Peter Spiegelman - Thick as Thieves

Carr takes a deep breath. “Dennis come up with anything else on Bessemer’s friends?”

“He’s looking. Mike’s on it too, or will be when he gets back from Boca.”

Carr turns in his seat. “What the hell’s he doing down there?”

“Val needed a replacement for one of the cameras she’s gonna use in Chun’s house. Mike brought it down.”

“Why the hell didn’t she call me?”

Bobby puts up a hand and arranges his meaty face into as close as it comes to a conciliatory look. “She calls me direct sometimes. She’s done it before. It’s not a problem.”

“It’s a problem for me, Bobby. I want to know who’s doing what, and where. And if she called you, how come you didn’t go down there?”

Bobby clears his throat and suppresses a smile. “ ’Cause I’m here with you, looking at Howie.”

Carr sighs and peels his shirt from the upholstery. “Run the AC.”

Bobby does, and the two of them sit without speaking, watching some stonemasons build a long wall. They are shaping and fitting the rocks, and their hammers sound like gunshots to Carr. The air conditioner dries the sweat on his skin but does nothing for the throbbing in his temples. Tina’s words reverberate there: Bertolli was short almost two million euro. Two million euro-Declan thought there’d be more.

They were in Port of Spain, in the bar at the Hyatt Regency. Wind was shaking the windows, and the city lights were lost behind low clouds. The place was empty, and they were all a little drunk. Declan was like a red-faced witch over a cauldron.

“The bastard doesn’t trust banks or bankers,” he said. “Oh, he uses them-he’s got to with the feckin’ money he makes on all that crap he smuggles in-but he likes to keep some cash on hand. Nothing big, mind you, we’re talking three to five mil in euros-he prefers them to dollars. Keeps enough around for incidentals and traveling funds, in case he has to move in a hurry, which he’s done a few times-out of Sao Paulo, out of Ciudad del Este, out of Argentina and back again. He’s quite the jackrabbit, Senor Bertolli is.

“I had this job lined up years ago-had it all worked out-but the fat fuck skipped on me. Hightailed it out of Argentina when a new government came in, with his wife, mistresses, and various bastards in tow. Got away about a minute before the PFA knocked down his door. Took all his cash with him too. But that party’s gone now, and so Bertolli and his money have come home.”

Carr was slow on the uptake. He’d been working on the Prager job all day-peering at floor plans and wiring diagrams. His eyes were gritty and his head full of numbers, and he didn’t get the point right away. Declan was annoyed.

“Wake up, Carr-it’s the feckin’ expenses. The up-front costs on the Prager job are running twice what we expected, and they’ll run higher still. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be paying such a big chunk of my take in finance fees to the grand Mr. Boyce. It’s usury what he’s chargin’! This deal is lovely-a quick in and out, three bucks easy, and then we don’t need his feckin’ financing.”

That was all he’d had to say to convince Mike and Bobby and Ray-Ray, who were already antsy from too much planning, and who were never happy paying anyone for anything. Some part of Carr had known right there that it was a losing battle, but still he spent the next week in increasingly heated, increasingly pointless argument with Declan. He and Valerie both-though that night, in the Hyatt bar, she’d just stared into her drink and said nothing at all.

Carr’s head drops, and he realizes he’s been dozing. Bobby is watching him. “Up late?” he asks.

Carr wipes his chin. “Anything from Bessemer?”

“His car hasn’t moved, and there’s nothing on the mic but seagulls.”

Bobby has a cooler in the back, and Carr pulls a bottle of water from it. He takes a long pull and looks at Bobby. He doesn’t want to ask about it-doesn’t have the energy today-and besides, he knows what the answer will be. But still… Bertolli was short almost two million euro. He clears his throat.

“At Bertolli’s place that night,” Carr begins, and at the mention of the name Bobby’s face colors with surprise and anger.

“You’re fucking kidding me with this!” he says, and then the laptop pings twice, loudly.

Bobby sits up fast. “Bessemer’s moving,” he says, and he throws the car into gear and guns it through the dirt lot. There’s a curtain of dust around them; the laptop slides from the console and Carr catches it mid-flight. Bobby pushes through the side streets and they hit South Ocean Boulevard in time to see Bessemer’s convertible pull out of Stearn’s place. His top is still down and his thin hair is flying as they pass him going north.

“Fast lunch,” Bobby says, and he slides the car through an easy U-turn and into the northbound lane.

“I’m not surprised,” Carr says. “Did you see Bessemer’s face? He looked like he was about to throw up.”

Two miles up South Ocean Boulevard they watch him do just that, in a garbage can by the side of the road.

“A lot of phone time for Howie tonight,” Dennis says, “and he didn’t sound good.”

They’re at the workhouse-Carr, Bobby, Dennis, and Latin Mike-and the pent-up heat of the day is suffocating. Mike is tilted back in a kitchen chair, clean-shaven, hair slick from a shower. The half-smile on his face sets Carr’s teeth on edge.

“He called the Caymans a few times,” Dennis continues, “his pal Prager’s number, but he never got past the help. Then he called his pimp. Took him four tries to go through with it. First three times, he hung up before anyone answered.”

“Prager didn’t take his call?” Carr asks.

Dennis shrugs. “The secretary said he wasn’t in, but she had to go away and check before she said it. The second time, she told him Prager would get back to him.”

“Has he?”

“Not yet.”

Mike grins nastily. “I thought Prager was his friend,” he says. “That’s not so friendly, jefe. ”

“And the pimp?” Carr asks. “What was going on with the three hangups?”

“He didn’t want to pull the trigger,” Bobby says.

Carr squints at him. “Pull the trigger on what?”

Dennis shakes his head. “He didn’t say on the phone.”

“Who’s the pimp?” Carr asks.

“Calls himself Lamp. Works for the Russian brothers.”

Mike dangles a cigarette from his lip, but doesn’t light it. “Howie’s gotten whores for his friends before. How come he’s nervous now?”

Bobby shakes his head. “The guy is freaked about something. The way he blew his lunch this afternoon-I thought his socks were gonna come up.”

Carr looks at Dennis. “You find out more about Bessemer’s friends?”

Dennis taps at one of his keyboards. “Plenty,” he says, “though I’m not sure it amounts to anything. Brunt and Moyer are retired money guys, like Stearn. Moyer was a bond trader; Brunt was an investment manager.”

“They all work at the same place?”

“Different companies, different places. Stearn was in London, Moyer in New York, and Brunt was in Chicago.”

“And the other two guys?”

“Tandy is also retired. He was a partner in a law firm up in New York. He got downsized a few years back-him and half the firm. As far as I can tell, Scoville has never worked. Lives in the guesthouse on his mother’s property, a few miles down the road from Stearn. Besides sailing and heroin, lying around the pool seems to be the only job he’s ever had.”

“Married?”

“Not Scoville, but the rest of them are.”

“Any of them have records?”

“Scoville took a couple of possession busts in New York, one with intent to sell. He got probation and rehab.”