Thick as Thieves (14 page)

Bobby clears his throat and suppresses a smile. “ ’Cause I’m here with you, looking at Howie.”

Carr sighs and peels his shirt from the upholstery. “Run the AC.”

Bobby does, and the two of them sit without speaking, watching some stonemasons build a long wall. They are shaping and fitting the rocks, and their hammers sound like gunshots to Carr. The air conditioner dries the sweat on his skin but does nothing for the throbbing in his temples. Tina’s words reverberate there:
Bertolli was short almost two million euro
. Two million euro—Declan thought there’d be more.

They were in Port of Spain, in the bar at the Hyatt Regency. Wind was shaking the windows, and the city lights were lost behind low clouds. The place was empty, and they were all a little drunk. Declan was like a red-faced witch over a cauldron.

“The bastard doesn’t trust banks or bankers,” he said. “Oh, he uses them—he’s got to with the feckin’ money he makes on all that crap he smuggles in—but he likes to keep some cash on hand. Nothing big, mind you, we’re talking three to five mil in euros—he prefers them to dollars. Keeps enough around for incidentals and traveling funds, in case he has to move in a hurry, which he’s done a few times—out of São Paulo, out of Ciudad del Este, out of Argentina and back again. He’s quite the jackrabbit, Señor Bertolli is.

“I had this job lined up years ago—had it all worked out—but the fat fuck skipped on me. Hightailed it out of Argentina when a new government came in, with his wife, mistresses, and various bastards in tow. Got away about a minute before the PFA knocked down his door. Took all his cash with him too. But that party’s gone now, and so Bertolli and his money have come home.”

Carr was slow on the uptake. He’d been working on the Prager job all day—peering at floor plans and wiring diagrams. His eyes were gritty and his head full of numbers, and he didn’t get the point right away. Declan was annoyed.

“Wake up, Carr—it’s the feckin’ expenses. The up-front costs on the Prager job are running twice what we expected, and they’ll run higher still. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be paying such a big chunk of my take in finance fees to the grand Mr. Boyce. It’s usury what he’s chargin’! This deal is lovely—a quick in and out, three bucks easy, and then we don’t need his feckin’ financing.”

That was all he’d had to say to convince Mike and Bobby and Ray-Ray, who were already antsy from too much planning, and who were never happy paying anyone for anything. Some part of Carr had known right there that it was a losing battle, but still he spent the next week in increasingly heated, increasingly pointless argument with Declan. He and Valerie both—though that night, in the Hyatt bar, she’d just stared into her drink and said nothing at all.

Carr’s head drops, and he realizes he’s been dozing. Bobby is watching him. “Up late?” he asks.

Carr wipes his chin. “Anything from Bessemer?”

“His car hasn’t moved, and there’s nothing on the mic but seagulls.”

Bobby has a cooler in the back, and Carr pulls a bottle of water from it. He takes a long pull and looks at Bobby. He doesn’t want to ask about it—doesn’t have the energy today—and besides, he knows what the answer will be. But still … 
Bertolli was short almost two million euro
. He clears his throat.

“At Bertolli’s place that night,” Carr begins, and at the mention of the name Bobby’s face colors with surprise and anger.

“You’re
fucking
kidding me with this!” he says, and then the laptop pings twice, loudly.

Bobby sits up fast. “Bessemer’s moving,” he says, and he throws the car into gear and guns it through the dirt lot. There’s a curtain of dust around them; the laptop slides from the console and Carr catches it mid-flight. Bobby pushes through the side streets and they hit South Ocean Boulevard in time to see Bessemer’s convertible pull out of Stearn’s place. His top is still down and his thin hair is flying as they pass him going north.

“Fast lunch,” Bobby says, and he slides the car through an easy U-turn and into the northbound lane.

“I’m not surprised,” Carr says. “Did you see Bessemer’s face? He looked like he was about to throw up.”

Two miles up South Ocean Boulevard they watch him do just that, in a garbage can by the side of the road.

“A lot of phone time for Howie tonight,” Dennis says, “and he didn’t sound good.”

They’re at the workhouse—Carr, Bobby, Dennis, and Latin Mike—and the pent-up heat of the day is suffocating. Mike is tilted back in a kitchen chair, clean-shaven, hair slick from a shower. The half-smile on his face sets Carr’s teeth on edge.

