Thick as Thieves

by Peter Spiegelman

  Prager chuckles patronizingly. “I heard you the first time. We’ve talked about this before, Bess. Often. You know it’s not a simple matter.”

  Bessemer’s voice is nervous but determined. “I know you always make it sound complicated, but I’m still not clear why that should be.”

  Again, the chuckle. “We’ve been over it again and again.”

  “A simple wire transfer—I’m not sure why it’s more involved than that.”

  Another sigh, longer, more impatient. “How many ways can I say it?” Prager asks. “Transferring the money is the easy part. Provenance is the problem.”

  “But that’s … isn’t that my problem?”

  “The hell it is,” Prager says brusquely. “Who do you think will be the second person the feds want to talk to, as soon as they’ve eaten you for lunch?”

  “We could break it into several transfers, in smaller amounts. I know you know how to—”

  Prager’s voice turns colder. “That’s called structuring, Bess, or maybe you’ve forgotten. And the feds are always thrilled to find it. It tells them they’re on the right track. I know they’d especially love to see it in your bank account.”

  “They’re not still watching me,” Bessemer says, with more hope than conviction.

  “Really? Is that what all your security people tell you? Because my security people tell me something different. They say that the feds are still fascinated by what flows through your accounts, and that Tracy and her fucking lawyers do their best to keep them interested.”

  Dennis looks at Carr, puzzled. Carr shakes his head. When Bessemer speaks again, his voice is a white flag. “I need money, Curt,” he says softly.

  “I know,” Prager says. “And believe me, I’m working on getting it to you. In the meantime, if you need something to tide you over, I’m sure we can work it out. We can do what we’ve done before: package it as a consulting fee, for client referrals. As long as we give it documentation, and keep it to small amounts, it should be fine.”

  Prager’s reassurances are met with silence. A skeptical silence, Carr thinks, and maybe Prager thinks so too, because his next words are lower and somehow more threatening. “What’s the matter, Bess—after everything we’ve been through, you suddenly decide you don’t trust me? All these years, and I still haven’t proven I can keep my word?”

  Bessemer coughs and sputters, but his declarations of trust come too late: Prager has already hung up.

  “What was all that about the feds?” Dennis asks. “We’re the only ones following Howie around. And who the hell is Tracy?”

  “She’s Bessemer’s ex,” Carr says. “I don’t know what the rest of that shit was about.” Carr is still rubbing his chin when Bessemer makes a second call—this one to Willis Stearn.

  “Friday night, at nine,” Howie says when Stearn picks up. His voice is clipped, almost angry.

  “At your house?”

  “That’s what you asked for.”

  “And she’s—”

  “It’s what you asked for, Willis.”

  “How old is—”

  “For chrissakes, Willis, she’s what you fucking ordered!”

  Bessemer hangs up, and Dennis stares at Carr, his Adam’s apple twitching. They watch on the laptop screen for a while, while Howie drinks in silence

  “Tell Bobby and Mike to come back,” Carr says finally. “He’s not going anywhere.”

  Bobby and Mike bring a lot of beer with them. They all sit around the folding tables in the workhouse, in the glow of the laptop screens. An oily, late-day rain beats at the windows.

  “How much gin you think Howie’s gonna put away tonight?” Bobby asks between swallows of beer. “I bet he makes it through the bottle, but doesn’t hold it down. How about it—anybody want to start a pool?”

  Mike drags on a cigarette. “Howie’s delivering the goods to Stearn on Friday,” he says. “We get video of that, we can put whatever kind of leash we want on him. What do you say, jefe—we ready to roll on this?”

  Dennis slams his bottle down and some beer sloshes out the top. His face is red, and his reedy voice is trembling. “Video? Are you saying we’re just going to sit there and watch while this shit happens?”

  They all look at him, surprised. In the time they’ve known him, they’ve never heard Dennis raise his voice beyond a goofy laugh. Latin Mike shakes his head, and Carr leans back in his chair.

