speak.
‘Are you married?’ Epstein finally asks. ‘You got any kids?’
‘No.’
‘So, you’re completely on your own? Nobody to report to at the end of the day?’
Carter smiles to himself. Only a few days before, he would have responded without hesitation. Now there’s Angel Tamanaka.
‘What’s your point, Solly?’
‘I can’t make ends meet. That’s the point. I can’t make the numbers add up, no matter what I do.’ He ticks the points off on the middle finger of his left hand. ‘The job’s cut back on overtime, so I have to make due on my base pay. Sofia’s been working for the last year, but child care eats up most of her salary. Now she’s pregnant again and she’ll be gainfully unemployed for a year, even if she works into her ninth month.’
Epstein glances at Carter, who’s staring at the bridge. ‘I work in a gas station on my off-days,’ he continues. ‘I’m the monkey in the booth you have to pay if you don’t have a credit card. I make twelve dollars an hour, but only because I carry a gun. The other monkeys get eight.’ He shrugs. ‘Between the house payments and the car payments – we need two cars now – and the payments for the loan I took out with the credit union ... Let’s just say I’m in over my head, Carter. Let’s just say that when Sofia quits her job, me and my little family are gonna sink beneath the waves. Glug, glug, glug.’
Epstein’s complaint reminds Carter of Angel’s cautionary tale about her father’s doomed attempt to save his lumber yard. Hideki Tamanaka had given his all to the struggle, but the forces arrayed against him were too powerful to resist. He’d found a way out, though, by firing a bullet into his head. Epstein, or so it seems to Carter, has other plans.
They walk past a couple, teenagers by the look of them, making out on a bench. Lost in lust, the young lovers appear not to notice the intrusion. Epstein smiles and nudges Carter with an elbow. ‘You remember when you were that young?’ he asks. ‘There was no such thing as enough.’
Carter returns Epstein’s smile, though his sexual experiences, before and after joining the military, have been sporadic and brief. ‘I’m not out to kill Bobby Ditto,’ he says.
‘Is he out to kill you?’
‘Sure, but he doesn’t know who I am, or where to find me, or how to fight me if he did.’
‘Then why come to me?’
‘I’m coming to you, Solly, because I want everything in the files you cops undoubtedly keep on the Ditto brothers. I want every known associate, every address, what they do, their connections ... hell, I want the names of their children and grandchildren. I want to be buried in information.’
They continue on for a time, until they’re standing in the shadow of the bridge. The towers on this side, the Brooklyn side, rise seven hundred feet above their heads.
‘What do you think they did first?’ Carter asks. ‘I’m talking about the people who built the bridge. What was the very first step they took?’
‘Convince the politicians to give them money. Look, it’s gettin’ late and I need a few hours’ sleep. I’m working tomorrow.’
‘My cards are on the table. I’ve got nothing to add.’
‘Fair enough, so let me put my own cards on the table. I’m not an idiot, Carter, so I know you’re gonna pull a rip-off. Bobby doesn’t do hijackings or commercial burglaries. He doesn’t run whores or make book or lend money. Bobby Ditto’s in the drug business and that means cash, cash, cash.’
Epstein turns suddenly and begins to retrace his steps. Intrigued, Carter follows, certain of only one thing. Something in the cop has changed and the good lieutenant’s no longer afraid of him.
‘There a bottom line here?’ Carter asks.
‘Two bottom lines. The first one has you cutting me in, which would definitely be in your interest if you need manpower. The second one has you paying me ten grand for the files.’
Out on the water, an ocean-going tug out-pushes a loaded barge toward the narrow passage between the upper and lower bays. Beyond, the Atlantic Ocean runs all the way to Europe. The barge carries an EPA logo on the side and a cargo of sludge from one of the city’s waste treatment plants, a cargo to be dumped long before England comes into view.
Carter nods to himself when the tugboat sounds its foghorn. He’s intrigued by Epstein’s proposal, but far from ready to make a commitment. He has no idea what resources the operation will call for. That’s why he’s after the files.
‘I can’t choose without the files and I’m not giving you ten thousand dollars. The way I see it, you’re in my debt.’
‘Even though I kept my end of the deal?’
‘There was no deal, Solly. What you did was more in the nature of an insurance policy. But the fact is I don’t know what I’m going to do with the information, which may or may not answer the questions that need answering. I’m willing to go to a grand to cover the risk you’d be taking, but that’s it.’
‘What about the first part?’
‘Bringing you in?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I like to work alone, for obvious reasons. But I’ll think about it.’
Now Epstein takes a moment to think. He stares across the water at the low Staten Island hills, his lips slightly parted, eyes fixed. Then his expression hardens as he turns to Carter.
‘Four,’ he says. ‘Four grand. I gotta get at least four.’
Carter walks into the bedroom he shares with Angel to find two votive candles burning in ruby-red jars on a dresser. An opened book lies between the candles:
‘Whenever you leave, I think maybe this time you won’t come back,’ she tells him as she rubs the sleep from her eyes.
‘You worried that I’m gonna leave you?’
‘Leave me?’ Angel gestures at the bulge in Carter’s pants. ‘No, what I think is that you might be killed. Nobody’s invincible.’
Carter takes off his shoes and socks, then unbuttons his shirt. ‘Does that mean you’d miss me?’
‘Missing is part of the deal. Sooner or later.’
‘Inevitably?’ Carter drops his shirt and tugs at his belt. He’s asking himself what Lo Phet would make of this world he’s stumbled into, if there’s a name for it. ‘No escape?’
Angel’s eyes slide over Carter’s body, the slope of his shoulders, the humped biceps, the wormy veins that criss-cross his forearms. The skin on Carter’s chest is stretched tight and her hand rises from the comforter just a bit, as though she’s already feeling that skin on the tips of her fingers.
‘You need to move a little faster,’ she says.
‘And why’s that?’
‘Because I hate to squirm.’ Her smile is wicked. ‘It’s sooooooo unladylike.’
An hour later, they’re sharing a pint of mango ice cream, sitting atop the covers, when Carter says, ‘We’ll be moving out of here tomorrow.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘I have another apartment, in Manhattan.’ Carter dips the spoon into the ice cream, places it before Angel’s lips and watches her pink tongue capture the offering. ‘I can be traced to this address,’ he explains. ‘Not easily, but it’s possible.’
‘Then why live here at all?’
‘To leave a trail, a false trail. Just in case.’
