Angel Face

by Stephen Solomita

  ‘Our commander was a Brit named Montgomery Thorpe who claimed to be educated at Sandhurst, the British Royal Military Academy. Some way, he got us out ahead of Youboty, so that we were waiting for the warlord when he drove up to this deserted village in the Nimba Mountains. I was stationed at the entrance to the village, me and two other men, Jerzy Golabek and Paul Ryan. We were concealed behind rocks on a hillside. Thorpe and the rest of our men, eight in all, were on the other side of the village. You understand, there were eleven of us and we were going up against thirty fighters with superior arms. Our advantages were concealment and surprise, but they were no guarantee.’

  Carter leans against the headboard, his eye moving to the ceiling as he organizes the details. The boy soldiers have haunted him for years, the memories surfacing in bits and pieces, an image here, an image there, triggered by the face of a bewildered gang-banger on a perp walk, or the odor of blood in a butcher’s shop.

  ‘The plan belonged to Thorpe and it was simple enough. We’d let Youboty and his technicals—’

  ‘What’s a technical?’

  ‘Technicals are unarmored pickup trucks, usually Japanese, with large caliber weapons mounted in the beds, in this case fifty caliber machine guns. Anyway, the plan was to let Youboty turn into the village, then open fire from behind with small arms and a mortar. We were hoping that he’d retreat through the village and into an ambush on the other side.’

  Carter stops long enough to accept a spoonful of yogurt. ‘The village was in the Nimba Mountains, above eight hundred meters, where the jungle bleeds into a mix of pine forest and grasslands. This was in midsummer, in equatorial Africa, and we were completely exposed to the sun, a ragtag collection of mercs from every continent except Antarctica. Even in the mercenary world, we were the lowest of the low, like the bandit Samurai in that movie. We served no master.

  ‘I remember the wind hissing over the rocks and a family of jackals that searched the huts in the village, one by one, and the sweat running from my hair to my toes, and the hours ticking by. Thorpe had made an educated guess, but a guess is still a guess. If Youboty took a different route – and there were others open to him – we’d have to fight our way back to the coast with nothing to show for the risk.

  ‘But Thorpe was right this time. Youboty and his boy soldiers arrived at two o’clock in the afternoon, crowded into four technicals. Youboty was in the cab of the lead vehicle. The boy soldiers were huddled around the fifty caliber machine guns in the truck beds. They wore rags and their eyes were hollow, their faces gaunt. I knew they were vicious. I’d seen, first hand, what they did when they happened on an occupied village. They were cruel, needlessly cruel, but there was a method to their cruelty. Little bands like Youboty’s had no access to supplies. They pillaged to survive.

  ‘Anyway, the first part went exactly as planned. Golabek fired off a mortar round just after Youboty’s technical cleared the first house. As luck would have it – bad luck – he scored a direct hit. Youboty and his lieutenant were blown to pieces. See, the boy soldiers couldn’t fight, even with their master alive. They had no training and no real experience defending against soldiers who did. That’s why they panicked when Paul and I eliminated the machine gunners with our M16s. Instead of retreating through the village, away from our fire, they jumped out of the technicals and ran into the mud huts.’

  ‘I think I might have done the same thing,’ Angel declares. ‘Duck for cover.’

  ‘The cover was an illusion because the roofs had fallen in and they were completely exposed to mortar fire from both ends of the village. The huts were death traps. But they still had options. They could have massed and attacked my position, or they could have dug in, forced us to come for them, or they could have surrendered. But they didn’t, Angel. No, what they did, in ones and twos and threes, was dash into the open and fire off their weapons. I don’t know what they expected to hit – not a single round came anywhere close to our position – but standing out in the open, only a few hundred yards off, they were as unprotected as targets on a shooting range. As far as I could tell, I never missed, not once.’

  Carter pauses to ease the pressure in his diaphragm. He’s having trouble drawing a breath. Angel’s watching him, eyes wide, mouth open. She’s never seen him like this, and she doesn’t know what to make of his story. Carter doesn’t help matters when he finally says, ‘You know the expression that mob guys use? Making your bones? Like you’re one thing before you kill for the first time, then you become something else?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Well, I killed children for money, Angel, and not because they were vicious murderers, which they were. I killed them for the diamonds they were guarding. What does that make me?’

