Thick as Thieves

by Peter Spiegelman

  The drive is crushed shell and it’s bordered by close-cut lawns and ironwood trees sculpted by the constant winds. It curves gently west and rises up a hillside that he knows, from the broader topography, must be man-made. Another curve and they’re at the top, where the drive empties into a wide circle of pavers, set in a herringbone pattern. There’s a fountain in the center, marble, pale pink, like the inside of a baby’s ear. A marble fish stands on its tail within, and the braid of water falling from its mouth makes a prosperous sound. Across the circle is the house.

  Its architectural pedigree is indeterminate—an uneasy hybrid of Italianate, Spanish Colonial, and Georgian—with big the only unifying principle. Beneath the tiled roof, its stone walls are yellow—goldenrod in the main parts, going to a butter color for the arched colonnades and the ornament work around the windows and doors. There is a portico in front, and two glossy black doors. They stand open, and Curtis Prager is in the threshold, in sandals, linen trousers, and a pale pink polo shirt. Kathy Rink is at his side, in a green golf skirt and with a smile fastened on her face.

  Carr glances at Bessemer, who is smiling oddly and humming softly, tunelessly. Carr wonders if he’s taken something. “Shit,” Carr whispers, but when he pulls up to the portico, Bessemer sharpens.

  Bessemer is out of the Toyota before Carr has switched off the engine, a big smile and a big hand extended. There’s a clumsy hug and biceps squeezing, and then Prager holds Bessemer at arm’s length. He’s taller than Carr expected, with more ropy muscle on him. He seems to dwarf Bessemer.

  “Jesus, Bess, you look like shit. What the hell have you been doing to yourself?”

  Bessemer grins and ducks his head almost shyly. “Just the usual misdemeanors. But what about you—you keep a special portrait in the attic, or something? Drinking pints of virgin’s blood? You look twenty years younger.”

  “Virgin’s blood.” Prager laughs. “That’s the pot calling the kettle. I just do a day’s work once in a while, and then I get on a tennis court or in a boat. Get some oxygen in my blood, instead of pure ethanol.”

  Prager claps Bessemer on the shoulder once more, and Bessemer ducks his head again, and it occurs to Carr that he’s witnessing a sort of theater: an imitation of camaraderie, an acting out of Bessemer’s subordination. He’s not sure who the intended audience is. Maybe himself. Maybe they do it for each other.

  There’s a final lockjaw laugh, and Prager turns to Carr. His eyes, in his lined, brown face, are the color of sleet. His hand is cool and wiry. “And you must be Mr. Frye—at long last. Sorry for the scheduling screwup, but this week has been one fire drill after the other.”

  “There are worse places to kill time,” Carr says. “And call me Greg.”

  Prager nods. “I’m Curt. Now, I hope you’ll bear with me a bit longer, Greg, before we sit down.” He looks at Kathy Rink, who looks inside the house and beckons.

  Two men appear, both stocky with crew cuts, one holding something that looks like an old-fashioned walkie-talkie. He smiles politely and approaches Bessemer, while his partner waits, eight feet off.

  “Mr. Bessemer, if you could spread your feet apart and hold your arms straight out from your sides, I’ll sweep you down real quick. Mr. Frye, you’ll be next.”

  There are platters of shrimp, crab legs, and scallops on crushed ice, a tureen of ceviche, bowls of gazpacho, frosted pitchers of iced tea, and plates of sliced fruit, all on a linen-covered table, under a wide awning. Beyond the awning, there are trees with songbirds in them, and a hillside descending in terraces to the beach and the swaying sea.

  “Kathy insists on a frisk,” Prager says, smiling across the table at Carr and Bessemer. “Personally, I think she likes it.”

  Rink smiles just as brightly. “It’s what you pay me for, Curt, and I’m sure Mr. Frye—Greg—understands.”

  Carr nods and raises a glass of iced tea. “I’m all for hobbies.”

  Howard Bessemer squeezes a lemon wedge over his plate. “That other fellow you had—what was his name—he never saw the need to have me felt up.”

  Carr watches over his glass as Rink seeks out Prager’s eye, and Prager nods to her minutely. “See what you were missing?” Prager says, and he dips a shrimp in red sauce and eats it.

