‘Milek’s playin’ billiards, same as always.’
Angel heads for a large alcove in the back of the club. A full-sized pool table covered in red felt occupies most of the space, with just enough room on the sides to wield a cue stick. Milek is doing exactly that, but he stops when he sees Angel. They’d hooked up once upon a time, a weekend affair that temporarily satisfied Angel’s bad-boy propensities. Now she instinctively compares Milek to Carter and sees him for what he really is: a rapidly aging man in his mid-thirties, his hair thinning, his paunch growing, a threat only in his own mind.
‘Hey, baby, what’s up?’
‘Need to talk, Milek.’
‘Sure.’ Milek hands his cue to his sidekick, a bulked-up Latino kid so taciturn he might be a mute. ‘Finish the game for me, Carlos.’ He winks at Angel. ‘I’ll be back when I’m back.’
Angel follows Milek out the door, on to the sidewalk, then west toward First Avenue. ‘You’re looking bummed-out this evening,’ Milek observes. Angel has yet to crack a smile. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘I need a gun, Milek. Two, actually, a big one and a small one.’
A short skinny kid walks toward them. His purple hair is moussed into a stiff Mohawk and his bare arms are covered with tattoos. An unleashed pit bull lopes beside him, its pink tongue hanging nearly to the ground. The pit bull outweighs the kid by twenty pounds.
Milek and Angel observe a brief silence as they give the dog a wide berth. Then Milek asks, ‘Why are you coming to me?’
‘Because you once told me you could get anything.’ Angel smiles sweetly, but the challenge is plain enough.
‘You’re asking me to get you a weapon without knowing what you’re going to do with it. If you go home and shoot your boyfriend, I’ll be a co-conspirator.’
‘If I was going to shoot my boyfriend, I wouldn’t be asking for two guns,’ Angel says. ‘But here’s the deal, Milek. I have a thousand dollars in my purse. If you don’t want it, I’ll find someone who does.’
‘Whoa.’ Milek shakes his head. ‘What happened to you, Angel? You used to be sweet.’
The sweet part was never sincere, but Angel doesn’t avoid the underlying truth. She has, indeed, changed, and Leonard Carter’s the agent of that change. This is not a matter she intends to share with Milek Ostrovsky.
‘Two guns, a thousand dollars,’ she says. ‘Yes or no.’
Three hours later, Angel’s back in Carter’s Woodhaven apartment. Carter’s not home yet, which is all to the good. She carries her purchases into the bedroom where she lays them out on the dresser, a .45 caliber Ruger revolver and a .32 caliber Bersa automatic, a sub-compact with a seven-round magazine. Compared to the massive Ruger, the Bersa is nearly weightless.
Angel had examined the weapons in Milek’s battered Honda. The workings were simple enough. According to Milek the revolver had no safety. You point and pull the trigger, that’s it. The Bersa did have a safety, but all you had to do was flick it up with your thumb. At which point you were good to go.
‘One thing, Angel. The .32 probably won’t stop a man with a single round unless you shoot him in the head, so I hope you’re a good shot.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Then point it at the middle of his chest – or her chest, for that matter – and keep pulling the trigger until the gun’s empty.’
Angel has no specific plans for either weapon. But she’s watched Carter over the last few days, watched him head out to practice his marksmanship or his fighting skills, and she doesn’t want to be unarmed if Carter should decide to rip her off. She knows she’s not his match, but there’s always the element of surprise. Angel’s good at deception.
Angel hides the revolver beneath a stack of her panties in a bureau against the wall opposite the bed. The little automatic, the sub-compact Bersa, goes into the toe of an insulated winter boot lying in the back of the closet. As it’s the middle of May, the boot won’t be used again for many months.
Satisfied, Angel raids the refrigerator, piling a scoop of cottage cheese and a handful of blueberries on to a plate. She carries the plate into the living room where she pours herself a glass of Chardonnay and inserts a Ted Allen DVD into Carter’s player: Uncorked: Wine Made Simple. As Angel understands the trophy wife bargain, she’s obliged, or will be, to properly maintain her spouse’s household. Meat, potatoes and a bottle of beer just won’t do for the elegant dinner parties she intends to throw. Thus, she studies, perfecting her craft as Carter perfects his. Angel is majoring in Art History at Brooklyn College, reads every upscale fashion magazine she can find, attends weekend seminars on antique American furniture and French wines. When the time comes, she intends to be prepared. She will strike while the iron is hot. She will seize the day. She will laugh all the way to the bank.
Or she would, if her attention didn’t keep wandering to Leonard Carter. That business with the knives? By the time Carter finished, his body was as chiseled as the daggers he so carefully wiped off. The glistening sweat didn’t hurt either. Now she wonders when he’s coming home. What’s it been? Six hours? It feels like forever.
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.