  TWENTY

  Bobby Ditto grunts with each upward thrust of his arms. He’s on the deck behind his home in Howard Beach, Queens, only a few miles from Kennedy Airport on Jamaica Bay. Bobby’s doing bench presses, pushing two hundred and fifty pounds into the air with each rep. This is a workout weight, and far from his best efforts, which reach beyond three-fifty.

  The Blade stands behind the bench, his hands beneath the weight bar as it rises and falls. At a signal from his boss, he guides the weights on to the bench’s hooks. Unburdened, Bobby sits up, dropping his feet to the ground as he lifts a pair of forty-pound dumb-bells and does a set of rapid-fire curls. Just after dinner last night, one of his favorite whores injected a mix of human growth hormone and steroids into his left buttock. His ass is still sore, but the rest of his body’s humming along, all gain, no pain.

  Except when he thinks about Paulie Margarine and his boy, Freddy. Bobby has a half-assed connection in the NYPD, a sergeant named Casey, who he called as soon as he heard the news. According to Casey, Paulie and his son were discovered in their beds, shot once through the forehead. There was no sign of forced entry, despite the house being alarmed, and no physical evidence was recovered. Nevertheless, given Paulie’s long-term mob affiliation and the kid’s being released from prison only a year before, the cops are looking at the usual suspects, including Bobby Ditto.

  Right after hanging up on Casey, Bobby used a throwaway cellphone to call Louis Chin. No answer on the first, second or third attempts. Goodbye, Mr Chin.

  Levi Kupperman’s face appears in the sliding door leading from the deck into the house. ‘I’m done,’ he says. ‘The house is clean.’

  Bobby lays the weights down and stares at the kid, standing there with his little meter in his hand, hollow eyes pleading, a bag of bones. Bobby’s thinking that Levi’s usefulness is coming to an end, that maybe his addiction has reached a terminal phase. The kid looks like death warmed over, like he’s waiting for someone to open the lid on his coffin so he can climb in and make himself comfortable.

  ‘Take care of him,’ Bobby tells the Blade. Then he gets up and strolls to the edge of the deck. Located on a channel leading to Jamaica Bay, Bobby’s home is on stilts, the better to avoid the inevitable flooding when nor’easters push the Atlantic Ocean in his general direction. Below him, tied to a wooden pier, his pride and joy bobs in the swells, a twenty-two-foot SunDancer with enough cabin space to bed a pair of whores, or hide several bodies. Bobby keeps the SunDancer fueled and ready to go from early April until mid-November.

  ‘OK, boss, he’s gone.’

  Bobby turns to his most trusted advisor – the Blade’s as close to a father as Bobby’s ever known – and smiles to himself. Right this minute, two of Bobby’s men are sitting in the living room, looking through the windows. As if they could stop – or even slow down – Leonard Carter.

  ‘See, Marco, what I can’t figure is why I’m standin’ out here in the sunshine.’ He jerks a thumb toward the sky. ‘Instead of bein’ up there, tryin’ to explain my life to St Peter.’

  ‘You’d need a hell of a shyster to bring that one off,’ the Blade responds.

  ‘Is that what you figure? That we’re gonna burn, no questions asked?’

  ‘No,
what I figure is that when you’re dead, you’re dead, and that’s the end of it. But what could I say? To each his own.’

  ‘OK, but the question I’m still askin’ is why I’m not dead.’ Bobby walks back to the weight bench. He picks up a pair of thirty-pound dumb-bells, leans back and begins doing flys, his arms fully extended.

  The Blade follows Bobby over. He positions himself at the foot of the bench and folds his arms across his chest, but says nothing. The Blade’s wearing a royal-blue track suit with white piping on the arms, a high-end knock-off. The Blade never buys retail, not if he can help it. He figures legit manufacturers are even bigger crooks than the factory owners churning out the fakes.

  ‘I’ve been thinkin’ along the same lines as you,’ the Blade finally says, which is not the truth, not at all. The Blade’s been primarily focused on their upcoming deal.

