Carr laughs coldly. “You did it for love?”
“You sound shocked.”
“I expect cynicism from you, not delusion.”
Declan’s smile is tired. “Not a believer, lad?”
“In a love that has you killing your own? I don’t call that love.”
“You think it’s all paper hearts and stolen kisses? You’re not that young, Carr. You’ve read a book or two.”
Carr sighs. “I hope she’s worth it.”
Declan laughs bitterly. “Too soon to tell, lad,” he whispers.
Then the bedroom door opens, and Tina walks through. She’s wearing fatigue pants, a black T-shirt, a black plastic holster under her left arm, and another on her right hip. Her platinum hair—longer now—is tied in a tight braid. She slams a clip into a Glock as she crosses the living room, and slides the gun into her shoulder holster.
She shakes her head in disgust. “If I have to listen to much more of this, I won’t wait for Boyce to shoot me. I’ll do it myself.”
50
There is heat in Carr’s face again, and a rushing sound in his ears, and the feelings that eluded him with Declan come surging back now. He looks at the Taurus on the table, and has to make a fist to stop himself from reaching for it.
“Long time, Tina,” he says.
She purses her lips. “Not long enough, if you know what I mean,” she says, and looks at Declan. “You pat him down?”
“Jaysus, girl, he’s not come here to throw down. If that’s what he wanted, he’d have done it already.”
“That’s your view. Pat him down.”
Declan rolls his eyes and puts up his hands in mock despair. “Indulge her, lad,” he says. Carr stares at Tina for a moment, and then he stands and puts his palms on the table and spreads his legs. Declan is quick and thorough, and there’s only the slightest hesitation when his fingers find the mic taped between Carr’s shoulders. He smiles at Carr and looks at Tina. “Like a baby,” he says.
Tina goes to the kitchen window and looks up the hill. Then she turns to Carr. “Great. Now if you two are through catching up, we can—”
“Not quite through,” Carr says softly.
“What, more questions? Let me guess—Valerie?”
“I want to know what happened to her.”
Declan coughs nervously. “Come on, lad, you—”
Tina cuts him off. “He knows what happened to her. He knows.”
Carr nods slowly, as his chest tightens. “It was at Chun’s place?”
“She never saw it coming, if that makes you feel better. And it was clean. And fast.”
The floor is shifting beneath him and Tina’s voice is faint. Carr sits down again, carefully. Declan is staring at the floor, and Tina is back at the window. “I shouldn’t have let Chun see it happen, though,” she continues. “That was a mistake. The woman went fucking ape-shit—put up a hell of a fight.”
“Where?” Carr says. His voice is small and choked. “Where is she?”
“Valerie? Burial at sea, due east of the Boca Beach Club, four miles out or so. I don’t know the GPS coordinates or anything.”
The room seems to darken, and Carr’s knees shake. “Christ,” he whispers, and he closes his eyes and there is Valerie in Napa, the candlelight on her arms and neck, her hair coming loose from its braid, her smile. And there she is in Portland, the dying orange light on her face, her hands cold under his shirt. Maybe that’s what we’ll do afterward, you and me. We’ll conduct a little research to find some happy couples. We’ll be like archaeologists. And there is her amber voice, close in his ear, intimate. Afterward. And there is the weight of her, above him, the heat of her body washing over him. Carr’s chest aches, and his bones are lead.
“Regret’s a bitch,” Tina says from somewhere far off. “You spent all that time wondering about her, but she wasn’t lying to you. You ask me, I think she liked you. She put up with your whining, which was more than I—”
“Stop talking,” Carr says. He is surprised to find himself on his feet, his chair overturned. He wants the Taurus, but Declan has a hand over it and is shaking his head.
Tina looks at Carr. “At last, something we agree on: enough fucking talk. How many men out there?”
“Too many,” Carr says.
“I count seven,” Tina says. “Am I right?”
Declan chuckles. “You planning on a war, love?”
“I’m not planning to go anyplace with Boyce.”
“Darlin’, I think they’ve got us fair and square.”
Tina crosses her white arms on her chest. “The hell they do. We’ve got Carr. If they want him back in one piece, they’ll let us walk.”
Carr’s laugh is jagged and loud. “You think anyone on earth cares if I’m in one piece?”
“You better hope Boyce does,” Tina says. “Otherwise this is going to be a mess, and you’ll be the first stain.” And she slips the Glock from her shoulder holster and points it at Carr.
