Angel Face

EIGHT

Angel 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.’

‘Sure, you want another Danish?’

‘No, too sweet for me. Just the coffee. I have the feeling it’s gonna be a long night.’ Angel’s further encouraged when Carter’s eyes narrow just the tiniest bit. As men go, he’s a difficult read, but lust is lust and men have a hard time concealing their desire. He wants her. She can work with that.

Angel leans back and stares down at the table. There’s an imprint on the tabletop of the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock in a rowboat. The man stepping on to the shore has blond hair and a pointy little beard. He carries a staff in his hand, a staff topped with a Christian cross. Just in case any lurking savages should misunderstand his intentions.

‘You have to protect me.’ Angel runs a finger over the cross as she remembers one of the maxims placed before her at a seminar entitled ‘Reach Out: Life Is For The Taking.’ The race, Dr Maureen Lippcott had insisted, does not go to the swift or the strong. The race goes to the nimble. Conditions change. Adjust or die.

OK, so the dying part was a bit overdramatic. But you can’t control everything. That was the lesson. Just a few weeks ago, she’d read a story in the paper about a man – she can’t remember his name – who’d once been in the mortgage writing business. His company went bankrupt after the market crashed, but he’d read the cards before they hit the table. Within a few months, he opened a company that negotiates with banks on behalf of mortgage holders in default.

‘You can’t leave me to wander the streets,’ she says.

‘Don’t you have any friends?’

Actually, Angel isn’t that close to anyone, which is another part of being nimble. You have to be prepared to move on, at least until you reach your final goal. ‘First of all, the girls I know are in the same business I am. Second, what’s-his-face, that gangster, has Pierre’s hard drive. So what I should really do is warn my friends, not visit them. Hey, weren’t you listening the first time? Those gangsters came to get me and ran into you. That means we’re joined together in their minds. That means they’ll be looking for me harder than ever.’

Angel’s encouraged by Carter’s nod. He’s not disputing the facts. But there’s something she’s not telling him. Almost from the time she became a woman, Angel’s been attracted to bad boys. Her first lover, the last time she heard, was doing fifteen years in a federal pen for bank robbery and kidnapping. Angel’s always considered this attraction to be a character flaw, one certain, if indulged, to negatively impact her life plan. But now she’s sitting across from the baddest bad boy in New York and she’s got nowhere to go.

‘You have to protect me,’ she declares. ‘You can’t wash your hands and walk away.’

Carter stares down at his sticky fingers, then wets his napkin and wipes them off. ‘You want me to take you home?’

‘I ...’ Angel shrugs, then says, ‘Yes, you have to. Otherwise, I have no chance.’

‘Sure you have a chance. You can go to your apartment right now, pack a few bags and take off.’

‘What if they’re waiting for me?’

‘If a chance was certainty, they wouldn’t call it chance.’

‘Is that supposed to be funny?’

‘OK, Angel, let’s suppose I take you back to my home, that we tangle up our lives. What do you think will happen if you become a threat to me somewhere down the line?’

It’s a good question, which Angel freely admits. But there’s another item on her agenda, one she’s not quite ready to reveal, not until she’s softened him up a little more. She snaps her fingers. ‘I’ve got an idea. You can train me to do what you do. That way I’ll be able to fight back.’

‘That’s cute, Angel, but it doesn’t answer the question.’

‘You think I can’t do it? Hey, Carter, I’ve already got the memoir planned. From Ho to Hit Bitch: A Transformative Journey. It’s guaranteed to be a number one selection of Oprah’s Book Club. I’ll sell millions of copies and retire to my yacht in the Bahamas.’

Angel nods encouragement when Carter’s smile becomes a laugh. That little glimmer of lust she noted before has now blossomed. It’s burning white-hot. She looks down at the disembarking Pilgrim and says, ‘There’s something else, Carter. Ricky Ditto liked to brag. He bragged from the minute he picked me up until you shot him. Along the way, he told me about his houses and his businesses and what a tough guy he was. In my world, the customer’s always right, so I encouraged him to a certain extent. Anyway, Ricky made this left turn off Broadway just after we came into the Bronx. There was a hillside covered with trees – it was too steep for buildings – and we were about halfway there when he pointed at this apartment house. Here’s what he told me, Carter. Ricky said there was an apartment in that building with three hundred thousand dollars under the floorboards.’

Carter signals to the waitress for a check, which she has ready. The diner’s crowded and she’s anxious to clear the table. Carter picks up the check and slides out of the booth, with Angel following closely behind. As they wait for the cashier to ring up the check, one of the tattooed men spins on his stool to openly stare at Angel’s breasts. Then he looks into Carter’s eyes, discovers an even darker version of himself and returns to his meatloaf.

Angel is more beautiful naked than dressed. She’s an altar at which Carter can bring himself to worship. But Carter doesn’t fool himself. When he runs his mouth along Angel’s inner thigh, from her crotch to the back of her knee, he doesn’t assume the guttural sound rumbling up from her chest indicates passion of any kind. Same for the twitch of a muscle just below her navel and the pressure of her manicured nails on the back of his head. Feigning passion is a necessary skill in the sex worker business. But then, twenty minutes later, Carter finds himself confronted by the unexpected. Angel’s face reddens, then her neck and her shoulders, the rush of blood leaving her skin the color of a sunburn. They’re both soaked with sweat by now, and they’re changing positions with the agility of performing dolphins. When Carter finally explodes, his orgasm is as powerful as any he’s ever known.

A few minutes later, Carter’s lying on the wet sheets, his hand over his eyes, trying to catch his breath, when he feels a second release. Janie’s passing? Paulie’s email? Carter’s ship has sailed without his noticing. He’s in the deep water now, and there’s no turning back, the shore already lost to sight. Angel’s lips are on his throat. Ready or not, here I ... Well, it might take a while before they get to the last part.

‘Tell me the truth.’ Angel leans forward, until her breasts fall lightly against Carter’s chest. ‘Am I worth a thousand dollars?’

‘Did you say you wanted the truth?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘I wouldn’t go more than nine-fifty.’

Angel jabs a finger into his belly. ‘Damn, you’re hard everywhere. It’s amazing. The men I’ve known in my life? If they had a body like yours, they’d be wearing sleeveless T-shirts tight enough to pass for girdles.’

When Carter doesn’t reply, Angel jumps up, walks naked across the room and begins to rummage in a chest of drawers. Her movements seem perfectly natural, as if she’s totally unaware of the predictable effect her bouncing buttocks have on Leonard Carter. But then she looks back over her shoulder, a wicked gleam in her eyes.

The face of an angel? The soul of a whore? Every man’s fantasy come to life? Carter feels like someone nailed his eyes to her ass.

‘Here, this’ll do.’

Angel spins around to display a summer-weight pajama bottom. She jumps on the bed, her breathing shallow, and works the pajama legs through the slats on the headboard. Then she ties his wrists. This is all play, of course, and Carter knows he can pull his hands free at any time. But then Angel lays a pillowcase over his eyes, tucks the ends beneath his head, and the game becomes more interesting. Carter holds his breath while Angel runs a fingernail across his chest, gently, slowly. Then she takes his left nipple into her mouth and gives it a tug.

Even as the inevitable, inescapable groan passes his lips, Carter’s thinking, yes, the ship has definitely sailed; yes, it’s in the deep water; no, I can’t see the goddamned shore. But then he realizes there’s nothing new here. His ship has sailed many times: when he left the military, when he left Iraq after the collapse of Coldstream Military Options, when he left Africa with the blood money in his pocket. No, there’s nothing new here, except for Angel, except for him flopping on the bed like a hooked fish.

And then there’s the money.