Peter Spiegelman - Thick as Thieves

“Any of them friends with Bessemer before he came down here?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“So Howie is what to them-the only guy they know who knows the rough trade?”

Mike lights his cigarette and chuckles derisively. “We trying to get inside their heads now too? Who gives a fuck?”

Carr ignores him. “And we think Howie’s doing this… why?”

Bobby sighs. “Same reason people do most things,” he says, “for the money.” He looks at Dennis.

“The guy’s chronically short,” Dennis says. “The divorce cleaned him out pretty good. His house is paid for, but his grandmother’s trust throws off barely enough income to cover the taxes and his liquor bills, and she set it up so he can’t get at the principal.”

“My abuela was a bitch too,” Mike mutters.

“I thought Prager was hiding money for him,” Carr says. “What happened to that?”

Dennis shrugs. “It’s not in any of the accounts I can see, though I can’t see into Isla Privada.”

Carr shakes his head. “When’s Howie meeting the pimp?” he asks.

“Monday,” Bobby says, “outside the Brazilian place. I’ll be there.”

Carr looks at Latin Mike. “We’ll all be there.”

“Sure, jefe,” Mike says, smiling. “All of us.”

The night is close and the airport throws sheets of flashing light against the low clouds. The smell of the jet fuel, of the house, of Mike’s cigarettes, and of his own sweat are caught in Carr’s clothing, and he walks the long way around the block to get to his car. He’s halfway there when he hears footsteps behind him and whirls.

Latin Mike chuckles from behind the glowing end of a cigarette. “That’s slow, man. I want to hurt you, you be all the way hurt by now.”

He steps from the shadows and Carr takes a slow, deep breath to quiet his pulse. “You going out again?” Carr says.

“Just for some air. Not enough in that dump tonight. And you?”

“To bed. You want something?”

“Me? No, I got what I need-but you’re still looking for something.”

Carr sighs. “We’ve been over this. I want to know more before we go at Bessemer. I want to know why-”

A barking laugh, and Mike blows smoke into the blinking sky. “I’m not talking about Bessemer. Bobby says you’re still asking him about Mendoza. Says you did it again today.”

Carr takes another deep breath. “And?”

“And I want to know what that’s about.”

“It’s about what it seems to be about: I want to know what happened, what went wrong. Bobby didn’t tell you?”

“Bobby tells me everything, jefe. But why you keep asking him about this? You think he’s gonna tell you something new? You think he doesn’t get what you’re doing when you ask the same questions over and over? That you’re calling him a liar.”

“I didn’t know it was upsetting him so much.”

“Sure you did. So why don’t you cut it out? You still got questions about what happened down there, ask me.”

“Why, are you going to tell me something new?”

Mike barks again. “I’m gonna tell you to fuck off.”

“So nothing new.”

Another laugh. “You want new, maybe you need to get different questions.”

“Maybe I have one.”

Mike smiles and rolls out a line of smoke rings that break on Carr’s shoulder. “Give it a try, cabron. ”

“Okay. Did you get into that barn before Bertolli’s guys turned up?”

In the long silence that follows, a car passes, a jet passes, someone shouts from somewhere in Brazilian Portuguese. Mike flicks his cigarette into the street. He shakes his head and laughs to himself. “Deke was always so hot on you-always talked about how smart you were, how good at planning, how you saw angles other people didn’t, how you thought big. It was like you were his kid or something.

“Me, I never got it-and I told him so. More smoke than fire, I said. Too much complication. Too much bullshit. After a while, he didn’t want to hear it: told me to shut up or move on. I thought about that a long time, and decided to stay. I liked Deke; I was used to him, and I liked the paydays, so… I didn’t change my mind about you, but I kept my mouth shut. But when the old bastard bought it, I tell you I was ready to book. I would have too if this gig had been any smaller, and if Bobby and Val hadn’t asked me-shit, they begged me-to stick it out.”

Carr kicks at a piece of broken pavement. It skips and skids and ends up in a storm drain. He laughs softly. “I don’t hear anything new, Mike, and I don’t hear an answer to my question.”

Mike’s fists clench and his arms swell. “Here’s my answer, pendejo -if you’re running this thing, then run it, and if you’re not, then shove off. ’Cause this is the last fucking job I’m doing, and if it turns to shit, it’s you I come looking for. No one else-just you. So get your mind off Mendoza and Declan and Bertolli’s fucking barn, cabron, and get it on Bessemer and Prager.”

Mike turns and walks back into the dark, and Carr sees his lighter flare as he fires up another smoke. “Was that a yes or a no about the barn?” Carr calls, but Mike doesn’t answer.

They lean together like schoolgirls, flushed and whispering as they stroll the pink arcades around Mizner Park. They’re not quite holding hands, but it takes a second look to be certain. Valerie-Jill-is in a summer dress: spaghetti straps and long, tanned limbs. On her day off, Amy Chun, president of the Spanish River Bank and Trust Company, wears a tan wrap skirt, a white T-shirt short enough to expose a narrow band of midsection, and low sandals. She’s in her mid-forties, slender, shorter than Jill by two inches, and more darkly tanned. Her straight black hair is done in a loose braid, and her sunglasses are sleek and smoky.

They pause at the window of a jewelry store. Jill points, Amy takes off her glasses, nods, and they both laugh. Jill walks on and Amy watches her.

Carr’s chest aches and he realizes he’s been holding his breath. He sighs and runs down the car window. A damp breeze wanders in. Not even two weeks since Jill joined Amy Chun’s yoga class, he thinks, and already she’s set the hook deep.

Valerie’s voice was tired and raspy on the phone the night before, and she was reluctant at first to talk about Chun-like a magician asked to explain her very best trick-but Carr had insisted.

“She’s better than I’d hoped,” Valerie said. “Basically, she’s got no life. She goes from work to her workout to her house, and then it’s more work, into the night.”

“No friends or family?”

“I haven’t seen any friends, and the only family she’s got are her parents, in Vancouver. No, it’s all work for Amy. But the little time she’s not grinding away, she spends online-and not just shopping, either.”

“What’s she doing-looking at pornography?”

“A little, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Amy is a stalker-a cyber-stalker, anyway. I went through the take from Dennis’s spyware-her e-mail, her browser history-and it’s plain as day. She’s keeping tabs on someone named Janice Lessig.”

“Who the hell is she?”

“She runs a little company out in the Bay Area-makes organic bread and shit like that. She lives in Berkeley, plays the cello in a couple of amateur groups, has two daughters, and a domestic partner named Elaine.”

“I repeat-who the hell is she?”

“She and Amy went to B-school together, twenty years ago, and they were pretty tight. I think maybe she’s Amy’s road not taken. ”

“They were lovers?”

“I can’t say for sure, but they wrote some articles for their B-school review together, and their last year there, they were its coeditors.”