then I cut off his head and presented it to an Italian gangster from Queens. A gift of sorts.’

Angel finally takes a deep breath. ‘Get serious, Carter. I’m not in the mood for jokes.’

Carter smiles. ‘Kupperman took his chances when he chose Bobby over us. That doesn’t come as any surprise, by the way, an addict siding with his dealer.’

‘But why did Bobby kill him if he was loyal?’

‘Bobby needed to hurt somebody and I wasn’t available. But that’s the difference, Angel, between thugs and professionals. Bobby indulged an impulse that only placed him in greater danger.’

Angel shudders, imagining, for just an instant, what the gangster will do to her if she falls into his hands. ‘Does Bobby worry you?’ she asks.

‘Given the information Bobby already has, he’ll probably find me if he works at it long enough. I intend to handle that problem by killing him. But I’m seriously pissed off, too. Bobby had no reason to harm Levi Kupperman, no reason at all.’

Angel guides the van on to a ramp for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, only to find traffic at a near stop. Sighing, she works the van on to the roadway, then into the left lane where she watches traffic moving in the opposite direction zip past.

‘We’re finished, right?’ she asks Carter. ‘Now that Bobby pulled the bugs?’

Carter doesn’t answer right away. He’s too busy weighing the obvious cost of going forward, his life, against a set of benefits that elude him. Angel will be gone within weeks if she gets her hands on the money, gone for good. Carter doesn’t intend to become anyone’s pool boy. So what will he do, besides dump his end of the loot in an already fat bank account?

‘Nothing to say?’

Carter waits for Angel to merge with the traffic in the center lane. Up ahead, a man sits on the trunk of a stalled Toyota, his chin in his hands, no doubt enjoying the fine spring day.

‘You should have paid closer attention, Angel.’

‘To what?’

‘To Levi Kupperman.’

‘What did he say that can possibly help us?’

‘It’s what he didn’t say that matters. If you remember, the main problem with lifting the money from the bunker had nothing to do with the men guarding it. They’re a problem, all right, but a problem I can overcome.’

Angel’s smile is nearly beatific. ‘The safe, of course. You were worried about the money being in a safe you couldn’t open.’

‘I had Levi describe the contents of Bobby’s office while I held a knife to his throat. Since he couldn’t know what I was after, he had no reason to leave anything out.’

‘And he never mentioned a safe, which means the money’s probably sitting in a closet.’

‘Probably?’

‘Well, he could have moved it.’

‘And I have to kill three men in order to find out?’

But Carter’s teasing. He’s decided there’s only one benefit to be gained from this particular operation. Call it the thrill of combat. Carter can almost taste the moment, almost smell the blood as it trickles into Montgomery Thorpe’s river. All the hours of handgun practice at Carl Maverton’s gun range? He’ll soon be putting the skills he developed to the ultimate test, a challenge unrelated to Angel Tamanaka, as beautiful as she undoubtedly is, as much as he undoubtedly wants her.

Carter glances at his watch. Two o’clock in the afternoon and plenty of work to be done. ‘Head for the Home Depot, the one in Flushing,’ he tells Angel. ‘I’m going in tonight.’

Carter lays out his equipment on the living room rug: the M89, a holstered 9mm Glock, a combat knife in its scabbard, a hooked pry bar, a two-pound hammer and a wood chisel, a ski mask, thirty feet of rope with a grappling hook attached to one end, a Grade II bulletproof vest, a small bolt cutter, a propane torch and a pair of two-way radios.

‘Do you know how to use these?’ Carter hands one of the radios to Angel.

‘They look like someone dragged them up from the Stone Age. You sure they’re not petrified?’

‘Walkie-talkies have been around for a long time, but they have certain virtues. First, they communicate directly with other radios. They don’t need the phone system or a satellite. Second, they’re set to a specific frequency that helps to maintain privacy. But we’re not going to use them to talk to each other. Press that button on the side, the large one.’

Angel complies, producing an audible click in the second radio. ‘That’s it?’

‘You’re going to drop me behind the warehouse at three o’clock in the morning, then find a parking space within sight of the front entrances. When I need you to pick me up, I’ll key the radio three times. If Bobby or any of his people show up before I come out, you do the same thing, one click for each person. If the cops show up, click four times fast. But don’t speak, Angel. Don’t give me away.’