“He called the Caymans a few times,” Dennis continues, “his pal Prager’s number, but he never got past the help. Then he called his pimp. Took him four tries to go through with it. First three times, he hung up before anyone answered.”

“Prager didn’t take his call?” Carr asks.

Dennis shrugs. “The secretary said he wasn’t in, but she had to go away and check before she said it. The second time, she told him Prager would get back to him.”

“Has he?”

“Not yet.”

Mike grins nastily. “I thought Prager was his friend,” he says. “That’s not so friendly,
jefe.
”

“And the pimp?” Carr asks. “What was going on with the three hangups?”

“He didn’t want to pull the trigger,” Bobby says.

Carr squints at him. “Pull the trigger on what?”

Dennis shakes his head. “He didn’t say on the phone.”

“Who’s the pimp?” Carr asks.

“Calls himself Lamp. Works for the Russian brothers.”

Mike dangles a cigarette from his lip, but doesn’t light it. “Howie’s gotten whores for his friends before. How come he’s nervous now?”

Bobby shakes his head. “The guy is freaked about something. The way he blew his lunch this afternoon—I thought his socks were gonna come up.”

Carr looks at Dennis. “You find out more about Bessemer’s friends?”

Dennis taps at one of his keyboards. “Plenty,” he says, “though I’m not sure it amounts to anything. Brunt and Moyer are retired money guys, like Stearn. Moyer was a bond trader; Brunt was an investment manager.”

“They all work at the same place?”

“Different companies, different places. Stearn was in London, Moyer in New York, and Brunt was in Chicago.”

“And the other two guys?”

“Tandy is also retired. He was a partner in a law firm up in New York. He got downsized a few years back—him and half the firm. As far as I can tell, Scoville has never worked. Lives in the guesthouse on his mother’s property, a few miles down the road from Stearn. Besides sailing and heroin, lying around the pool seems to be the only job he’s ever had.”

“Married?”

“Not Scoville, but the rest of them are.”

“Any of them have records?”

“Scoville took a couple of possession busts in New York, one with intent to sell. He got probation and rehab.”

“Any of them friends with Bessemer before he came down here?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“So Howie is what to them—the only guy they know who knows the rough trade?”

Mike lights his cigarette and chuckles derisively. “We trying to get inside their heads now too? Who gives a fuck?”

Carr ignores him. “And we think Howie’s doing this … why?”

Bobby sighs. “Same reason people do most things,” he says, “for the money.” He looks at Dennis.

“The guy’s chronically short,” Dennis says. “The divorce cleaned him out pretty good. His house is paid for, but his grandmother’s trust throws
off barely enough income to cover the taxes and his liquor bills, and she set it up so he can’t get at the principal.”

“My
abuela
was a bitch too,” Mike mutters.

“I thought Prager was hiding money for him,” Carr says. “What happened to that?”

Dennis shrugs. “It’s not in any of the accounts I can see, though I can’t see into Isla Privada.”

Carr shakes his head. “When’s Howie meeting the pimp?” he asks.

“Monday,” Bobby says, “outside the Brazilian place. I’ll be there.”

Carr looks at Latin Mike. “We’ll all be there.”

“Sure,
jefe
,” Mike says, smiling. “All of us.”

The night is close and the airport throws sheets of flashing light against the low clouds. The smell of the jet fuel, of the house, of Mike’s cigarettes, and of his own sweat are caught in Carr’s clothing, and he walks the long way around the block to get to his car. He’s halfway there when he hears footsteps behind him and whirls.

Latin Mike chuckles from behind the glowing end of a cigarette. “That’s slow, man. I want to hurt you, you be all the way hurt by now.”

He steps from the shadows and Carr takes a slow, deep breath to quiet his pulse. “You going out again?” Carr says.

“Just for some air. Not enough in that dump tonight. And you?”

“To bed. You want something?”

“Me? No, I got what I need—but you’re still looking for something.”

Carr sighs. “We’ve been over this. I want to know more before we go at Bessemer. I want to know why—”

A barking laugh, and Mike blows smoke into the blinking sky. “I’m not talking about Bessemer. Bobby says you’re still asking him about Mendoza. Says you did it again today.”

Carr takes another deep breath. “And?”

“And I want to know what that’s about.”

“It’s
about
what it seems to be about: I want to know what happened, what went wrong. Bobby didn’t tell you?”

