Monkey in the Middle (10 page)

Paulie finds the Flab duct-taped to a chair in the basement. He's gagged, for good measure, and Clyde Redman's watching over him.

‘Boss?'

Paulie nods to himself at Clyde's respectful tone. This is a good kid. ‘The lock give you trouble?' he asks.

‘Piece of cake.' Clyde Redman, who grew up in the Harlem but claims Apache heritage, is a lock and safe specialist. He's mostly used on heists, but his job tonight was unlocking the Flab's back door while Paulie kept him distracted.

‘Go upstairs, tell the Owl I'll call him if I need him.'

Paulie waits until Clyde shuts the door leading into the kitchen, then explores the Flab's basement. As he goes, he snaps on a pair of latex gloves and dons a painter's mask. For once, he's not being paranoid. At a press conference just the other day, a spokeswoman for the Medical Examiner bragged that the ME's new lab can recover DNA from a fingerprint.

‘I'm tryin' to get the picture, Dave,' Paulie says. ‘Because I keep tellin' myself that I did right by you. I brought you into my thing, gave you work, treated you with respect. And what did you do by way of showin' me how grateful you were? You ratted me to the cops. Please, tell me what the fuck you were thinkin'. Did they have you in the hole? Were you facin' hard time? Or did you think you were gonna take my place? That a man like the Owl would kneel to kiss your ring?'

Paulie hefts a monkey wrench that has to be three feet long and weigh five pounds. He imagines himself crushing every bone in Flannery's body, starting with his toes. Paulie Margarine hates rats. But the wrench won't do, nor will an awl stuck in a joist or the hatchet he discovers on a workbench. No, you get blood on you, one fuckin' drop, you go away for the rest of your life.

Paulie finds what he's after on the floor next to the oil burner, a small propane torch. He twists the little wheel on the side before turning back to Flannery. The hiss of escaping gas seems to fill the room, to own the space. Paulie gives it a few seconds, then closes the valve. He turns to examine Flannery. The Flab has breasts like a woman, big hanging breasts, and the fat around his middle covers his cock and balls, a miniskirt of shapeless flesh. Paulie finds himself wondering what the whore felt when she first laid eyes on him. This was a body that couldn't be cleaned. But maybe she was used to it, maybe that was her specialty, repulsive men.

With a quick yank, Paulie rips the gag away. The Flab grimaces, but doesn't make a sound. His eyes are spitting hate.

‘I was there when Bruno got whacked, which you already know,' he says. ‘I was a witness. Swear to God, the cops wouldn't let me go until I talked to the detective. His name was Epstein, a name I'm sure you recognize.' Paulie slows down for a minute, but the Flab refuses to look at him. ‘To make a long story short, this detective, Epstein, warned me off the hit on Toufiq. Only thing, Dave, there wasn't any hit on Toufiq. I made that up because I didn't trust you.'

Flannery finally looks up at his boss. ‘You're gonna kill me.'

Though he doesn't hear a question, Paulie responds anyway. ‘Don't be so pessimistic. You help me out, maybe we could work a deal.'

‘What kind of deal?'

‘I wanna hear about the set-up first, what you give, what you get, like that. We'll take it from there.'

The Flab's eyes roll across the room, to the left and the right, his neck twisting as far as it can, given the duct tape. Paulie wonders if he's looking for a way out, some magic eject button, or maybe for his guardian angel to ride to the rescue. But no, Paulie decides, the Flab's getting ready to lie. He's pickin' his words carefully.

‘They had me for the Alterone thing,' Flannery says. ‘They had me dead. I was lookin' at twenty-five to life.'

Paulie shrugs. He doesn't know the details and he doesn't want to. Carlo Alterone was a small-time coke dealer who set up on the Flab's turf without paying the required tax on his earnings. His body was found in a dumpster on Pitkin Avenue. End of story. Or, it would be if there was a word of truth to what the Flab was saying. But Paulie's not here for a debate. The cop is the least of his worries.

‘Now tell me about Thorpe,' he says.

‘Thorpe?'

‘Yeah, tell me about Thorpe.'

‘Thorpe?'

‘Don't keep sayin' his name, Dave. You're getting' me crazy. Just tell me how you met him, how you met Thorpe. Let's start with that.'

Flannery's face tightens down when Paulie lights the propane torch. ‘Swear to God, Paulie, swear on my fuckin' mother, I don't know what you're talkin' about.'

