Thick as Thieves (13 page)

He remembers the heat of the stones, the smells of rotting fruit and grilling meat, the cool damp of the arcades, the drone of many footsteps on the cobbles, the feel of her dress as he leaned against her. Gardenias and tobacco.

And then there is a voice behind him, and a cool hand on the back of his neck.

“I thought you’d know better than to sit with your back to the door.”

He jumps, and his beer goes flying, and Tina smiles.

“At ease, soldier,” she says.

It’s the first time he’s seen her away from a golf course, the first time he’s seen her without Mr. Boyce, and the change in context is disorienting. For an instant Carr wonders if she’s come to kill him, but decides probably not. If she had, he would probably be dead by now. Probably, too, she would’ve worn something else.

She’s dressed in black shorts—very short—a black tank top, and black flip-flops. Her black sunglasses are pushed into her white-blond hair. Her arms and legs are ghostly, and her hands, long-fingered and elegant, are raised. Her gray eyes are steady.

“The door was locked,” Carr says.

“Guy like you should get better locks,” Tina says, lowering her hands. “Sorry for the surprise.”

“You could’ve called first.”

“Don’t like phones,” she says. “Besides, I like to keep in practice.”

Carr wipes his hands on his pants. “It doesn’t seem like you need much. And somehow I don’t think that’s the only reason you’re here.”

She smiles thinly. “Mr. Boyce didn’t want to pull you away, but he does want to know how things are going.”

“And he doesn’t like the phone either?” Tina nods. “So you’re here to check up?”

“More like checking in.”

“I don’t remember a lot of checking in with Declan.”

She shrugs. “Does it need explaining?”

“I’m not Declan—I get it.”

Tina sits on the sofa, slips off her shoes, and folds her legs beneath her. “No need to pout,” she says. “So how about we open a couple more beers, and you tell me what’s what, and I do the same?”

Carr looks at her more closely, and his disorientation becomes bewilderment. Tina out of school is less guarded—relaxed, almost funny. Her voice is soft and liquid—intimate in the confines of a room. And her pale, oval face, always smooth and empty at those golf course meetings, has an appealing touch of irony at the corners of her eyes and mouth.

“You want yours in a glass?” he asks. Tina shakes her head.

Tina’s had three bottles by the time Carr’s made his report, and Carr has had two more. His head is cottony, and Bessemer’s work as a procurer, though no less mystifying to him, is more amusing as he tells it to Tina.

“Maybe it’s not all that different from private banking,” Carr says, smiling. “It’s all about keeping the clients happy.”

Tina shakes her head. “Guy’s a few cards short of a deck, for sure. It’s a big gamble just to pick up some extra income. Can’t blame you for wanting to find out why.”

Carr shrugs. “And what about you? Anything new with our pal Prager?”

“Not much. His security guy, Silva, has fallen off the wagon again.”

“Christ,” Carr says, drinking the last of his beer. “It’s a wonder he has a liver left.”

“I’m not sure he does. And this time he’s fallen off the radar too. He was on a tear in Homestead last week and we lost him.”

“Probably staggered into the Everglades.”

“We’ll let you know if he staggers out again,” Tina says. “You need any help with Bessemer, or maybe with his Russian friends?”

“If I do, what’s it going to cost me?”

Her smile is chilly. “The deal doesn’t change: we front your expense money, and we get paid back—plus finance charges—off the top. Services rendered are at cost plus.”

Carr counts off on his fingers. “Expenses, finance charges, cost plus, finder’s fee, management fee. You guys are fucking crooks.”

Tina laughs, and it’s surprisingly girlish. “We don’t do pro bono.” She drains her beer bottle and thrusts the empty at Carr. “But you want to do for yourself, fund your own expenses, save a little money, it’s okay with us.”

A frown darkens Carr’s face. “That didn’t work out so well for Declan.” He takes Tina’s empties and his own to the kitchen, and returns with two fresh beers. Tina is standing at the window, watching the distant storm.

“Speaking of which,” she says. Carr takes a deep breath, trying to chase the wool from his head. He stands next to Tina. Their reflections are like ghosts in the glass. “We had a talk with somebody down there,” she continues. “Somebody who used to work for Bertolli.”

“
Somebody
who?”

