Angel Face

by Stephen Solomita

  ‘You want me to stop?’

  Bobby Ditto stares at Levi for a moment, then shakes his head. When he first hired Levi, the kid was a hotshot with his own equipment and an expanding electronics company. That was before he got too strung out to think about anything but cocaine and more cocaine. Now he’s a scarecrow who works for an eight-ball of coke – three and a half grams of white powder that’ll be gone up his nose by tomorrow morning.

  ‘Ya know, you’re tryin’ my patience.’ Benedetti notes the kid’s panicky look with some satisfaction. Bobby’s renowned for his bad temper and his willingness to act on it. Not this morning, though. Now he’s got more important things to consider. ‘Just finish up and get the fuck outta here.’

  Fifteen minutes later, Levi opens a door thick enough to defend a castle and disappears. Two men replace him, Marco Torrino, called ‘the Blade’, and a man named Samik Atwal. In the old days, the Blade would have had a formal title: capo. But the old days are gone, brought down by a get-the-wops mentality that allowed black, Latino and Russian gangs to freely organize. Thus, Torrino has no title. He’s just the man who’ll come to kill you if you fuck with Bobby Ditto, a role he’d played for Bobby’s father, now deceased.

  The Blade’s companion, Samik ‘Sammy’ Atwal, has come to the Bunker as a courtesy. Atwal’s a second-generation Indian-American who captains a small crew located in the Queens neighborhood of Jackson Heights. The crew deals powder and crack to Atwal’s countrymen. That’s fine with Bobby Ditto, who’s as big on ethnic identity as he is on entrepreneurship. But he does sometimes wonder how the raghead came to be best buddies with his brother, Ricky, now deceased.

  Ricky Ditto’s murder is the sole cause of Bobby Ditto’s foul mood. That’s because Bobby has to do something about it. Revenge, retribution, an eye for an eye? That’s how the system works. That’s how it has to work when you can’t go to the cops. You want justice, you either get it yourself or appear weak. Bobby and his crew are mid-level drug wholesalers. They purchase ecstasy, heroin and cocaine in bulk and sell it off in smaller units, untouched. Large sums of money are exchanged along the way and rip-offs are a constant hazard. It really doesn’t pay to look weak, not at all.

  ‘First thing,’ Bobby Ditto says when Atwal takes a seat on the other side of his desk, ‘I wanna thank you for comin’ down. I appreciate the courtesy.’

  ‘Hey, Ricky was my friend. You find out who did this, you tell me. I’ll do what’s necessary.’

  Bobby stares at Sammy for a few seconds before he speaks, a move he knows to be disconcerting, but the man fails to react. Still, Bobby tells himself, the raghead’s gotta think he’s a suspect.

  ‘You want coffee?’ Bobby Ditto asks. ‘I got a machine upstairs. Cappuccino, espresso, you name it.’

  ‘Nah, I got somethin’ I gotta do this morning.’

  ‘Have a cup anyway.’ Bobby nods to the Blade and says ‘Do me a favor, Marco.’ He waits until Marco takes the hint and disappears. Then he turns to Atwal. ‘You shouldn’t take this the wrong way, Sammy, but it’d be good if we had this moment to ourselves.’

  ‘Whatever you want.’

  Bobby Ditto brings his chair forward. He’s a big man, much bigger than Atwal, and he leans across the desk to stare into Atwal’s round eyes. Bobby’s thinking that Sammy looks soft, what with his chocolate-brown skin and fat cheeks, but that appearances can be deceiving. The man’s eyes reveal only patience. ‘You told the Blade there was somethin’ I needed to know.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s this. I’m like ninety-nine percent sure that Ricky had a date that night.’

  ‘A date?’

  ‘With a whore.’

  Bobby sits back and stares at the ceiling for a moment. ‘OK, so he wanted a little strange. What’s the big deal?’

  ‘He told me he was takin’ her back to the house.’ Sammy spreads his hands and smiles apologetically. ‘Rose and the kids were off visitin’ Rose’s mother. Ricky wanted to do an all-nighter at home.’

  Bobby Ditto groans. ‘Sammy, this is something you really should not spread around. Rose’s got problems enough without knowin’ her husband was gonna party with a whore in her bed. Besides, we can’t be sure it’s even true.’ Bobby traces a little circle with his forefinger. ‘Ricky, as you know, had a way of stretchin’ the facts.’