  Bobby looks into his beer. His voice is quiet. “C’mon, Denny—we’ve seen bad shit before. Most of what we do is watch scumbags, and if they’re not doing boring shit, they’re doing bad shit. We’ve seen people get knifed, get shot, get the crap kicked out of ’em. Get killed. We’ve done a little of that ourselves.”

  “This is different. Those people were scumbags too, and they were all adults. Bessemer is talking about a kid here.”

  Mike laughs bitterly. “Jesus,” he says, and looks at Carr. “Why don’t you talk to him? Tell him to grow up or something.” Carr doesn’t answer, and Mike shakes his head. He turns back to Dennis. “We don’t even know for sure what Stearn ordered, bro.”

  “Bullshit,” Dennis says. “You know this girl they’re talking about is a kid. Why else would Howie’s pimp be so nervous—not to mention Howie shitting his pants?”

  “And what do you want to do about it—call the policía? Or maybe you’re gonna ride to the rescue yourself—go snatch her from Bessemer’s place and leave her on the church steps, wrapped in a blanket.”

  Dennis stares at nothing. “I … I don’t know what to do about it,” he says softly. “I just don’t want to sit there watching—recording—while shit like that goes down.”

  Mike snorts. “You want somebody else to work the video, so you don’t have to see?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “You sure about that, junior? Maybe your conscience just needs a little wiggle room.”

  “Fuck you,” Dennis says to Latin Mike, and then he turns to Carr. “If we’re going to roll Howie up,” he asks, “what are we waiting for? Let’s do it now—tonight.”

  “Which does what, cabrón—besides save you from seeing something you don’t want to see? The kid they’re pimping out would be in the same shit regardless, on top of which we give up some leverage on Bessemer.”

  Bobby runs a hand through his hair and sighs. “We’re not cops, Denny.”

  Dennis pushes his chair back from the table. “I’m not saying we are. I’m just saying … Fuck—I don’t know what I’m saying.”

  Mike blows a plume of smoke at the ceiling. “So what are we doing, jefe?”

  Carr studies his beer, thinking about Prager, recalling the threat heavy in the anchorman voice. What’s the matter, Bess—after everything we’ve been through, you suddenly decide you don’t trust me? All these years, and I still haven’t proven I can keep my word? It had left Bessemer scared, but scared of what?

  “There’s something we’re still not seeing,” Carr says softly.

  “Hijo de puta!” Mike shouts. “What else is there to know? And why the fuck do we need to know it?”

  Bobby puts a hand on Mike’s shoulder, but Mike shakes it off. Bobby looks at Carr. “He has a point: we’ve got video and sound of the guy buying and selling drugs, arranging hookers for his buddies, and come Friday we’ll have him in the middle of who knows what kind of sick shit. What else do we need?”

  Carr shakes his head. His voice is low and raspy. “The feds offered to let him walk away from eighteen months in prison if he rolled on Prager, and Bessemer turned them down. Prager’s got a grip on him, and I want to know what it is. We get only one shot with Bessemer, and I want to go in holding all the cards.”

  “I thought he kept his mouth shut because Prager helped him hide money from his wife,” Bobby says. “What else—”

  Mike cuts him off. “We got the fucking cards already. We got Bessemer with his dick hanging out, and this time he won’t be looking at some bullshit Wall Street summer-camp jail. He’ll
be looking at real prison for the shit we’ve got on him. There’s no way he has the balls for that.”

  “There’s something we’re not seeing,” Carr says again.

  “You’re saying you want to wait?” Bobby asks.

  He shakes his head slowly. “I’m saying between now and Friday, I want to know what’s going on.”

  “And how the hell we gonna find out?” Mike asks, disgusted.

  “That’s not your problem,” Carr says.

  * * *

  On his apartment’s balcony, Carr switches to rum. He puts his bare feet on the railing and tilts back in his chair, and his thoughts skid like bad tires. He thinks about the rain and the heat, and sees Bessemer, slumped over the wheel of his BMW, and wonders again what hold Prager has on him. He sees a light on the water, bobbing and blinking in the dark, and he wonders who might be out there—so far out—on a night like this. He leans forward and squints, but loses sight of it.

