Angel listened to his explanation with one ear, unmoved even by the sight of all that money, piles and piles of money, a waterfall of money dropping from the interior of the suitcase to the comforter on the bed. But then Carter slipped out of his vest and his shirt, revealing a smoky-red bruise that virtually covered his ribs on the left side.
‘Close call. A few inches lower and it would have come through under my vest. In which case ...’ He winced as he probed the center of the wound.
‘You want to go to the hospital?’
‘The rib’s not displaced. There’s nothing a doctor can do. What’s that they say? Grin and bear it? No harm, no foul?’
Angel shakes her head. ‘Joke if you want, Carter, but you came within a few inches of dying in that basement. You’re what? Twenty-nine years old?’ She picks up a packet of hundred dollar bills and lays it on top of the slug in his hand. ‘Was it worth it?’ she demands.
A week later, Lieutenant Solly Epstein met them in Central Park. He’d come to collect his share of the loot, but his message was encouraging. The Organized Crime Control Bureau, his unit, had pronounced the incident drug related, which it definitely was, and they were looking at the usual mob suspects. Meanwhile, the media had taken OCCB’s theme a step further. The Red Hook Massacre was big time news, yet at no point, in the hundreds of articles and hours of airtime, did anyone suggest that the massacre was the work of a single individual. There were, on the other hand, several pieces linking Mexican drug cartels, in style and psychology, to the carnage.
‘Al Zeffri’s not talkin’,’ Epstein explained. ‘He claims he doesn’t remember anything about that night, which could be true because he didn’t regain consciousness until late the next day. You must have hit him pretty hard.’
‘I had to make sure he didn’t come up behind me.’
Epstein glanced at Angel and winked. ‘I woulda thought blowin’ his knee apart was enough guarantee. Anyway, you got nothin’ to worry about. Not only hasn’t your name been mentioned, it doesn’t appear in our database. As far as the NYPD’s concerned, you don’t exist. You’re still a ghost.’
Angel spells it out a week later, as she and Carter lie in bed. They’re going at it twice a day by now, the sex hard and fast and as necessary as breathing. Angel can’t get enough, and can’t wait to get away. Never has she been more attracted to a man, never more repelled. Carter’s death on two legs and she’s drawn to him like a junkie to a fix.
‘I’m leaving,’ she tells him.
‘When?’
‘As soon as you set up my account.’ The account in question will be established in a Cayman Islands bank. There’s a cost, ten percent of the principal, but Angel’s happy to pay. ‘You were right,’ she adds. ‘Eventually, you’ll be caught or killed. I don’t think you care all that much.’
‘But you do?’
‘I murdered a man.’ Angel hesitates before adding, ‘I’m not feeling guilty, not by a long shot. The Blade deserved what he got and the world is better off without him. But I can’t go back there again. Taking a life, it’s too big for me.’
Her independence finally declared, Angel returns to her pursuits. She completes her Art History paper, collects her diploma, purchases a spare-no-expense, hot-weather wardrobe. The surface of their dining room table quickly disappears beneath stacks of books on Caribbean art, exhibition notices, website printouts, travel brochures, real estate listings from a dozen nations. By early June, when she books an airline ticket to Piarco International Airport in Trinidad, she has everything in place: her bank account, a small rented townhouse in a resort community, plans to open an art gallery in Tobago, appointments with a dozen artists’ representatives.
If there’s a fly in this ointment, it’s Carter’s attitude. He’s not trying to dissuade her, not clinging to every moment of togetherness. No, Carter leaves the apartment shortly after breakfast and doesn’t return until evening. Angel assumes he’s off to one or another of his training sessions, but he doesn’t tell her where he’s going or where he’s been. He doesn’t tell and she doesn’t ask.
There’s a simple explanation, of course. Carter’s become indifferent. Stay or go – it’s all the same to him. But the evidence doesn’t add up. Their nights are spent in bed, Carter a one-man gang-bang, Angel urging him on. This proves especially true on their last night together, which they spend in Vincent Graham’s den on 37th Street. Carter’s taken, not to mention inspired, by the mirrored ceilings and Vincent’s toy collection, especially the restraints, the handcuffs and the shackles. They do argue, for just a moment, over who gets to play the prisoner and who the prison guard, but finally agree to take turns.
Long after midnight, when Angel and Carter are too sore and exhausted to do more than lie next to each other, Angel explains why she bought the two guns, the revolver she left for him to find and the little automatic, and why she’d arranged access to Graham’s apartment. Carter doesn’t blame Angel for not trusting him. In her position, he would certainly have done something similar and he tells her so.
A segue into their feelings for each other might easily follow this conversation, yet the hows and whys of their doomed relationship go unmentioned. They don’t discuss even the possibility of meeting again. No, in the end, they turn out the lights and roll on to their sides. Carter falls asleep within a few minutes, as usual, leaving Angel to her own thoughts.
Talk it out, resolve the conflicts. That’s the conventional wisdom, repeated hundreds of times each year on dozens of ‘talk’ shows. But that’s not happening here and Angel finally realizes that Carter’s reticence hasn’t impaired their communication, not at all. The Tibetan who painted the bhavacakra would have understood perfectly. Their unfolding karmas brought them together, two infinitely small particles, in order to complete some necessary transaction. That done, those same karmas are driving them apart. Call it fate. Hell, call it serendipity. Whatever business they had with each other is finished. Time to move on.
Carter watches the cab until it reaches 14th Street and turns right, on its way via New York’s system of antiquated highways to John F. Kennedy Airport. Most of what Angel Tamanaka still owns – her clothing, along with a few photographs, a knick-knack or two, a battered teddy bear named Slippy – has gone ahead of her, packed into a pair of antiqued steamer trunks. Every other possession has been sold or given away.
But not to Carter, who’s retained no personal items, not even a hazy photo on his cellphone, the single exception being Angel’s Ruger revolver. Its firing pin restored, the weapon now rests in a trunk in Carter’s Bronx storage room, too fine an instrument of death to be summarily tossed.
With no particular destination in mind, Carter heads west along 9th Street. The moist June air is warm enough to evoke the oncoming summer, but Carter doesn’t mind. He’s got a couple of hours to kill before heading over to the gym and the city sidewalks have long been a place of refuge. Carter’s feeling a familiar sensation, a sort of clutching around the heart, born not of love, but of the fear that seized him when the state took control of his life. At the same time, and he admits this to himself, he’s relieved. Carter’s had three acknowledged loves in his life, his mother and Janie, both dead, and the military, where he learned to kill without remorse. Each had abandoned him, leaving him to fight on his own. Or so he’s come to believe.
And Angel? Yeah, he’ll miss Angel, definitely. Even thinking her name produces a familiar warming in his crotch.
Carter laughs softly, catching the attention of a young woman coming from the other direction. The woman moves several feet to her right as they pass, an acknowledgement, Carter thinks, of just how many psychotic human beings roam through the city. Careful, careful, you never know, keep your distance.