won’t have to split the take with Epstein. So, maybe she underestimated him. Maybe he’s not the bad boy she took him for.
‘Am I next on the dismissal list?’ she finally asks.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because someone has to drive the van.’
‘Ah, there’s the Carter I know. Practical, practical, practical.’
Carter proves her doubly right when he adds, ‘Cops are no good in a firefight, Angel. They usually panic and empty their weapons as fast as they can pull the trigger. If Solly had worked on a SWAT team, I would have kept him on, family or not. As it is, except for the technical part, he’s pretty much useless.’
‘Like I said, practical, practical, practical.’
They’re in the apartment’s living room, sitting on a sleek leather couch that mirrors the furniture throughout the apartment. A celebration of glass, chrome and blond wood devoid of adornment, the furnishings are not to Carter’s taste, or Angel’s, either. But they’re not in it for the ambiance.
‘You know we’ll never get out of prison if something goes wrong,’ Carter says.
‘Like what?’
‘Like if a police cruiser happens to cruise by at just the wrong time, or an unknown witness calls them, or if I should happen to come out on the losing end of a firefight. You can plan all you want, but there’s no certainty in war, not for the individual soldier. How old are you, Angel? Twenty-three, twenty-four?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘I think life expectancy for women is around eighty-three years. That would leave you staring out through prison bars for the next six decades. I told Solly to consider his family. You need to consider the family you might never have.’
Angel snuggles up against Carter. On the one hand, she’s touched by his concern. On the other, he’s misjudged her badly. For one thing, blood’s already been spilled, Ruby Amaroso’s blood, and she was there to play her part. Did the gangster have a wife and children, a mother and a father, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces? Angel doesn’t really care. She’s slipped into a place she’s been avoiding for a long time, a walk on the wild side from which (and she knows this, too) she might never return.
‘I’m going to take a bath now, Carter. I need to shave my legs.’ Angel runs her fingers along Carter’s thigh, producing a satisfying twitch. ‘Unless you want to shave them for me.’
Carter harbors no desire to put a sharp blade to Angel’s flesh, even a safety razor, but he agrees to observe the process. The outcome, unfortunately, is less erotic than he hoped. Though Angel pursues the mechanics of bathing and shaving diligently, she speaks mostly about the underdeveloped island of Tobago, part of a two island nation called Trinidad and Tobago.
‘Trinidad and Tobago have lots of oil, Carter. And I mean lots. They have a stable government, too, something like Costa Rica’s, so you don’t have to worry about rebellions and coups. Trinidad takes care of the oil part and it’s fairly industrialized, especially in the south and around the capital, Port of Spain. Tobago’s a different story. There’s a mountain rainforest in the center, the beaches are all white sand and turquoise waters, the fishing is superb and the reefs are almost pristine. This is exactly what you want in the Caribbean.’
‘You sound like a tourist video.’
Angel doesn’t dispute Carter’s assessment. To a certain extent, when she compares Tobago with other high-end resort islands, like St Barts or St Kitts, she has to play the advocate. As it turns out, Tobago’s low population density is the island’s biggest plus. There’s plenty of room for villas and yachts and every other accoutrement that might attract the rich.
‘Final points.’ Angel leans forward to pull the drain plug, then rises to her feet. She doesn’t have to ask for a towel as Carter’s already holding one. ‘Tobago’s almost on the equator, so when it’s summer in the USA, it’s winter in Chile and Argentina, and vice versa. You can fly from Buenos Aires or New York to Port of Spain in under seven hours. And did I mention Trinidad’s carnival? It puts Rio’s to shame. Trinidad is the home of calypso and steel drum bands that play every kind of music from soca to classical.’
Carter wraps Angel in the towel and pulls her against him. The heat of her body runs through him in a nearly painful wave. ‘Didn’t you say something about a
‘I want you to come with me,’ she tells Carter. ‘When I make my move.’
‘To the Caribbean.’
‘Yes, to the Caribbean.’
‘In exactly what capacity?’
‘Pool boy, with privileges.’
Carter lifts Angel off the floor and carries her toward the bedroom. ‘I don’t think pool boy works for me, but I can promise you this. I’m more than comfortable with the privileges.’
TWENTY-THREE
Carter enters River Avenue Storage in the south Bronx, a 24/7 facility, at one o’clock on Thursday morning. He rides the elevator to the third floor and walks to a door at the end of a long deserted hallway. Dropping to one knee, he works the dials on the two combination locks securing the door, then rolls the door up, steps inside and slides the door back down before turning on the light. Carter rents the ten-by-twenty space under an assumed name, having paid with cash for the one year lease.
The room is empty except for two large trunks pushed against the back wall. Carter approaches the trunk to his left. He keys the padlock securing the lid, opens it wide and removes a flat case that resembles cases designed to carry musical instruments. But there’s no guitar inside, no keyboard. The case has been specially fabricated to hold an Israeli sniper rifle, an M89SR. It took Carter a year and several thousand dollars to secure the weapon, but the rifle has virtues he couldn’t ignore. The M89 weighs only ten pounds and is less than three feet long. It uses 7.62 NATO rounds, which are easy to acquire. Best of all, it came with a detachable silencer designed specifically for the M89. Unlike home-made silencers, this one actually works.
Rifles are much noisier than handguns – there’s no confusing the crack of a long gun with a car backfiring, or a kid setting off a string of firecrackers. That’s not a big deal in combat situations. The position of a sniper several hundred yards away simply can’t be determined on the basis of sound. The opposite principle applies to assassins operating in an urban environment where potential witnesses might be anywhere. True, gunfire is routinely ignored in some inner city neighborhoods, but Carter has no desire to bet his life on community indifference. Silence being the assassin’s best friend, he prefers to rely on a well-engineered suppressor.
As he did on the day he acquired the weapon, Carter brings the M89 to his shoulder, and as on that first day, the stock molds to his shoulder, the pistol grip to his hand, the sights to his eyes.
Smitten, he decides. That’s the word for what happened to him, with the gun and with Angel, both equally beautiful in his eyes. There’s a difference, though. While Carter doesn’t know what to do with Angel Tamanaka, he knows exactly what to do with the rifle. Or what he hopes to do.
Carter returns the M89 to its case and sets the case on the ground. He pulls an empty backpack from the trunk and half-fills it with a variety of materiel that might or might not be useful, depending on the set-up. Only a few hours before, he and Epstein accomplished a pair of ends. Without setting off the alarm, they attached a magnetized tracking unit beneath the Expedition’s right rear fender, along with a listening device that reached into the vehicle’s interior. Epstein accomplished this last trick by drilling a small hole in the underside of the SUV, then inserting the head of a bug through the hole. As the hole was drilled beneath the front seat and the bug only a quarter-inch wide, the odds against accidental discovery are great.
The operation hadn’t been without its discomforts. It had rained all day and the yard, no more than earth covered with a thin layer of gravel, was cold and muddy. Epstein had volunteered to crawl under the car and plant the devices by himself, but Carter had insisted, despite the conditions, on observing what he deemed to be a teaching moment.