  The wind shifts, and the smells of wet earth and decaying vegetation come in. He thinks about his father’s house, the gray light, his father’s eyes, the list of nursing homes Eleanor Calvin has given him, and the messages from her that he’s continued to ignore. The light reappears on the water and vanishes again when he tries to fix on it—like a dust mote, he thinks, almost imaginary.

  The wind shifts again and a sweet smell—some night-blooming flower—washes across the balcony. He thinks about Valerie—Jill—and Amy Chun leaning close, and wonders how they’re spending this rainy evening. He thinks about Tina, curled like a cat on his sofa, about Bobby and Mike, and Bertolli’s missing money. He thinks about the wreckage of the van, and Ray-Ray and Declan, and the morgue smell that still rises sometimes from his clothes.

  And he thinks again and again about Dennis—his red face, his reedy voice, his disgust. Are you saying we’re just going to sit there and watch while this shit happens? It seems to Carr he’s been doing that for a while now, one way or another. With Declan, and before that with Integral Risk.

  It was raining in Mexico City, a halfhearted drizzle on a warm spring day, when Carlos Morilla summoned him to his office tower out in Santa Fe. He was chairman and CEO of Morilla Farmacias, and Integral Risk’s largest client in Mexico. Carr was the account manager.

  Morilla’s face was dark and shuttered as he told Carr to have a seat. His voice was rumbling, and his English without accent. There was not the usual offer of coffee. Morilla slid a blue Integral Risk folder across the desk.

  “You are telling me that my Patricia is homosexual?” he said. “My only daughter—a lesbian? This is your finding?”

  Carr took a deep breath. “The report draws no conclusions, sir. You requested that we observe Patricia and her friend for a period of time and document their activities. That’s what we’ve done.”

  Morilla frowned. “Is there another conclusion one could reach?” Carr said nothing and Morilla’s face had grown even darker. Morilla sighed. “She is very young, Patricia, and she has led a sheltered life. She is very impressionable—susceptible to the influence of … of the wrong sort of person. So there is something else I would like you to take care of.”

  Carr thought he’d never gotten proper credit for the patience he’d shown. He hadn’t interrupted Morilla’s commands, even when the executive’s voice had shaken, his face had reddened in a way that reminded Carr of his father’s, and he’d snapped his Montblanc pen in two. Carr remained quiet and composed throughout, and when Morilla was done, Carr had taken a deep breath and explained things slowly and carefully.

  “Integral Risk is a corporate security firm, sir, and while we deeply value the business we have done together, this is simply not the sort of job we can undertake. It is neither in your best interests, nor in ours. I think, with time to reflect, you might also see that this is not the wisest course for your family.”

  It was this last suggestion—that someone else, the hired help no less, might know what was best for the Morilla family—that Carr realized too late he should have kept to himself. Morilla had colored deeply, but said nothing for a long time. Then he picked up the phone and called the general manager of Integral Risk Latin America—Carr’s boss’s boss.

  Carr hadn’t minded the weeklong enforced vacation. He went to the seashore. He swam every day, and read and drank at night. What he’d minded was learning, when he returned, that Luisa Rios, an art student at UNAM, had had her face slashed from her left earlobe to the corner of her mouth and her right arm broken in three places.

  The wind rises, and the sounds of the rain and ocean and thrashing palms merge into a great wave, and Carr’s chair is slipping out from under him, falling backward, and Carr with it. The jolt knocks the breath out of him, and his glass breaks on the balcony deck. He carries the pieces inside and dries his face. Then he picks up his cell phone.

  “You up for a road trip?” he asks when Valerie answers.

  18

  The cheerleader figure is sloppy now, and the etched features are blurred. Her skin is lined and lax, like her paint-stained jeans, and her brown eyes are wary. The avid smile—so much on display in the wedding announcements Carr found online—is nowhere in sight, and her hair, lacquered chestnut in those photos, is curled by the ocean air, sweat-dampened, and streaked with gray. The cheerleader’s older sister, Carr thinks: wiser certainly, but angrier too, with little left in the way of expectations. He is certain that more than just time has worked these changes on Tracy Holland—six years of marriage to Howard Bessemer doubtless played a part.