Declan laughs. “We have a better negotiating position than that, girl. Boyce wants his money, for chrissakes, and recovery’s easier with us than without. In fact, it’s impossible without us.”
Tina’s mouth puckers in disgust. “You think I’m going to deal away my money?”
“It’s not just your money.”
“Whatever.”
Declan smiles and walks around the table. He puts a hand on Tina’s shoulder. “I like to mix it up as much as the next fellow, but it’s nice when there’s at least the ghost of a chance. You know Boyce as well as I do, love. He leaves no daylight.”
Tina shakes off his hand. “You are a fucking old woman. After all that work, the time we put in, all the goddamn bridges we burned—you’re ready to deal it away? Well, I’m not.” She turns the Glock on Carr again. “How many men out there?”
“I forget.”
Declan’s smile is unwavering. “Who says we have to deal it all away? That’s what negotiation is about. I’m sure Boyce will agree, recovering some money is better than recovering none at all.” He puts his hand out again.
She steps back and keeps her gun on Carr. There are pink spots on her cheeks, the first time Carr has ever seen color there. His mouth is dry and he looks again for the Taurus, but he can’t see it on the table.
Tina shakes her head at Declan. “You’re mister diplomat now? Sure, Boyce might negotiate—and then he’ll hose us once he has the cash. And then where will we be? I’m getting tired of asking, Carr—how many fucking men?”
“Two. Four. A hundred. Go out and count them yourself.”
Declan drapes a big arm on her shoulder. “We’ll still be alive, love. Even a shit deal is better than dead.”
Tina ducks from beneath his arm and draws the second Glock from her hip. “The hell it is. If you think I’m—”
Declan hits her with the Taurus on the side of the head, and Tina crumples to the floor. He kicks her guns away, kneels beside her, and checks her breathing and her pulse. Then he slides all three guns across the tiles to Carr. “Better than dead,” he says, and he picks Tina up and carries her to the sofa.
Boyce and five of his men are on the patio when Carr opens the door. The men go inside. Carr hands Boyce the guns. “You hear it?” Carr asks.
“I heard. I’m sorry about Valerie.”
“So am I,” Carr says, swallowing hard. “It wasn’t a surprise, but …”
“Knowing it is different.”
Carr leans heavily against a whitewashed wall, dizzy for a moment in the morning air. “You’ll deal with the money?”
Boyce nods. “Why don’t you sit down?”
Carr waves him off. “I’m fine.”
Boyce looks at him for a moment and then puts out a massive hand. They shake and Boyce goes inside, and Carr walks through a gate in the stone fence and down to the beach.
He keeps walking until the sand is firm beneath his feet, and then he stops and watches the ocean, and the waves unfurling. The stray he’d seen a
t dawn is back, rolling and splashing in a tidal pool. His coat is heavy with water, glistening like a seal’s, and he’s holding a piece of driftwood in his mouth. A boy comes down the beach now, with a leash and a yellow tennis ball. The boy whistles; the dog attends. Not a stray then. Carr looks north and sees a lighthouse in the distance. He thinks about walking there, but finds that he’s kneeling in the sand and that he cannot move.
Epilogue
It is February, and Stockbridge lies under a blanket of new snow. The storm that spread it moved on before dawn, and the morning sky is blue and painfully bright. Carr wears sunglasses to shovel and salt the drive, the front steps, and the stone walk out to the mended gate, and he keeps them on while he drinks a cup of coffee on the porch and watches a town plow throw pillars of snow into the air. When his coffee is gone, he stacks bales of newspaper into his pickup—yet another load for the recycling center. The bed is nearly full when a black Mercedes pulls into the drive. Carr pushes his sunglasses into his hair and takes off his gloves.
A liveried driver walks carefully around the car and opens the rear door. Mr. Boyce emerges, too large to have ever fit inside. He squints in the glare, turns up the collar of his black overcoat, and smiles.
“I thought I might be too early,” Boyce says. His deep voice is somehow muffled in the snow.
“I’m up with the chickens,” Carr says. “But I wasn’t expecting visitors.”
“I thought I’d tell you in person that the money’s finally settled.”
“About time.”
“Declan doesn’t make anything easy.”
Carr nods and crosses his arms on his chest. “Tell me the final numbers.”
