Carr opens the bedroom door and looks inside. Bessemer is a snoring mound in a landslide of pillows and blankets. A bottle of Bombay Sapphire lays on its side, on the end table. Carr closes the door. “The guy puts it away,” he says.
“More every day,” Mike says, and he stretches and scratches and wanders to the terrace doors. He looks out at the glowing pool and the gray ocean. “You want to watch that. He’s got to be upright for Prager.”
“He will be.” Carr walks to the bar and fishes in the little refrigerator for a Coke. “You’re good to stay the morning?”
Mike nods. “You think Dennis got anywhere last night?”
“We’ll find out.”
A new salesman appears on the screen, with a pitch about a moisturizer.
Mike points and laughs. “Should buy some of this shit for Bobby. Guy looked like Larry the Lobster when you brought him back.”
Carr nods. “I told him to use sunscreen.”
Which is a lie. Carr had watched as Bobby drank beer and grew ever more pink, but he had said nothing about getting burned. What he had done was make Bobby repeat his story several times more, and answer questions about Nando and Valerie.
About Nando, Bobby had said little, besides that Mike had kept in touch with him over the years, and that the fee Nando had charged for helping them launder money “wasn’t robbery.” About Valerie he’d said less.
“She’s never asked about the money, and I’ve never told her. If she knows something, she heard it from Mike.”
“Mike tell her a lot of secrets?” Carr had asked, and he’d gripped the canopy rail tight enough that his fingers ached.
“Fuck should I know?” Bobby had said, but he’d looked away.
A silence followed, during which Bobby drank another beer and Carr replayed his afternoon in Miami against the new backdrop Bobby had painted. It was Bobby who’d broken the silence, with a decorous belch and an observation.
“Mike won’t put that money in the pot.”
“I’ll save him the trouble—I’ll just deduct it from his cut. From yours too.”
“He won’t like it.”
“And how about you, Bobby?”
Bobby had shrugged. “I’m not crazy about it, but I wasn’t crazy about the sneaking around, either. I figure if we’re gonna do this job, then let’s get it done. I want this fucker over with. But that’s me—Mike’s another story.”
“I’m not going to lose a lot of sleep over it.”
“So, am I supposed to tell him about this, or what?”
“Do what you want, Bobby.”
It doesn’t seem to Carr that Bobby has yet told Latin Mike anything, though with Mike it wouldn’t necessarily be obvious. Maybe Bobby has been too busy tending his sunburn.
Bessemer is still asleep when Carr leaves the suite, and Mike is still on the sofa. Carr is careful on his way through the lobby, and watchful, but there is no reappearance of Kathy Rink’s men. The sky is painted pearl gray as he crosses the visitors’ parking lot, and already the day’s heat is building beneath it. There’s a rumble of thunder off to the east as he climbs into Mike’s SUV and drives away.
The workhouse is at the end of a quiet lane, on a canal that feeds into North Sound. It’s a stucco box in faded blue, with a tiled roof and plaster embellishments around the windows. From the street, Carr can see into the sandy backyard. There’s a metal dock there and the fishing boat is tied up alongside it. Dennis opens the door. A week on Grand Cayman and he’s paler and thinner than ever—a red-eyed, unshaved reed. He puts a finger to his lips.
“Bobby’s still crashed,” he says softly. Carr follows him in.
The main room is white and raftered, and the big front window has a view of unkempt hedges, milky sky, and planes angling toward the airport. The furnishings are a hodgepodge of hotel castoffs: fraying slipper chairs, sagging leather and chrome armchairs, water-stained end tables, and the ashtrays of a dozen defunct lounges. Dennis has three laptops open side by side on a chipped glass dining table, behind a stack of highspeed modems, coils of cable, and a platoon of empty soda cans.
“You want coffee?” he asks Carr. Carr nods and Dennis disappears into the kitchen, reappearing with a steaming mug.
Carr takes a drink. It’s bad. “When’s the last time you slept?” he asks.
Dennis’s smile is skewed and slightly goofy. “A while ago.”
“Hope you were doing more than just surfing porn sites.”