  ‘This guy, Carter?’ Bobby lays the weights on the bench. He’s breathing a little harder and his massive chest is slick with sweat. ‘He’s like a magician, right? Like he walks through fuckin’ walls? Hey, face the facts. Paulie was nobody’s asshole, and neither was his kid. Meanwhile, they got whacked in their beds.’

  The Blade’s quick to agree. ‘The man’s good. I seen for myself what he can do, like first hand. Know what I think? I think the army trains these guys to be supermen. Like the Jews, ya know? Like the Mossad. They could track down anyone, anywhere. Like they’re fuckin’ invisible.’

  ‘Then why am I still walkin’ around, Marco? How come I’m not sittin’ in the morgue, waitin’ to be sliced and diced?’

  ‘All I know for sure is that he said he was comin’ for you.’

  ‘But when? What’s he waitin’ for? Think for a minute. Carter shoots Ricky. Then he takes the whore away from you and Ruby. Then he whacks Ruby right on the street, takes out Paulie in his bed, and most likely the Chink’s gone, too.’ Bobby lifts the weights to his chest, lies down and starts another set of flys. ‘I don’t get the timing, Marco. I don’t get the timing at all.’

  The Blade’s thoughts come together before Bobby completes the set. First, his boss is right. If Carter wanted Bobby dead, he would’ve made an attempt by now. Yeah, they’ve been careful, but they’re not exactly hiding. ‘I’m thinkin’ that he wants somethin’.’

  ‘But he’s not tellin’ me what it is.’

  ‘No, and he has Ruby’s cellphone. The number for the warehouse is on it. He could’ve called any time.’

  ‘So, then what?’

  Once the Blade’s mind begins to move in the right direction, his logic follows the same path taken by Solly Epstein. Outside of Bobby Ditto’s life, there’s only one thing he and his boss have that anybody could want.

  ‘What we gotta do, like right away, is bring the money into the bunker.’

  ‘The money?’ Bobby drops the weights to the deck and sits up. The basic question – why am I still alive? – was as far as he’d gotten, that and the fact that the payments to Chin were wasted money. Now he’s thinking he could be ruined forever. ‘Where do ya get that from?’

  The Blade takes a deep breath. ‘Follow the connections, Bobby. Carter connects to the whore. The whore connects to your brother. Your brother – who had a big mouth, which everybody knows – connects to the money.’

  ‘Fuckin’ Ricky.’ Bobby stops at the approach of a small boat. He walks over to the rail and waves to Vince Capporelli, who lives two houses away. Vince holds up a bluefish that must weigh fifteen pounds.

  ‘You need to get out in the bay,’ Vince calls. ‘The blues are feeding close to shore. The water’s boiling.’

  Bobby can remember a time when he would have packed his fishing gear, filled a cooler with beer and sandwiches, and been out the door fifteen minutes later. Now he spends his days in a bunker.

  ‘OK,’ he tells the Blade, ‘get the boys together, pick up the money and bring it to the bunker. I want you to use at least three men and make sure one of ’em is Donny Thorn. I’m gonna put him in charge.’

  Donny Thorn is Donald Thornton, an Irish kid who grew up with Bobby and his brother. He’s quick, tough and gets the job done, the perfect choice to replace Ruby.

  ‘A harp? The boys ain’t gonna like that.’

  This is not something Bobby needs to be told. The rest of his men are Italian. Taking orders from an Irishman won’t come easy. So what? Bobby returns to the weight bench and lies down. All this bullshit, it’s ruining his workout.

  ‘Just get it done, Marco. And tell the boys to bring a change of clothes and a toothbrush. They won’t be leavin’ that basement any time soon.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  When the Blade steps on to the sidewalk, Carter and Epstein both respond with a muttered ‘Fuck.’ More ladylike, Angel settles for, ‘Oh, shit.’ The Blade went into the building unburdened. Now he’s carrying a small, hard-sided suitcase. And that’s not the worst of it. No, the Blade’s accompanied by three younger men whose heads swivel back and forth as they hustle over to a Ford Expedition with appropriately darkened windows. A minute later, they take off.

