Thick as Thieves

by Peter Spiegelman

  “First Curtis, then Misha and Sasha, then Stearn, and now you,” Bessemer says, sniffling. “I don’t know why this keeps happening. Sometimes I feel like I have a sign around my neck—kick me, or something.”

  “The Grigorievs are squeezing you?” Carr asks, and Bessemer nods. “Stearn too?” Another nod.

  “The brokering that I do—with the drugs and the girls—Misha and Sasha got me into it. I ran up a big tab with them—bigger than my cash flow could handle—and they suggested a way I could pay it off. Suggested isn’t quite the right word actually.”

  “Insisted?”

  “That’s closer. Anyway, that’s how it got started, but this thing tonight, with Willis … I’ve never been involved in anything like that before. When I found out what he wanted, I tried to beg off. I told him I didn’t have those kinds of contacts, but he wouldn’t hear it. He said I was getting a reputation around town, and that I needed to be careful. He said things could get awkward for me if rumors got back to the police.” Bessemer offers Carr the straw.

  Carr smiles. “Not just now.”

  Bessemer snorts another line. “You see, I haven’t been lucky recently.

  So how do I know, if I get involved with this, it won’t turn out the same? What assurance do I have?”

  Carr nods and smiles sympathetically. “Other than my word as the guy holding the gun, you have none. But you also have no choice. Not to put too fine a point on it.”

  Bessemer looks at Carr and then looks down at the mirror atop the liquor cabinet, at the last line of cocaine, at his own reflection. He bends, snorts the final line, and wipes his nose with the back of his hand.

  “Who are you supposed to be?” he asks, sniffling. “When I talk to Curtis, what am I supposed to say?”

  “I’m a guy you met in Otisville, a good guy, someone who helped you when you were inside. Say that we’ve stayed in touch, and now I’m in the market for a banker. We’ll do the details later.”

  “And when you meet with him, then what happens?”

  “I do a little business with him.”

  “You know it won’t be that simple, right? Curtis checks. He checks on everything, very carefully, and then he double-checks.”

  Carr nods and finishes his soda water. “Don’t worry, Howie. I’m double-checkable.”

  23

  “He sounds like a whiner, and more than a little screwy,” Tina says to Carr, as the tide runs over their bare feet.

  Carr looks at her over the top of his sunglasses. “He’s both of those, and a lush to boot. And a cokehead.”

  “Well, I feel much better.” Tina laughs. “And I can’t wait to tell the boss. He’ll love it that your whole plan hangs on a guy like this.” They turn and walk north through the creaming surf. The hem of her gauzy black skirt and Carr’s rolled cuffs are damp with foam.

  “I can’t say I’m thrilled myself,” Carr says, “but it’s not like there were a lot of options, or a lot of time.”

  Tina shrugs and watches the ocean, glassy and orange in the late daylight. “How’s Bessemer adapting to his new circumstances?”

  “He’s self-medicating on gin and blow, but he’s behaving. I’ve got a babysitter with him all the time, and I think he likes the company.”

  “When push comes to shove is he going to cooperate? Is he going to stick to the script with Prager? Will he be convincing?”

  “He’ll get there. Right now he’s mostly scared.”

  “Of who?”

  “Of Prager; of me.”

  “Who’s got the edge?”

  “We’re holding the same threat over his head, but I’m the guy in his living room with a gun. Plus, I’ve got the carrots.”

  “And he believes in them?”

  “He wants to, but he’s not sure.”

  “So maybe he’s not completely stupid,” Tina says, tracking a gull as it swoops above some flotsam. “That was a nice piece of research up north, by the way, with the Cotter thing. A big roll of the dice, for sure, but it worked out. You could be a cop.”

  Carr shrugs. “Bessemer’s ex was the key. She gave us the where and the when. That made it a whole lot easier to figure out the what—especially since it happened in the off-season. It was a big deal for the papers out there—the only real news they had to report at the time. And the place they found her—that stretch of road—it was one of the routes you’d take if you were driving from Prager’s place to the highway.”

  “Still, a risky play,” Tina says. “It hasn’t occurred to Bessemer that Prager can’t rat him out without implicating himself in the cover-up?”