  The door opens and Marco enters. He’s carrying two cups of coffee and a plate of anisette-flavored biscotti on a tray. He sets the tray down and disappears.

  Sammy takes a biscotto and dips it into his coffee. He bites into it and nods. Compliments on the pastry are mandatory at meetings of this kind and he plays his part. ‘This ain’t from the supermarket,’ he observes. ‘This is the real deal.’

  ‘The Blade’s grandmother,’ Bobby explains. ‘She was born in Sicily, like a hundred years ago. So, tell me about the whore. Do you know her? She from the neighborhood?’

  ‘Sorry, but I never laid eyes on her. See, what happened is that Ricky hooked up with this high-end escort service about a month ago. They do some kinda fantasy thing where you get to make up a story and the girls act it out. According to Ricky, the girls are beautiful. Any color you want, any age, too. They got like a website with pictures, but you have to be a member to get on it.’

  ‘So, what you’re telling me, it’s like nothin’, right?’ Bobby allows a trace of annoyance to creep into his voice. ‘You don’t know who she is, where she came from or even if she was there?’

  Atwal picks up his coffee, leans back and crosses his legs. ‘I was with Ricky on Wednesday afternoon, playin’ pool in the Bronx. When he left around three, he said he was going straight over to pick up the girl.’

  ‘Pick her up where?’ Bobby doesn’t like any of this, not at all. The way the raghead’s lettin’ out the information, bit by bit? There’s gonna be a pay-off somewhere down the line.

  ‘On a corner in Manhattan. I remember he told me Broadway and 106th, only I could be wrong about the street.’

  ‘But the Broadway part is right?’

  ‘Broadway and somewhere uptown on the West Side. That I’m sure of. Plus, I got a business card from the escort service, Pigalle Studios.’

  ‘The card have an address on it?’

  ‘A phone number, that’s it.’

  Mollified, Bobby finally takes his coffee cup from the tray. He lays it on his desk, then picks up a biscotto. He won’t have any problem linking the phone number to an address. He watches Atwal take a business card from his shirt pocket and lay it on the desk, a gift.

  ‘I never wanted the card in the first place,’ he explains with a shrug. ‘Plus, I couldn’t use it anyway. Ricky woulda had to vouch for me first.’

  Bobby Ditto picks up the card and looks at it for a moment before sliding it into a drawer. ‘Don’t take offense, Sammy, because I’m definitely grateful for you comin’ in. But what you told me, it’s gotta be what actually happened, word for word. See, I don’t know you, which is why I’m worried you might be sendin’ me on a wild goose chase. I don’t need to be whackin’ some bitch whose only crime is givin’ my brother a blow job. Are you sure you got the day right, the time?’

  ‘Swear on Krishna, Bobby. When Ricky left the pool hall on Wednesday, he was goin’ straight to pick up the whore. I remember because it was rainin’ pretty hard and he was worried about the traffic comin’ out of Manhattan. I mean, you gotta think—’

  Benedetti completes Atwal’s thought. ‘You gotta think, what with Ricky being killed in his own home, that the whore was with him at the time. And if the whore survived, you also gotta think that she was the one who killed him. And if she was the one who killed him, she can tell me who paid her to kill him.’ Bobby Ditto cracks his knuckles. There’s nothing to be gained by further discussion with an outsider. He’s got the business card. The ball’s in his court. ‘Like I already said, I appreciate your comin’ down. So, if there’s anything I can do for you …’

  ‘Well, maybe there is something. Just an idea.’

  Bo
bby smiles to himself. He doesn’t begrudge Sammy Atwal. Giving up the business card before requesting a favor? That shows respect, and class, too. ‘Let’s hear it.’

  ‘I don’t know what Ricky told you about me and the boys …’

  ‘Everything.’

  Atwal laughs. ‘Like you said, Ricky liked to talk. But the thing is we’re movin’ up. We’ve outgrown our suppliers. We need more product.’

  ‘How much more?’

  ‘Like three or four ounces every couple of weeks.’

  Bobby Ditto’s thrilled, though he’s careful not to show more than mild interest. It could’ve been a lot worse. ‘You understand, Sammy, there’s no credit thing happening here. It’s cash up front.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘And you gotta be ready to jump. I don’t hold product, not for nobody. If you tell me you need a week to raise the money, I’m gonna walk away from ya. And once I walk away, I don’t walk back.’

