Thick as Thieves

by Peter Spiegelman

  “First time for everything.”

  “First and last time for this.”

  “You never know—you might develop a taste for it.”

  “Not going to happen,” Carr says, shaking his head. “Last time I saw you, you were headed down to Santiago, to have a look at Guerrero. How did that go?”

  Tina sighs. “I wish I could say it was a breakthrough, but it wasn’t.”

  “Guerrero wasn’t Declan’s guy?”

  “He was the guy all right, but that was it. He had nothing to tell us.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Declan—or somebody very much like him—put down a cash deposit to fly that Saturday night. He paid cash, and booked for four passengers, plus baggage.”

  “Going where?”

  “São Paulo.”

  “Declan.”

  “Sounds like. Unfortunately, that’s all this Guerrero had to say. The date came and went, the guy didn’t show and didn’t call, and Guerrero happily kept the cash. End of story.”

  Carr’s jaw clenches. “Which leaves us where?”

  “No place great,” Tina says. “It takes us back to our two original questions: Who gave Bertolli’s men the heads-up, and what became of Bertolli’s missing money?”

  “How about Bertolli’s former security guy down there—the one your people turned up?”

  “How about him?”

  “We could go back to him—push a little harder, or sweeten the pot—get him to do some digging into who warned Bertolli.”

  Tina is doubtful. “The guy was pretty scared …”

  “So that’s it then? I’ve spent my money on dead ends?”

  “You want to keep spending, I’ll keep my guys working—knocking on Bertolli’s man again, trying to turn up another source, whatever. But if we’re going to do that, then we’ve got to work it from the other end as well.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Who knew Declan’s plans, and who was in a position to leak them? And who might’ve benefited from doing it? Those are the questions—and I think you know who you need to ask.”

  A gust of wind blows through the canvas walls of the cabana. Carr hunches like an old man and pulls the towel around his shoulders.

  * * *

  Tina buys him a T-shirt and flip-flops from her hotel’s gift shop, along with a beach bag for his fins, mask, and diamonds, and she drives him back to his hotel. They say little in the car, and she drops him at the roadside just past the resort’s flower-draped gate.

  Bobby is watching television when Carr returns, a Dodgers game now. Bessemer is snoring in his room, diagonal across the bed, one arm flung out in a desperate reach for something. Carr closes the bedroom door.

  “He went down about an hour ago,” Bobby says. “The guy is not looking forward to seeing Prager.”

  Bobby is gone when Bessemer teeters into the living room, wiping crust from his eyes and spittle from his chin—a bedraggled teddy bear. He squints at the television, and then at the evening sky.

  “Jesus,” he says. “What time is it?”

  “Time to make a phone call, Howie,” Carr says.

  Bessemer’s hair is a weed patch, and he pushes clumsy fingers through it. “Call to who?”

  “Come on, Howie, wake yourself up.”

  “You want to call Curt now?” he asks. His voice is a rusty hinge. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Greg. Really, I’m not my best.”

  Carr shakes his head. “Room service will fix you. Coffee and a club sandwich.”

  Bessemer waves his hands and drops onto the sofa. “No, really, Greg, now isn’t a good time. How about I give you Curt’s number? Just say that I told you to call.”

  Carr goes to the bar and fills a glass with crushed ice and Coke. He places it on the coffee table in front of Bessemer, takes a seat next to him, and drapes an arm across Bessemer’s hunched shoulders. Carr’s voice is low and intimate, almost a whisper.

  “And how about I put your face through those glass doors, Howie, and drop you four floors off the terrace? Because unless you pull yourself together and remember who you’re talking to, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. And I’ll be long gone while they’re still figuring out which pieces of you go where. So drink your soda and have a think, Howie, but don’t take too long. I’ll get the room service menu.”

  Carr gives Bessemer’s shoulder a friendly squeeze as he finishes, and he sets a cell phone down next to the sweating glass.