  “He said he tried that line of reasoning once, and never again. Prager told him he could get a dozen people to swear that it never happened—that Bessemer drove off in the middle of the night and didn’t return, and that Prager wasn’t even in East Hampton at the time.”

  Tina nods, still following the gull as if she’s taking aim. They come to a hotel beach, and a hotel bar with shaded tables. Tina points. “I need to get out of the sun.”

  Carr orders an iced tea, Tina a lime soda. She takes a sip and shakes out her hair. It shimmers like white tinsel. “When are you going to have him make the call?” she asks.

  “In a few days. I want him to settle down a while longer, and I want to go over the story with him some more.”

  “Dennis fix up your past?”

  Carr nods. “Bumped some servers at Justice and the Bureau of Prisons. Frye did federal time for receiving stolen property. Overlapped eight months with Howie in Otisville. Before that, a money laundering beef, with charges eventually dropped. Nowadays, he’s based in Boston. Has a nice little online business selling jeweler supplies to the trade.”

  “Too bad it’s bullshit—I bet he could get me a deal on some earrings. How are things going in Boca?”

  Carr takes a long swallow of iced tea and looks into his glass. “Val says it’s going well.”

  “Love is in the air?”

  “She’s got Chun locked in. She’ll be all but moved in there soon, and then she can plant whatever we want, and clean it up again before the security sweeps.”

  “She was a big help with Bessemer’s ex, I guess. A regular Watson to your Holmes.”

  Carr nods. Tina rests her heel on the edge of her seat. Her skirt falls away and her bare leg is like ivory. She brushes sand from her bare foot. “You don’t like talking about her,” she says.

  Carr’s voice is carefully neutral. “Are there questions I haven’t answered? Something you want to know that I haven’t told you?”

  “You and she have a thing going, once upon a time? Or maybe going on now?”

  Carr’s face is taut. “Who’s asking—Boyce or you?”

  Tina lowers one foot, raises another, brushes away sand. A tiny smile flickers on her lips. “You’re a big boy, and nobody’s playing chaperone. It’s just not typically the best management technique. Don’t shit where you eat, et cetera. Fucks up unit cohesion. Doesn’t help command judgment much either.”

  The sun has dropped behind the hotel tower and the sky is washed in violet. Carr drops some bills on the table. “Let’s walk,” he says.

  Carr heads for the shoreline. The sand is cooler, and he turns north again, for a jetty a quarter mile away. Tina is silent at his side.

  “How are things in the Prager compound?” Carr asks eventually.

  “Same same,” Tina says. “He’s getting ready for his prospecting trip to Europe and Asia. Silva still hasn’t surfaced from whatever glass he’s climbed into.”

  “Good,” Carr says. He stops and digs a flat stone the size of a silver dollar from the sand. He launches it in low, spinning flight over the smooth water, and it bounces and jinks more times than he can count before vanishing into a gray swell. “And down south?” he asks. “Are we making any progress there?”

  “Maybe. Our guys were in Santiago, trying to locate the pilot Declan made his exit arrangements with. They went trolling at the bars near Los Cerrillos—the
pilot bars—and got a hit. Found a charter operator named Guerrero. He’s got a light jet, a Hawker, and he’s apparently used to working for cash, and with no questions asked. You know the name?”

  Carr shakes his head. “Is he the guy Declan hired?”

  “He told my guys he took a deposit from someone that sounds a lot like Declan.”

  “Declan’s plan was to go to São Paulo. From there, there were a lot of options to get back to Port of Spain. Where was this Guerrero supposed to go?”

  “He wouldn’t say. He wouldn’t say anything else without money.”

  “Your guys didn’t want to pay?”

  “My guys check with me first. I told them I’d come down and see for myself. I’m flying out of Miami tomorrow.”

  Carr stops and looks at Tina. The tide rushes up over their ankles and he sees a shiver run through her. “This is a lot of personal attention,” he says.

  Tina takes off her sunglasses and nods. “You got me interested.”

  Carr’s phone burrs as he opens the door to his apartment. He answers without looking and Eleanor Calvin’s voice takes him by surprise. She is just as surprised by his.

  “I didn’t think I’d actually reach you,” she says. “I’ve tried so many times.”

  “I’ve gotten your messages, Mrs. Calvin, but things have been crazy at work.”

  “I’m sure, dear.”

  “How’s your move coming? Are you showing the house yet?”

