Peter Spiegelman - Thick as Thieves

“In a few days. I want him to settle down a while longer, and I want to go over the story with him some more.”

“Dennis fix up your past?”

Carr nods. “Bumped some servers at Justice and the Bureau of Prisons. Frye did federal time for receiving stolen property. Overlapped eight months with Howie in Otisville. Before that, a money laundering beef, with charges eventually dropped. Nowadays, he’s based in Boston. Has a nice little online business selling jeweler supplies to the trade.”

“Too bad it’s bullshit-I bet he could get me a deal on some earrings. How are things going in Boca?”

Carr takes a long swallow of iced tea and looks into his glass. “Val says it’s going well.”

“Love is in the air?”

“She’s got Chun locked in. She’ll be all but moved in there soon, and then she can plant whatever we want, and clean it up again before the security sweeps.”

“She was a big help with Bessemer’s ex, I guess. A regular Watson to your Holmes.”

Carr nods. Tina rests her heel on the edge of her seat. Her skirt falls away and her bare leg is like ivory. She brushes sand from her bare foot. “You don’t like talking about her,” she says.

Carr’s voice is carefully neutral. “Are there questions I haven’t answered? Something you want to know that I haven’t told you?”

“You and she have a thing going, once upon a time? Or maybe going on now?”

Carr’s face is taut. “Who’s asking-Boyce or you?”

Tina lowers one foot, raises another, brushes away sand. A tiny smile flickers on her lips. “You’re a big boy, and nobody’s playing chaperone. It’s just not typically the best management technique. Don’t shit where you eat, et cetera. Fucks up unit cohesion. Doesn’t help command judgment much either.”

The sun has dropped behind the hotel tower and the sky is washed in violet. Carr drops some bills on the table. “Let’s walk,” he says.

Carr heads for the shoreline. The sand is cooler, and he turns north again, for a jetty a quarter mile away. Tina is silent at his side.

“How are things in the Prager compound?” Carr asks eventually.

“Same same,” Tina says. “He’s getting ready for his prospecting trip to Europe and Asia. Silva still hasn’t surfaced from whatever glass he’s climbed into.”

“Good,” Carr says. He stops and digs a flat stone the size of a silver dollar from the sand. He launches it in low, spinning flight over the smooth water, and it bounces and jinks more times than he can count before vanishing into a gray swell. “And down south?” he asks. “Are we making any progress there?”

“Maybe. Our guys were in Santiago, trying to locate the pilot Declan made his exit arrangements with. They went trolling at the bars near Los Cerrillos-the pilot bars-and got a hit. Found a charter operator named Guerrero. He’s got a light jet, a Hawker, and he’s apparently used to working for cash, and with no questions asked. You know the name?”

Carr shakes his head. “Is he the guy Declan hired?”

“He told my guys he took a deposit from someone that sounds a lot like Declan.”

“Declan’s plan was to go to Sao Paulo. From there, there were a lot of options to get back to Port of Spain. Where was this Guerrero supposed to go?”

“He wouldn’t say. He wouldn’t say anything else without money.”

“Your guys didn’t want to pay?”

“My guys check with me first. I told them I’d come down and see for myself. I’m flying out of Miami tomorrow.”

Carr stops and looks at Tina. The tide rushes up over their ankles and he sees a shiver run through her. “This is a lot of personal attention,” he says.

Tina takes off her sunglasses and nods. “You got me interested.”

Carr’s phone burrs as he opens the door to his apartment. He answers without looking and Eleanor Calvin’s voice takes him by surprise. She is just as surprised by his.

“I didn’t think I’d actually reach you,” she says. “I’ve tried so many times.”

“I’ve gotten your messages, Mrs. Calvin, but things have been crazy at work.”

“I’m sure, dear.”

“How’s your move coming? Are you showing the house yet?”

“I’ve got an offer on it-two, actually. The real estate agent thinks there might even be a third one coming. They all want to close soon.”

Carr stands in the darkened living room and takes a deep breath. “Oh,” he says.

“Have you settled the arrangements for your father, dear?”

“I’m working on it, Mrs. Calvin.”

“I know it’s difficult for you, but there isn’t much time.”

Carr walks to the window and leans his head against the glass. “I’m aware, Mrs. Calvin.”

“I know you are, dear, and I didn’t call to talk about this. The ambassador is a little agitated this evening, and he wants to speak with you.”

“Agitated about what, Mrs. Calvin? I really don’t have-”

“I’m not sure what’s upset him, but he’s insistent. He’s been… difficult all day, and I’m afraid he’s been drinking.”

Carr sighs. “Put him on,” he says.

His father’s voice is scratchy and attenuated across the ether, and he sounds to Carr like an old recording of FDR. Nothing to fear but fear itself. He seems at first more angry than drunk.

“She lies to me, you know. Tells me she’s done things when she hasn’t. Tells me she hasn’t done things when I know she has. And she takes things. That’s why I can never find a goddamn thing in this house.”

“Mrs. Calvin doesn’t take things, and she doesn’t lie. She’s not your maid either.”

“You’re taking her side.”

“There’s no side to this.”

“You’re just like her, you know.”

“Like Mrs. Calvin?”

“Don’t be thick. You’re just like her-always watching-like a goddamn cat. Quiet like a cat, and arrogant-no one can tell you anything, oh no. And stubborn-goddamn stubborn-just like her. Everything on your terms, and you won’t let go until you’re goddamn good and ready.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dad,” Carr says, and he sighs heavily. “What is it you’re upset over?”

“I can’t find it. I spent all day looking. Looked in her room, in your room, even got up in the goddamn attic, and I can’t find it.”

“Can’t find what?”

“The plata. I can’t find her plata. ”

Carr puts his hand out in the darkness and finds the back of a chair. It fails to anchor him in the present.

Plata. Carr gave it that name, the family story went, when he was three or so, and speaking his first words of Spanish. They were in Lima, and the plata was an S. T. Dupont cigarette lighter, a tiny, weighty slab of silver that the young Carr liked to play with. It was a gift to his mother from her sometimes tennis partner, the courtly, ever-smiling Sr. Farias-commemorating not only their success in the Club Regatas mixed doubles tournament, but also his appreciation of Andrea Carr’s help in landing the Spanish journalist an interview with the new American ambassador.

Hector Farias turned up all over Latin America, bouncing from country to country at least as often as the Carrs. And whenever they found themselves living in the same cities, Farias and Andrea Carr resumed their tennis. Carr’s recollections of him are mostly blurred and, he knows, mostly composites. Farias in tennis whites, drink in hand, his hair wavy and damp, his teeth like white tiles. Farias at a consular reception, his shirt like a cloud, his shoes like glass, smoke curling from his smiling mouth. Farias on the living room sofa, straightening his tie, tugging at his cuffs, grinning at Carr, while his mother, cheeks burning, stepped quickly to the window and smoothed her skirts. Which living room was that?