Tina shakes her head. “Somebody who worked security for him, up until a few months ago—security in Mendoza.”

Carr leans forward. “Did he say anything about how they knew Deke was coming? Who they got the word from?”

“He didn’t know anything about that. He was strictly an order taker; he didn’t ask questions, didn’t even think about having questions.”

“So what use is he?”

“Everything we heard about that night—everything we heard from you—says that your guys got tagged almost as soon as they pulled up to that little airstrip.”

“That’s the way it was told to me, every time—that they’d barely gotten out of the vans.”

“And they never got inside the barn? Never laid eyes on the cash?”

“That’s the way I heard it. I assume that you’ve heard something different.”

She nods again. “This guy says that your people didn’t get hit coming out of the vans; they got hit coming out of the
barn
. He says when it was all over that night, Bertolli was short almost two million euro.”

In the glass, Carr sees Tina watching him. “And this guy is who?”

“I told you, he worked security for Bertolli.”

“So he’s what—some brain-dead kid with a gun? And your friends down there just tripped over him? Or did he volunteer his services?”

“He’s no genius, but he’s no walk-in either. Our friends worked hard
to turn him up, and they spent some money too. He was hiding out in B.A. Seems he’d had a falling-out with his crew chief up in Mendoza. Something about the chief’s sister.”

“And your friends believed him?”

“I did too.”

“You spoke to him?”

Tina nods. “Went down there last week.”

A jagged white line lights the horizon, and the afterimage flares behind Carr’s eyes. He takes a long pull on his beer. “Two million euro,” he says. “Maybe it burned with Declan’s van.”

“I asked about that. This guy said Bertolli had them sifting through the wreckage, looking for some trace. They didn’t find one.”

“There wasn’t much left of that van,” Carr says.

“If you say so.”

Carr turns to look at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Tina keeps her gaze on the horizon. “You’re the one had eyes-on. You were at the salvage yard; you were at the morgue. I wasn’t.”

“Eyes-on,” he mutters, and the traces of lightning vanish from beneath his lids, replaced by twisted metal, blistered paint, melted upholstery, charred, fire-stiffened limbs, blackened flesh, and naked, shattered bone. And the smell, even days after, even in the air-conditioned bays of the city morgue … It comes over him in a wave, and the beer in his gut threatens to erupt.

“You okay?” Tina asks.

“That van was like a fucking shell crater. I’m not surprised they didn’t find anything. They blew the hell—”

“Yeah, that’s another thing,” Tina says, cutting him off. “According to this guy they didn’t run Declan off the road. According to him, they were hauling ass on Highway Seven, but Declan got way out in front. They lost sight of his van for like twenty minutes. They were thinking about turning around when they saw a flash up ahead of them, and a column of smoke. The van was wrecked and burning on the roadside when they got there, but they didn’t see it happen.”

“I saw the bullet holes—in the rear bumper, in the side panels. As twisted up and black as everything was, you could still see those.”

“He didn’t say they weren’t firing at it—in fact, he said they chewed its tail up pretty good—he just said they didn’t force it off the road.”

Carr shakes his head, steps away from the window. “Am I supposed to make something of that? He said they shot up the van. Maybe it blew a tire. Maybe the gas tank was leaking and there was a spark. So Bertolli’s men weren’t around to see it go up—so what?”

Tina perches on an arm of the sofa and draws a knee up under her chin. She examines her toenails, which are perfectly manicured and glazed white. When she looks back at Carr, her gray eyes are as steady as ever. Her voice is vaguely amused. “A girl can’t win with you. You bitch when we don’t turn up anything, and you bitch when we do. You make what you want out of it, I’m just telling you what I’ve found.

“We’re looking at this only because you said you wouldn’t go on with the Prager gig otherwise—and it’s the only reason Boyce agreed to split the costs with you. You don’t like how we’re going about things, you don’t want to hear what we learn—that’s cool. He’s got other ways to spend his money, and I’ve got other ways to spend my time.”

Carr looks at her for a long minute, and then smiles. “And here we were getting along so well.”

She shrugs. “Honeymoons never last.”

Carr sits at the other end of the sofa and puts his beer on the floor. “Two million euro. If it didn’t burn in the van, and Bertolli’s boys didn’t pocket it themselves—”

“I seriously doubt that. Bertolli’s got them terrified.”

