Angel Face

by Stephen Solomita

  ‘Every day’s another firefight, Louis. That’s the beauty of it.’

  Nelson doesn’t march with the real players. He’s not Kroll Associates. L&L Security’s clients manage third-tier office buildings in obscure, outer-borough neighborhoods. Their needs are commonly limited to a single security guard stationed behind a table in the lobby, a guard whose main function is to prevent the homeless from taking up residence in the hallways.

  Once upon a time, Louis and Nelson were responsible for a combat unit operating near Kandahar, Louis an officer, Nelson his sergeant. They’d shared the same foxhole, ducked the same bullets, mourned the same dead.

  ‘This business, it’s like another war. It’s combat all over again. Only now you fight with money instead of bullets.’

  Chin responded with an appropriate ‘Semper Fi’, but his thoughts had already shifted to another factor. The dollars Nelson put in his pocket, week by week and month by month, were a hundred percent legit. He wasn’t looking over his shoulder, waiting for the cops to snatch him off the street. At worst, he’ll end up in bankruptcy court. Instead of a prison cell.

  Chin’s thinking that the law of averages will catch up with him if he trades in secrets long enough. He’s thinking the Feds will come down on him like a ton of bricks. He’s thinking he needs to find another way.

  The good news is that Nelson’s landed a top-tier client in the form of Grantham Management. Grantham wants L&L Security to staff a ten-story commercial property about to open near City Hall in lower Manhattan. The contract, according to Nelson, is all but signed.

  ‘Come in now, Louis. I’m talking about partners. See, you’ve got a presence that clients are definitely gonna love. It’s that officer thing, right? People not only respect you, they assume you’re smart because you’re Asian. Me, I’m a jarhead and I always will be. I take orders. I get the job done. With you out front and me watching your back, we can’t fail.’

  Chin hesitates as he turns from Kissena Boulevard on to Barclay Avenue. For just a moment, he stares at a six-story apartment building halfway up the block, his building, home sweet home. A red-brick cube devoid of architectural detail, the building’s as plain as a low-income housing project, as plain as a prison. Chin figures that’s only reasonable because the structure was originally built for working-class New Yorkers a paycheck away from poverty.

  Nelson asked Louis for an answer by the end of the week, but Chin’s already made up his mind. The encounter with the cop has him spooked. The bulge under the arm, the handcuffs dangling from a belt loop. Louis’s parents would die if he got himself arrested. His father’s an engineer, for Christ’s sake. His mother’s an accountant.

  So, that’s it. Chin heads for home, imagining himself a businessman fretting over the accounts receivable, wondering how in the world he’ll make the next payroll. Maybe ten years from now, if he works enough seventy hour weeks, he’ll be reasonably compensated. Maybe.

  Chin hesitates before the inner lobby door. The lock is broken, the door slightly ajar, a common occurrence that never fails to annoy Chin. The lock wasn’t damaged by vandals or thieves. Pragmatists to the core, the residents are themselves responsible. The intercom hasn’t worked in six months, which means you have to come to the lobby when you have a visitor or receive a delivery. Or you would if the lock wasn’t broken.

  There’s a bottle of white wine in Chin’s refrigerator, a half-assed decent Chardonnay that calls to him as he presses the button for the elevator, as the door opens and he steps inside. Only when the elevator begins to move do his thoughts turn to Leonard Carter. Another ten grand and he’ll have the cushion he suspects he’ll need for his transition to legitimacy. Chin’s not suicidal. He’s not intending to confront Carter one on one. But there’s that warehouse two blocks away, the one he noticed while the cop examined his ID. Chin had driven past the building on his way out of the neighborhood, a matter of pure chance. The structure was vacant, its doors and windows covered with sheets of plywood. Late at night, access to the roof would involve only a minimum of risk. Chin’s almost certain the roof overlooks the windows of Carter’s apartment, all of them.

  If Carter believes himself to be safe, Chin thinks, if he fails to take elementary precautions like keeping the shades drawn, if he foolishly exposes himself …

  Chin keys the two locks protecting his door, steps inside his apartment, locks the doors behind him and flips on the light. Big mistake. If he’d reversed the last two steps, if he’d turned on the light first, if he’d seen Leonard Carter standing in the kitchen before he locked the door behind him, he might have had a chance. Maybe not, though. Carter’s holding a gun in his right hand, a silenced, .22 caliber semi-automatic, an assassin’s weapon. His eyes are calm and cool, his stare unwavering.

