Be the one who’s there for the team when everybody else quits. Be the last woman standing. Be the go-to girl. Tomorrow morning, her agent will direct-deposit $800 into her account at Citibank. She’ll put aside four hundred of those dollars to pay for general living expenses and her taxes. The rest will go into a second account at Chase, her capital accumulation account. Angel has forty grand in that account and she’s proud of every damned penny. Most of her schoolmates at Brooklyn College, even the ones who work part-time, have already accumulated enough debt to keep them broke for the next decade.
Be Prepared – you don’t have to be a boy or a scout to accept that piece of advice. She’s supposed to remain in character from the minute she slides into the car until she’s dropped off tomorrow morning at seven o’clock, three hours before the client’s wife and kids return from a visit with the grandparents. That’s why she’s wearing a brown corduroy dress a size too big, a dress that hangs all the way to mid-calf. That’s why she didn’t put on make-up, why she’s wearing a plain white bra and cotton panties thick enough to pass for a diaper.
So, all right, remember to stare down at the floor when you get into the car. Answer in monosyllables and don’t forget to mumble. You’ve made up your mind. This time you’ll tell Dr Rick the whole truth, which he suspects anyway. You’ll do it, but you’re scared out of your mind and ...
Angel’s thoughts are interrupted by the honking of a horn. She stares for just a moment at the Lincoln Towncar parked in the bus stop while she slips into the part. Then she walks forward, slowly, as if approaching a gallows, to peer through the window. The client is sitting at the wheel. Marked by acne scars on both cheeks, his meaty flesh, the color of ground beef, drapes his jawbones like a shroud. But his little black eyes are on full alert. They’re balls of desire. Most likely, he’s been jerking off all week in anticipation.
The client reaches across the seat to open the door and Angel, after only a brief hesitation, closes her umbrella and slips inside. Without looking up, she fumbles in her worn brown purse, pulls out an aerosol breath freshener and squirts it into her mouth, a good touch.
‘Hi, Dr Rick,’ she mumbles.
Angel takes a certain amount of pride in her theatrical talents. Creative by nature, she can improvise with the best of them. Still, she needs cooperation. She needs the client to participate, to work the game. But Dr Rick’s imagination is as thick and meaty as his complexion. He keeps reverting to Ricky Ditto, which is what his gangster friends call him, and he can’t stop bragging about the bars he owns in Queens and Staten Island, or his string of Manhattan laundromats, or the house he owns in Riverdale, or the house in Flushing he bought for his mom.
Maybe he wants me to admire him, she thinks. Or maybe he thinks the game doesn’t start until he gets into the house. Whatever, Angel decides to stay in character.
‘I feel little, Dr Rick,’ she says. ‘Like I can’t do anything.’
‘Yeah?’ Ricky Ditto chuckles. ‘Well I could show you a few good moves.’
And what’s she supposed to say to that? Except that she’s not going to work with any more gangster jerks. Most of her clients are wealthy and successful businessmen. They’re sharp and quick and they know how to play the game. Sometimes, they’re even fun. But this guy? He’s a CFA, born and bred, a Complete Fucking Asshole.
‘Please, Dr Rick, you’re making me very nervous.’
Ricky Ditto has the seat pushed all the way back to accommodate his belly. His arms are stretched out, both hands on the wheel, and he stares fixedly through the wiper-streaked windshield. They’re driving north on Broadway, headed over the Broadway Bridge connecting Manhattan to the Bronx, running four blocks at a time between the red lights. Ricky finally turns left on 234th Street and pushes the Lincoln toward the steep hill leading into the neighborhood of Riverdale, an upper middle-class enclave tucked between the Hudson River and the slums on the other side of Broadway. On Riverdale’s far western edge, the views over the Hudson River are spectacular.
‘Hey, check this out,’ Ricky says when they’re about halfway up the hill. ‘See that apartment building?’
‘It’s very nice,’ Angel replies, although she’s looking at a six-storey, red-brick, plain-as-mud structure with a sagging cornice.
‘There’s an apartment in that building, right now it’s got three hundred grand sittin’ under the fuckin’ floorboards. You wouldn’t believe just lookin’, right? Me, I could put my hands on the cash right now. And that’s just one place. We got others.’
Angel’s trying to decide where to go with the bragging. How can she work it into the scenario? Make a reference to his exalted credentials? Make him a Harvard graduate? Or maybe he’s won the Nobel Prize. Yeah, that’s good. She’ll look directly into his eyes when she congratulates him. She’ll project trust and awe and deep, deep respect. He’ll come around.
They drive the rest of the way in silence, finally turning into a cul-de-sac lined with single-family homes on generous lots. At the far end, a garage door opens and Ricky guides the Lincoln into the space, inching forward until his bumper touches a wooden rail on the far wall. Then he presses a button and the door rumbles down.
Show time, Angel tells herself, as she always does. She gets out of the car and half-drags herself to a door leading into a kitchen. Ricky Ditto walks ahead of her. He flips on the overhead light and crosses the kitchen floor.
‘Lemme show ya where the office is gonna be. I got a couch in there, ya know, like in a shrink’s—’
A loud crack brings Rick’s broad body to an abrupt halt, a crack Angel knows to be a gunshot, though she can’t bring herself to think the word. But then Ricky falls backward, his body tipping over, his spine straight. His head bounces when he crashes on to the linoleum, just once before he lies inert, eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling. Blood runs in three directions from a hole in his head, to the right and the left and into his stiff black hair.
Angel’s only beginning to process the data when Carter steps into the kitchen. He’s holding a small caliber revolver in his right hand and he’s looking directly into her eyes.
‘Did you touch anything?’ he asks.
THREE
Not that it makes any difference, but Carter’s stunned for just a moment. He’s looking at one of the most beautiful women he’s ever seen. Eurasian, no doubt, with big dark eyes that taper sharply at the corners, an assertive little nose and a luscious mouth. Her face is heart-shaped, her chin rounded, her complexion is the color of newly carved ivory. Carter’s eyes rake her face in search of a flaw, a pimple, a blackhead, a mole, but her skin might have been painted by an artist working from his personal fantasy of the ideal woman. And not a sexual fantasy, either.
Only at the very last minute, before he gets back to business, does Carter realize that she’s not wearing any make-up.
‘Did you touch anything?’ he repeats.
‘Huh ... I ... Oh, God, don’t kill me.’
Carter’s virtually devoid of sadistic impulses. Good thing for this woman. If he did harbor a well of sadism, if he liked to cause pain, her fear would only turn him on.
‘Stop for a minute and think. Did you touch anything?’
Angel finally does stop, long enough at least to draw a breath. He’s hasn’t killed her yet. That has to be good news, right? Assuming he doesn’t plan to drag her into the basement and take his time about it.
‘I don’t think so,’ she says.
‘What about inside the car?’
‘The handles? Maybe the door?’
Carter pulls a navy-blue handkerchief from the back pocket of his trousers. ‘We’re going to go into the garage and I’m going to wipe down the car on your side. You’re going to walk ahead of me and you’re going to stay between the front door of the car and the wall of the garage. Do you understand what I just said?’