“Bobby tells me everything,
jefe
. But why you keep asking him about this? You think he’s gonna tell you something new? You think he doesn’t get what you’re doing when you ask the same questions over and over? That you’re calling him a liar.”

“I didn’t know it was upsetting him so much.”

“Sure you did. So why don’t you cut it out? You still got questions about what happened down there, ask me.”

“Why, are you going to tell me something new?”

Mike barks again. “I’m gonna tell you to fuck off.”

“So nothing new.”

Another laugh. “You want new, maybe you need to get different questions.”

“Maybe I have one.”

Mike smiles and rolls out a line of smoke rings that break on Carr’s shoulder. “Give it a try,
cabrón.
”

“Okay. Did you get into that barn before Bertolli’s guys turned up?”

In the long silence that follows, a car passes, a jet passes, someone shouts from somewhere in Brazilian Portuguese. Mike flicks his cigarette into the street. He shakes his head and laughs to himself. “Deke was always so hot on you—always talked about how smart you were, how good at planning, how you saw angles other people didn’t, how you thought big. It was like you were his kid or something.

“Me, I never got it—and I told him so. More smoke than fire, I said. Too much complication. Too much bullshit. After a while, he didn’t want to hear it: told me to shut up or move on. I thought about that a long time, and decided to stay. I liked Deke; I was used to him, and I liked the paydays, so … I didn’t change my mind about you, but I kept my mouth shut. But when the old bastard bought it, I tell you I was ready to book. I would have too if this gig had been any smaller, and if Bobby and Val hadn’t asked me—shit, they
begged
me—to stick it out.”

Carr kicks at a piece of broken pavement. It skips and skids and ends up in a storm drain. He laughs softly. “I don’t hear anything new, Mike, and I don’t hear an answer to my question.”

Mike’s fists clench and his arms swell. “Here’s my answer,
pendejo
—if you’re running this thing, then
run it
, and if you’re not, then shove off. ’Cause this is the last
fucking
job I’m doing, and if it turns to shit, it’s
you
I come looking for. No one else—just you. So get your mind off Mendoza and Declan and Bertolli’s
fucking
barn,
cabrón
, and get it on Bessemer and Prager.”

Mike turns and walks back into the dark, and Carr sees his lighter flare as he fires up another smoke. “Was that a
yes
or a
no
about the barn?” Carr calls, but Mike doesn’t answer.

They lean together like schoolgirls, flushed and whispering as they stroll the pink arcades around Mizner Park. They’re not quite holding hands, but it takes a second look to be certain. Valerie—Jill—is in a summer dress: spaghetti straps and long, tanned limbs. On her day off, Amy Chun, president of the Spanish River Bank and Trust Company, wears a tan wrap skirt, a white T-shirt short enough to expose a narrow band of midsection, and low sandals. She’s in her mid-forties, slender, shorter than Jill by two inches, and more darkly tanned. Her straight black hair is done in a loose braid, and her sunglasses are sleek and smoky.

They pause at the window of a jewelry store. Jill points, Amy takes off her glasses, nods, and they both laugh. Jill walks on and Amy watches her.

Carr’s chest aches and he realizes he’s been holding his breath. He sighs and runs down the car window. A damp breeze wanders in. Not even two weeks since Jill joined Amy Chun’s yoga class, he thinks, and already she’s set the hook deep.

Valerie’s voice was tired and raspy on the phone the night before, and she was reluctant at first to talk about Chun—like a magician asked to explain her very best trick—but Carr had insisted.

“She’s better than I’d hoped,” Valerie said. “Basically, she’s got no life. She goes from work to her workout to her house, and then it’s more work, into the night.”

“No friends or family?”

“I haven’t seen any friends, and the only family she’s got are her parents, in Vancouver. No, it’s all work for Amy. But the little time she’s not grinding away, she spends online—and not just shopping, either.”

“What’s she doing—looking at pornography?”

“A little, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Amy is a stalker—a cyber-stalker, anyway. I went through the take from Dennis’s spyware—her e-mail, her browser history—and it’s plain as day. She’s keeping tabs on someone named Janice Lessig.”

“Who the hell is she?”

“She runs a little company out in the Bay Area—makes organic bread and shit like that. She lives in Berkeley, plays the cello in a couple of amateur groups, has two daughters, and a domestic partner named Elaine.”