A blush spreads up Dennis’s neck. “Not just porn.”
Carr puts his coffee aside. “So what’s new in the virtual world of Isla Privada Holdings?”
“That’s a nontrivial question,” Dennis says, rubbing his chin and taking a seat before one of the laptops. Carr girds himself: Dennis gets pedantic when he’s tired, and he’s tired now. “Security on their VPN wasn’t totally stupid to begin with. I mean, aside from the happy gap we want to exploit, the multifactor authorization is pretty cute. And the rest of the stuff—it may be textbook, predictable, maybe even lazy, but it’s not totally stupid. It’s good enough, for instance, that if you look at it too hard—look actively, I mean, poke around too much—they’re going to know you’re there. And they’re going to poke back.” He looks up at Carr, his eyes shadowed but earnest. “We don’t want that.”
“We don’t,” Carr affirms.
Dennis opens four packs of sugar over his coffee mug, stirs with a pencil, sips at it, and smiles. “So, a nontrivial question—how do you look inside the box without taking the lid off? Not so easy, unless …” Dennis taps a forefinger lightly on his temple.
“Unless you’re you—I get it. So what’s changed?”
Dennis drinks more coffee. His fingers beat a droning drumroll on the tabletop. “A few things. They’ve upgraded their routers; they’ve implemented better filtering on inbound and outbound packets; and they’re scanning their servers better. Still textbook, but at least a more recent edition. In fact, if I was going to mount a denial-of-service attack on them, I might actually have to spend more than ten minutes planning it.”
“I didn’t think we cared about that stuff.”
“We don’t.”
Carr counts to ten and struggles to keep the impatience out of his voice. “What’s changed that we care about, Dennis?”
“For the moment, nothing—at least from what I see. The network access protocols and authorization layers are the same. The out-of-band component, to the user’s cell phone, is still in place. Last night, I walked through video of Chun as she was logging in yesterday, and I synchronized it with the sniffer logs. Everything looks the same.”
“And our gap?”
“From what I see, it’s still there. Once you pass through the authorization layers—the password generator, the thumbprint scan, the call back to the cell phone with a second password—and you get onto the network, access to Isla Privada’s processing system is by password alone. And there’s still no cross-check between the network access and processing system. So if I’ve got Curtis Prager’s processing system password, then that system thinks I’m Curtis Prager, and it lets me do everything Curtis Prager can do, even if I’ve gotten onto their network using Amy Chun’s ID.”
Carr sighs. Something loosens in his chest, but it tightens again when he looks at Dennis. “There are a lot of qualifiers in what you said, Dennis—‘for the moment,’ and ‘from what I see.’ They’re not particularly reassuring.”
Dennis’s fingers drum faster on the table. “They shouldn’t be. I can’t see too far into their network without hitting trip wires, but I’ve seen enough to know that their environment is changing. They haven’t fixed the hole that we want to climb through yet, but I’d say it’s just a matter of time.”
Carr sighs again, but there’s no relief in it. “How much time?”
Dennis shrugs. “Ask Kathy Rink.”
Tina’s hotel room overlooks a garden, with lavish beds of jacaranda, frangipani, and hibiscus massed around a weathered stone fo
untain. The garden is empty and the flowers are limp and restless in the humid breeze. Carr turns from the window.
“You should be smiling,” Tina says from the sofa. “It’s all good.”
“You call it good; I call it fucked up, though maybe not completely fucked up. Maybe not. There’s a difference.”
“Semantics.”
“Call it that when it’s your ass hanging out.”
Tina chuckles and unfolds herself from the sofa. She wears a simple gray skirt and a short black T-shirt, and her white-blond hair is pulled into a short ponytail. She pads barefoot across the room to refill a glass of ice water from a pitcher.
“Come on, Carr—the system stuff hasn’t changed, security’s tighter but still manageable, and your prints came back to Kathy Rink with Greg Frye’s record attached—and only his record: that’s good news.” Carr looks at her and raises an eyebrow. “What?” Tina says.
“I’m just wondering how you managed it—the fingerprints, I mean.”
