Peter Spiegelman - Thick as Thieves

“What the fuck?” Carr says to no one, and he steps behind one of the manicured palms.

Nando crosses the lobby and pushes through the doors. He’s wearing a tan suit and an open-collared French blue shirt, and he’s carrying a tan briefcase. He’s thicker and darker than when Carr last saw him, years ago in Costa Alegre, and more prosperous-looking than ever. He’s on his cell as he crosses Brickell and heads south. He’s still talking when he enters another office tower, this one clad in brushed metal and gray glass. He’s alone in the elevator when the doors slide shut, and Carr watches the numbers climb to eight.

Security in the gray building is lazy, and no guards brace Carr as he scans the lobby directory. The assortment of firms is only slightly different here-more lawyers, fewer consultants-but there are still plenty of foreign banks. The eighth floor, in fact, is nothing but banks.

Nando is inside for about an hour, after which Carr follows him down Brickell to another building-gold glass this time. Carr can’t tell which floor he’s headed to-there are too many people on the elevator with him-but there is no shortage of banks here either. Nando reappears fifty minutes later. Carr is buying gum at a lobby kiosk and readying himself for another walk in the heat when Nando turns not to the Brickell Avenue doors, but toward the back of the lobby and the enclosed passage that leads to the building’s parking structure.

Carr comes down the passage in time to see Nando board an elevator. It stops on the third parking level and Carr jogs up the stairs. He comes out of the stairwell and hears footsteps echoing, a car door closing, and an engine turning over.

“Shit,” he whispers, and he waits at the stairs as Nando drives by in a white rental.

Back on the sidewalk, Carr looks up and down Brickell Avenue, but sees no sign of Nando’s car, or of Valerie. He walks up the street to the gray tower with the lax security. Around the corner he finds the tower’s four-level parking structure and, on its lowest level, the loading dock. There’s security there-two guys in rumpled uniform shirts and sneakers-but they seem only semiconscious. Carr checks the block and climbs a low wall into the parking structure. He bounces hard on the fenders of three parked cars-Lexus, BMW, Rover-and their lights flash and their horns blare. He steps behind a wide pillar, and when the security slackers wander over to investigate the alarms, Carr slips into the loading dock and into the service elevator and rides to eight.

Three banks-all foreign-have offices on the eighth floor, but only one has a reception desk. The blonde behind it looks barely out of middle school, and she has a fizzy voice and a manic smile.

“How can I help you today?” she says.

Carr puts on a beaten look. “I’m hoping you can help me out with my boss,” he says. “He’s was in here a while ago, and he thinks he left his BlackBerry. Now he is rip-roarin’ pissed-like it’s my fault he can’t keep track of his stuff.”

The girl nods in solidarity and sympathetic understanding of irrational bosses. “I haven’t seen anything lying around.”

“He was in about two hours ago. Black-haired guy, big, dark, in a tan suit and a blue shirt.”

The blonde nods. “New accounts,” she says, and she picks up the phone. “Britty, you find a BlackBerry over there? That new client, Mr. Reyes-he thinks he might’ve left his here.” She listens and nods and smiles at Carr. “She’s checking,” she tells him. Then she listens again and frowns. “Thanks anyway, babe,” she says into the phone, and she shakes her head.

He is barely aware of the walk back to the Four Seasons, and surprised to find himself there. More surprised to find that Valerie’s car is still in the lot. He gets into his own car and finds a spot with a view of the hotel entrance and waits.

The afternoon rush washes about him, and so do the questions. Mr. Reyes? New accounts? What is Nando doing in Miami? And what the fuck is he doing with Valerie? The questions spin around like water in a drain, and there’s orange in the sky when he realizes he hasn’t been watching the hotel, or anyway that he hasn’t been seeing it.

A dinner crowd is arriving, and the valets cast long shadows as they dart among the idling cars. Carr watches them run, and watches the pretty crowd disappear inside, through the revolving doors. And then he sees a couple step out. The woman is first, and Carr recognizes Valerie right away, though her blouse is untucked now, and her hair is damp, as if from a bath. It takes him a moment longer to recognize the man, who pauses in the doorway and then walks forward, slips a thick arm around Valerie’s waist, and rests a large hand on her hip. Mike.

“You’re not yourself this morning, Greg,” Bessemer says to Carr. “Need some more coffee?” He reaches across the kitchen counter and fills his mug.

Latin Mike looks at Carr with no expression, and Carr looks back. “I’m going now,” Mike says, and Carr nods.

Bessemer squints at him, curiosity plain on his round face. “Rough night?”

And it hasn’t ended yet, Carr thinks. The rum brought him no sleep, and even now there’s a blur around the borders of things, and a hollow echo to every sound. His thoughts want to wander, to drift sideways, to skid. They steer the wrong way and then hit the gas until the skid becomes a dizzying spin.

They left the hotel separately-Mike first, then Valerie. Carr followed Valerie back to Boca, back to her apartment, then out again to Amy Chun’s place. After an hour of watching dark windows, he left her there. Then he drove back to North Palm Beach and started to pace. Sometime past midnight the drinking began.

Drinking, pacing, replaying how many moments, again and again, in his head. Poolside at Chamela. Her apartment in Port of Spain. More workhouses and hotel rooms than he could count. And more questions. When did his suspicions begin? What set them off? When did she meet Nando, and how? Why, along with the sensation of having missed a stair, does he feel something equally jarring-something a lot like relief?

Round and round he went, unable or unwilling to get to the middle of it, to get a purchase on the central problem: the dimensions of her betrayal. What has she done? What is she in the midst of doing? Who is she doing it with? Who can he trust, and what the hell should he do?

Howard Bessemer is still holding the coffeepot, still squinting at him. “Are we going to make that call today, Greg?”

Carr looks at him but says nothing.

Drinking, pacing, staring at the ocean. What the hell should he do ? His options are limited to exactly two: finish the Prager job, or cut and run-and the second choice is more or less a nonstarter. Mr. Boyce has fronted a lot of cash on this job, and if Carr decides to fold, he’s going to want it back-and with a nice return. Yes, Boyce is currently holding the diamonds the crew picked up in Houston, and they’ll go some way to paying off the debt, but Carr has no intention of being stuck with the balance. Neither does he want to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, waiting for Tina to appear.

Sometime before dawn, he decided he couldn’t stand his apartment any longer, and he walked across the road to the beach, leaving his shoes at the edge of the sand but bringing the rum. The sand was cold, and in the moonlight the breakers looked like white smoke rolling toward him.

He thought of Tina and looked over his shoulder and laughed out loud at the notion of telling Boyce what was going on. Or rather telling him that something was going on, but that Carr didn’t know exactly what it was. Not much of a thought, really-not much of an option. At best, Boyce would pull the plug on the job himself, and still want his money back. More likely, he’d decide the whole shit storm was an unacceptable breach of operational security-a terminal breach. And there, over Carr’s shoulder, would be Tina again.