Thick as Thieves

by Peter Spiegelman

  Bessemer is standing now, a look of alarm replacing the curiosity on his face. “Are we calling or not?”

  Carr looks at him. “Pour me another cup of coffee,” he says, “and get the telephone.”

  27

  They’re followed from the airport on Grand Cayman—two men in a muddy blue Nissan, as inconspicuous as it’s possible for a single-car tail to be. Carr spots them as he turns the Toyota onto Dorcy Drive.

  “They were at the rental counter,” he says, “but that’s not a rental car.” Bessemer starts to turn in his seat, but Carr puts a hand on his arm. “Use the mirrors,” he says. Bessemer does, and his brows crease in confusion.

  “The driver was outside passport control,” Carr says, “but he wasn’t on our flight.”

  “You think they’re following us?”

  “I know they are. You ever see them before?”

  “I don’t think so,” Bessemer says, and there’s worry in his voice.

  “This a usual thing for Prager?”

  Bessemer shakes his head. “If it is, I never noticed.”

  They’re quiet after that. Bessemer watches the Nissan in the rearview. Carr watches traffic and looks at the landscape of the northern edge of George Town, which is flat, cluttered, and homely under a pale sky. Carr lowers his window and the smell of ocean rushes in, mixed with odors of asphalt and exhaust and brackish salt marsh. He glances at Bessemer, who is still looking in the mirrors, and whose face has tightened with fear.

  “Strip malls and SUVs,” Carr says. “Just like Florida.”

  Bessemer nods stiffly. “The north side’s nicer. This your first time down here?” Carr smiles but doesn’t answer, and Bessemer’s eyes dart back to the mirror.

  “They’re just watching, Howie. They’re not going to do anything.”

  Bessemer’s nerves have been fraying since the call to Curtis Prager, which, when it finally happened three days before, had gone as well as Carr could’ve hoped. Bessemer had stayed on script and had managed to sound convincing about it. And, because Prager doesn’t like phones, he hadn’t had to talk for long. Bessemer told Prager that a good friend, Greg Frye, was in town, looking for a money manager. And when I heard about the business opportunity Greg’s got, I thought of you right away, Curt.

  Prager asked how good a friend this was and how Bessemer knew him. When Bessemer explained that he was an Otisville friend, Prager went silent for a long while—so long that Carr wondered if they’d been cut off. When Prager finally responded, he was brief.

  “You know I’m always happy to meet prospective investors, Bess. So if you’ve got the time, you and your friend should come down here. We’ll hit some balls, we’ll put some lines in the water, and we’ll see what bites.”

  Bessemer started fretting as soon as he hung up. “I thought all you wanted was an introduction, Greg. I think I’ve held up my part of the bargain.”

  “So far, so good,” Carr said.

  “You never talked about a trip.”

  “It’s a short trip, Howie.”

  “But you never said—”

  “Prager invited both of us down. It would be a little awkward if I showed up by myself.”

  Bessemer paced and worried his lower lip. “It’ll be awkward for me if Curtis thinks I’ve lied to him. Awkward as in dead.”

  “Don’t be dramatic.”

  “Dramatic? I’m not the one holding somebody hostage in his own house, or blackmailing him into being part of some kind of scam. I’m not the dramatic one.”

  Carr had almost smiled. “Don’t be so negative, Howie. This doesn’t have to be complicated: we go down there, we hang out, and then we’re done. Stay focused on what you get out of this: your money, your life back, a fresh start.”

  “I don’t know,” Bessemer said, shaking his head and walking to his liquor cabinet.

  “The upside, Howie—focus on the upside.”

  They’re on Tibbetts Highway now, the Nissan still with them, a quarter-mile back. They come up a gentle rise and on his left, beyond the big hotels, Carr sees the beaches, the ocean, and the cruise ships at anchor, each one as graceless as a Soviet apartment block. Away to his right, North Sound is like a pale blue plate, and the feathered wake of a powerboat like a fracture line across it. Closer on the right is the broad dome of a landfill, with a thousand white gulls wheeling above. Carr glances at Bessemer, who is drumming his fingers on the armrest and still staring at the mirrors. Carr understands nerves—his own are like confetti.

