Back to the cave, Bobby tells himself. He looks around him, at a truck backing through the roll-up door on the front of the warehouse, at a forklift pulling an enormous roll of carpet from the back of a trailer. Bobby’s workers are really hustling. That’s because it’s after four o’clock and they won’t be going home until the trailer’s unloaded.
Bobby, as he trudges off, never thinks to look up at the roof where Carter’s crouching next to a ventilation pipe, only his forehead and eyes exposed. Good thing. If Bobby had looked up, if he’d spotted Carter, he’d already be dead.
TWENTY-TWO
Carter finally makes an appearance at the East Village apartment a few minutes before midnight. He finds Angel and Solly Epstein seated at a dining room table covered with files and cartons of Chinese food. Angel’s hopeful expression fascinates him, as always. She’s relentlessly optimistic. But he’s got little good news, though he takes her in his arms when she crosses the room in search of a hug. Epstein’s grinning from ear to ear as his eyes occasionally drift to Angel’s well-rounded buttocks.
Released, Carter picks up a pair of chopsticks and a microwave-safe container of beef in black bean sauce. His instructors would have called it opportunistic feeding. Take your calories and your sleep whenever and wherever you can – you might be a long time finding another chance. Carter hasn’t eaten since they left the apartment in the morning.
‘Anything good?’ Epstein asks. ‘You’ve been gone a long time.’
Carter responds by snatching a container of rice. He brings the container to his lips and shovels cold rice into his mouth with the chopsticks. The black bean sauce was highly spiced. His tongue is on fire.
‘I told them extra hot,’ Angel explains.
‘Thanks for sharing.’
‘Maybe I should go first,’ Epstein says. ‘What I have to say won’t take that long.’
Carter accepts a glass of water and nods. ‘By all means.’
‘You said to look for a soft spot. We only found one, a kid named Levi Kupperman who sweeps the bunker for listening devices. This information comes, by the way, from Ruby Amaroso. I didn’t work with Ruby, or with the joint task force investigating Benedetti, but I do know that Ruby was facing a couple of hundred years on federal narcotics charges. It seems he was dealing on the side and wasn’t as careful as his boss. Bottom line, he had every reason to tell the truth.’
Epstein pauses long enough to sip at his beer. He looks from Angel to Carter, finds both attentive, then continues. ‘Kupperman’s a cocaine addict. The way Ruby put it, “I’m givin’ him a year, at the most, before his brain is totally fried.” Junkies can be reached by withdrawing or bribing them with their drug of choice, or with some combination of the two. That makes Kupperman a weak spot.’
‘If he can find bugs, he should be able to plant one.’
‘Planting a bug is the easy part,’ Epstein explains. ‘Look, there are two general types of eavesdropping devices. The first transmits a signal in real time. You sit outside the bugged site with a receiver and you hear everything that goes on. That won’t work in the bunker, which was designed to defeat transmitters. The second type records information on a chip and you have to go back to retrieve the device. Even assuming another trip is feasible, how do you know if anything significant was recorded? You could end up with a five hour conversation centered on broads and baseball. Keep in mind, you take a certain risk in approaching Kupperman. He might run back to his boss.’
Carter glances at Angel. He notes the still hopeful look in her dark blue eyes and has to resist an urge to caress her. Still, he doesn’t try to sugar-coat the problems.
‘There’s a yard next to the warehouse where they park company vehicles overnight, including the armored Expedition. Attaching a GPS device to the SUV will be easy. If I can defeat the alarm, we can also bug the interior.’
‘You got into the yard?’ Epstein’s tone is admiring. The chain-link fence surrounding the yard was topped with razor wire.
‘The warehouse isn’t well-protected. There are security cameras in front of the roll-up doors and the office door, but not in the back of the building. I was able to access the roof while the warehouse was still open. It would be easier at night when the neighborhood’s more or less deserted.’
Carter picks a dumpling from a container, dips it in a brown sauce that might or might not have been intended for that purpose, and slides it into his mouth. He chews slowly, his eyes on Epstein. The cop appears to be impressed, but accessing Benedetti Wholesale Carpeting was no great feat. Compared, say, to operating for a week in the hinterlands of Yemen.
‘Look, I don’t have much in the way of good news,’ he finally says. ‘I was able to enter the warehouse through a skylight shortly after the business closed for the night. By then, Bobby and the man we saw with the suitcase—’
‘That would be Marco Torrino,’ Epstein interrupts. ‘He’s called “the Blade” because of his nose.’
‘OK, Benedetti and Torrino left together a little before six. But not the three men we saw with Torrino in Kingsbridge. They stayed behind.’
‘How do you know they didn’t leave before we got to the warehouse?’ Angel asks.
‘Because I came down those narrow stairs that Solly described. There’s a locked door at the bottom, a very flimsy door as it turns out, but I could hear a television going, a woman’s voice screaming, “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Give it to me. Give it to me.”’
Angel and Solly both laugh, as Carter intended. Then Epstein asks, ‘How did you get into the building?’
‘There are two skylights on the roof, neither locked down.’
‘And you what? Flew down and back up?’
‘Actually, I gave up on superpowers a long time ago.’
‘So, how’d you do it?’
‘I went to a hardware store and bought thirty feet of rope.’ Carter pauses, but Epstein’s out of questions. ‘Look, I can probably neutralize the men inside the basement, but if the money’s locked in a safe, we’ve shown our cards for nothing.’
‘Maybe it’s just sitting there,’ Angel suggests. ‘In the suitcase.’
‘A little information,’ Solly interrupts. ‘According to Amaroso, the basement’s divided in half. The part at the end of the stairs is used for storage. The bunker’s at the other end of building. According to Ruby, it’s protected by a thick wooden door consisting of two slabs of oak and an electronic lock that reads a bar code imprinted on a key card. I’m not saying the bunker can’t be penetrated, but you’d be a long time getting past that door.’ Epstein glances at his watch. ‘Time to call it a night. I’m on vacation as far as the job’s concerned, but there’s no vacation from your family. I better get home.’
‘I’ll walk you to your car,’ Carter says, already heading for the door.
The East Village sidewalks are quiet, even on Avenue A in the heart of the club scene. It’s after midnight and tomorrow’s a working day. A few smokers stand outside the clubs, indulging their ten-dollar-a-pack habits. On the street, a horde of empty cabs flies past, reminding Carter of a military convoy double-timing through hostile territory.
‘So, what’s up, Carter? What couldn’t we talk about in front of your girlfriend?’
‘Your family’s up.’
Epstein eyes his companion, but Carter’s expression reveals nothing. In his plaid shirt, brown pants and scuffed athletic shoes, he appears entirely inoffensive. ‘Say that again.’
‘Face the facts, Solly, we’ve lost the element of surprise.’ Carter pauses for a moment. ‘This business started as a quick snatch-and-run in Kingsbridge. With a little luck, we could have entered the apartment when the resident ...’