Monkey in the Middle (19 page)

There are other possibilities as well, from the yards of the one- and two-family homes across the street. Or there might be someone inside Janie's apartment, already waiting. But even so, the warehouse, furthest away, is the obvious place to start. On Christmas Eve it will be entirely deserted.

Five minutes later, Carter parks the van behind the warehouse and a block down the street. The warehouse is now between him and Janie's apartment, where any shooter's attention is sure to be focused. Still, Carter moves quickly, remaining close to the building's façade, until he comes even with a dumpster parked behind a chain link fence. The fence seals off a small parking area just beyond a pair of shuttered loading bays.

Though topped with barbed wire, the fence is no real obstacle to Carter. He's more concerned with attracting the attention of the homeowners across the street if he decides to climb it. But he's not exactly inconspicuous where he is. Restless, he subjects the warehouse roof, the edge closest to him, to an infrared inspection, but finds nothing. Nor, when he takes a closer look, is there any entrance to the building except through the loading bays.

On the move again, Carter hugs the building as he travels three-quarters of the way around, past the main entrance in front, to a side door. He feels a brief exultation when he tries the knob of this door and it turns freely. Carter's thinking he could move the van on to the block and wait for somebody to come out. He's thinking that would be the safest approach. But Carter's had enough waiting. Plus, he wants time alone with the shooter. There's a message to be sent, after all. He pushes the door open, glimpses a stairway only a few feet beyond, then steps inside. When he closes the door behind him, he becomes functionally blind. There are no windows. He might as well be inside a cave.

Carter places the infrared unit to his eye and scans the stairway, detecting a trail so faint it might be no more than wishful thinking. But he is certain of one thing: no threat awaits him at the top. Carter lays a finger against the wall to his left, then takes a step. The riser is concrete. It neither creaks nor groans beneath his weight.

Reassured, he climbs to a small landing on the second floor and searches it with his hands, very gently, his touch light enough to be the touch of a lover. He discovers a pair of doors and a second flight of stairs. Again, he scans the entire space, including the steps, and again detects no sign of an enemy.

Carter takes a step, then another, then pauses to scan ahead. He can see a faint light at the top of the stairs, but no heat signature. Slowly, he advances, doing that rabbit in the meadow bit – climb, stop, check, climb – until his head rises above the top step and he discovers the source of the light. Carter is staring into a loft that covers the entire floor. Broken by two rows of pillars, the loft is packed with bedroom furniture arranged to create little rooms. Bed, nightstand, dresser, armoire, sometimes an ottoman or a chair. The light bleeds in through six tall windows that face the streetlamps on Myrtle Avenue, so dim it barely kisses the furniture. But Carter's pupils are fully dilated and he discovers the anomalies within seconds: a tall armoire pulled into an aisle, a damaged skylight directly above, broken glass on the floor.

His path decided in an instant, Carter moves into gear. He climbs the last few stairs, slips across the room to the front wall and positions himself behind a second armoire. He slides the Glock into a pocket, then withdraws the combat knife from its sheath. His strategy is based on an old saw: what goes up must come down. And the only way down for anyone on that roof is through that skylight.

So, Carter waits, as he's waited so often in the past, but this time, knowing his enemy's position, he indulges himself. He allows his thoughts to drift back to an operation conducted in Liberia, an ambush that broke the back of a warlord named Tamba Youboty, while incidentally liberating the hoard of diamonds Tamba was transporting to the Congo.

Along with two other men, Jerzy Golabek and Paul Ryan, Carter was stationed on a rock-strewn hillside overlooking a tiny village in the Nimba Mountains. Another eight men were concealed on the far side of the village, in a bend of the only road. The village itself had been abandoned long before, another victim of Liberia's endless civil war. The roofs of the few substantial mud-brick buildings lining the road had collapsed and there were gaping holes in the outer walls.

Positioned in deep shadow, Carter and his companions went unnoticed when Youboty led his boy soldiers, perhaps thirty strong, into the village. Youboty wore a soiled khaki uniform with gold epaulets and a sweat-soaked officer's cap. Jammed into a little parade of technicals, his soldiers wore ragged t-shits and shorts. A few were obviously wounded and many went barefoot. They'd been running for the better part of two days, running from Togaba Kpangbah, the warlord they stole the diamonds from, and they were clearly exhausted. Perhaps that's why they initially failed to react when the first mortar exploded in the center of the convoy.