  ‘OK, understood.’

  Bobby stands up. The meeting’s over. ‘You did good today,’ he tells Atwal as they walk to the door. ‘You showed respect and respect is how we do our thing in America. You’ll be hearin’ from us, count on it.’

  They come through the door to find the Blade talking to a warehouse worker, a woman whose name Bobby doesn’t know. Par for the course with the Blade, a pussy hound if ever there was one. Bobby’s about to make the Blade very happy. He’s about to tell the Blade there’s a hooker who needs to be taken off the street and questioned. He’s about to tell the Blade he doesn’t really care what happens to the hooker afterward.

  SIX

  Carter fires up his computer shortly after finishing breakfast on Monday morning. He’s expecting confirmation of a wire transfer to his bank in Panama, payment for a job well done. Sure enough, the money’s right where it’s supposed to be and Carter immediately transfers the full amount to a bank in Moscow. Instructions for the Moscow bank are already in place. After deducting their commission, the bank will move the cash to a smaller bank in the South Pacific that doesn’t record the money’s next – and final – destination.

  His business concluded, Carter turns to his email box, deleting the spam before opening a heavily encrypted email from Paul Marginella, universally called Paulie Margarine. Paulie is Carter’s agent. He secures the jobs and makes the payments after deducting his commission. But not any more.

  Hey kid, I got some bad news for you. Or maybe not. It depends on how you’re doin these days. But I ain’t been feeling right for a long time now and I’m gonna have to shut the operation down. No hard feelins, OK? We did good while we could (hey, that rhymes – I’m a poet who don’t know it) and we have to move on. Best of luck. Paulie.

  Carter takes the message to Sweat & Strain, a gym on 10th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen. He focuses on three words as he rides cross-town on the L Train: Or maybe not. For some time now, Carter’s been tempted to break off the relationship himself. In his own mind, he compares each job to a combat deployment. Maybe the odds against being killed or wounded in any given operation are great, but if you’re deployed over and over again … Carter doesn’t bother to complete the thought. He’s killed twenty-three men in fourteen cities over the past two-plus years, and the cops investigated every death. Sure, he’s protected himself. The emails that pass between Carter and Paulie are the sum total of their contact, and they do not go directly from Paulie’s computer to his. Paulie’s emails are addressed to an email forwarder in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. From Minsk, they voyage to the websites of three forwarders on three different continents before Carter retrieves them. One of the spook agencies, the CIA or the NSA, might be able to track and decrypt the emails, but not a local cop shop.

  But if Carter can’t be traced through Paulie Margarine, there’s still the possibility that he’ll be caught at the scene of the crime, say by a police cruiser turning on to the block at just the wrong time, or be tracked down because he missed a surveillance camera or left a minuscule bit of DNA behind, despite his many precautions.

  In Carter’s opinion, there are no guarantees. In Carter’s opinion, the most remote outcome is rendered probable by enough repetitions.

  So Carter’s relieved on the one hand. Paulie’s absolutely correct – it’s time to move on. But coming right after Janie’s passing, the prospect of a career change adds fuel to an already smoldering fire.

  Carter doesn’t neglect his workout. He works harder than usual, in fact. S&S is run by a mixed martial artist named Jordan Boone who promotes his self-defense system, which includes a dozen manuals selling for ten dollars each on the gym’s website. Boone claims to have distilled his method from ‘every martial art on the planet.’

  Forget about tactics that work in a ring or a cage. Self-defense is about protecting yourself from attack by incapacitating your opponent long enough to get away.

  That’s all bullshit, of course, at least in Carter’s opinion. Half the patrons of Boone’s gym are serious knuckleheads far more likely to be the attacker than the attacked. But the system, with its kicks, strikes and throws, works as well as any other. You practice the moves, over and over and over, until each and every opening draws the appropriate counter-attack, until you see and strike before you’re conscious of what you’re going to do next. Then, if you’re Carter, you run away. Carter has no criminal record and the last thing he wants to do is draw the attention of the police.

