There was a forward pitch, a sickening drop, scrabbling fingers, rushing, flooding cold, and a blow to the head that ran through Carr’s whole body. There was bubbling and roaring, and no time to call out, and no breath to call with. The shadow of the boat rose above him and began to fall again, and then Arthur Carr had a fist through the front of his life vest—was dragging him up through the brown water, up into the air, and dropping him on the cockpit bench.
Carr coughed and sputtered, and his father wrapped a blanket around him and studied his face. He peered into one eye and then the other, and put alcohol and a bandage over the gash on his cheek, where he’d slammed into the hull. Then he took the tiller, turned the boat back toward the marina, and shook his head in disgust.
“Now you’re both dead,” his father said flatly, “you and your nonexistent friend.”
That’s the best he can do: an afternoon more than two decades back when his father hadn’t actually flown into a rage, had instead been only casually cruel, but had cared enough to pluck him from the river. Though he wasn’t sure about the caring part—saving him might simply have been easier than explaining his absence to Carr’s mother.
Carr takes another pull on his beer and empties the bottle—his third somehow. Blue light is rippling through the sky, and a red light is blinking on his phone in the corner of his sofa. Mrs. Calvin has left another message. He opens a fourth beer, takes a long swallow, and hears his father’s voice again: You can’t just sit there and watch.
But watching is what he’s best at—what he’s always been best at, from when he was very small: the comings and goings of neighbors; the shopkeepers in their storefronts, sweeping, chatting with customers, hectoring clerks; the deliverymen; the embassy drivers; the maids and cooks and gardeners; and his parents most closely of all. His father didn’t like it—it made him edgy, he said—but his mother didn’t mind. In fact, she encouraged it, nurtured it, made a virtue of it, and a game.
He remembers sitting on her lap, in the tall windows of one of their houses, looking out on a tree-lined avenue. Was he even five years old? She would place a pale finger on the glass and point, and he would follow her gaze. Then she would put her hand over his eyes. ¿Qué ves, mijo? What do you see?
And he would tell her. A man with a dog. A lady in a hat. A blue truck. A green taxi. A grandpa at a café table. He remembers the softness of her palm across his brow, the smell of her hand—gardenias and tobacco. And what is the old man doing? Reading a newspaper. Smoking. Drinking from a cup. What kind of cup? What color hat? How large a dog? They would go on and on, in English, in Spanish, as afternoon went down to dusk. He would lean against her, sleepy, her voice warm and husky in his ear. ¿Qué color es el coche, mijo? And how many men are in it?
When his father returned from work—always furrowed and simmering, his tie askew—the game would stop, and it was as if his mother had left the room. As if she’d left the house altogether. She took him from her lap, and her arms were stiff and cool. Her hazel eyes were narrow. She spoke quietly, and only in English, and she said very little. Mostly she listened to Arthur Carr’s litany of irritations and slights, nodding without ever conveying agreement.
Carr remembers his father’s voice—droning at first, and growing louder as the cocktails took hold. He remembers his father’s rumpled shirts, damp spots under the arms, and his father’s broad, sloppy gestures. He remembers his mother’s rigid shoulders, a vein thrumming in her neck, her stillness otherwise. He would try to catch her eye sometimes—offer up a grimace or a conspiratorial smirk—but it was as if he wasn’t there. Or she wasn’t. Other times, he would perch in the window and continue their game on his own, but inevitably his father grew irritated.
“It’s like living with a goddamn cat,” Arthur Carr would mutter, pulling him from the sill. “Nobody likes a cat.”
More lightning, another beer, and Carr thinks about his father’s anger and his mother’s distance, and he remembers the maps.
His mother was a great one for them. Maps and guidebooks and histories and almanacs—but especially maps. When word of a new posting would come, despite Arthur Carr’s grumblings—or perhaps because of them—she would smile, haul out the maps, and study them.
“Should we just stumble around like tourists?” she would say to Carr. “Get lost on our way to buy ice cream? No—we must know something about this place. We can’t have people think you are un hombre inculto.”
Carr remembers her at the dining table, half-glasses balanced on her nose, a cigarette burning in an ashtray, a cord of smoke twisting to the ceiling. The books were open in an arc in front of her, and the maps were unfurled. Her hair was pulled back and tied with a black ribbon.
“Here’s where we will live, mijo,” she said, pointing with a sharp red pencil. “And here is Daddy’s office, and the new school.” She made neat red check marks as she spoke. “Here is the museum, and the fútbol stadium, and the port, right here, and three train stations, and the main post office. Here is the airport, and the television studio, and the radio station, and the power plant. And see—here is the park, mijo, and the carousel.”
And he remembers wandering the cities with her, remembers the narrow streets and the squares—cobbled, noisy, sometimes with a fountain, a dark arcade, or a looming church. His mother would hold his hand through the crowds, and buy him a lemon ice, a slice of melon, or a skewer off the grill. Then she would find a bench or little table and smoke and watch the people while Carr ate. They would sit for what seemed like hours to Carr, but he didn’t mind. She would run her fingers through his hair, and sometimes, after he’d eaten, he would lean against her and doze.
Often, he recalls, she would meet someone she knew. Or they would meet her. And why not: the whole world seemed to stroll through those squares. Carr recognized some of the men and women, from embassy parties he thought, but most of them were strangers to him. They spoke mainly in Spanish to his mother, though some spoke in English and some in Portuguese. They would stop long enough to say hello, to talk about the weather, to shake hands and offer a cigarette or a book of matches. They all stared at him.
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.”
12
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. “Do
es 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.”
13
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?”
Thick as Thieves Page 10