Going in, the hope was that Youboty would gather his soldiers and retreat along the only road, that he'd run headlong into the larger, more heavily armed force on the other side of the village. Instead, Youboty was killed by the initial mortar round – a matter of pure luck, and not good luck at that. Leaderless, the boy soldiers finally scrambled behind the walls of the little houses when Carter and Ryan open up with their M16s. The engagement would be protracted.

To Carter's right, Jerzy Golabek, formerly of the Stasi the East German Secret Police, fired off one mortar round after another. The result was predictably devastating, since the buildings that shielded the boy soldiers lacked roofs. At that point, as any trained soldier would know, the boys had two reasonable choices. They could assault Carter's position or they could get their asses in the wind.

But the boy soldiers hadn't been trained to do anything but kill. They chose a third course, one that bordered on collective suicide. Two or three at a time, they dashed into the open, firing RPGs on trajectories more likely to bring down an orbiting satellite than to impact Carter's position.

Carter was too busy killing these children to wonder about their behavior. He was firing off three-round bursts, taking the boys out almost as soon as they appeared. But later on, as he walked among the dead, he tried to imagine what they were thinking when they exposed themselves. Were they merely displaying courage, a kind of ultimate macho? Or did they believe they were protected? Each and every boy had a pouch hanging from a thong around his neck. The pouches contained some sort of vegetable matter glued together with dried blood. Carter knew the boy soldiers were told that these pouches would protect them. But had they really believed it? Had they run into the road thinking themselves invulnerable? Didn't they know their spirit-gods had already been defeated by the bombs and the bullets of men who believed only in the god of money?

Carter is still pondering these questions when a leg drops down through the skylight. In an instant, the past slips from his mind, the shooting, the bodies, the reek of blood and offal. Carter has no room for killings past. The questions he'd asked himself were stupid anyway. War on the ground is kill or be killed. Everybody knows that. Except for boy soldiers.

Twenty-Four

P
aulie Margarine is in his hot-tub when his doorbell rings at eight o'clock on Christmas morning. Paulie's got one of the hot-tub's jets aimed at each of his bad knees, which have been aching all night. Lee Pho sits behind him, massaging oil into his back. There's bath oil in the water, too, jasmine scented. Dry skin is another of Paulie's age-related problems.

‘Who the fuck is that?' Paulie asks.

Lee Pho doesn't answer. No surprise, as she speaks only a few words of English. The doorbell sounds again, four notes,
ding-Dong-ding-Ding
.

‘Jesus Christ,' Paulie mutters.

‘Burrday.'

‘What?'

‘Jee-cry burrday.'

‘Yeah, Jesus Christ's birthday.' Paulie stands up, the process divided into segments, neck, shoulders, back, ass, legs. When he finally steps out of the tub, Lee Pho is waiting, towel in hand. He shakes her off and the bell rings again. Faintly, he hears somebody shout, ‘Police, open the door.'

On Christmas Day? Paulie thinks. They come for me on Christmas Day?

Paulie shrugs into a terrycloth robe and ties it across his body. Not that he's shy. In fact, there's nothing he'd like more than to wave his dick in a cop's face. Or he would if he was twenty years younger. Now he's embarrassed by the flab around his waist and the loose skin beneath his triceps. Not to mention that his balls hang halfway to his knees.

Paulie reaches the door before the bell sounds again. He peers through the little window to discover a pair of cops on his doorstep, the one from Bruno Brunale, Lieutenant Epstein, and a younger, lumpy-faced cop wearing an expensive coat. To Paulie, this is good news. If they intended to arrest him, they would've brought enough manpower to patrol the southern border. Not to mention a hundred reporters.

‘What do you want?' Paulie shouts through the glass.

‘Open the door,' Epstein says.

‘I'm gonna call my lawyer.'

‘Don't do that.'

‘Why, you got a warrant?'

The younger cop finally gets in on the act. He draws his weapon and aims it through the window at Paulie's face. ‘Open the fuckin' door,' he says.