  “When it comes to security, Howie, it’s smart to change things up now and then,” Carr says. “Otherwise your boys get stale.” He looks out at the ocean, the sand, two patrolling guards; then he looks at Prager. “Your private island?”

  Prager smiles. “Not an island, but private.”

  “It’s nice, but don’t you miss home?” he asks Prager. “The States, I mean.”

  Prager eats another shrimp. “This is home to me. It’s the only place I miss.”

  “But there’s no issue with you going back stateside?”

  “I go back when I need to,” Prager says. “And what about you, Greg? And you are Greg today, right—not Glenn Freed, or Gary Frain, or Craig Farley? Is Boston still your base, Greg, or are you resettling in Palm Beach?”

  Carr knows he’s supposed to be impressed that Prager knows Greg Frye’s aliases, and intimidated, and he lets his face tighten. “I do business in a lot of places. People come to me if they need to, and they don’t seem to care much where I am or what I call myself, as long as I meet my obligations. Palm Beach is okay, though. The real estate market’s still plenty soft.”

  Kathy Rink pats her mouth with a linen napkin. “That what you’re doin’ there, Greg, bottom-feeding?”

  “That’s real estate, right? Making money off somebody else’s stupidity. Or their shit luck.”

  “Too true,” Prager says approvingly. “But property’s just a sideline for you, isn’t it? I mean, you didn’t come to talk to me about mortgage financing?”

  “I need a banker. And maybe it’s possible a banker could need me.”

  Prager’s smile is indulgent. “They always need customers, otherwise they’d have no business. But strictly speaking, I’m not a banker, Greg—I run a holding company. And I don’t have customers, per se, I have investors—typically, quite large ones. That said, Isla Privada does own several financial institutions in Florida. If you need an account set up, I’m sure we can help you out.”

  Carr spears a fat scallop on his fork. He dips it in a dill sauce and pops it whole into his mouth. “I really like your paranoia, Curt,” he says, chuckling. “But it’s a fucking conversation killer. Would it help if she pats me down some more? Maybe a cavity search?”

  Kathy Rink’s laugh is throaty and loud. “Can it wait till after lunch?”

  Carr winks at her and looks at Prager. “I think you have some idea what I do, and what I’m looking for. I came here to do business, not to hang out by the pool or tiptoe around.”

  Prager shrugs. “As I told Bess, I’m happy to listen. But doing business is something different, Greg. The truth is, I don’t know you from Adam.”

  “Howie’s not a good reference?”

  “You’re here only because of his introduction. But with all due respect to Bess—and he knows I love him—an introduction is not quite the same as a reference. Bess doesn’t actually do business with you, whatever that business is—he can’t vouch for you that way. So you don’t come with the same kind of pedigree most of my new clients come with.”

  “The fingerprints didn’t tell you enough?”

  Prager glances at Rink. “They tell names and dates and places, Greg,” Rink says. “Which could add up to somebody interesting, or could be somebody who’s a little vulnerable.”

  “Vulnerable to what?” Carr asks.

  “To being squeezed.”

  “Squeezed? By who?”

  Rink chuckles. “It’s a long fucking list of acronyms. We’ll run out of daylight before I get through ’em all.”

  Carr smiles and works some incredulity into his voice. “You think I’m a cop?”

  Prager smiles back. “I don’t know enough about you to think anything at all, Greg. That’s why, for n
ow, it’s better that I just sit and listen. If what you have to say is interesting, I may decide to spend the time and money to find out more about you—pretty much all there is to know. If not, we will have had a pleasant lunch and we’ll say good-bye.”

  Howard Bessemer partly stifles a belch. He looks at Carr and shrugs. “I think that’s your cue, Greg.”

  34

  They leave Bessemer with the remains of lunch, and they walk as Carr talks—he and Prager in the lead, Kathy Rink trailing. It’s a slow saunter around the grounds, and they stop occasionally to admire the horticulture or the view, but throughout, Prager and Rink maintain a careful silence. No questions, no comments, not even a sigh. Carr has waited a long time to make this pitch, and he knows Frye’s business as well as Frye himself might, if he weren’t fictional.