  ‘Walk further into the apartment,’ he says.

  Chin counts off the steps – one, two, three, four, five – until Carter orders him to stop.

  ‘Strip down. Toss your clothes across the room.’

  Well, there it is, Chin thinks. What goes around, comes around. In Afghanistan, he’d ordered suspected Taliban to strip down shortly after taking them into custody, ostensibly because their garments and bags had to be searched. But a naked prisoner is a compliant prisoner, reduced in his own eyes, and everybody knew it, including the prisoners. Humiliation by design, caution the excuse, a naked exercise in power relationships. Forgive the pun.

  ‘You want to hear a joke?’ Chin asks as he strips off his briefs to stand naked.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘What happens when a Chinese man with a hard-on runs into a wall?’ Chin gives it a couple of beats before delivering the punchline. ‘He breaks his nose.’

  Carter doesn’t laugh. ‘I want you to sit down with your back against the wall, your feet crossed at the ankles. Do it now.’

  Chin complies, but then asks, ‘Would you mind telling me what this is all about?’

  Carter responds by shooting him in the right knee, the pain so overwhelming that Chin’s vision is instantly replaced by a wall of fire, as if he was staring into the heart of a blast furnace. He wants to scream, but he knows better. Then the fire recedes and he watches Carter raise the .22 until the barrel is pointed at his forehead.

  ‘I have a low tolerance for bullshit,’ Carter explains.

  Unable to speak, Chin stares for a moment at the blood flowing from his knee. Then he wraps his hands around the punctured bone and feels the shattered bullet trapped beneath the skin. This is exactly what’ll happen if Carter pulls the trigger again. The round will shatter as it penetrates his skull, leaving each tiny shard to track a different path through his brain.

  ‘What do you want me to tell you?’ he finally mutters.

  ‘First, how you found me.’

  ‘Do you know who Bobby Ditto is?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He had information on you, your last name and your involvement with a man named Montgomery Thorpe.’ Chin pauses for breath. ‘I have a … a contact with access to sections of the CIA’s database.’

  ‘Classified sections?’

  ‘Yes, classified data. I discovered Thorpe first, then you as a known associate. From there it was a matter of working backward until I found the address you gave when you enlisted.’

  ‘And Bobby Ditto knows my name and address?’

  Chin’s wishing that Carter’s expression would change. He’d prefer righteous anger to the man’s eerie calm. ‘Look, I’m just a clerk. I trade in information. I’m not a threat.’

  ‘Then why did you put my apartment under surveillance? And why do you have a scoped Remington 30.06 in your closet?’

  ‘I’m a hunter, a deer hunter.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You don’t have any hunting equipment, not even a pair of boots. You hunt humans, Chin. Which leaves you without any right to complain when your prey fights back. I’ve searched your apartment and I know you’ve been to war. So, unless you’re that rare atheist in the foxhole, it’s time for you
to make your peace.’

  But Chin doesn’t pray. Instead, he begins to cry, the tears running from his eyes in a little stream. Not that it helps him. Carter has responsibilities now, to Angel and the cop. If he risks himself, he risks them, and Chin, given his military experience and his access to state secrets, is a genuine threat.

  ‘One day it’ll be my turn,’ he explains. ‘Today, it’s yours.’

  Paulie Margarine’s fully awake when Carter steps into his bedroom, yet he sees or hears nothing until Carter reaches the foot of his bed. Paulie’s awake because he’s in pain, despite a patch on his chest that leaches a steady dose of Fentanyl on to his skin. The cancer is everywhere, including his bones, and he has little time left. Now, looking up at Carter and the gun in his hand, Paulie knows that he has even less, that his journey is almost complete. And the amazing part is that he still wants every minute, that he doesn’t want to surrender a single second.

  ‘Carter?’ The word is barely audible and he swipes a dry tongue over dry lips before repeating himself. ‘Carter?’

  ‘Yeah, Paulie, it’s me. The man you never expected to see again.’ Carter shakes his head. ‘How much, Paulie. How much to sell me out?’