  29

  Isla Privada Holdings is headquartered in a six-story slab of concrete and tinted glass that would be anonymous in an actual city, but that in George Town is a soaring office tower. It’s off Elgin Avenue, not far from a police building that looks like it’s made of orange sherbet. Carr parks next to a Land Rover with a large man leaning on the bumper. He’s wearing a dark suit and fiddling uncomfortably with his shoulder holster, and he gives Carr a hard look as he and Bessemer pass, but Carr knows it’s just for practice.

  It’s not yet noon, but the asphalt is already soft underfoot as they cross the parking lot. Bessemer is shaved and combed and barely bloodshot, but his steps are hesitant.

  “We take it nice and easy, Howie,” Carr says softly as they approach the glass doors. “And we keep things simple.”

  Carr has said it before—spent much of last night saying it. “You introduce me, and you let me talk. He asks about Otisville, you stammer, look embarrassed, and you let me talk. Just do what you said you always do when you arrange these get-togethers—make the introductions and fade into the woodwork.”

  “Why are we doing it at his office?” Bessemer asked a dozen times or more. “He always has me over to the house. I’ve never even been to the office before. Curtis hardly goes there himself.” And a dozen times or more Carr replied with comforting noises, none of which he himself quite believed.

  There’s a security desk in the lobby, and cameras, but nothing more heavy-handed in the procedures than a glance at their passports, consultation of the visitors list, and a call upstairs. Carr fights the impulse to turn away from the cameras. Someone at Isla Privada approves them, and they’re pointed toward a small elevator for a slow ride to the fifth floor. Bessemer is shifting from one foot to the other.

  “You have to pee, Howie?” Carr asks.

  “Among other things.”

  A woman, fit, brisk, and fiftyish, meets them at the elevator. She wears tan trousers and a sleeveless white blouse, and has a thick blond ponytail that barely moves as she leads them down corridors, around corners, and through a maze of low cubicles.

  Isla Privada’s offices aren’t empty, but they feel that way—like a Saturday morning, rather than almost noon on a Wednesday—and the decor is decidedly low-key. The furnishings are as muted and generic as the building itself—slate and putty and taupe. The office artwork is visual pabulum: placating and instantly forgotten, surplus from a shopping mall or an airport lounge. Even the ringtone of the telephone system is muffled to a low burr that sounds to Carr like an electronic snore. The air is cool and smells like a new car.

  This is not the back office—the centralized operation that processes the transactions of all the bank and trust companies in Isla Privada’s portfolio and that enables Curtis Prager to wash and move so much money so efficiently and inconspicuously. Those offices, Carr knows, are two miles away, in an even blander building, wrapped in much more serious security. But looking over the cubicles as he passes, Carr sees no clue of the business being done here. Insurance? Consulting? Selling time-shares? It could be anything.

  The woman leads them to a glass-walled conference room. She stands by the door and ushers them in with a sweep of her muscular arm. There’s an oval conference table in the center of the room, and beneath the shaded windows a low credenza with trays on top. Coffee service, ice bucket, glass tumblers, and small bottles of soda.

  “Sorry for the wait, fellas,” the woman says. “Please have a seat.” Her voice is husky, aggressively upbeat, and h
as a trace of Texas in it. Her skin is tanned and grainy. “We’ll get started in just a minute, but in the meantime we have refreshments.” She crosses the room and carries the trays from the credenza to the conference table. Bessemer reaches for a glass and a bottle of ginger ale.

  “And for you Mr. Frye?” She spreads her hands toward the trays, like a trade-show model presenting a dishwasher. “Please, help yourself,” she says, and leaves, closing the door behind her.

  Bessemer fills a glass with ice and ginger ale and empties it in one long swallow. He picks up a cocktail napkin and wipes his mouth and his forehead. Then he goes to the window and raises the shades. Carr sees the low rooftops of George Town, bright under the hammering sun, and the busy blue harbor. Bessemer turns and begins to speak, and Carr shakes his head minutely.

  “Lots of boats,” Carr says.

  Bessemer nods. “Curt must be running late,” he says, and begins to pace.

  Carr stares until he catches Bessemer’s eye. “Another drink, Howie?” he asks, and slides a bottle of ginger ale across the table. Then he reaches for a glass of his own.