  “It’s a simple operation: I’m basically a middleman, a wholesaler. I buy stones in quantity—sometimes large quantities, sometimes smaller lots—and I resell them to other middlemen, or to retailers. The nature of my suppliers is such that I pay significantly discounted prices, so I can offer merchandise to my buyers at a price point way below other wholesalers, and still maintain a very fat margin. As you’d expect, it’s a cash business, end to end: my suppliers want only cash, and I take only cash from my buyers.

  “I started out regional—the Boston area, and New England—but, my trip to Otisville aside, I’m good at what I do and I’ve been successful. I can handle quantity in a hurry in either direction—buying or selling—and I can ship it, so now I’ve got suppliers and buyers all over the United States and abroad. Like I said before, they come to me, and I can do business anywhere. I keep my overheads low, in part by contracting whatever services I need—security, transpo, storage, whatever—so, no employees. I spend a few months here, a few months there, but I’m based pretty much nowhere, and that’s how I like it.

  “I figure my banking needs are nothing new to you. I’ve got cash to move, and to put on deposit somewhere—with somebody who’s not going to file a whole lot of paper. I want to invest what I deposit—build a diversified portfolio, nothing too aggressive, but with some international exposure. China definitely, maybe India—we can talk about it. And I need someone who can help me repatriate my assets—give them a boring history, something I can pay taxes on, though not too much. But something that’ll stand up to an audit. And of course I want access—cash on demand, wherever I happen to be, in the States or abroad.

  “In terms of quantity, I’ve got ten bucks I’d want to place up front, and I’d be looking to place maybe two bucks a month afterward. Maybe more sometimes.”

  Carr pauses as they approach Prager’s pink guesthouse, waiting for some reaction but getting none. The guesthouse has a wall of French windows on the ocean side that open on to a patio. There are two tables there, with umbrellas and chairs, and Prager sits in one and watches the surf unfurl. Rink sits next to him and looks at Carr, who continues.

  “What’s different about my setup—where maybe there’s an opportunity to work with somebody like you—are my buyers overseas. I have a lot of them—in Europe, Latin America, Asia, all over—a whole network of gray market independents. And all they do, all day long, is buy and sell stones—for local currency, for euros, for dollars, for pretty much whatever you want. Cash goes out, diamonds come in; cash comes in, diamonds go out—all day long, and no questions asked. And they all know how to ship.”

  Carr pauses again, waiting for a response. And he gets one, after a fashion: Prager looks at him for a long while and raises an eyebrow before he stands and strolls away. Carr follows, and Kathy Rink follows him. They pass a greenhouse and a low cinder-block building painted the same pink as the guesthouse. It’s the size of a two-car garage, and it has a tin roof and roll-down metal door. The door is open, and two young black men are inside, talking, laughing, and doing something with the gardening equipment ranged around the walls. They fall silent as Prager passes. The path curves toward the beach again, and when they hit the sand, Carr continues.

  “Stones are a lot easier to move than bulk cash,” Carr continues, “and a whole lot harder to trace. They’re easier to store and secure, and easy to convert to cash when you need to—especially with a network like mine at your disposal. How much simpler does your operation become if you don’t have to worry about moving cash—if you can move diamonds instead? Or better yet—if somebody is moving the diamonds for you? How much does that improve your margins? And how much more can you charge your clients for access to this kind of network?”

  Carr finishes as they climb the stairs that lead from the beach to a vast blue swimming pool. They cross flagstones, headed toward more glass doors. Carr sees Bessemer, still at the table under the awning. Bessemer raises a hand in salute, and Carr waves back and looks for cameras, remembering where they’re mounted, figuring the blind spots. The three remain silent as they go into the house, down a paneled hallway, past what looks like a wine cellar, and up a flight of stairs.