Paulie's never heard such despair in the voice of another human being. For just a moment, he feels that despair himself. Flannery's telling the truth, which leaves Paulie Margarine with no bargaining power, no juice, no edge. Nevertheless, because he needs to be certain, Paulie sets down the torch and re-tapes the Flab's mouth.

‘I'm gonna start with your hand, Dave, your right hand. Then I'm gonna ask you again. I'm gonna ask you to tell me how you met Thorpe. And don't even think about lyin' to me, because I can keep burning a lot longer than you can keep lying. You can trust me on that.'

As Paulie approaches the Flab, he experiences a moment, a transient moment, of sympathy. Not for the Flab, or the whore upstairs, who's most likely dead already. But for Ollie Havelock, the Owl. Dave Flannery must weigh 350 pounds. Disposing of his body will be no walk in the park. If the Owl didn't cart Flannery off in pieces, he was gonna need a crane to get him out of the basement.

Fourteen

C
arter intends to make short work of Titanic Metal Fencing. A meatball, that's how he defines the task before him. To Carter's immediate superior in Afghanistan, Lieutenant Petronello, every assignment was a meatball, no matter how dangerous. But Titanic Metal Fencing really is a meatball. First thing, its yard, which takes up a short, triangular block, is marked by haphazardly arranged stacks of fencing material, from chain link to chicken wire, some reaching to a height of twenty feet. At this time of night, with the moon already down, their shadows dominate the yard. Carter's instinctively fond of shadows, and he's been trained to use them to his advantage.

But there's still the dog, some kind of terrier with filthy brown fur and a cropped tail, barking at Carter from behind a fence topped with strands of rusty barbed wire. The animal has to be neutralized, obviously, but Carter has a thing about collateral damage, a line he drew for himself years before. Men like Tony Maguire and Charles Bousejian? They'd chosen their lives freely and Carter had eliminated them without a second thought, as he'd eliminated Arab fighters in the Afghani mountains. But not the innocent, the villagers huddled in their stone huts, and not the miners in Sierra Leone, the ones who pulled diamonds from the riverbeds and went to sleep hungry at night. Not them.

Carter's love of precision contributes to his attitude. If you don't separate combatants from civilians, chaos will surely follow. Carter fears chaos. At times, especially in Africa, he stood inches from the edge of that abyss before stepping back. He didn't want the blood to own him as it owned so many of the others. Survival? Kill or be killed? That was all fine. As was looting the looters. But not anyone anywhere, just because they happened to get in the way.

The mutt has stopped barking. He's now staring at Carter with his head cocked to the right, growling low in his chest. Carter is kneeling by the fence, unmoving. He thinks the animal is wondering why this human doesn't run away, or throw a rock, or do something besides stare back. The night is very cold and the dog's wet breath seems to explode from his mouth.

Carter removes a pair of bolt cutters from his backpack and cuts a small hole in the fence. He stretches the hole with both hands, then pulls the opening toward him before thrusting his right hand into the yard beyond. This is too much for the dog, who roars once, then leaps forward, throwing caution to the wind. Carter smiles as he yanks his fingers back through the opening. As anticipated, the animal's snarling muzzle follows, then his head, then his neck. By the time Carter's hands encircle the dog's mouth, he's thoroughly helpless.

Carter tightens down hard, then harder, until the dog squeals like a hurt puppy. Though Carter's repulsed by the greasy fur and the animal's sour smell, he holds on for a moment longer, his aim to drive home an underlying basic. He's in a hurry and there won't be time for another lesson.

The dog yanks himself free of the fence, his legs skidding on the concrete, when Carter lets go of his muzzle. Then he hurtles across the yard and dives under a truck parked near the gate, still howling and without looking back.

‘Good dog,' Carter says.

Once through the fence, Carter approaches the back of a single-story building on the northwest corner of the site. The building's few windows are protected by iron bars that project far enough to cage an air conditioner. Carter uses one of these cages as a stepping stone to the flat roof, a nothing climb. Working quickly now, he cuts a hole in the roof with a hatchet, then slides down a rope to the floor twenty feet below.

The only light, from a street lamp at the end of the block, barely penetrates the filthy windows at the front of the building. It takes nearly a minute before Carter's pupils fully adjust to the darkness. Then he instinctively makes his way toward the light, coming around a stack of cast-iron bars to discover a Ford Econoline parked just behind a roll-up door. Good enough.