“I didn’t.”
“Boyce, then.”
“I don’t ask, and he doesn’t tell.” She smiles at Carr but he doesn’t return it.
“This is more than just ordering off-menu—more than calling in a favor here and there. This is pulling some serious weight, and I have a hard time believing you don’t know shit about it.”
Tina returns to the sofa, folds her white legs beneath her, and smooths her skirt. “I know about gift horses, and where not to look.”
“I’m serious, Tina.”
“So am I. I’m not talking about this anymore, and if you’ve got half a brain you won’t either.” Her eyes are flat and icy and unwavering, and finally Carr turns back to the view of the garden. “How’s Bessemer holding up?” Tina asks.
“He’s pickling himself in gin.”
“He going to keep his shit together for Prager?”
“Mike was worried about the same thing. He will.”
“And Mike, and the rest of your crew—how’re they doing?”
Carr takes a deep breath and turns around. Tina’s eyes have lost some of their chill, and that makes it easier. “I found out what happened to Bertolli’s money,” he says, and he tells her about Bobby’s confession, and about the afternoon he spent in Miami, walking up and down Brickell Avenue. Tina is perfectly still; her face is without expression while Carr speaks and in the squirming silence that follows. Finally, she clasps her white hands together and puts them in her lap. Her voice is soft.
“Well, they’re busy beavers, aren’t they? Maybe you’re not giving them enough to do. Too much time on their hands.”
“I’m sure that was the issue.”
Tina frowns. “There’s plenty here for me to be pissed at—like the fact that I’m only just now hearing about this—but I’m doing my best to rise above it, and so should you.” Carr nods and Tina continues. “Assuming Bobby’s not full of shit, this explains where some of the money went—though not all of it.”
“Bobby said Declan had the rest. If he did, then it went up with his van.”
“Maybe. You buy that Bobby and Mike had only half the cash?”
“Why lie about that? He’s no more of a shithead for walking off with the whole take than he is for walking off with half of it.”
“Maybe,” she says again. “And what about tipping off Bertolli? You don’t think those two had anything to do with that?”
“I think Bobby was telling the truth about that.”
“And you’ve proven to be such a good judge.”
Carr bites back his first response and rubs his chin. “They sell Declan to Bertolli, they sell themselves in the bargain. They were all getting shot at together.”
“If you buy Bobby’s version of events.”
“What about your witness—Bertolli’s runaway gunman—did he have orders to shoot at only two out of four guys?”
Tina shakes her head. “Maybe Bobby and Mike were willing to roll the dice—warn Bertolli and take a chance that in the ensuing shit storm Declan would get iced and they could split with the cash.”
“That’s a hell of a chance, Tina. Takes large brass balls to make that bet, or a tiny little brain.”
Tina shrugs skeptically. “Mike and Bobby don’t fit that profile? Well, you’d know better than I.
“But what about Fernando—what the fuck is he doing with these guys? Last I heard he was slapping up condos in Cabo or something. Guess the real estate market’s driven him back to a life of crime.” She shakes her head. “And Valerie in on it too—who’d have guessed she couldn’t be trusted?” Tina looks at Carr and smiles thinly.
“I don’t know what she’s in on, or since when.”
“Ask her—I’m sure she’ll give you a straight answer.”
Carr looks at the garden again. The wind has picked up and the flowers are shaking their heads at the darkening sky. “You don’t think she would?”
Tina’s laugh is like a blade. “It’s what you think that matters. Do you trust her—do you trust any of them—to do their jobs? This late in the game, that’s what it comes down to: honor among thieves.”
“Fuck trust—I’ll have their money. They need me if they want to get paid.”
“Now that’s a working relationship,” Tina says, nodding. She shifts on the sofa, stretching out her legs. “And speaking of which—what about our little project down south?”
“What about it?”
“The unanswered questions—who tipped Bertolli, and what happened to the rest of the cash—you want to spend more money on them? Should I keep asking around?”
There’s a rumble of thunder outside, and fat drops of rain against the glass. The garden is dark, the flower beds a uniform gray.