  He saw Valerie the day before he left Palm Beach. She drove up while Amy was at work, and he took a room at the Marriott. She said not a word about Miami or Nando or Mike, and Carr managed not to ask. Managed not to speak much at all that afternoon, unless spoken to—and there wasn’t much of that at first. Later, when the sheets and pillows were on the floor and they were sideways on the bed, Valerie had questions of her own.

  “They’re set up down there?” she asked.

  “Dennis went yesterday. Bobby and Mike go tonight.”

  “They must be happy to get out of that dump.”

  “They were getting stir-crazy. Forward motion calms everybody down.”

  “Everybody, including you?”

  “I want to get it done as much as anyone.”

  “And afterward?” she asked softly, and slid a bare foot up his calf. “You ever been to New Zealand? It’s really something down there—Middle Earth, just like in the movies. I know a place where we could have a cottage to ourselves, just us, a few thousand acres, and some sheep. Nothing to see out the windows but cliffs and sky and ocean. What do you say—you take care of the airfare, and I’ll pick up the tab at the Wharekauhau?”

  “New Zealand’s a long way.”

  “You can afford it. And besides, isn’t that what you want—something far away?”

  He had no answer for that, so he nodded vaguely and went into the bathroom. When he came out, Valerie was standing by the balcony doors. She’d opened the drapes to the width of her shoulders, and she wore nothing but the long bar of light that came through the glass. Carr stared at her for some time, looking for he didn’t know what. A mark? A sign? Some sort of clue? But there was nothing except that body, slender, wanton, tinted pale saffron by the streetlight. She turned to look at him, and her face, half in shadow, was suddenly exhausted.

  “We moved a lot when I was a kid,” she said quietly. “Base to base—never anyplace longer than a year or two. My mother was useless around the house, but my father could do things, and he’d always try to fix up whatever crappy billet we’d been assigned. He’d paint, hang pictures, plant a window box, that kind of thing. But those places weren’t ours, and all the petunias in the world couldn’t change it—couldn’t make us belong somewhere. I get the feeling you know what that’s like.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll be glad when this is done. I’m tired of hotels and furnished apartments and putting on these lives like somebody else’s clothes. I want someplace I can sit still. Someplace that’s mine.” The air conditioner came on and she shivered in the breeze. She wrapped her arms around herself. “I want my skin back.”

  Carr swallowed hard, and Valerie stepped away from the window and began to collect her scattered clothes. “Something’s on your mind,” she whispered.

  Did they show, he wondered—the questions that still spun through his head? He shrugged. “Prager, Bessemer, a bunch of things.”

  “You need help,” she said. “Let me help you.”

  The resort grounds are vast: a golf course, clubhouse and marina on the sound, and, across West Bay Road, a curving, coral-pink hotel complex on Seven Mile Beach. The Nissan doesn’t follow when Carr turns through the main gates, but any relief he feels is short-lived. There are two more men in the lobby, watching them from behind day-old newspapers.

  28

  They’re in a fourth-floor corner suite—two bedrooms separated by a living room, a kitchenette, a wet bar, a terrace, and glary views of pool an
d ocean. While Bessemer explores the bar, Carr carries his bag to a bedroom and drops it on a luggage rack. He steps into the bathroom and runs water in both sinks. Then he opens his cell and calls Bobby.

  “Not bad here,” Bobby says. “You can practically smell the offshore cash.”

  “It’s very fragrant,” Carr says. “You guys clean when you came in from the airport?”

  “Sure. Clean last night, clean today. Why?”

  “Two guys were with us on the drive here, and another pair picked us up in the lobby. I see one of them down by the pool. I don’t know where his partner is.”

  “You think they’re Prager’s?”

  “I hope like hell they are,” Carr says. “We don’t need new players at the table.”

  “His security guy was supposed to be a joke.”

  “Maybe he’s on the wagon again.”

  “Fucking drunks,” Bobby says, “you can never count on ’em. I got your stuff; you want me to bring it over?”