Carter slips off his backpack and lays it on the floor. He removes a small bar of Semtex, a detonator and a timer. Connecting them, one to the other, takes only a few seconds, setting the timer for thirty minutes only a few seconds more. Finally he attaches the bomb to the Econoline's gas tank and starts the timer.

A meatball. And he didn't have to kill the mutt, either.

Carter walks into his apartment thirty-five minutes later. He heads for the kitchen where he makes himself a sandwich, ham and Swiss on seven-grain bread. He fills a glass with milk, adding a dollop of chocolate syrup at the last minute. The curious thing about Carter is that he has no real use for the money he accumulates. He has no wish to dine in Manhattan's four-star restaurants, or to cruise the Avenues in a stretch Hummer. Carter accumulates only to accumulate. The numbers that matter are the ones on his bank statements, and it doesn't bother him at all if no one else ever sees them. Carter doesn't crave admiration, much less celebrity.

He eats standing up, chewing thoughtfully. A few ounces of Semtex aren't enough to make anyone scream terrorist and it's possible the explosive will go entirely undetected. But there was definitely enough to blow the Econoline's gas tank and start a serious fire. Maybe the fencing material, the metal, will survive. But the office, just a few yards away, is certain to be destroyed. Paulie Margarine has an interest in Empire Fencing. Hopefully, he and his legit partner are insured. That way, should the insurance company pay up, they'll have a chance to rebuild the company. Like Thorpe, Carter bears no grudge against Paulie.

Carter washes the dishes before retreating to his computer. He opens Outlook Express, then considers for a moment before typing an e-mail addressed to Thorpe. Though he's really fed up, he opts for a neutral tone.
Bravo is complete. Please forward all past due remittances
. He wants to add,
If the operation is to
proceed
. But he merely signs his name and sends it off. That done, he turns to a computer game, The Battle of Bull Run. Carter has chosen the part of the Union Army, playing against the computer. His job is to reverse history, the Union army having been soundly defeated at Bull Run. Though Carter's not usually a gambler, he's decided to risk everything on a frontal assault. He will feint to the left and right, then slam his main force into the heart of Beauregard's line. But that comes later. For now, he must decide where to deploy his troops. Though the men need rest after a two-day forced march, an attack must be launched before Confederate reinforcements arrive. Delay was McDowell's first mistake.

Carter's still at it a half-hour later when Thorpe replies to his e-mail. The message is short, but Carter reads the words several times. He wants to make sure he gets the facts right. Thorpe is claiming that their ‘partnership' will soon ‘bear fruit', that Paulie Margarine's resistance ‘crumbles as we speak'. This is a sop to blunt the bad news.
Problems with cash flow, as discussed in the past, preclude immediate payment. Sorry, old boy. Keep the faith
.

Old boy? Faith? Carter has to wonder if Thorpe means to piss him off. He has to wonder, too, about the magic number. That's the number beyond which the benefits of not paying Carter exceed the risks. Thorpe owes him twenty for Maguire, twenty for Brunale, and eight for the arson. $48,000? The brutal fact is that Carter's replaceable. There are thousands more out there like him, maybe tens of thousands, from Rumania and Hungary and Russia, Cold War veterans with hearts of stone, and from the crucible of western Africa and the paramilitary armies of Columbia and Peru. Not all are as skilled as Carter, and not all share his self-control, much less his ability to blend in. But Thorpe's tapped into a network that includes hundreds of mercenaries. If he decides to make a switch, personnel will be the least of his problems.

Carter shuts down the computer and prepares for bed. He's brushing his teeth, staring into the mirror at his foaming mouth, when he makes a pair of admissions. First, Thorpe isn't lying; they did talk about future cash-flow problems before they shook hands in Dar es Salaam. Thorpe had been straightforward. His funds were limited and there might come a time, especially in the course of this first operation, when Carter would have to wait for his money.

All very nice, every track covered. But Thorpe has a gift for intrigue that Carter will never match. Carter knows this, as he knows it's entirely possible, perhaps likely, that Thorpe anticipated this moment. That he foresaw a scenario in which the mark was about to make good, while Carter was still owed a ton of money. Maybe dumping Carter was always a part of Thorpe's business plan.