Peter Spiegelman - Thick as Thieves

“He’s no genius, but he’s no walk-in either. Our friends worked hard to turn him up, and they spent some money too. He was hiding out in B.A. Seems he’d had a falling-out with his crew chief up in Mendoza. Something about the chief’s sister.”

“And your friends believed him?”

“I did too.”

“You spoke to him?”

Tina nods. “Went down there last week.”

A jagged white line lights the horizon, and the afterimage flares behind Carr’s eyes. He takes a long pull on his beer. “Two million euro,” he says. “Maybe it burned with Declan’s van.”

“I asked about that. This guy said Bertolli had them sifting through the wreckage, looking for some trace. They didn’t find one.”

“There wasn’t much left of that van,” Carr says.

“If you say so.”

Carr turns to look at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Tina keeps her gaze on the horizon. “You’re the one had eyes-on. You were at the salvage yard; you were at the morgue. I wasn’t.”

“Eyes-on,” he mutters, and the traces of lightning vanish from beneath his lids, replaced by twisted metal, blistered paint, melted upholstery, charred, fire-stiffened limbs, blackened flesh, and naked, shattered bone. And the smell, even days after, even in the air-conditioned bays of the city morgue… It comes over him in a wave, and the beer in his gut threatens to erupt.

“You okay?” Tina asks.

“That van was like a fucking shell crater. I’m not surprised they didn’t find anything. They blew the hell-”

“Yeah, that’s another thing,” Tina says, cutting him off. “According to this guy they didn’t run Declan off the road. According to him, they were hauling ass on Highway Seven, but Declan got way out in front. They lost sight of his van for like twenty minutes. They were thinking about turning around when they saw a flash up ahead of them, and a column of smoke. The van was wrecked and burning on the roadside when they got there, but they didn’t see it happen.”

“I saw the bullet holes-in the rear bumper, in the side panels. As twisted up and black as everything was, you could still see those.”

“He didn’t say they weren’t firing at it-in fact, he said they chewed its tail up pretty good-he just said they didn’t force it off the road.”

Carr shakes his head, steps away from the window. “Am I supposed to make something of that? He said they shot up the van. Maybe it blew a tire. Maybe the gas tank was leaking and there was a spark. So Bertolli’s men weren’t around to see it go up-so what?”

Tina perches on an arm of the sofa and draws a knee up under her chin. She examines her toenails, which are perfectly manicured and glazed white. When she looks back at Carr, her gray eyes are as steady as ever. Her voice is vaguely amused. “A girl can’t win with you. You bitch when we don’t turn up anything, and you bitch when we do. You make what you want out of it, I’m just telling you what I’ve found.

“We’re looking at this only because you said you wouldn’t go on with the Prager gig otherwise-and it’s the only reason Boyce agreed to split the costs with you. You don’t like how we’re going about things, you don’t want to hear what we learn-that’s cool. He’s got other ways to spend his money, and I’ve got other ways to spend my time.”

Carr looks at her for a long minute, and then smiles. “And here we were getting along so well.”

She shrugs. “Honeymoons never last.”

Carr sits at the other end of the sofa and puts his beer on the floor. “Two million euro. If it didn’t burn in the van, and Bertolli’s boys didn’t pocket it themselves-”

“I seriously doubt that. Bertolli’s got them terrified.”

“Then where did it go?”

“I figured you’d have a theory.”

“Your guy didn’t see anyone else out there? No cars, no trucks?”

“I asked a few different ways; he said no. But it’s remote as hell up there, with lots of twists and turns, and fucking dark. Somebody running without lights… who knows?”

Carr reaches for his beer, and looks through the brown glass at the dregs that remain. “Two million euro-it’s not pocket change.”

“Nope,” Tina says. “Maybe you want to ask your boys if they’ve seen it lying around.”

Carr drains the bottle. The beer is warm and mostly froth, and he nearly gags getting it down. He shakes his head at Tina. “I don’t want to,” Carr says, “but I will.”

Bobby calls in the morning, to say that Bessemer has broken his routine.

“He’s playing tennis with Stearn today-just the two of them, no Brunt. And they’re having lunch afterward. That’s new and different for a Thursday.”

Carr’s head is like bad fruit, but he drags himself to a sitting position and tells Bobby he’ll meet him in an hour. He raises the shades and squints into the milky sky. Then he stumbles to the shower, where the blast of water hurts, and then helps.

Carr finds street parking and meets Bobby in the alley behind the Barton Golf and Racquet Club. Bobby has traded the painter’s van for a gray sedan. He has the AC on and the cold air is like a second shower. Bobby is drinking a blue slushie from a plastic cup the size of a sap bucket.

“Howie’s jumpy today. He got that way when Brunt called, and told him it was just going to be Howie and Stearn on the tennis court. Got more that way when Stearn called to invite him for lunch after.”

“Stearn makes him nervous?”

“Haven’t seen them alone together much, but I think so. He lets him win at tennis. Double-faults if he’s about to beat the guy.”

“He does the same with Brunt, and he lets those other guys beat him at golf. That’s Howie’s thing. We know what Stearn does for a living?”

“Rich and retired, like most of Howie’s friends. Denny tells me he was over in London for twenty-plus years, with an American bank-a portfolio manager or something. Got fired in a merger, and came here after that. On a couple of boards around town-the hospital, the art museum. On the board of a prep school, up north.”

“He married?”

“Wife spends the summer in Maine. Kids are grown.”

“Nothing obvious that would make Howie nervous.”

“Come on, the guy looks like some kind of zombie scarecrow. He makes me a little tense.”

Stearn wins the second set when Bessemer double-faults, and the men sling their racquet bags and walk to the clubhouse. Bobby pulls the car around and they follow Bessemer’s BMW as it follows Stearn’s Mercedes from the Barton.

Lunch isn’t far. They travel south from the Barton, then east, then south again, on South Ocean Boulevard. Carr and Bobby are a hundred yards back when the Mercedes and then the BMW pull through the black iron gates of Willis Stearn’s estate. Driving past the entrance, Carr catches a glimpse of lawns like carpet and, in the distance, a mustard-colored villa. He swears softly.

“We’ve got a mic in Howie’s racquet bag,” Bobby says, as they round the corner, “but I’m betting he leaves it in the car.”

“Which means we’re deaf and blind.”

The properties here are large, and private, and the security patrols are not lazy. The closest parking spot Bobby finds is nearly half a mile away, a dirt patch at a construction site. It’s beyond the range of the mic in Bessemer’s bag, and just at the limit of the one in his car, but in any event there’s nothing to hear besides distant traffic and the occasional growl of thunder. Bobby switches off the engine.

“The GPS will tell us when he moves,” Bobby says. He reaches for a laptop on the backseat and balances it on the console between them. Then he settles himself lower behind the wheel and runs his straw around the bottom of his empty cup.