Peter Spiegelman - Thick as Thieves

Carr trails them to an outdoor cafe. They take a table near a tiled fountain and order iced teas. The air is thick and the palms and bougainvillea hang in limp surrender, but Jill and Amy don’t seem to mind. Even in the shade, their arms and legs are shining. Jill reaches for the sugar, nearly tips her glass, just catches it, and laughs nervously. Carr shakes his head at the performance.

It’s the seamlessness that impresses him most, the integration of elements small and large into her fabricated persona. The endearing clumsiness, the slightly funky clothing and accoutrements, the accent and the diction, the attitude, the wear and tear: all Jill, all of a piece. He wonders how she’s done up her apartment, what’s in the glove box of her car, and what’s on her iPod. Not a false note, he’s sure.

The heat is a weight on his shoulders, and he finds a bench beneath a palm. He thinks back to Costa Alegre, to Valerie’s easy shifts between the three engineers. He recalls the other men and women he’s watched her seduce over the years, and the characters she’s inhabited to do it-doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs… He watches her sip tea, and something about the dappled light on her legs reminds him of Port of Spain, the perpetual overcast of the two months they spent there, laying the groundwork for the Prager job.

Declan installed them in one of the new glass towers on the waterfront, in seven apartments-Declan, Bobby, Ray-Ray, Dennis, and Mike on the seventh floor, Valerie and Carr on the ninth. After which Declan, Bobby, Ray-Ray, Dennis, and Mike developed a sudden fondness for cricket, and decamped most afternoons to Queen’s Park, leaving Carr and Valerie squinting into their laptops. Fucking Cinderella was Valerie’s grumbled gloss on the circumstances.

At first they worked separately-digesting Boyce’s dossiers, ferreting out additional information, collecting technical data-and met in the evenings to compare notes and drink beer. Later they worked in Valerie’s apartment, assembling and disassembling the framework of a plan, again and again, until they had something that might float.

He stared out her living room window a lot, at the highway and the rush of cars, at the shipping containers stacked along the wharves, like the ruins of an ancient city, at the ocean like beaten lead. A pearly light filled her place, along with a perfume-something with lime and orange blossom and vanilla.

Valerie went to buy lunch one afternoon, leaving him there alone. Carr walked through every room and thought about looking inside her medicine chest and her closets, but didn’t. He stared for a long time at the pile of books by her bedside. They were paperbacks, slim volumes by Borges, Fante, Akhmatova, Didion. He leafed through them, and when he heard her key in the lock he piled the books up again. He was standing at the living room window when the door opened.

Was it then that things began to simmer, or had it started long before? Either way, she leaned in closer after that, touched him on the hand or the arm often, didn’t look away. Her apartment felt smaller, and Carr felt a surge of anger and disappointment whenever the cricket fans returned.

The phone shudders in his pocket and it brings him back to his bench. He looks down the arcade and sees Amy Chun, alone at her table. He reaches for his phone, and Valerie is on the other end, whispering angrily.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing here,” she says, “but you’ve seen enough for one day. Now clear the fuck out before you queer my play.”

Monday noon is too early for Lamp. He grimaces at the sky, adjusts his sunglasses on his peeling nose, and fiddles with the visor on his open-top Jeep. Then he hoists up his iced coffee and takes another needy pull. He does it all very slowly, as if he’s half asleep, and the other half is in some pain.

Carr watches from a wine bar across the street and decides that Lamp looks like his job. Not the pimp job, but the other one, which, according to Dennis, is owner and manager of Lampanelli’s Surf n’ Sport, in Riviera Beach. He’s fortyish and tall, with sandy hair, a tan, and a gut edging toward sloppy. He’s wearing a pink T-shirt and khaki shorts, and has a tattoo of a parrot on his left calf and a look of annoyance on his unshaved face.

Lamp glances around the parking lot. The Grigoriev brothers’ Brazilian restaurant is closed today, and the lot is empty but for his Jeep. He checks his watch. Carr hopes that Lamp finds some patience, or is tired enough to stay put for a while. Bobby and Latin Mike have called to tell him that Howard Bessemer is en route, but moving slowly due to traffic and what seems to be a lethal hangover.

“Looks like he’s been living on bad fish and toilet water,” Bobby said, laughing. “We’re about half a block back of him, and twenty-five seems to be his top speed today.”

“Hungover or reluctant?” Carr asked.

“Both,” Bobby said.

Definitely reluctant, Carr thinks, and for several days now also reclusive. Bessemer didn’t leave his house for his usual weekend poker and whore festival, or for anything else. Lunch and dinner were delivered three days running, along with parcels from the local liquor store. And televisions were on around the clock in the kitchen, the living room, and the bedroom, though Bessemer watched none of them, but wandered from room to room drinking gin and smoking joints. When he did pause, it was to collapse wherever he was standing, and to sleep for a few hours. Then up again and back to work. The only other breaks in the action-besides his occasional puking-were when Bessemer tried calling Prager. None of his attempts was successful.

The waitress brings Carr another soda water. He watches Lamp drain his iced coffee cup. On the street beyond the far side of the parking lot, Carr sees the van where he parked it, long before Lamp pulled in. Dennis is in back, with a couple of laptops and wireless broadband cards. He looks for Bobby and Mike, but doesn’t really expect to spot them. They’re good enough that he won’t see them climb into the van. There’s movement in the foreground and Bessemer’s BMW rolls into the lot.

Despite the clear skies, Howie’s got the top up, and from Carr’s vantage he’s no more than a ghost at the wheel. He leaves a parking space between his car and the Jeep and kills the engine. And then he sits. And sits. Unmoving, with his white hands on the wheel, as if at any moment he might drive off again. Lamp is as puzzled as Carr, and after a while he holds his wristwatch out toward Howie’s car and taps the face with his finger. Howie gets the point.

He opens the door slowly and cringes like a vampire in the midday sun. Lamp looks Howie up and down and shakes his head. Howie leans against the Jeep and starts talking, and Carr curses another conversation he isn’t going to hear.

Whatever Howie’s saying, he’s saying it fast, and Lamp holds up a hand and looks irritated. Howie pauses, rubs a hand over his face, and starts again, more slowly this time. Lamp listens and begins to shake his head, and the look of irritation is replaced by one of vague disgust. Carr’s phone vibrates.

“Me and Mike are in the van,” Bobby says. “You see this?”

“I see it,” Carr answers, “but I have no idea what he’s saying.”

“Whatever it is, Lamp’s not crazy for it. You’d figure a guy like him has heard it all before.”

Lamp is still shaking his head, and Bessemer is still talking, leaning more heavily now against the Jeep. Finally Lamp holds up a hand and points at Howie’s car. Howie begins to speak again, but Lamp points once more and pulls a cell phone from the pocket of his shorts. He waits until Howie is back in his car, and then he makes his call.