  ‘I never …’

  ‘Bobby Ditto connected me to Montgomery Thorpe, which he couldn’t have done without your help. I just want to know how much.’

  Paulie’s too ashamed to admit the truth. Five thousand? Given the cost, the gain was pitiful. ‘Fifteen grand, but the money wasn’t the point. My family and his, we go back a long way. I couldn’t refuse him. But I swear, I never thought he’d actually find you. I never thought you’d let yourself be traced. I thought you were too smart for that.’

  In fact, Carter might have sold Janie’s apartment at any time over the past few years, knowing she’d never use the place again. Instead, he deliberately left his back trail in place, the better to see who was coming up behind him. ‘Tell me why Bobby came to you? What made him think you could help him?’

  Paulie tries to raise himself up far enough to slide a second pillow beneath his head, only to be greeted by a sharp pain that runs in a jagged line from his right shoulder to his fingertips.

  ‘Holy shit, I feel like my arm’s on fire.’

  Carter leans forward to lift Paulie’s head, to prop up the pillows, to lay the old man back down. ‘You want something?’

  ‘The docs say if I take any more painkillers, they’ll kill me instead of the pain.’ Paulie laughs, surprising even himself. But he’s not a man to be victimized by illusions. He took a chance when he sold Carter out, though he truly believed the odds against the information he bartered leading to Carter were astronomical.

  ‘So, my question. Why did Bobby come to you, Paulie? How did he know who to ask?’

  ‘If you’re thinkin’ I advertised our relationship, you’re wrong. Bobby Ditto knew to come to me because it was Bobby who put the hit on his brother. He told me that Ricky was a snitch, but that was bullshit. Ricky wasn’t worth squat and Bobby was proppin’ him up. What I think, Bobby got tired of doin’ all the work for half the profit.’

  ‘But you didn’t ask?’

  ‘Business is business.’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  Paulie shifts his aching knees, turning on to his side. ‘What about Freddy?’ he asks. ‘What about my son?’

  ‘Gone,’ Carter says. ‘I couldn’t leave him out there to hunt me down.’

  ‘It’s what I woulda done.’

  Paulie looks through the window at a full moon hanging just above the birch trees in the yard outside. He finds himself wishing he could sit outside one more time, sit in full sun, listen to the birds sing, watch a robin search for insects in the grass. This entire spring – his last spring – has been about the birds. Starlings, robins, sparrows, an occasional blue jay, once a cardinal, once a red-tailed hawk that circled overhead for almost an hour. There were days when he looked forward to their songs as eagerly as a baseball fanatic to opening day.

  ‘Are you a Catholic, Paulie?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You want a minute to pray?’

  Paulie considers the offer. ‘I made confession two days ago for the first time in forty years, to a Nigerian priest named Father Owegnu. Once I got started, I couldn’t stop. I had to tell him everything. Hey, credit where credit is due. The priest didn’t interrupt and he didn’t get moralistic on me. He didn’t give me a penance, either. He just told me to keep on prayin’.’

  ‘And you’ve been doing that, Paulie? You’ve been praying to your maker?’

  ‘Yeah, I had to because I knew I was gonna be seein’ Him soon.’

  Carter raises the .22. ‘Then say hello for me.’

  NINETEEN

  Carter pushes into his apartment at three o’clock in the morning. Still awake, Angel’s on the computer. Carter lays the package he’s carrying on a table as she approaches. He’s expecting to take her into his arms, but Angel doesn’t reach out to hug him. Instead, she punches him in the chest.

  ‘Why didn’t you call me? I was worried sick.’

  And what can he say to that? I was busy murdering three people and it slipped my mind? Angel’s standing in front of him, hands on hips, cheeks flaming. She’s wearing a T-shirt that reaches to mid-thigh, no bra and some marvelously erotic perfume that might be successfully marketed to victims of erectile dysfunction.

  ‘If you wanted a worry-free life,’ Carter finally says, ‘you should have gotten out of the van when I offered to let you go.’ He raises a hand to caress the side of her face. ‘The criminal life, it’s not given to serenity.’