Angel clicks the radio several times, then drops it beside her on the couch. ‘Something has to happen before you go, between us.’

‘Fine with me.’

‘I’m not talking about sex.’ Like Carter, Angel’s been guarding her privacy for a long time. She has acquaintances, but not friends, partners, but not lovers. Yet Carter’s somehow defeated her security system, as he intends to defeat Bobby Ditto’s.

‘What if I forget about the Caribbean?’ she asks. ‘What if I was willing to stay here?’

‘Are you asking me to go steady?’

Angel’s right foot lashes out, catching him midway between knee and ankle. ‘One day you’re going to have to come out of that closet. You can’t hide in there all your life.’

Carter rubs his shin. ‘Isn’t that your plan? To hide inside a rich man’s wealth for the rest of your life?’

‘Actually, I was counting on him dying young and me becoming a fabulously rich widow, after which I’d marry the man of my dreams. But my failings aren’t the point. I’m asking about you.’

‘Listen, Angel, what I do ... ? Let’s just say my occupation doesn’t lend itself to a long-term outlook. Or to intimate friendships. As for you tossing away your life’s ambition? If I was you, I’d think twice. Sooner or later, probably sooner, I’m going to be killed or caught. I know I’ve made these points before, but they haven’t changed.’ Carter’s smile is wicked. ‘Unless, of course, I settle down, become a member in good standing of the moral middle class. Maybe I could open a small business, stop working out, gain thirty pounds, learn to fall asleep on the couch after dinner.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘No risk, no gain.’

Angel grimaces. Not only has she failed to make her point, she’s not certain that she even knows what it is. Carter’s concentration is so intense, as he packs his gear, that she finds herself envious. He’s an athlete before a championship event, or maybe an addict contemplating his drug of choice, knowing that he’ll be stoned by morning. Stoned or dead.

Finally satisfied, Carter retreats to the dining room table where he lays out the items he purchased at Wal-Mart, the wooden matches, the sandpaper, the X-Acto knife, the glue and the ping-pong balls. Alongside, he places two shotgun shells, a sheet of newspaper and a pair of kitchen shears.

‘Let me show you a trick.’ Carter motions Angel to stand next to him. ‘I learned this in the military, part of my super-secret advanced training. But then I came home to find thirteen-year-old nerds posting how-to-make-a-flash-bomb videos online.’

Carter fits a blade into the X-Acto knife and cuts one of the ping-pong balls in half, leaving only a tiny strip to act as hinge. He bends the two halves back, creating a pair of small cups, like the halves of an eggshell lying on end. Into each cup, he glues strips of coarse sandpaper in the shape of a cross. The matches come next. Carter cuts off the heads, roughly divides them in two, then lays them on the sandpaper strips.

‘There are three men in the basement, untrained and undisciplined. I’d bet my life savings against a quarter that they have no concerted plan of action if the basement door is breached. How much experience and practice they have with handgun combat is also suspect. Remember, they’ve been in that basement for several days and nothing’s happened. Are they psychologically prepared for combat? I don’t think so, Angel. But I don’t mind giving myself another edge anyway.’

Carter breaks down the shotgun shells, extracts the gunpowder and wraps it loosely in newspaper. He lays the packet on top of the matches in one of the cups, then closes the ping-pong ball.

‘I want you to glue the edges together,’ he tells Angel. ‘Nice and even now. Let the glue drip slowly.’ Carter rolls the ball against the tip of the glue tube, describing a neat circle. He blows on the glue, a long slow breath, again turning the ball. Finally, while the glue is still tacky, he covers the seam with a strip of tape and lays what now looks like an ordinary ping-pong ball on the table.

‘If you throw this against a hard surface, the sandpaper will ignite the matches and the matches will ignite the gunpowder. There won’t be an explosion because the gunpowder isn’t packed down. What there will be is a flash of light intense enough to blind someone for about five seconds.’ Carter smiles, remembering Gentleman Jerry Miculek. Gentleman Jerry could take out an entire platoon in five seconds. ‘That should be enough time.’