“After expenses, et cetera, the recovery netted seventy-eight five, of which a third stays with me, and two-thirds—that’s fifty-two million and change—goes to you. Per your instructions, ten of that goes to Bessemer’s kid—”
“Simon.”
“To Simon Bessemer, of Boothbay Harbor, Maine; another five to Maureen Shepherd, of Eugene, Oregon—Dennis’s mother; and five more to Elaine Geller, of Bethpage, Long Island—Bobby’s sister.”
“What about Mike?”
“There might be an aunt in San Diego. We’re still looking.”
“And Valerie?”
Boyce shakes his head. “Daniel Finch and Dawn Schaffer—the mother went back to her maiden name—both deceased, no siblings.”
Carr lets out a breath that hangs in the air like a ghost. “Finch,” he says quietly, “that was her name? Valerie Finch?”
“Anne Finch,” Boyce says. “That was her real name. Anne Elizabeth Finch.”
Carr swallows hard and stares for a while at a snow-covered fir. “Her parents … do you know where they’re buried?”
“In Texas, at a place near Austin.”
“Both of them, in the same place?”
“Same place. Why?”
“I want to get something—a stone or something—near her parents. Could you—”
Boyce nods. “What do you want on it?”
“Just her name,” Carr says.
The plow passes again, going in the other direction, and the chains sound to Carr like sleigh bells. He and Boyce watch as it recedes down the road, and then Boyce takes an envelope from his coat.
“It’s a statement,” he says. “It lays out the recovery, the expenses, the split—everything.”
“What about the tax situation?”
“That too. You’re square there—with the feds and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts—all documented and paid up, as far as they’re concerned.”
“Thanks,” Carr says, and tucks the envelope in his back pocket. “And thanks for the courier service.”
“I figured I’d see for myself how you’re doing.”
Carr shrugs. “I’m still racking up the frequent-flyer miles at the dump and the recycling center, and they throw rose petals at my feet at the hardware store.”
“How’s your dad?”
“Some days he reads to me from the FT, other days I read to him, and then there are the days he craps his pants. It’s up and down, but the general trend is down. He’s dying.”
Boyce nods gravely. “And the help situation?”
“A new one started Monday. She’s a few years out of nursing school, worked in a dementia unit, over in Springfield. Nice kid, very eager. I figure she’ll last two weeks.”
“Say the word, and I’ll have Margie back tomorrow. She did fine with him before, and it would give you a break for a while. A little time to do something else.”
“Something else?”
“I’ve always got something else that needs doing.”
“I have my hands full here,” Carr says.
“Any thoughts about what you might do … afterward?”
Carr tenses at the word. “Not a one.”
“A man’s got to do something.”
“Maybe not. I’ve got a lot of money now.”
“I don’t see you as the idle type.”
“I just need some practice.”
Boyce smiles and shakes his head. “You sure about Margie—about taking a break? This sort of thing … it can be long, and none of it is easy.”
Carr shrugs again. “He’s my father.”
Mr. Boyce nods and grips Carr’s hand. He walks to his car, and the driver comes around to get the door. Boyce pauses and turns back to Carr. “You never ask about them—about Declan and Tina. Not once.”
“There’s nothing I want to know,” Carr says, and Mr. Boyce folds himself into his Mercedes and is driven away.
Carr brings his coffee mug inside. The front hall is warm and smells of soap and floor wax and fresh paint, and the living room smells of apple wood from the fire he built the night before. He raises the shades and white winter light pours in and pools on every polished surface—the floorboards, the andirons, the silver bowl on the mantel, the silver frames atop the gleaming black piano.
The frames are empty still—the photographs of Carr’s parents lost in Prager’s toolshed, or in the storm, or maybe to the sea—and the glass panes are like black windows. Arthur Carr has assured him that there are other photos of them—just as damned blurry—in a box somewhere in the attic, but Carr has yet to look. It’s freezing up there now, and there are dozens of boxes to search, and Carr knows that in these matters his father is not reliable.
Carr straightens the frames on the piano, carries his coffee mug to the kitchen, and raises every window shade along the way.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Spiegelman is a veteran of more than twenty years in the financial services and software industries and has worked with leading financial institutions in major markets around the globe. Mr. Spiegelman is the author of Black Maps, which won the 2004 Shamus Award for Best First Novel; Death’s Little Helpers; and Red Cat. He lives in Connecticut.
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