  Twenty minutes later, Carr his finished two club sodas, and the hairs have risen on the back of his neck, though he doesn’t know why. Bessemer is pacing again, but the little knot tightening in Carr’s stomach isn’t fallout from that. He swirls the ice in his glass and looks around the conference room, which has suddenly come to resemble a fishbowl.

  “Does Prager usually keep you waiting long?” he asks.

  Bessemer flinches, startled by Carr’s voice. “He never keeps me waiting, and he never parks me in a conference room either. I feel like a salesman, for chrissakes.”

  “I know what you mean,” Carr says, and he looks through the glass walls at the people in the their cubicles doing god knows what. “Have you caught a glimpse of him, walking around?”

  “Walking around out there?” Bessemer says, flinching again. “No, I haven’t seen anything.” And the knot tightens more.

  And then the blond woman is at the conference room door again, still smiling, though this time apologetically.

  “Fellas, I feel terrible about this. I just now got off the phone with Curtis, and he’s not going to be able to make it in today. He’s on his way to the airport—got a little emergency, and he’s got to jump over to Nassau real quick. But he wants you to know he’s real sorry for this, and he’d like to reschedule for Saturday—lunch at his place.”

  Carr looks at Bessemer, who is sputtering. “This is unbelievable,” Bessemer says. “We came down to see Curt, not for a vacation. I’d have come in February if that’s what I was after.”

  The blonde nods and her smile slides smoothly into a sympathetic frown. “And Curtis is so sorry. In fact, he’d like you to send over your hotel bill, so he can take care of it.”

  Bessemer begins to speak and Carr puts a hand on his arm. “That’s all right,” Carr says, smiling. “Things come up—I know how it is. And Saturday should be fine, don’t you think, Howie? Give us time for some golf.”

  Bessemer looks at Carr and nods vaguely. “Golf, sure.”

  The blonde’s smile returns. “Great—so I’ll tell Curtis Saturday.”

  “Saturday,” Bessemer says.

  The blonde makes more noises of cheerful apology and leads them out of the conference room and through the office again. The knot in Carr’s stomach moves into his chest. They pass the men’s room, and Carr makes an abrupt right turn.

  “I’ve got to make a pit stop,” he says, leaning on the bathroom door. “I’ll catch up at the elevators.” Carr pushes through, and as he does he sees the blonde’s face tighten with a look of annoyance.

  The bathroom is small and gray and smells of disinfectant. Carr runs water on his hands and dries them and listens to the blonde’s voice dwindle down the hallway. When it’s gone he throws away his paper towel, steps into the corridor, and turns left. He walks down the hall, turns a corner, and stops when he sees the conference room, and the man at the conference table, who is sporting a crew cut, a polo shirt, and vinyl gloves, carefully placing Carr’s drinking glass in a plastic evidence bag.

  At the elevators, Bessemer is sweating, and the blonde is checking her watch. Carr smiles as he approaches. “Sorry to hold things up,” he says, chuckling. “Too much club soda.”

  The blonde returns his smile and presses the elevator call button. “So we’ll see you Saturday, Mr. Frye? Mr. Bessemer?”

  Carr nods and puts out his hand. “You’ll be there too, Ms.…?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry—I never did make a proper introduction to you fellas. I’m Kathy Rink.”

  “A pleasure,” Carr says. “Are you Curtis’s assistant?”

  Kathy Rink smiles wider and laughs as she squeezes Carr’s hand. “Oh, no, Mr. Frye, I’m his head of security.”

  30

  “She’s ex-DEA,” Tina tells Carr, stirring the ice in her drink, but drinking nothing. “She left eighteen months back, after fifteen years there. Spent most of her time in the New Orleans district, in Shreveport and Baton Rouge, and her last three years down south, in Honduras. She came on about four weeks back, with a recommendation from one of Prager’s clients. Word is she’s still got plenty of friends in the agency.”

  “Shit,” Carr says. His voice is low and cold.

  They’re alone on the terrace of a bar perched over a cove, at a table by the wooden railing. The tide is rolling in, slapping at the rocks below and casting up a briny mist. Carr has nothing in front of him but the strips of a shredded cocktail napkin that are being carried away, one by one, on the wind.