  “And you can check out the babysitters while you’re at it. Howie and I will take a walk around the grounds, starting with the bar by the pool. We’ll meet you back here. You need a key to the suite?”

  Bobby laughs. “Now you’re just being a prick,” he says, and hangs up.

  The Caiman Lounge is a broad expanse of terra-cotta tile, bleached wood, and sliding glass doors that let the bar merge with the patio around the pool. Carr and Bessemer pause at the entrance. Carr doesn’t see Bobby—doesn’t see anyone besides a few off-season honeymooners sitting close. He and Bessemer take a table near a large aquarium. Carr orders an iced tea, and Bessemer a gin and tonic. Bessemer is transfixed by a green and blue triggerfish swimming lazily behind the glass.

  “Ridiculous fish,” he says. “Goofy-looking. It reminds me of my ex-mother-in-law.”

  “Triggers are aggressive,” Carr says. “They’ll take a chunk out of you if you get between them and the next meal.”

  “Definitely my ex-mother-in-law.”

  Carr nods, and then he spots the lobby men. One takes a seat at the bar and orders something. The other walks in from the pool patio, sits at a table in back, and studies a menu. Bessemer is rambling on about his former in-laws, and Carr tunes out to regard the minders from the corners of his eyes.

  Polo shirts, thick necks, bristly haircuts, heavy, confounded brows, and a general air of unfocused anger. Corporate security types, he thinks—ex–law enforcement, ex-military—the kind of foot soldiers he used to hire and fire at Integral Risk. The waitress delivers their drinks, and Bessemer interrupts his ramble to clink glasses. Carr sits for another ten minutes, not listening to Bessemer, not looking for Bobby, and then he gets up.

  “Let’s walk, Howie.”

  And so they do, for half an hour or so: around the pool, down to the beach, back to the lobby, in and out of the pricey shops, and through the barbered gardens. And the two minders stroll with them—never obviously, not to Bessemer at any rate, never too close, but never really out of sight. Carr leads them on a final turn around the marina, then back across West Bay Road and through the lobby again. He and Bessemer are alone on the elevator to the fourth floor. When they return to their suite, Bobby is there, drinking beer. He’s got the blinds drawn, and a Marlins game on the big plasma screen.

  Bessemer is in the doorway, about to speak, when Carr raises a hand to stop him. Carr looks at Bobby and lifts an eyebrow.

  Bobby holds up what looks like an old-fashioned beeper with a stubby antenna on top. “It’s okay,” he says. “I swept it. It’s clean.”

  A tentative smile falls from Bessemer’s face. “What’s clean?”

  “The room, Howie,” Bobby says. “And a pretty nice room too. First-class all the way with Greg, huh?” Bessemer nods vaguely, still confused.

  “What did you see?” Carr asks.

  “Just the two buzz cuts. They looked like a couple of water buffaloes, waddling around after you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Bessemer asks. “Who’s a water buffalo? Are we still being followed?”

  “It’s all good, Howie,” Carr says, shaking his head. He sits in a chair across from Bobby and opens the brown plastic grocery bag that Bobby has left on the coffee table. Inside, wrapped in a hand towel, is a holstered Glock, and beneath that a small box, about the size of a deck of cards. Carr opens it and empties the contents into the palm of his hand: three black, one-gigabyte flash drives.

  “Gave you two extra, for backup,” Bobby says. “Prager plugs it in and we’re good to go.”

  “He doesn’t have to open a file or read the directory?”

  “Nope. All he has to do is plug it in and the worm loads.”

  “You make it sound easy,” Carr says.

  Bobby shrugs. “You’re the guy who’s got to get him to do it.”

  Bessemer’s eyes lurch from the gun to Carr. “Do what? Plug what in?” His voice is brittle and shaky.

  “Not to worry, Howie,” Carr says, and then he nods at Bobby. “I’m going out, but he’ll keep you company while I’m gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “No place far,” Carr says. “We’ll call Prager when I get back.” And then he goes into his bedroom, rummages in his bag for a bathing suit, and opens his phone.