  Carter goes into the kitchen and takes a black, industrial-grade trash bag from the pantry. He strips out of his clothes and stuffs them in the bag. Then he marches naked into the living room where he retrieves the package he laid on the table. The package contains Louis Chin’s hard drive, along with several printed documents that outline Carter’s military, and post-military, careers. Carter’s already tossed the .22 automatic (but not the silencer) into the East River. Tomorrow, he’ll dump everything else, including the clothes and the shoes he wore.

  As he flips the switch on a paper shredder next to the computer workstation, Carter glances at the computer’s monitor. The figure that stares back, some sort of monster clutching a giant wheel, more or less compels his attention. The monster’s three eyes bulge from his head and he wears a crown of five human skulls.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asks.

  ‘It’s Tibetan, a Wheel of Becoming.’ Angel lays a hand on Carter’s bare shoulder. ‘I have a paper to write, my last Art History paper, and I’m going to compare this painting with religious art of the Middle Ages.’

  Carter begins to feed the documents into the shredder, but his attention remains on the image in the monitor. ‘What’s a Wheel of Becoming?’

  ‘I’m not a Buddhist, Carter, but I think it’s supposed to be about the different worlds and how we get into them. See here, these are the worlds, in the second circle. On top, the World of the Gods. On the bottom, the Hell World.’

  ‘The Hell World? In Africa, I worked with a mercenary from Nepal. His name was Lo Phet and he claimed we were already living in the Hell World.’ Carter examines the segment at the bottom of the wheel more closely. He finds cold and hot hells, humans boiling away in a cauldron. A dog tears at the flesh of a man impaled on the branch of a tree. And, yes, it does remind him of Africa where the boy soldiers routinely amputated hands and feet, arms and legs, noses, lips and ears. Where mass rape was the norm and enslaved villagers mined for diamonds under a sun hot enough to substitute for hellfire.

  Carter finishes shredding the documents, then destroys the hard drive before adding what remains of both to his clothes in the trash bag. Finally, he puts the bag next to the front door and heads off to the shower. Close-in head shots produce blowback in the form of blood droplets and minute particles of bone. Carter can see bloodstains on his right forearm, and he assumes there’s trace ev
idence on his neck and in his hair. He doesn’t think himself pursued, but he’s taking no chances. Better to be sure.

  Ten minutes later, Angel’s leaning against the towel rack, her eyes fixed on Carter’s soapy chest. ‘You’re pretty quiet tonight,’ she says, a clear invitation to unburden himself.

  But Carter’s not about to confess – he’s not even tempted. He squeezes a dab of shampoo into his palm and begins to work it into his hair. Right now, he’s trying to feel something. Regret, triumph, relief, he doesn’t care. But that’s not happening. Maybe later.

  Carter steps out of the shower to find Angel standing with a towel in her hands. Somehow, when he wasn’t looking, she ditched the T-shirt.

  ‘Why do I have the feeling,’ she asks, ‘that you’re going to be mean to me?’

  Carter’s not mean to Angel. He revels in her beauty instead, as though, after many, many throws of the dice, nature had finally gotten it right. There’s no millimeter of her skin he doesn’t taste. His hands are everywhere, tracing the contours of her body, the arch of her breasts and her hips, the folds of her ears, the hollow spaces between the vertebrae on her spine. At one point, lost in his own pleasure, he thinks he might be imagining her.

  Moments later, Angel re-establishes her corporeal nature by heading off to the bathroom, then to the kitchen. She returns with a container of peach yogurt, not the ice cream Carter was hoping for.

  ‘So,’ she asks as she settles, cross-legged, on the bed, ‘what’s it like in the Hell World?’

  Carter mulls the question over, wondering exactly where to go, or whether to go anywhere. Angel’s Great Adventure. That’s what it’s about for her, a stepping-stone to her ultimate goal, a point of passage. Carter’s intimately familiar with points of passage. He knows that some of them are one-way only, and he decides to warn Angel.

  ‘There were eleven of us in Liberia,’ he begins, ‘chasing down a warlord named Tama Youboty and the blood diamonds he stole from another warlord named Togaba Kpangbah. I say warlord, but lord is too big a title for Youboty. He had about thirty men under his command, boy soldiers, none more than sixteen, a few no taller than the AK47s they carried.