Paulie obeys without hesitation and the cops walk in just as Lee Pho, fully dressed, makes an appearance. Fortunately, the lumpy-faced cop has stashed his gun. The neighborhood is strictly middle-class and Paulie doesn't need some Korean whore screaming her head off as she runs down the street. He fetches Lee Pho's coat and ushers her out.

‘OK,' he tells the cops, ‘you muscled your way into my house on Christmas Day. So, whatta ya want?'

They're clustered, the three of them, in a small foyer. Paulie's blocking the way and he's already decided that he's not going to move. Whatever the cops intend to do to him, they'll have to do it here.

‘Relax,' Epstein says. ‘We're the wise men from the East. We bear gifts.'

Paulie looks from one cop to the other. He's thinking that these are the cocksuckers who fed information to that crazy bastard. The one who jumped him outside the Copperwood Diner. He's thinking that maybe, down the line when they've forgotten all about him . . .

‘Last time I looked in the bible,' he says, ‘the wise men didn't threaten to blow Jesus's head off.'

‘What could I say? It's an updated version. We're makin' allowances for the culture.' Epstein shoves his hands into his pockets. ‘All right, no more bullshit. I wanna get back home. I got a pregnant wife. The name of the man who killed Brunale and the rest of them is Leonard Carter. I have his address, too.'

Paulie memorizes the address as Epstein reels it off. ‘Why are you tellin' me this?' he asks. ‘What's your stake here?'

But the questions answer themselves. He's talking to a pair of bent cops and Carter knows enough to put them away. Carter's a problem and Paulie Marginella's the solution.

‘The man's a cold-blooded murderer,' Epstein explains. ‘Murder is what he does. It's all he's ever done. If we had enough on him to make an arrest, he'd already be in custody. But we don't, so we're giving you a heads-up. What we figure, even a mutt like Paulie Margarine has a right to defend himself.'

Paulie manages not to laugh in the cop's face. He even conjures a smile as he opens the door. ‘OK, you made your point. If there's nothing else, Merry Christmas to you and your pregnant wife.'

An hour later, Paulie enters the Church of the Immaculate Conception where he attends mass almost every Sunday. A number of the Catholics in his crew occasionally show up at Immaculate Conception. Bruno Brunale was a regular, along with his wife, Jennifer, and their two children.

As planned, Paulie seeks out Jennifer Brunale and the kids before taking his customary seat at the back of the church. This is the first opportunity he's had to offer his condolences and he goes on for some time, praising his associate's many virtues.

‘Any news from the city?' he finally asks. ‘About when they'll release the body?'

Jennifer Brunale is fifteen years younger than her dead husband, in her early thirties and drop-dead gorgeous. Paulie looks into her blue eyes and discovers . . . encouragement, at the very least. Jennifer Brunale's never worked a day in her life. No reason to start now.

‘One minute they tell me a week, the next they tell me two weeks.' Jennifer shrugs her well-toned shoulders. ‘My lawyer says there's nothing we can do.'

Paulie responds with his wisest, fatherly-don smile. ‘I want you to send Bruno to Calabrasso's Funeral Home on Ditmars Boulevard. Make whatever arrangements you want and tell the old man that I'm good for the tab.'

Jennifer cups Paulie's hand between her gloved palms. Her fingers curl around his. ‘Thank you, Paulie, thank you,' she says.

‘Hey, Bruno was a good man. I want to lay him out right.'

And bury the jerk is all Paulie wants to do. There's an official version of the attack on Paulie's crew making the rounds: the Flab was responsible, he paid the price in spades, now it's back to business. Needless to say, there's no role for Leonard Carter in this bit of fiction. Better his name should never be mentioned.

Paulie takes his seat just as Father Zambinne approaches an altar virtually buried in flowers. ‘The Lord be with you,' he tells his congregation.

‘And also with you,' the congregation, including Paulie Margarine, responds.

After mass, on his way upstate to visit his son, Paulie begins to relax. He no longer has to watch his back and he's more relieved than he'd care to admit. The business with Bruno Brunale? Paulie was only inches away when Brunale took a bullet to the head. The shock of it, coming out of nowhere, not to mention the threat to his livelihood, not to mention the cocksucker getting away clean . . .