  Tina’s hotel is down the beach from Carr’s—practically next door, she said, but it turns out to be a mile-and-a-half swim. The water is warm and clear, but there’s rough surf around the reefs, and a powerful undertow at a break in a sand bar, and it takes Carr almost forty minutes to make the trip. He’s breathing hard when he pulls off his fins and mask and walks out of the ocean. His shoulders and thighs are burning.

  Tina is waiting for him in a white canvas beach cabana, the last tent in a curving white line. She’s lying on a lounge chair, wearing a black two-piece swimsuit and big black sunglasses. Her skin is pale and petal smooth, and Carr can feel her eyes on him as he crosses the sand.

  She hands him a heavy white towel. “I’m impressed,” she says, “but wouldn’t driving have been easier?”

  “Sure,” Carr says, drying his hair. “Except I didn’t think you’d want me bringing my minders along.”

  Tina sits up and pulls her glasses off. Her eyes are narrow. “What are you talking about?” she says softly.

  “Minders. Two of them—big biceps, high and tight hair, milling around the lobby. Not to be confused with the pair who tailed me from the airport.”

  “Where did you leave them?”

  “On the hotel beach, trying to pick me out of a few dozen people snorkeling offshore.”

  “At some point they’re going to realize you’re not coming in.”

  Carr shrugs. “They can tell the lifeguard.”

  Tina looks into the middle distance. “No idea of who sent them?”

  “They’ve got that corporate look, but otherwise no clue.”

  “Prager’s?”

  “That’s the optimistic interpretation.”

  “It seems awfully diligent for Eddie Silva.”

  Carr nods. “Surprises were inevitable down here: security immediately around Prager is what I know least about.”

  “Bessemer was supposed to be your ticket around all that.”

  “And Silva was supposed to be a useless lush.”

  Tina makes a sour face and raps her sunglasses idly against her lounge chair. “So much for theories,” she says. “What did you do with Bessemer?”

  “Bobby’s with him, at the hotel.”

  “He and Mike and the kid settled in?”

  Carr nods. “In a place on the sound, with a yard and a dock and a straight shot to the airport. They like it better than West Palm.”

  Tina gives him a speculative look. “You want the stones?”

  Carr sits. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “And I thought it was just to see me,” Tina says. There’s a canvas beach bag at her side, and she reaches in and pulls out a large nylon shaving kit, blue with a zippered top. She tosses it to Ca
rr, who catches it and opens the zip. The diamonds are in three plastic bags inside. Carr takes them out and weighs each one in his palm. “Everything here?”

  “Except what I used for belt buckles and toe rings,” Tina says.

  Carr smiles and makes a show of weighing the bags again. “As long as you left me enough to get Prager’s attention.”

  “From the minders, I’d say you already have it.”

  Carr puts the stones back in the zippered case. He looks at Tina and gets another questioning look in return. “You worried?” she asks. “About these guys following you around?”

  His first impulse is to laugh, and he almost does. Not because he isn’t worried about being followed—he is. Out from behind the listening end of a microphone, outside of anonymous cars and vans, Carr feels naked. The minders have simply added a spotlight and pointing finger. No, the almost laughter isn’t because the buzz cuts don’t scare him, it’s because they’re at the end of a long line. In the crowded landscape of Carr’s fear, they are mere foothills beside Valerie, Mike, and Nando, beside his galloping suspicions about what really happened on that bleak highway to Santiago, beside his dark fantasies of what might happen here afterward, if his crew is successful in stealing Prager’s money.

  His second impulse—and it surprises him—is to tell her. The idea of giving voice to his fears, saying them aloud, confessing them to Tina, makes him dizzy for an instant. Words well up in his chest. They bubble and rush and nearly spring forth, and then he remembers who he’s talking to. The half-smiling woman on the lounge chair vanishes, replaced by a slender figure—a riding crop in a black dress—standing in the deep shade at the edge of a golf course. So Carr swallows the words with his laughter and shrugs.

  “I’m not crazy about working the front of the house,” he says, “being the face Prager sees, the one he’ll remember.”