  ‘Does this mean what I think it means?’ Put off by Solly Epstein’s sudden appearance, Angel’s been sulking all day. She wants to know why she wasn’t consulted before Carter added a full partner to their little enterprise. Of course, Carter may very well be planning to eliminate the cop and his share of the loot, all in one fell swoop. As he might be planning to eliminate Angel Tamanaka. There’s no way to know.

  Carter ignores Angel’s question. ‘They’re spooked about something. If I follow them, we’ll be spotted.’

  ‘I think I know where they’re going,’ Epstein says. ‘I think they’ll take the money to the bunker. Work your way back to Harlem River Drive and head south.’

  Angel bristles again when Carter meekly complies. ‘What’s the bunker?’ she asks.

  ‘Bobby owns a rug warehouse in Brooklyn,’ Epstein replies. ‘He’s got a room in the basement, soundproofed, no windows. It’s where he does business.’

  ‘A bunker?’

  ‘That’s what he calls it.’

  ‘And you think the money’s in the suitcase?’

  ‘I can’t see another reason why he’d send four men to get it.’

  Earlier in the morning, before they set up the surveillance, they’d begun to comb through the hundreds of items in OCCB’s file on Roberto Benedetti. A quick review of known associates yielded immediate results. Bobby Ditto’s godfather, Vincent Pugliese, rents an apartment, 5B, in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx. In poor health at age seventy-four, Pugliese lives alone, his wife long deceased, his children scattered. He walks with the aid of a cane and is said, by an NYPD registered informant, to be uniformly polite to his neighbors.

  Armed with that bit of information, all three had driven to Kingsbridge. That was four hours ago. Now they’re on the road again.

  ‘Why would he move the money?’ Angel’s watching her elaborately constructed fantasy, the one that has her opening a little art gallery on Tobago just in time for the winter season, dissolve before her eyes. ‘Is he on to us?’

  But there are any number of possibilities out there and Angel barely listens to Epstein as he dissects each of them. She’s wondering exactly what she’s going to do if there’s no money to steal, no goal to achieve. A return to normalcy seems unlikely, given that Bobby Ditto now believes her partially responsible for two murders.

  Angel starts to speak, but then looks over at Carter. His features are composed, his expression almost serene, this despite Bobby Ditto’s knowing his name. Angel’s annoyed at first, but then skips to an obvious bottom line. No matter what happens to the money, Bobby’s fate has already been determined. No need to worry.

  The drive to the Red Hook section of Brooklyn takes more than an hour. They’re plagued by heavy traffic on FDR Drive along the East River, on the Brooklyn Bridge with its perpetual renovations, most of all on the notorious Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The delays cost them nothing, nothing that hasn’t alread
y been lost. The SUV’s sitting in front of Benedetti Wholesale Carpeting, a long, two-story building located a few blocks from the waterfront.

  ‘The bunker’s in the basement,’ Epstein explains. ‘To get there, you have to come down a narrow flight of stairs.’

  ‘How do you know so much about the set-up?’ Angel asks.

  ‘An informant.’ Epstein’s crouched in the cargo space behind the van’s rear seat. He’s thinking that it’s someone else’s turn to bounce up and down on the plywood floor. Somebody with a bigger ass. ‘The informant’s name, a major source, by the way, was Ruby Amaroso. Unfortunately, someone put a knife in Ruby’s back last week. I’m not sayin’ I know who that somebody was, but I got my suspicions.’

  Angel laughs, but Carter’s expression doesn’t change. Finally, she says, ‘The good thing is that we know exactly where the money is. If we can’t get to it right now, they have to bring it out, sooner or later.’

  ‘That won’t necessarily help us, even if we happen to be watching at the time,’ Carter responds. ‘The Ford’s armored.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘First, the vehicle didn’t settle on its springs when four men got inside. Second, the guard on the front passenger’s side of the SUV let the window down. It was two inches thick. Third, even though the driver turned slowly, the truck still pulled away from the turn. That’s because of the weight. Armored vehicles stop bullets – some of them will stop an RPG – but they don’t handle well.’

  Carter doesn’t wait for a response. He’s not discouraged, not yet, but there’s plenty of work to be done. ‘Look, I’m going to check out the warehouse for soft spots. There’s no need for you to be here. I want you to take the subway back to the apartment and work your way through the files. You’ll be looking for the same thing I’m looking for, a soft spot.’