Peter Spiegelman - Thick as Thieves

“That time of night, the fog-it must’ve been hard to see.”

Bessemer squints at him and shakes his head. “That’s what Curtis said, when I drove back to his place- even sober, you’d never have seen her, Bess. Then he woke up his security guy and told me he’d take care of everything. And fuck me if I didn’t believe him.”

Bessemer hangs his head, and a shudder runs through him. Carr claps him on the arm. “You can’t change the past, Howie, but you don’t have to be a prisoner of it.”

Bessemer shrinks from his hand. “What bullshit,” he says. “What total bullshit. What you really mean is that I can trade one jailer for another-Prager for you.”

Carr sighs, crosses the room again, and picks up his gun. He blows a speck of something off the barrel and slips it into his belt. “You’re looking at it the wrong way. I’ve put a carrot and a stick on the table: you help me out and you get your money back and get out of this life; you don’t help, and… well, we both know how that goes. With Prager, you get only the stick-and you’ve been getting it for years. I figure you’ve got to be a little tired of it by now.”

Bessemer makes a sound halfway between a groan and a bitter laugh and pushes his hands through his thin hair. “I need something more than water,” he says, and points to the liquor cabinet. Carr nods. Bessemer walks unsteadily to it, and finds a bottle of Bombay Sapphire inside. He pours some into a glass, drinks half, and coughs. He shakes his head slowly.

“You’re planning on… on stealing from him?” Bessemer struggles with the word stealing, as if just speaking it is enough to bring down thunder. Carr looks at him and says nothing, and Bessemer takes that as an answer. “If I got involved in this-if I helped you-and Curtis found out, prison wouldn’t be the problem, if you know what I mean. Curtis and the people who work for him-the people he knows-they’re capable of-”

“I know who they are, Howie, and what they’re capable of. You get your money back, you can afford to go somewhere else. To be somebody else.”

“What-an alias? A new identity?”

“You’re really happy with the old one?”

“But I… I wouldn’t know how-”

“It’s not hard, Howie. I can show you.”

Bessemer drinks the rest of his gin and massages his temples with his thumbs. He rummages again in the liquor cabinet. He comes out with a mirror, a razor blade, a silver straw, and a small white envelope. He taps a pile of white powder onto the mirror and draws it into six thin lines. He bends over the mirror and four of the lines disappear. He looks up at Carr.

“First Curtis, then Misha and Sasha, then Stearn, and now you,” Bessemer says, sniffling. “I don’t know why this keeps happening. Sometimes I feel like I have a sign around my neck- kick me, or something.”

“The Grigorievs are squeezing you?” Carr asks, and Bessemer nods. “Stearn too?” Another nod.

“The brokering that I do-with the drugs and the girls-Misha and Sasha got me into it. I ran up a big tab with them-bigger than my cash flow could handle-and they suggested a way I could pay it off. Suggested isn’t quite the right word actually.”

“Insisted?”

“That’s closer. Anyway, that’s how it got started, but this thing tonight, with Willis… I’ve never been involved in anything like that before. When I found out what he wanted, I tried to beg off. I told him I didn’t have those kinds of contacts, but he wouldn’t hear it. He said I was getting a reputation around town, and that I needed to be careful. He said things could get awkward for me if rumors got back to the police.” Bessemer offers Carr the straw.

Carr smiles. “Not just now.”

Bessemer snorts another line. “You see, I haven’t been lucky recently.

So how do I know, if I get involved with this, it won’t turn out the same? What assurance do I have?”

Carr nods and smiles sympathetically. “Other than my word as the guy holding the gun, you have none. But you also have no choice. Not to put too fine a point on it.”

Bessemer looks at Carr and then looks down at the mirror atop the liquor cabinet, at the last line of cocaine, at his own reflection. He bends, snorts the final line, and wipes his nose with the back of his hand.

“Who are you supposed to be?” he asks, sniffling. “When I talk to Curtis, what am I supposed to say?”

“I’m a guy you met in Otisville, a good guy, someone who helped you when you were inside. Say that we’ve stayed in touch, and now I’m in the market for a banker. We’ll do the details later.”

“And when you meet with him, then what happens?”

“I do a little business with him.”

“You know it won’t be that simple, right? Curtis checks. He checks on everything, very carefully, and then he double-checks.”

Carr nods and finishes his soda water. “Don’t worry, Howie. I’m double-checkable.”

“He sounds like a whiner, and more than a little screwy,” Tina says to Carr, as the tide runs over their bare feet.

Carr looks at her over the top of his sunglasses. “He’s both of those, and a lush to boot. And a cokehead.”

“Well, I feel much better.” Tina laughs. “And I can’t wait to tell the boss. He’ll love it that your whole plan hangs on a guy like this.” They turn and walk north through the creaming surf. The hem of her gauzy black skirt and Carr’s rolled cuffs are damp with foam.

“I can’t say I’m thrilled myself,” Carr says, “but it’s not like there were a lot of options, or a lot of time.”

Tina shrugs and watches the ocean, glassy and orange in the late daylight. “How’s Bessemer adapting to his new circumstances?”

“He’s self-medicating on gin and blow, but he’s behaving. I’ve got a babysitter with him all the time, and I think he likes the company.”

“When push comes to shove is he going to cooperate? Is he going to stick to the script with Prager? Will he be convincing?”

“He’ll get there. Right now he’s mostly scared.”

“Of who?”

“Of Prager; of me.”

“Who’s got the edge?”

“We’re holding the same threat over his head, but I’m the guy in his living room with a gun. Plus, I’ve got the carrots.”

“And he believes in them?”

“He wants to, but he’s not sure.”

“So maybe he’s not completely stupid,” Tina says, tracking a gull as it swoops above some flotsam. “That was a nice piece of research up north, by the way, with the Cotter thing. A big roll of the dice, for sure, but it worked out. You could be a cop.”

Carr shrugs. “Bessemer’s ex was the key. She gave us the where and the when. That made it a whole lot easier to figure out the what-especially since it happened in the off-season. It was a big deal for the papers out there-the only real news they had to report at the time. And the place they found her-that stretch of road-it was one of the routes you’d take if you were driving from Prager’s place to the highway.”

“Still, a risky play,” Tina says. “It hasn’t occurred to Bessemer that Prager can’t rat him out without implicating himself in the cover-up?”

“He said he tried that line of reasoning once, and never again. Prager told him he could get a dozen people to swear that it never happened-that Bessemer drove off in the middle of the night and didn’t return, and that Prager wasn’t even in East Hampton at the time.”

Tina nods, still following the gull as if she’s taking aim. They come to a hotel beach, and a hotel bar with shaded tables. Tina points. “I need to get out of the sun.”

Carr orders an iced tea, Tina a lime soda. She takes a sip and shakes out her hair. It shimmers like white tinsel. “When are you going to have him make the call?” she asks.