  Most of the regulars at Sweat & Strain outweigh Carter, especially the ones who juice with steroids. But Carter’s not only fast, he’s also fearless, and he’s acquired a bit of a reputation. He’s not surprised when a pro named Johnny ‘The Crusher’ Carpenter asks him to work out. They go at it for an hour, until Carpenter breaks it off and heads for the showers. Carter would like nothing more than to follow – he’s gotten much the worse of the exchanges – but he has one additional task ahead, one he absolutely hates, skipping rope. Which is why he forces himself to do it.

  Six hours later, at four o’clock in the afternoon, Carter approaches the front door of a house on a tree-lined street in Astoria, Queens. The single-story house isn’t much to look at – brick walls, shingled roof, a picture window in the living room – but it rests on a generous lot surrounded by a thick hedge in the back. Carter hesitates only for a moment before ringing the bell.

  The man who opens the door is about Carter’s age, but that’s the only resemblance between the two. He’s fifty pounds heavier than Carter, with a serious gut and jowls befitting a man twice his age.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asks.

  ‘I’m here to see Paulie Marginella.’ Carter knows this must be Paulie’s son, Freddy, who was in prison the last time Carter and Paulie met. ‘Does he still live here?’

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘My name’s Carter.’

  Freddy’s double take proves one thing: Paulie’s got a big mouth. Carter smiles. ‘I know I’m not expected, but I heard that Paulie’s not feeing well …’

  ‘My dad’s in the backyard, catching a few rays.’ Freddy steps aside to let Carter into a small foyer. ‘This is about what exactly …’

  ‘It’s about me paying my respects to a sick friend.’

  Although Freddy fixes Carter with a hard stare, he’s not his father’s son. Carter’s not intimidated and he simply returns the stare, his eyes blank.

  ‘All right, hang out here for a minute. I’ll ask if he wants to see you.’

  Freddy’s back two minutes later. He nods and leads Carter through the living room to a sliding glass door. The door’s open and he points through it to a man sitting in a wheelchair positioned on a small patch of sunlit grass. There’s a second chair next to him, a folding lawn chair with plastic webbing stretched across a tarnished aluminum frame.

  ‘Lemme know when you’re ready to leave,’ Freddy says. ‘Dad wants to talk to you alone.’

  Paulie Margarine’s backyard is nicely sculpted. A small bed of yellow tulips, a cluster of intertwined bir
ch trees, a Japanese maple, its spider-thin leaves barely opened, that might have been lifted from a Bonsai pot. Against the side of the house, an enormous lilac, more a tree than a bush, perfumes the warm May air.

  Carter acknowledges the contrast as he crosses the lawn. Every living thing in Paulie’s yard has dedicated itself to renewal, except for Paulie Margarine. Paulie’s as thin as a rail and his skin is a shade of yellow that no tulip will ever reproduce. Emblazoned with the logo of the New York Mets, a thick blanket wraps his body from his neck to his feet. The hand that emerges from beneath the blanket is bony enough to be the claw of a diving raptor.

  ‘Hey, Carter, check this out.’ With great effort, Paulie manages to pull up the blanket to reveal a black boot. ‘I’m ready,’ he announces.

  ‘To die with your boots on?’

  ‘I gotta.’ Paulie’s grin reveals gums the color of bone. ‘It’s part of the culture. It’s our thing, our cosa nostra.’

  Carter’s laugh is genuine. He’s always liked Paulie, a man true to himself, a genuine tough guy. ‘So, what’s up, what do you have?’

  ‘Hepatitis C, which is destroyin’ my liver. I’m on the list for a transplant.’ Paulie’s hand disappears beneath the blanket. ‘But it’s not lookin’ good. I turned down the last round of chemo. Whatever time I got, I don’t wanna spend it leanin’ over a toilet, which in fact I can’t even do any more. I gotta throw up in a bedpan.’

  Carter lets that pass and they sit quietly for a few minutes, until Paulie asks, ‘So, whatta ya gonna do? Now that you’re outta work?’

  ‘I’m thinking you were right, Paulie, it’s time to move on. I don’t know to what exactly, but I’ve got money put away, so I’m not all that worried.’

  ‘I’m not worried, either. I know exactly what I’m gonna be doin’ six months from now and that’s breathin’ dirt. But my kid has big ideas. He’s gettin’ out of all the old businesses. The way it is now, with the Feds, you make a wrong move and they put you in jail for a thousand years. The money’s in computer crime and that’s where Freddy’s goin’. We’ll be done with our other businesses, including the business you and me had together, within a few months.’