“Keep asking,” Carr says.
* * *
The wind is gone and the rain falls straight and heavy; the short sprint from parking lot to lobby leaves Carr soaked. He shivers as he steps into the elevator and presses the fourth-floor button. He’s alone in the car and the door is nearly shut when a hand slides in and bumps it open again. And then Valerie is there, wet from the rain. She presses the button for three, waits for the door to close, and presses her mouth against his.
33
Howard Bessemer is a vision in seersucker: clear-eyed, pink-cheeked, hair slicked and shining—an altogether healthier vision than his recent diet should allow. He sits erect and alert in the passenger seat, scanning the approaching coast, the whitecaps, the immaculate sky, as Carr bears left off Frank Sound Road onto North Side Road. Bessemer’s window is down and his face is turned into the salt breeze, and he reminds Carr of a dog out for a ride.
“Day like today, you see why people move here,” Carr says.
Bessemer smiles. “Wait till you see Curt’s place. It’s not quite San Simeon, but it’s a hell of a spread.”
Carr nods. “Prager live there all by himself?”
“Him and the staff. Every now and then he sets up a girl in the guesthouse.”
“Girl as in girlfriend?”
“As in hooker,” Bessemer says, smirking. Carr lifts an eyebrow. “Always pricey, though. Very high-class.”
“No doubt,” Carr says.
They ride on in silence, Bessemer watching the sea, and Carr, despite their destination and the mounting tension, failing to keep his mind from the night before. Lack of sleep casts a dreamlike scrim over his memories of the evening—burnishing the images and shuffling their order.
Even from across the room, Valerie’s voice was close in his ear. “You want this job done, and so do I. I did what I had to do.”
Her hands were cold under his shirt. Her hair was wet and smelled like lilac and an airplane cabin.
“All I know about what happened down there is what Bobby and Mike told us. The first Mike said anything to me about euros was the day before we went to Miami.”
Her mouth tasted of airline wine, and it seemed to be everywhere at once.
“Bobby and Mike talked about Nando sometim
es, and so did Deke, but I never met him until that day in Miami.”
Her dress was wet, and it peeled away like a shedding skin. She left it in a pile beside the minibar.
“Amy’s gone for two days, up in New York. I’m booked on the first flight back to Boca tomorrow morning.”
Her legs were smooth and slick, and the hollows of her neck were full of rain.
“Mike was going to pull out of the job if I didn’t help him wash his money—and he was going to take Bobby with him.”
Her room was on the third floor, overlooking treetops and a loading dock. She kept the lights off and opened the drapes.
“Bobby told Mike that you knew, and Mike told me, and then I got on a plane down here. I didn’t want to talk to you about this on the phone.”
Her lips were searing.
“The e-mail from that coffee bar? That was to Nando. He said no cell phones—messaging only. He was superparanoid.”
In the dim light, her skin was like matte gold.
“That afternoon, with Mike, that was the only time. You want this job done, and so do I. I do what I have to, and I’m not going to apologize for it.”
The rain grew heavier, and it made a tearing sound as it fell through the leaves.
“Have you thought any more about afterward—where you want to go, what you want to do? ’Cause if you haven’t, I’ve got ideas.”
North Sound Road becomes Rum Point Drive, and Bessemer clears his throat. “We’re coming to it,” he says, and a surge of adrenaline drags Carr from his reverie.
Prager’s property announces itself to their right, with a wrought-iron fence and high, dense shrubs that obscure the ocean view. A while longer and they reach the gate.
It’s tall and steel and topped with cameras, and adjoined by a green pastel bungalow. There are two men inside and Carr recognizes one of them from the airport tail. The man comes out wearing a trained smile and a Glock on his hip. He’s carrying an iPad and Carr sees two pictures on the screen: his own and Bessemer’s. The guard glances at the photos and at them and rests a hand on the car roof.
“Mr. Frye, Mr. Bessemer, welcome. Mr. Prager will meet you at the main house. Just stay on this drive—you can’t miss it.” As he speaks, the gate opens and he steps aside and waves them in.
Thick as Thieves Page 22