“Then where did it go?”

“I figured you’d have a theory.”

“Your guy didn’t see anyone else out there? No cars, no trucks?”

“I asked a few different ways; he said no. But it’s remote as hell up there, with lots of twists and turns, and fucking dark. Somebody running without lights … who knows?”

Carr reaches for his beer, and looks through the brown glass at the dregs that remain. “Two million euro—it’s not pocket change.”

“Nope,” Tina says. “Maybe you want to ask your boys if they’ve seen it lying around.”

Carr drains the bottle. The beer is warm and mostly froth, and he nearly gags getting it down. He shakes his head at Tina. “I don’t want to,” Carr says, “but I will.”

Bobby calls in the morning, to say that Bessemer has broken his routine.

“He’s playing tennis with Stearn today—just the two of them, no Brunt. And they’re having lunch afterward. That’s new and different for a Thursday.”

Carr’s head is like bad fruit, but he drags himself to a sitting position and tells Bobby he’ll meet him in an hour. He raises the shades and squints into the milky sky. Then he stumbles to the shower, where the blast of water hurts, and then helps.

Carr finds street parking and meets Bobby in the alley behind the Barton Golf and Racquet Club. Bobby has traded the painter’s van for a gray sedan. He has the AC on and the cold air is like a second shower. Bobby is drinking a blue slushie from a plastic cup the size of a sap bucket.

“Howie’s jumpy today. He got that way when Brunt called, and told him it was just going to be Howie and Stearn on the tennis court. Got more that way when Stearn called to invite him for lunch after.”

“Stearn makes him nervous?”

“Haven’t seen them alone together much, but I think so. He lets him win at tennis. Double-faults if he’s about to beat the guy.”

“He does the same with Brunt, and he lets those other guys beat him at golf. That’s Howie’s thing. We know what Stearn does for a living?”

“Rich and retired, like most of Howie’s friends. Denny tells me he was
over in London for twenty-plus years, with an American bank—a portfolio manager or something. Got fired in a merger, and came here after that. On a couple of boards around town—the hospital, the art museum. On the board of a prep school, up north.”

“He married?”

“Wife spends the summer in Maine. Kids are grown.”

“Nothing obvious that would make Howie nervous.”

“Come on, the guy looks like some kind of zombie scarecrow. He makes me a little tense.”

Stearn wins the second set when Bessemer double-faults, and the men sling their racquet bags and walk to the clubhouse. Bobby pulls the car around and they follow Bessemer’s BMW as it follows Stearn’s Mercedes from the Barton.

Lunch isn’t far. They travel south from the Barton, then east, then south again, on South Ocean Boulevard. Carr and Bobby are a hundred yards back when the Mercedes and then the BMW pull through the black iron gates of Willis Stearn’s estate. Driving past the entrance, Carr catches a glimpse of lawns like carpet and, in the distance, a mustard-colored villa. He swears softly.

“We’ve got a mic in Howie’s racquet bag,” Bobby says, as they round the corner, “but I’m betting he leaves it in the car.”

“Which means we’re deaf and blind.”

The properties here are large, and private, and the security patrols are not lazy. The closest parking spot Bobby finds is nearly half a mile away, a dirt patch at a construction site. It’s beyond the range of the mic in Bessemer’s bag, and just at the limit of the one in his car, but in any event there’s nothing to hear besides distant traffic and the occasional growl of thunder. Bobby switches off the engine.

“The GPS will tell us when he moves,” Bobby says. He reaches for a laptop on the backseat and balances it on the console between them. Then he settles himself lower behind the wheel and runs his straw around the bottom of his empty cup.

Carr takes a deep breath. “Dennis come up with anything else on Bessemer’s friends?”

“He’s looking. Mike’s on it too, or will be when he gets back from Boca.”

Carr turns in his seat. “What the hell’s he doing down there?”

“Val needed a replacement for one of the cameras she’s gonna use in Chun’s house. Mike brought it down.”

“Why the hell didn’t she call me?”

Bobby puts up a hand and arranges his meaty face into as close as it comes to a conciliatory look. “She calls me direct sometimes. She’s done it before. It’s not a problem.”

“It’s a problem for me, Bobby. I want to know who’s doing what, and where. And if she called you, how come you didn’t go down there?”