  “That’s all I’ve got so far,” Tina says, “but I’m expecting another call.”

  “And is this call going to explain just what the fuck happened to your intel?”

  “I don’t like surprises any more than—”

  “It’s not your ass on the line.”

  Tina’s face is without expression and as white and still as carved bone. Her eyes are invisible behind her dark glasses, and her voice is without affect. “You want me to say it’s a fuckup? Fine—it’s a fuckup. You feel better now?”

  “No,” Carr says. He presses his fingers to his temples. “If Rink’s still got federal wiring, then Greg Frye won’t last. He’s not built for that. He’s good for a quick look-see—a criminal records check, or somebody trying to confirm that he and Bessemer were at Otisville together—but for somebody with fingerprints and access to AFIS …”

  Tina nods. “She’ll run right through Frye to you.”

  Carr looks down at the foam-covered rocks. “They took my prints when I applied, at every one of my interviews, on my first day at Langley, and a half dozen times afterward. Dennis is good, but he’s not good enough to scrub all that away.”

  Tina leans back and chews on her straw. “Your minders still around?”

  “We wouldn’t be meeting here if they were. They were with us to Prager’s office this morning, but not afterward, and they’re not at the hotel.”

  “You left Bessemer there?” Carr nods. “How’s he holding up?”

  “He was nervous before we met Rink; he’s bat-shit now. Bobby’s probably scraping him off the ceiling, if he hasn’t actually killed him yet.”

  “How’s Bobby doing?”

  “Pissed off, scared, ready to pack his bag.”

  And Bobby wasn’t the only one. After parking Bessemer in the suite and phoning Tina, Carr had arranged a conference call with Valerie, Bobby, Mike, and Dennis. His story of what happened at Prager’s office was met first with silence, and then angry, colliding voices. Bobby’s was the loudest and most poetic.

  “What the fuck? We pay Boyce for intel, and this is what we get—a steaming pile of dog shit? This is fucked, brother—up, down, and sideways—and I’m heading for the fucking airport.”

  Dennis had been slightly less noisy but no less upset, and Mike had done his yelling in Spanish. Only Valerie had been quiet, and Carr swore he could hear the gears turning in her h
ead.

  “Everybody else feel the same as Bobby?” Tina asks.

  “What do you expect? The boss doesn’t bring on a new security chief because he wants to keep things the same. So what we knew about Prager’s personal security, and what we could infer because of Silva, is all subject to change now. The same with Isla Privada’s network security, and even Amy Chun’s protection—all out the window. And I didn’t even tell them about the prints. Once they find out about that they won’t even bother to pack.”

  “So don’t tell them,” Tina says. She looks out at the ocean, and Carr watches the breaking waves in her black lenses. She tosses her straw into an ashtray. “Four weeks isn’t a lot of time in a new job,” she says. “It’s barely enough to figure out what changes you want to make, much less to make them.”

  Carr squints at her. “You think Rink hasn’t changed anything yet?”

  “She hasn’t even been there a month.”

  “That’s a fucking big maybe—and let me point out that we saw some changes today.”

  “We’d have to take a second look at things, of course—verify that nothing important has—”

  “And you think we’ll get it right on the second look? Or maybe the third? Come on, Tina.”

  She takes off her sunglasses. Her gray eyes catch the light and glitter like broken glass. “So your bag’s packed too, is that it? I just want to make sure I get it right for when Boyce asks me.”

  “I don’t know that there are any other options here.”

  “Bags packed—yes or no, Carr? ’Cause if it’s yes, I’ve got to get the accountants working on what you owe us. And by the way, I’m going to want those diamonds back, as a down payment.”

  “I’m not pulling out on a whim, Tina, or because I decided it was all just too much work. This is about the wheels falling off because of an intel fuckup. Your fuckup.”

  “No one’s arguing that, and trust me there’s a certain lazy bastard who has a date with the inside of an oil drum, but when Boyce asks me if I think this whole thing is irretrievably screwed, I’m going to tell him no.”