  “I’ve got an offer on it—two, actually. The real estate agent thinks there might even be a third one coming. They all want to close soon.”

  Carr stands in the darkened living room and takes a deep breath. “Oh,” he says.

  “Have you settled the arrangements for your father, dear?”

  “I’m working on it, Mrs. Calvin.”

  “I know it’s difficult for you, but there isn’t much time.”

  Carr walks to the window and leans his head against the glass. “I’m aware, Mrs. Calvin.”

  “I know you are, dear, and I didn’t call to talk about this. The ambassador is a little agitated this evening, and he wants to speak with you.”

  “Agitated about what, Mrs. Calvin? I really don’t have—”

  “I’m not sure what’s upset him, but he’s insistent. He’s been … difficult all day, and I’m afraid he’s been drinking.”

  Carr sighs. “Put him on,” he says.

  His father’s voice is scratchy and attenuated across the ether, and he sounds to Carr like an old recording of FDR. Nothing to fear but fear itself. He seems at first more angry than drunk.

  “She lies to me, you know. Tells me she’s done things when she hasn’t. Tells me she hasn’t done things when I know she has. And she takes things. That’s why I can never find a goddamn thing in this house.”

  “Mrs. Calvin doesn’t take things, and she doesn’t lie. She’s not your maid either.”

  “You’re taking her side.”

  “There’s no side to this.”

  “You’re just like her, you know.”

  “Like Mrs. Calvin?”

  “Don’t be thick. You’re just like her—always watching—like a goddamn cat. Quiet like a cat, and arrogant—no one can tell you anything, oh no. And stubborn—goddamn stubborn—just like her. Everything on your terms, and you won’t let go until you’re goddamn good and ready.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dad,” Carr says, and he sighs heavily. “What is it you’re upset over?”

  “I can’t find it. I spent all day looking. Looked in her room, in your room, even got up in the goddamn attic, and I can’t find it.”

  “Can’t find what?”

  “The plata. I can’t find her plata.”

  Carr puts his hand out in the darkness and finds the back of a chair. It fails to anchor him in the present.

  Plata. Carr gave it that name, the family story went, when he was three or so, and speaking his first words of Spanish. They were in Lima, and the plata was an S. T. Dupont cigarette lighter, a tiny, weighty slab of silver that the young Carr liked to play with. It was a gift to his mother from her sometimes tennis partner, the courtly, ever-smiling Sr. Farías—commemorating not only their success in the Club Regatas mixed doubles tournament, but also his appreciation of Andrea Carr’s help in landing the Spanish journalist an interview with the new American ambassador.

  Hector Farías turned up all over Latin America, bouncing from country to country at least as often as the Carrs. And whenever they found themselves living in the same cities, Farías and Andrea Carr resumed their tennis. Carr’s recollections of him are mostly blurred and, he knows, mostly composites. Farías in tennis whites, drink in hand, his hair wavy and damp, his teeth like white tiles. Farías at a consular reception, his shirt like a cloud, his shoes like glass, smoke curling from his smiling mouth. Farías on the living room sofa, straightening his tie, tugging at his cuffs, grinning at Carr, while his mother, cheeks burning, stepped quickly to the window and smoothed her skirts. Which living room was that?

  His clearest memory of Farías, though, is from a photograph in a Buenos Aires newspaper. It was already three months old when he saw it on his father’s desk, and they’d been in Stockbridge for almost that long, sorting through boxes others had packed for them so hurriedly in Mexico City. The unannounced visits from the dark-suited, block-shouldered men, their long discussions with his parents—together and separately—behind closed doors, the trips his parents made to Boston and Washington, had all grown less frequent. It was a good photo—not grainy at all—Farías with a trench coat over his broad shoulders, flanked by a pair of uniformed policemen, his hands thrust awkwardly before him, the handcuffs snug around his wrists. Un Espía Cubano was the caption.

  “I can’t find it,” Arthur Carr says again.

  “Why do you want it?” Carr asks.

  “It’s none of your goddamn business why I want it. Maybe I want to light a cigar. Maybe I want to burn down the house. Why the hell do you care? I just want it.”

  Carr drops into the chair and looks out at the empty night. He sighs again. “You’re not going to find it.”

  “Because she took it. I told you, she takes things.”

