Peter Spiegelman - Thick as Thieves

The blonde nods and her smile slides smoothly into a sympathetic frown. “And Curtis is so sorry. In fact, he’d like you to send over your hotel bill, so he can take care of it.”

Bessemer begins to speak and Carr puts a hand on his arm. “That’s all right,” Carr says, smiling. “Things come up-I know how it is. And Saturday should be fine, don’t you think, Howie? Give us time for some golf.”

Bessemer looks at Carr and nods vaguely. “Golf, sure.”

The blonde’s smile returns. “Great-so I’ll tell Curtis Saturday.”

“Saturday,” Bessemer says.

The blonde makes more noises of cheerful apology and leads them out of the conference room and through the office again. The knot in Carr’s stomach moves into his chest. They pass the men’s room, and Carr makes an abrupt right turn.

“I’ve got to make a pit stop,” he says, leaning on the bathroom door. “I’ll catch up at the elevators.” Carr pushes through, and as he does he sees the blonde’s face tighten with a look of annoyance.

The bathroom is small and gray and smells of disinfectant. Carr runs water on his hands and dries them and listens to the blonde’s voice dwindle down the hallway. When it’s gone he throws away his paper towel, steps into the corridor, and turns left. He walks down the hall, turns a corner, and stops when he sees the conference room, and the man at the conference table, who is sporting a crew cut, a polo shirt, and vinyl gloves, carefully placing Carr’s drinking glass in a plastic evidence bag.

At the elevators, Bessemer is sweating, and the blonde is checking her watch. Carr smiles as he approaches. “Sorry to hold things up,” he says, chuckling. “Too much club soda.”

The blonde returns his smile and presses the elevator call button. “So we’ll see you Saturday, Mr. Frye? Mr. Bessemer?”

Carr nods and puts out his hand. “You’ll be there too, Ms…?”

“Oh, I’m sorry-I never did make a proper introduction to you fellas. I’m Kathy Rink.”

“A pleasure,” Carr says. “Are you Curtis’s assistant?”

Kathy Rink smiles wider and laughs as she squeezes Carr’s hand. “Oh, no, Mr. Frye, I’m his head of security.”

“She’s ex-DEA,” Tina tells Carr, stirring the ice in her drink, but drinking nothing. “She left eighteen months back, after fifteen years there. Spent most of her time in the New Orleans district, in Shreveport and Baton Rouge, and her last three years down south, in Honduras. She came on about four weeks back, with a recommendation from one of Prager’s clients. Word is she’s still got plenty of friends in the agency.”

“Shit,” Carr says. His voice is low and cold.

They’re alone on the terrace of a bar perched over a cove, at a table by the wooden railing. The tide is rolling in, slapping at the rocks below and casting up a briny mist. Carr has nothing in front of him but the strips of a shredded cocktail napkin that are being carried away, one by one, on the wind.

“That’s all I’ve got so far,” Tina says, “but I’m expecting another call.”

“And is this call going to explain just what the fuck happened to your intel?”

“I don’t like surprises any more than-”

“It’s not your ass on the line.”

Tina’s face is without expression and as white and still as carved bone. Her eyes are invisible behind her dark glasses, and her voice is without affect. “You want me to say it’s a fuckup? Fine-it’s a fuckup. You feel better now?”

“No,” Carr says. He presses his fingers to his temples. “If Rink’s still got federal wiring, then Greg Frye won’t last. He’s not built for that. He’s good for a quick look-see-a criminal records check, or somebody trying to confirm that he and Bessemer were at Otisville together-but for somebody with fingerprints and access to AFIS…”

Tina nods. “She’ll run right through Frye to you.”

Carr looks down at the foam-covered rocks. “They took my prints when I applied, at every one of my interviews, on my first day at Langley, and a half dozen times afterward. Dennis is good, but he’s not good enough to scrub all that away.”

Tina leans back and chews on her straw. “Your minders still around?”

“We wouldn’t be meeting here if they were. They were with us to Prager’s office this morning, but not afterward, and they’re not at the hotel.”

“You left Bessemer there?” Carr nods. “How’s he holding up?”

“He was nervous before we met Rink; he’s bat-shit now. Bobby’s probably scraping him off the ceiling, if he hasn’t actually killed him yet.”

“How’s Bobby doing?”

“Pissed off, scared, ready to pack his bag.”

And Bobby wasn’t the only one. After parking Bessemer in the suite and phoning Tina, Carr had arranged a conference call with Valerie, Bobby, Mike, and Dennis. His story of what happened at Prager’s office was met first with silence, and then angry, colliding voices. Bobby’s was the loudest and most poetic.

“What the fuck? We pay Boyce for intel, and this is what we get-a steaming pile of dog shit? This is fucked, brother-up, down, and sideways-and I’m heading for the fucking airport.”

Dennis had been slightly less noisy but no less upset, and Mike had done his yelling in Spanish. Only Valerie had been quiet, and Carr swore he could hear the gears turning in her head.

“Everybody else feel the same as Bobby?” Tina asks.

“What do you expect? The boss doesn’t bring on a new security chief because he wants to keep things the same. So what we knew about Prager’s personal security, and what we could infer because of Silva, is all subject to change now. The same with Isla Privada’s network security, and even Amy Chun’s protection-all out the window. And I didn’t even tell them about the prints. Once they find out about that they won’t even bother to pack.”

“So don’t tell them,” Tina says. She looks out at the ocean, and Carr watches the breaking waves in her black lenses. She tosses her straw into an ashtray. “Four weeks isn’t a lot of time in a new job,” she says. “It’s barely enough to figure out what changes you want to make, much less to make them.”

Carr squints at her. “You think Rink hasn’t changed anything yet?”

“She hasn’t even been there a month.”

“That’s a fucking big maybe -and let me point out that we saw some changes today.”

“We’d have to take a second look at things, of course-verify that nothing important has-”

“And you think we’ll get it right on the second look? Or maybe the third? Come on, Tina.”

She takes off her sunglasses. Her gray eyes catch the light and glitter like broken glass. “So your bag’s packed too, is that it? I just want to make sure I get it right for when Boyce asks me.”

“I don’t know that there are any other options here.”

“Bags packed-yes or no, Carr? ’Cause if it’s yes, I’ve got to get the accountants working on what you owe us. And by the way, I’m going to want those diamonds back, as a down payment.”

“I’m not pulling out on a whim, Tina, or because I decided it was all just too much work. This is about the wheels falling off because of an intel fuckup. Your fuckup.”

“No one’s arguing that, and trust me there’s a certain lazy bastard who has a date with the inside of an oil drum, but when Boyce asks me if I think this whole thing is irretrievably screwed, I’m going to tell him no.”

Carr’s laugh is bitter. “Everybody in the stands gets an opinion. They just shouldn’t confuse watching with being on the field.”

“Is that really how you want to approach this?” Tina says quietly. Her smile is thin and chilly and doesn’t reach her eyes. After a moment Carr looks away.