The man’s eyes now project rage, impotent rage, helpless rage. But he has no choice. He has to answer. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I’m not.’
Carter doesn’t dispute the claim. The man looks nothing like Ricky Ditto. He steps close to him, jamming the revolver into his gut, and pats him down. No gun. Carter gestures to the man on the ground, who’s managed to rise to his knees and is now vomiting on to the sidewalk.
‘I want you to pick up your buddy and walk to the end of the block. If you turn around before I’m gone, I’ll kill you, witnesses or not. And you tell the brother he should heat up the cappuccino. I’ll be comin’ to visit.’
EIGHT
Angel can’t stop shaking. She’s shaking when Carter takes her hand, when he leads her to the van and puts her inside, when he drives north to 125th Street, then cross-town and over the Triborough Bridge into Queens. She’s shaking when he parks at the Pilgrim Diner on Astoria Boulevard, when he takes her inside, when he orders coffee and apple turnovers for both of them. There’s a little voice in her head that keeps saying, ‘It’s not fair.’ There’s another little voice that keeps saying, ‘So what?’ When she tries to lift her coffee cup, she spills hot coffee on her hand.
‘Are you going to say anything?’ she finally demands.
That brings a smile to Carter’s face, a somewhat lopsided smile that reveals a chipped incisor on the left side of his mouth. ‘This is what I get for saving your life? Not to mention your honor?’
Angel doesn’t rise to the bait. ‘They said they were cops. The older one had a badge.’ She shakes her head. ‘I never should have opened the door.’
‘They probably would’ve kicked it down. Subtlety’s not their thing. Patience either.’
Angel cuts through the apple turnover with the edge of her fork, spears a piece and shovels it into her mouth. ‘Damn, this is really good.’
‘They do their own baking.’ Carter picks up his turnover with his fingers and takes a bite. The crust flakes off beneath his teeth. ‘The Pilgrim’s been feeding the cab drivers who work LaGuardia Airport for fifty years. Sometimes I come here at three o’clock in the morning just for the smell.’
The only thing Angel can smell is her own fear. ‘I don’t get it, how you can be so calm? Do you do this every day?’
‘No, not every day. But I’ve done similar things often enough to use the adrenal rush to my advantage.’
‘Does that mean you weren’t afraid?’
‘I was afraid that I’d have to shoot them, which I didn’t want to do.’
Angel feels a sudden rush of pure rage. The one with the hatchet face had the cruelest smile she’d ever seen, not to mention the fact that his eyes were filled with lust and he’d threatened to rip her flesh off with a pair of pliers.
‘I wish you had,’ she says. ‘I wish you’d killed both of them.’
‘Too many witnesses.’ He gestures to her cup. ‘Finish your coffee and I’ll drop you off wherever you want. By the way, did they tell you who they were?’
‘They said something about a man named Bobby. Like I was supposed to recognize the name.’
‘That would be a mobster named Bobby Ditto. His brother, the one who’s dead, was named Ricky Ditto. Their actual last name is Benedetti. Somehow, Bobby discovered that you and Ricky had a date that afternoon.’
‘How did he find out my name and address? The old guy, the one with the hatchet face, called me Angel.’
‘Most likely from your pimp ...’
‘My agent.’ Angel sighs. She’s finally slowing down and she wonders how far she’ll fall. Last time, after Carter shot Dr Rick, she slept for twelve hours straight. She glances around the diner, at all the Pilgrim kitsch. There’s a plaster turkey in every corner. ‘I have nowhere to go,’ she finally says.
‘How about your folks?’
‘My father’s dead and my mother’s a drunk. Last I heard, she was living in a shelter.’
‘What do you want me to do? I—’
Angel cuts him off. ‘I want you to do what you said you were going to do. Go after that ... that Bobby Ditto.’
‘Sorry, Angel, I only meant to worry them. Bobby Ditto’s not a threat, not to me.’
‘Then why did you interfere?’
Carter’s eyes dart to the diner’s entrance. Two men have just come through the door. Thickly built, they wear wife-beater T-shirts that reveal jailhouse tattooing on their upper chests and arms. When they take seats at the counter, he turns back to Angel.
‘I only came to warn you.’
‘But you didn’t just warn me. You got involved and I’d like to know why.’
Carter shakes his head. He’s not going there. But Angel’s not fooled and she’s not stupid. He either wants her body or he has a conscience, despite his profession. And it has to be number two because he intends to drop her off. Unless, of course, he wants a quickie in the van. Angel represses a smile. Everything about Carter intrigues her, from his nerdy front, to his stunning (lucky for her) proficiency, to his confidence, to his white-knight heroics.
‘Like I said, I only came to warn you.’
‘OK, but the fact is that you kicked the crap out of one of them and scared the crap out of the other one. I could see it in his eyes. He definitely thought you were gonna kill him. But you didn’t, right? And now you and me, we’re joined together in their minds. We’re joined together and my name is the only one they know, which means they’re gonna keep looking for me.’
Carter’s trying to think of what to say – her logic is impeccable – when Angel’s cell punches out the opening notes to Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’. He nods when Angel looks up at him. Her life is no business of his. Then she puts the phone to her ear and her already grim expression darkens.
‘What? What? That can’t be.’
But it is, because when she hangs up a minute later, Angel hasn’t brightened. She tilts her chin up to meet his gaze and Carter realizes that her eyes aren’t black after all. They’re an impossible indigo that reminds him of the blue of the sky just before dark in the mountains around Tora Bora.
‘That was Pierre’s wife, Jeanne-Marie. Pierre’s dead. As in shot, killed, murdered.’ Angel looks down at the table. She’s shaking again. ‘Holy shit, what the fuck have you done to me? To me and the rest of the girls. Because the only thing they stole was Pierre’s computer. And they didn’t even take that. They just took the hard drive.’
‘You want some more coffee?’
‘Is that supposed to be funny?’
‘Probably not. So, what about an almond horn? The marzipan filling? It’s unbelievable.’
Carter’s remembering the first few minutes after a firefight. You were alive and that was enough. Tomorrow morning, you’d wake up on the right side of the grass. Carter’s been in dozens of firefights, in Asia and in Africa, and come through uninjured, a blessing he doesn’t attribute to his own skills. Better men died before his eyes.
‘Do you have a name?’
‘Carter.’
‘Well, here’s the thing, Carter. I left home unexpectedly and I somehow forgot to take my purse. That means I’ve got nothing, no clothes, no identification, no money, no credit cards, no debit card. I’ve got nothing and it’s your fault.’
‘Actually, I’m blaming the whole thing on Ricky’s wife and children.’
‘Say again?’
‘We were both in Ricky Ditto’s house because his family was somewhere else. We were there to take advantage of that fact in order to advance our individual interests. Myself, I’d never kill a man in front of his family, and I assume you apply the same principle to your own work.’
‘Actually, one guy snuck me down in the basement while his wife was upstairs. He had this fantasy about a sex slave ...’ Angel stops when Carter begins to laugh. So far, so good. ‘You said something about more coffee.’