  “Mrs. Calvin didn’t take it.”

  “Then where the hell is it?”

  “It’s in the … It’s with her—with Mom. You buried it with her, Dad.”

  24

  “A full boat,” Howard Bessemer says to Bobby. “Jacks over eights.” He sweeps the chips from the center of the dining table into the large pile already in front of him. “It’s just not your night.”

  It is nine a.m., and sunlight is streaming through the windows of Bessemer’s dining room, reflecting from the white plaster walls, refracting through the crystal ashtray, the highball glasses, the bottle of gin on the table, and the curtain of smoke above.

  He turns to Carr and smiles. “Top of the mornin’, Gregory,” he says. Bessemer is a dissipated teddy bear today, in seersucker pajama bottoms, a New York Athletic Club T-shirt, and a three-day beard that is a dirty-blond shadow on his pudgy cheeks. His blond hair is bent at odd angles, his gumdrop eyes are red and shiny, and so is the new cut at the corner of his mouth. He picks a joint from the ashtray, lights it, and takes a long hit. “Deal you in?” he asks.

  “Not just now, Howie,” Carr says, and he hands Bobby one of the grocery bags he’s carrying. “Let’s make coffee.”

  Bobby follows Carr to the kitchen and empties the bag onto the counter. Egg sandwiches, bagels, fruit salad in a plastic tub. There’s a TV on the counter and Carr switches it on and turns up the volume. He tosses Bobby a pound of ground coffee. “Late night?” Carr asks, his voice low.

  “Howie couldn’t sleep. He wanted to play cards, so we played.”

  “You get high too?”

  Bobby yawns and flips him the bird. “Yeah, baby, I’m trippin’ on Coca-Cola and potato chips.”

  “You hit him?” Carr asks. Bobby spoons coffe
e into the machine. “Bobby?” Carr says again. Bobby fills the coffeemaker with water and presses the button. He looks at Carr but stays silent. “Bobby?”

  “It was nothing. Mike was a little torqued up, and Howie was whining about something and Mike told him to shut up. Howie got mouthy and Mike got pissed.”

  “And hit him.”

  “Barely.”

  “For chrissakes, Bobby, we need him in one piece.”

  “Hey, I broke it up right away. And it’s not like we’re keeping the guy around long-term.”

  Carr frowns. “While we’ve got him, we need him happy.”

  “I’m down like two hundred bucks to the guy. That’s not happy enough?”

  Carr shakes his head. “What’s got Mike twisted up?”

  “Who the fuck knows?” Bobby says, unwrapping a sandwich. “It’s gettin’ so he’s almost as moody a bastard as you.”

  Bessemer has finished his joint when Carr carries a sandwich and a cup of coffee into the dining room, and he’s stacking his chips into neat columns before him.

  “I make it two hundred fifteen dollars I’ve taken off him,” he says.

  “He’s good for it. Sorry about the bruise.”

  Bessemer shrugs. “Your other friend is kind of an asshole, Greg. No fun to hang with at all.”

  “He’ll take it easy as long as you do, Howie. Everybody’s a little stir-crazy, and the sooner we move things along, the better.”

  “Amen to that,” Bessemer says, and takes a slug of gin. Carr takes the glass from him and slides the sandwich and coffee in front of him.

  “Let’s do breakfast now, Howie. Then we’ll do the story.”

  It takes Bessemer two sandwiches, three cups of coffee, and a long shower before he’s ready, and then he and Carr settle in Bessemer’s office. Sunlight seeps around the edges of the shades, but Carr leaves them drawn. He sits at the desk and turns on a brass lamp. Bessemer sprawls in a studded leather chair.

  “Take it from the top, Howie,” Carr says.

  And Bessemer does. He’s got the facts down cold: how he met Greg Frye in Otisville, where Frye was serving out the last months of a federal sentence for trafficking in stolen diamonds; how Frye had helped him learn the ropes there, and avoid the predations of the rougher trade; how they’ve kept in touch over the years; and how Frye has come down to Palm Beach in search of a banker, and—possibly—a business partner. And his delivery is solid: offhand, uncomplicated, adorned with enough detail to be convincing, but not enough to be dangerous. Bessemer is an apt pupil—at home with deception—but Carr knows that drills are one thing and live fire something else entirely.