‘I suppose you happen to have this umbrella with you.’
‘I got a plan, which puts me one step ahead of my boss.’
Bobby Ditto can no longer stand still. He turns and leads the Blade to the back of the warehouse, shoving his hands into his pockets as he rounds the corner. The day’s turned cold and the wind is up. The cloudless sky is the clean blue of the coldest, midwinter days. Across the street, six men push a school bus into the bus company’s dingy garage. At least three of them give orders at the same time, every other word an epithet.
‘All right, Marco, you made your point. But what’s done is done. Plus, the freak had to go, sooner or later, and we both knew it. Let’s move on.’
‘OK, first thing, if Carter’s after anything, he’s after the money. I just can’t make myself believe he has a market for the product. That means, once the deal is done, he’ll go away. What he has with you, it ain’t personal.’
Bobby stops as they approach the far corner of the warehouse. He looks from the razor wire on the fence to the roof twenty feet above his head.
‘You’re wrong, Marco. I know too much about Carter. He’s not gonna leave me on the street. It’s the same for me. I got his name and address. Sooner or later, I’ll run him down. I don’t care what it costs. I’m gonna find this prick and I’m gonna kill him unless he kills me first. But you go ahead. If I fuck up this deal and lose the front money, I’m dead anyway.’
‘I hear you, Bobby.’ The Blade raises a hand. ‘Put another man in the basement right away. If the Expedition comes up clean, leave it inside tomorrow night. We’ll load it on Sunday, a half-hour before pickup. Espinoza doesn’t want to see more than three men, but there are no rules about the ride over. I want to use at least two cars and I want to put our best men in them. You, me and Donny will be in the Expedition – remember, it’s armored – so the money will never be out of sight. Afterward, we take the product to the Queens Village apartment and leave enough men there to protect it.’
Bobby nods along when the Blade makes his final points. Carter wouldn’t have bugged the Expedition if he knew when and where the deal would go down. And even if he’s within sight of the warehouse when they set out for Greenpoint, what can he do to stop them? Bring in a tank? Fire rocket-propelled grenades? No, in order to stop the Expedition, he’d have to destroy the money, which he’d never do. That’s the underlying truth, according to the Blade. Carter’s not crazy. He doesn’t kill for the fun of it. Present him with an obstacle he can’t overcome and he’ll back off.
‘I don’t have a problem with any of it,’ Bobby says. ‘Just make sure nobody leaves that basement before Sunday.’
‘Consider it done.’ The Blade lights a cigarette. ‘What about the freak? Whatta you wanna do with him?’
‘Bring him to the house tonight. I see an ocean voyage in his future.’
TWENTY-SIX
Angel’s leaning so far forward that her chin almost touches the steering wheel. She’s driving on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, weaving through traffic, her breath coming in short heaves. Carter lets her go, at least for the present. He’s remembering a night he spent at a forward base camp in Afghanistan with two CIA spooks and a merc from Blackwater. Earlier that day, a twenty-year-old Marine had somehow wandered off the base and been captured. Now they can hear his screams in the distance, carried to them on a light breeze, faint enough to be the cries of a night bird.
Carter had wanted to do something – darkness, after all, is the covert operator’s friend – but he was quickly overruled. The team had a mission to perform and the base was only a way station. So, he sat up and listened, along with every other soldier on the post, to the slow, painful death of a brother.
Levi Kupperman’s death, by Carter’s standards, was neither horrific, nor especially painful. Not even as painful as Angel’s naiveté. She wants to do something, anything, to alter a past that can’t be altered. She wants to shed the burden. Kupperman’s death rattle had echoed in the van long after Bobby Ditto yanked the bug.
‘Did we kill him?’ Angel asks.
‘No, we didn’t. But you’re gonna kill us if you don’t stop for this light.’
Angel slams on the brakes and the van fishtails for a moment before coming to a stop. ‘I need to slow down,’ she admits.
‘You’re taking this too hard, Angel.’ Carter lays a hand on Angel’s shoulder. ‘Montgomery Thorpe once told me that human history is a voyage over a river of blood. Blood makes the trip possible, human blood. Thorpe considered himself a deep thinker.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘First I killed him, then I cut off his head and presented it to an Italian gangster from Queens. A gift of sorts.’
Angel finally takes a deep breath. ‘Get serious, Carter. I’m not in the mood for jokes.’
Carter smiles. ‘Kupperman took his chances when he chose Bobby over us. That doesn’t come as any surprise, by the way, an addict siding with his dealer.’
‘But why did Bobby kill him if he was loyal?’
‘Bobby needed to hurt somebody and I wasn’t available. But that’s the difference, Angel, between thugs and professionals. Bobby indulged an impulse that only placed him in greater danger.’
Angel shudders, imagining, for just an instant, what the gangster will do to her if she falls into his hands. ‘Does Bobby worry you?’ she asks.
‘Given the information Bobby already has, he’ll probably find me if he works at it long enough. I intend to handle that problem by killing him. But I’m seriously pissed off, too. Bobby had no reason to harm Levi Kupperman, no reason at all.’
Angel guides the van on to a ramp for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, only to find traffic at a near stop. Sighing, she works the van on to the roadway, then into the left lane where she watches traffic moving in the opposite direction zip past.
‘We’re finished, right?’ she asks Carter. ‘Now that Bobby pulled the bugs?’
Carter doesn’t answer right away. He’s too busy weighing the obvious cost of going forward, his life, against a set of benefits that elude him. Angel will be gone within weeks if she gets her hands on the money, gone for good. Carter doesn’t intend to become anyone’s pool boy. So what will he do, besides dump his end of the loot in an already fat bank account?
‘Nothing to say?’
Carter waits for Angel to merge with the traffic in the center lane. Up ahead, a man sits on the trunk of a stalled Toyota, his chin in his hands, no doubt enjoying the fine spring day.
‘You should have paid closer attention, Angel.’
‘To what?’
‘To Levi Kupperman.’
‘What did he say that can possibly help us?’
‘It’s what he didn’t say that matters. If you remember, the main problem with lifting the money from the bunker had nothing to do with the men guarding it. They’re a problem, all right, but a problem I can overcome.’
Angel’s smile is nearly beatific. ‘The safe, of course. You were worried about the money being in a safe you couldn’t open.’
‘I had Levi describe the contents of Bobby’s office while I held a knife to his throat. Since he couldn’t know what I was after, he had no reason to leave anything out.’
‘And he never mentioned a safe, which means the money’s probably sitting in a closet.’
‘Probably?’
‘Well, he could have moved it.’
‘And I have to kill three men in order to find out?’
But Carter’s teasing. He’s decided there’s only one benefit to be gained from this particular operation. Call it the thrill of combat. Carter can almost taste the moment, almost smell the blood as it trickles into Montgomery Thorpe’s river. All the hours of handgun practice at Carl Maverton’s gun range? He’ll soon be putting the skills he developed to the ultimate test, a challenge unrelated to Angel Tamanaka, as beautiful as she undoubtedly is, as much as he undoubtedly wants her.