‘First thing, Mr Benedetti, I could go to jail for what I’m doing. Second thing, I have to spread the money around. I don’t have access to any of this data. I have to rely on other people. But why don’t we do this: Give me ten up front and the other five when I find something useful.’
‘And if you don’t?’
‘Then we’ll call it even.’
Bobby nods to the Blade who crosses the room to open a small metal box. He removes two packets of hundred dollar bills and passes them to his boss.
‘One more thing before I fork this over,’ Bobby says. ‘I can’t be waitin’ around for an answer. You gotta work fast.’
‘Monday morning fast enough?’
Bobby hands over the bundles. ‘Monday morning, same time, same place. And one more thing. Abe Abramov personally vouched for you, which means I’ll go right back to him if you jerk me off. And if I go to Abe, he’s gonna come to you.’
Point made, Bobby leads Chin to the foot of the stairs and watches him until he disappears into the showroom. Then he returns to the office and the Blade, who’s sitting in the chair formally occupied by Louis Chin.
Bobby drops into his own chair and says, ‘So, where do we stand?’
‘We’ve got the product eighty percent sold, that’s the good news. But we’re still negotiating a location for the buy.’
‘What about the money?’
The Blade flashes that little frown he displays whenever he has to pass on bad news. ‘We can’t make it on our own. We’re gonna have to take front money.’
The front money will come from buyers eager to trade payment in advance for a steep discount. Which, Bobby supposes, makes them investors.
‘So, where do we put the money this time?’ Bobby’s got money stashed in five locations scattered about the city, an elementary precaution, but now he has to concentrate his capital. He’s has to be ready.
‘We did Bensonhurst last time.’
‘And the time before?’
‘Little Neck.’
‘With the lawyer, right?’
‘Yeah, the one who got busted for bribing a juror.’
Bobby runs a finger through his thinning hair. They’d gotten the money out three hours before the cops showed up with a warrant.
‘OK, let’s do the Bronx this time. Move the money into the Kingsbridge apartment. Handle it yourself, Marco. I don’t want any slip-ups. If we’re not ready, the deal’s gonna walk away from us.’
THIRTEEN
Angel’s glad. Glad to be out by herself, glad to be wearing her own clothes, glad for the soft Saturday night. Carter’s off on some mission that doesn’t include her, this following an afternoon they spent at her apartment where she packed every suitcase she owns with her ‘achiever’ wardrobe. Not boutique (that will come later), or even all-designer, her outfits nevertheless mark her as upwardly mobile. Tonight she’s wearing skinny jeans, a red blouse that reveals a fashionable line of cleavage, a midnight-blue leather jacket, and Cynthia Vincent wedges that add two inches to the length of her already long legs. The True Religion jeans came from Saks, but the top was bought a year ago at Macy’s, while the jacket came from a discount leather shop on Orchard Street. Still, she looks good and she knows it.
Along with dozens of unattached twenty-somethings, Angel’s walking along Avenue A on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The clubs in this part of town cater to every taste, from ratty punk bars to slick, neon-lighted pubs designed for bottom-rung Wall Street wannabes. Naturally, on a Saturday night, the hormones are flying, male and female, and Angel, who doesn’t fear the competition, is in her element.
The compliments, not to mention the outright propositions, polite and vulgar, come from all sides. Although she occasionally plays the hook-up game, Angel ignores the intrusions. Carter’s enough to satisfy her bad-boy appetites. Only the night before, he’d briefly taken her into his world, revealing an entirely unsuspected dimension. He’d stripped down to a pair of gym shorts an hour after dinner, then produced an ebony box with African animals carved into the wood, dozens of them. The box was impressive enough, but then he lifted the cover to reveal a pair of ceremonial jade daggers in the shape of fire-breathing dragons.
Carter had carried box and daggers to a room cleared of furniture at the back of the apartment, then put on a show that was half-dance, half-meditation. He’d covered the entire room, a dagger in either hand, his movements fast, then slow, then fast again, now smooth and fluid, now as stylized as a Maori war dance. Later, after the daggers and the box were stowed in the back of a closet, he explained that his workout, culled from a number of fighting traditions, was as practical as it was unique, every movement designed to ward off an attacker.
The physical end – the grace, speed, precision, agility – came as no surprise to Angel. But there was a level of creative sophistication to Leonard Carter that she’d never suspected. The daggers were Burmese and very old – they had to be worth many thousands of dollars. (Carter had only been willing to admit they were paid for in blood.) They were also beautiful, an actual treasure that might have been on display at the Asia Society. And the elaborate dance he’d performed with them, derived or not, was his own creation.
Angel had briefly studied Zen Buddhism at a storefront temple, back when she was a newly arrived immigrant. After only a few weeks, she came to realize that the religion demanded a commitment she wasn’t prepared to make, whereupon she dropped out. Now, as she crosses Eleventh Street, she remembers her instructor, a Japanese monk who wasn’t above making a pass at her, causally mentioning that Zen’s most ardent practitioners in pre-modern Japan were Samurai warriors. Raised a Christian, Angel embraced a gentle-Christ view of religion that didn’t include a warrior caste vicious enough to behead peasants for daring to look at them. Carter, apparently, was beyond such delusions, beauty and death playing equal parts in his performance.
Angel’s musings are interrupted when five skateboarders in torn jeans and ratty T-shirts fly out of Tompkins Square Park. They tear across the sidewalk and into the street where they play chicken with the traffic on Avenue A. Bemused, Angel watches them for a moment. The Lower East Side is all about diversity, a mix of types that includes Latinos from the housing projects along Avenue D, chess hustlers who dominate the park’s south-east corner, ex-patriot Brits who gravitate to faux-pubs like The Clerkenwell. Something for everyone, a new adventure every night. There’s even a bar-restaurant, Bondi Road, that caters to Australians.
A few minutes later, Angel walks into Prime Numbers, a dance club on Sixth Street. Barry Martin, the club’s owner, stands near a door leading to the basement. Always suspicious, he’s supervising a Latino busboy engaged in restocking the bar. The air is filled with techno music piped down from the second-story dance floor.
‘Angel, where you been, girl? Me long time no see.’ A Jamaican, Barry’s voice runs up and down the octaves, his accent far too thick for the Princeton graduate he is. Nevertheless, his enthusiasm’s heartfelt. Attractive women are the lifeblood of bars catering to the young.
‘Been here and there, Barry. Have you seen Milek?’
‘What you want with that boy, Angel? He’s no good for nobody.’
‘Then why do you let him in the club?’
A good question. Later on, a bouncer will stand guard at the club’s entrance, the better to maintain the joint’s exclusive image. But Angel doesn’t need an answer. Milek Ostrovsky is Prime Numbers’ resident coke and ecstasy dealer, tolerated because dance club patrons drink more booze and dance more dances when they’re stoned out of their minds.