Angel Face by Stephen Solomita Page B

feeling pretty good about the surveillance he and Angel conduct. The rain-speckled windshield conceals their presence in the back seat of the van, while the spatter of rain on the van’s roof provides enough white noise to cover their conversation. They could stay here all day without being noticed. Around and behind them, the block is entirely residential, the foot traffic light. Before them, on the far side of the street, a six-story apartment building squats on a corner lot, its double-glass lobby doors in full view. The building is just ornate enough, with its scroll-and-bracket lintels, to have a name – Wilson Arms – set in stone above the doors. According to Angel Tamanaka, there’s a buried treasure somewhere inside.
    Carter’s not entirely convinced. They’d wandered through the neighborhood for twenty minutes before they came upon the building, passing a dozen similar apartment houses, though none situated on a corner. The hill, on the other hand, the one Angel first mentioned, is where it should be, just two blocks away. Covered with trees and brush, and at least a hundred feet high, it’s steep enough to pass for a cliff.
    The hill is only a small piece of the bedrock that first emerges, like the spine of a half-buried fossil, at 72nd Street on the West Side of Manhattan. This far north, it separates the Latino-dominated neighborhood they’re in, Kingsbridge, from the more affluent neighborhood of Scarsdale, site of Ricky Ditto’s home. Angel and Ricky might easily have passed this corner on the way to his assassination.
    â€˜Do you have a goal?’ Angel asks without warning. ‘I mean, like a life plan?’
    Carter doesn’t reply immediately. The question feels like an ambush and he can’t remember the last time he spoke about his personal life. Carter’s the man nobody knows, the invisible man, a shadow in a city of shadows. Still, it’s already a time of firsts because now there’s someone on the planet, besides Paulie Margarine, who knows what he does for a living. Or used to do.
    â€˜I have a today plan,’ he finally says, ‘and a tomorrow plan.’
    â€˜And that’s it?’
    â€˜Pretty much.’
    â€˜Not me. And this could be the end of part one.’
    â€˜Which is?’
    â€˜Capital accumulation. Remember, unless you have some kind of special talent, which I don’t, it takes money to make money.’
    â€˜What about your looks?’
    â€˜OK, then my appearance is my only gift and I intend to make the best of it. You play the hand you’re dealt, right? If you’re smart?’
    Carter lays his hands on the seat-back in front of him. It’s all he can do to keep them off Angel’s legs. He’s convinced her to forego make-up and dress down, but even in a shapeless K-Mart skirt and blouse, she’s still conspicuous.
    â€˜What about part two? What are you going to do with all that capital?’
    â€˜It’s a long story, but if you want to hear it . . .’
    â€˜We have plenty of time.’
    Carter settles back, remembering night watches in the Afghan deserts and Congo rain forests, nights when his fellow soldiers whispered their tales into the darkness. Over time, he’d come to relish the stories and the intimate setting, nobody going anywhere soon. On moonless nights in Afghanistan, the stars seemed inches above his head. In Africa, the dark was filled with the furtive sounds of nocturnal animals that scurried through the trees or prowled the jungle floor. Did the snapping of a twig signal the passing of a leopard? Or the approach of an enemy?
    â€˜How long do you plan to be here?’ Angel asks.
    â€˜A couple of hours, maybe more.’ He smiles when Angel lays her hand on his shoulder, the gesture as casual as it is calculating. ‘Unless you think we should go knocking on doors. “Excuse me, but do you happen to have hundreds of thousands of