  At the top of the stairs, past a study, a game room, a music room, through an atrium, and down another paneled corridor, is Prager’s office. It’s white and glass, minimally furnished in an aggressively modern style—a monk’s cell with Barcelona chairs, a pair of Rothkos on the wall, and a view of palm trees and a Caribbean garden. Prager takes a seat behind a brushed aluminum desk that looks like a knife blade and that is bare but for a laptop, a large, wafer-thin monitor, and a phone. Rink takes one of the guest chairs. Carr takes the other and tries not to look at the laptop or at the thumbprint scanner plugged into it. Prager clasps his hands behind his head, leans back in his chair, and sighs.

  “You’re a guy off the street, Greg. Yes, you know Bess, and you have a little story to tell, but basically you’re a guy off the street.” Prager says it quietly, with a faint smile that is almost regretful. Carr says nothing.

  “You could be a big deal, or a big waste of time,” Kathy Rink says. “Or you could be something worse than a waste of time. How’re we supposed to know?”

  Carr shakes his head. “I’m confused. Are you saying no, or that you want to know more?”

  It’s Rink who answers. “Maybe he’s saying you haven’t sold him yet.”

  Carr shrugs and looks at Prager. “I’m not a salesman. It seems to me you’re either interested or you’re not.”

  “I don’t know if I’m interested,” Prager says. “I don’t know if you’re anything besides talk.”

  Carr lets a silence descend, and then he nods his head. “How about I get something from the car?”

  Prager nods to Kathy Rink, who picks up a phone. In a moment a crew cut appears. “Take Mr. Frye to his car, and then bring him back,” Rink says. “Anything he brings with him gets scanned.”

  The crew cut leads Carr out. When they return, Carr is carrying a slim metal attaché case.

  “You checked it?” Rink asks, and the crew cut nods and leaves. Carr places the case on the desk and turns it so that the latches face Prager.

  “I take it I’m supposed to open this,” Prager says, and Carr nods. Kathy Rink comes around the desk to stand beside her boss. Prager looks at her and she lifts the lid.

  Prager is silent for a moment, and then smiles thinly. “Very dramatic, Greg. They for real?”

  “You expect me to say they’re not? But I’m going to leave them with you, so you can check them out yourself.”

  “How much is here?”

  “In carats or in dollars?”

  “Dollars.”

  “Loose like that—three bucks, plus or minus. A lot more when you turn them into earrings and bracelets. But I figure you’ll check that too.”

  “This a big lot for you?”

  “Nope.”

  Prager leans back and sighs again. “So you’re a guy off the street with a story and props—albeit, expensive props.”

  “Which makes me more worried, not less,” Rink says. “Not many folks can afford this kind of window dressing. Assuming they’re even for real
.”

  Carr reaches across the desk and closes the attaché case. “I guess this is where I say thanks for lunch.”

  Prager puts a hand on the lid. “If you were in my shoes, would you do it differently?”

  “It would depend on how much I wanted your business,” Carr says.

  “The dollar amounts you’re talking about are rounding error,” Prager says, shaking his head. “Not even that.”

  “Then I guess it would depend on how interested I was in access to this network—what kind of problems it could solve for me, what kind of new revenue streams it could bring.”

  “And if you were interested?”

  “I’d ask you to open your kimono—at least a little.”

  Kathy Rink clears her throat and frowns. Prager ignores her and nods slowly. “And if I ask?”

  Carr rubs his chin and looks at Prager. “Open the briefcase. Look in the lid pocket.”

  Prager lifts the lid and lowers it again. He holds a black flash drive between thumb and forefinger. “What’s this supposed to be?”

  “My kimono,” Carr says.

  35

  Carr walks into the suite, and Latin Mike and Bobby look at him like children at a Christmas tree. Bobby’s face is red and peeling. “Did he take it?”

  Carr closes the door behind Bessemer and nods. “He took everything. When I left, the jump drive was sitting on his desk, right next to his computer.”

  Latin Mike sighs. Bobby smiles and puts out a fist. Mike taps it lightly. “So now we wait,” Bobby says.

  “We’ll know as soon as it’s plugged into anything with an Internet connection,” Carr says.

  “When what gets plugged in?” Bessemer asks from behind the bar.

  “Gotta be the next day or two,” Mike says, ignoring him. “He’s got that party next weekend, and afterward he’s on his road trip.”

  “Prager invited us to the party,” Carr says. “I want to be far away by then.”