Peter Spiegelman - Thick as Thieves

“So I’ve seen.”

“Most people, anyway.” She looks at the harbor again and starts to whistle something Carr almost recognizes.

He is fairly certain she isn’t drunk-he’s seen her drink much more than the beers she had with Holland and the bottle of wine he and she shared in the hotel lounge, and with no discernible effect. No, this evening she’s something different-something open and unguarded, and seemingly without calculation. A Valerie he hasn’t seen before? A performance he hasn’t seen, anyway. She leans against him at the rail, and her scent mixes with the smells of diesel and low tide.

“You like the water, don’t you?” she asks. “Diving, sailing-all of that.”

“I do.”

“You grew up around it?”

“I learned to sail when I was a kid.”

“Who from?”

“My father.”

“You were close to him?”

Carr looks at the bobbing lights and the water, nearly black now. He shakes his head. “I liked it in spite of him.”

“An asshole?”

“Like Tracy Holland-permanently pissed off.”

“At you?”

“At life; at the world; at my mother. I was a convenient proxy.”

The wind picks up, colder now, and Valerie shivers beside him. Carr takes off his blazer and hangs it around her shoulders. Valerie rubs her hand up and down his forearm. “Poor baby boy,” she says, chuckling.

“Are you making light of my troubled childhood?”

“Did they smack you around? Or each other?”

“No.”

“Then we have different definitions of troubled. ”

“You have that kind of trouble?”

She looks up. Her face is flushed from the wine, and Carr can feel the heat rising from her. “I was too cute to get mad at.”

“Even then?”

She nods. “Still, it sucks having an asshole for a dad. Probably sucks worse for a guy. Role models, and all that.”

“You’re watching too much daytime television down in Boca.”

Valerie wraps his jacket around her and laughs. “It explains so much, though-Deke’s appeal to you, his big, bluff paternal thing, why you’re still picking at what happened in Mendoza like it’s a scab.”

Carr steps back from the rail. “Definitely too much television.”

“Oprah can’t tell me shit, babe. You think I can do what I do without knowing what makes people tick? Now tell me Declan wasn’t a father figure to you.”

“I can’t say I’ve given it much thought.”

Valerie laughs. “Of course not.”

Carr takes another step back, and puts his hands in the air. “Deke had big plans, he ran a good crew, and he was a good soldier-disciplined, focused, a good motivator. He kept his head in the game, and he made us all rich. That’s what I know.”

“You’re remembering a different guy,” she says. “Yes, he thought big, and he ran a good crew-but disciplined? Focused? C’mon, Carr-that’s what he had you for. And half the time, he didn’t want to listen. Deke liked any excuse to light it up, and you know it. He got bored too easy, and deep down he was a fucking cowboy. Toward the end, it wasn’t even down that deep. Personally, I think it was some sort of midlife crisis.”

“That’s bullshit. Besides Mendoza-”

“I’m not just talking about Mendoza, and you know it. There was Cesar, and before that the Russians in Nicaragua. Before that, there was-”

“That’s enough, Vee,” Carr says, and his voice is icy.

“Don’t go all Eastwood on me now-we were almost having a conversation.”

“You were doing the talking.”

She smiles at him, and there’s a little pity in it. “Okay,” she says softly. “But you’re remembering a different guy.”

She takes his hand again and leads him down the wharf, past a yellow cigarette boat, a chrome-heavy sport fisher, and a big white catamaran. She’s whistling again, softly, and Carr sighs.

“What about you?” he asks. “No lingering mommy and daddy issues?”

She laughs. “You don’t know anybody more mentally healthy than me.”

“Most of the people I know are borderline sociopaths. Your parents stay together?”

Her laugh is sharp, and it echoes like a shot on the water. “They were both military, so they knew how to fight. It was like a nonstop cage match.”

“But you have no issues.”

She shakes her head and slips her arm around him. “It doesn’t always have to be like that, you know-like my parents, and yours. Like the battling Bessemers.”

“I haven’t seen many examples to the contrary.”

Valerie moves in front of him, and slides her hands under his shirt. They’re cold and smooth against his ribs, and a shudder runs through him. “Maybe that’s what we’ll do afterward,” she whispers. “You and me. We’ll conduct a little research to find some happy couples. We’ll be like archaeologists.”

“You think we’ll have to dig them up?”

Valerie laughs, and her mouth is hungry on his. “Early morning tomorrow,” she whispers. “We should call it a night.”

Carr arrives at the workhouse at three p.m. on Friday. He has swum, showered, shaved, and dressed in a blazer, jeans, and dark glasses. No one inside the house looks as good.

Bobby is bristled and fragile, and he’s working slowly though a liter of Coke and an egg sandwich. Latin Mike is also unshaven, vaguely jaundiced, and unconcerned with anything beyond the cup of coffee on the table before him, the cigarette burning in his ashtray, and the bottle of Advil in his hand. Dennis is green, shaking death. Carr lets the door slam behind him and smiles when they wince.

“I see you’ve been busy while I was away,” he says loudly. Mike ignores him, and Bobby flips him the bird over his sandwich. Carr chuckles. “How’s our man Bessemer doing?” he asks.

Dennis wipes sweat from his forehead. “Pickled. He was at the gin again last night, and didn’t get up until noon. Hasn’t been out of the house yet today. Stearn called him an hour ago, to check that his party was still on for tonight.”

“And?”

“Howie told him nine o’clock.”

“Has he spoken to Prager again?”

“He’s tried twice-yesterday and the day before-and got nowhere.” Carr nods. “And Amy Chun? How’s she coming along?”

Dennis taps on his keyboard. “Good. I pulled some stuff from her laptop-her personal one, not the Isla Privada equipment.”

“And?”

Dennis manages a smile. “She’s been e-mailing Val-Jill, I mean. She talks about how she misses her, how much she enjoys hanging out with her.”

“Fuckin’ Vee,” Bobby says through a mouthful of egg.

“Chun’s also been searching for anything and everything about Jill Creary on the Web,” Dennis says.

“No more stalking Janice Lessig?”

“Not for a while now.”

“What’s she finding on Jill?”

“Everything we put out there, everything Val asked for. Footprints in New York and in Boston. Modeling, PR, cooking school.”

“Chun does all the looking herself? No professional help?”

“All by herself,” Dennis says, and scrolls through some e-mail. “Her last note to Jill, she talks about the two of them going on vacation together.”

Carr shakes his head. “That’s fast.”

Mike rouses himself from his coffee to smile bitterly. “A real heart-breaker, that Vee.”

Bobby laughs, takes a bite of his sandwich, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He looks at Carr. “You gonna say how your trip went?”

“It went fine, Bobby.”

“Fine as in you had a nice little vacation, or fine as in you found something out about Bessemer?”

Carr smiles, but says nothing.

“Asshole,” Bobby says, and he takes a long swallow of Coke. “What time do we set up at Howie’s tonight?”