  Holland lays her roller in the metal tray, and wipes her hands on her T-shirt. She sweeps hair off her forehead and gazes at Carr suspiciously.

  “We rang the bell,” he says, smiling. “But no one answered.”

  Holland frowns and looks at Valerie. “You’re the one who called yesterday, about the film? Megan …?” Her voice is scratchy.

  Valerie walks through the French doors. She steps around the ladder and the paint cans and extends a hand. “Hecht, Megan Hecht. Looks like we caught you in the middle of something.”

  “A place this age, there’s always something,” Holland says.

  Carr nods. The white shingle pile, all porches and dormers, must be 150 years old at least. It sprawls against a hillside, above a rocky stretch of Maine coast and a choppy sea—Townsend Gut emptying into Boothbay Harbor.

  Valerie pushes her plaid sleeves above her elbows and looks around the dining room. She smiles appreciatively at the meticulous paint job—dove gray with intricate eggshell trim. “This looks like a pretty big project.”

  “Scraping and sanding were the hard parts; this is just boring,” Holland says. She looks at Carr. “Who is he?”

  “Brian,” Carr says, putting out a hand.

  “Brian helps me with research,” Valerie says, “and scouting locations.”

  “And getting coffee,” Carr adds, but still there is no smile from Tracy Holland. She wipes a forearm across her brow, drinks from a sweating bottle of Sam Adams, and moves through the French doors to the porch. Carr and Valerie follow.

  “A documentary about Wall Street wives,” Holland says, doubtfully. “Not the most sympathetic subjects in the world, are they? Probably do better with a reality TV show—some crap about a bunch of women you love to hate. That’s more like it.”

  “You may have a point,” Valerie says. “But as I mentioned on the phone, our director thinks women like you have some interesting stories to tell. A perspective on the crash that we haven’t seen before.”

  “Women like me,” she says. “I’m not sure what that means.” Holland leads them to a pair of wicker armchairs. She and Valerie sit, and Carr leans on the porch rail.

  “Do you mind if we tape?” Carr asks, and reaches for the camera case slung over his shoulder.

  Holland frowns. “Yes, I mind. I’m still not sure if I want to be involved in this.”

  “Sure,” Valerie says soothingly. “Talking is great.”

  “But why talk to me?
It’s not like Howard and I were boldfaced names in New York. The most coverage he got was when he got arrested.”

  “The kind of storytelling we do—it’s about taking the particular experiences of individuals and finding the broader themes. You and your husband led a certain kind of life in New York: his job, the Upper East Side co-op, private schools, charity boards. Now that’s all over—the market, his career, that whole life. And you seem to be a kind of refugee. There are other Wall Street wives in that spot. More than a few.”

  Tracy Holland sips some beer and looks out at the water. She chuckles again, more bitterly this time. “By which you mean what—women who made deals with the devil, only to find the devil couldn’t hold up his end?”

  Valerie’s smile turns confiding. “Is that what happened,” she asks, “a breach of contract on Satan’s part?”

  Holland smiles back. “Isn’t that how those deals always end?” she says. “But you should probably talk to those other wives. It was a long time ago, and I don’t think I’m typical of anything.”

  “No?”

  “I’m pretty sure none of my old friends do their own painting, diminished circumstances or not.”

  “You keep in touch with many of them?” Carr asks.

  She squints at him, surprised he has spoken. “No.”

  “What about your ex-husband? Do you think he was—”

  The squint turns into a scowl. “My lawyers deal with him. I don’t.”

  “I was just going to ask if he was typical of men who worked on Wall Street then.”

  “You think there was only one type—a bunch of Gordon Gekko wannabes in suspenders and slick hair? Kind of outdated, isn’t it?”

  Carr makes a conciliatory nod. “I’m sure they’re all unique, but maybe they had motivations in common.”

  “You mean greed.”

  “It’s what makes the markets go, and what inflates bubbles—according to popular wisdom, anyway.”

  Holland takes an angry swig. “You seem to know it all. I don’t see why you need me.”