Peter Spiegelman - Thick as Thieves

“Fuck,” he says aloud, and he cuts off the call and punches Bobby’s number. Again, faintly, a ringing inside. “Fuck,” he says again. He snaps on plastic gloves, takes a flashlight and a screwdriver from his pocket, and wishes he had something more substantial.

He slides the screwdriver into the frame and the back door opens with a whisper, and the smell hits him right away. It’s one that’s familiar, but still, his stomach nearly empties. He rubs his eyes and pulls his shirt up to his nose and steps inside.

It’s a small house, and the smell has filled it to bursting, and so have the heat and the flies. It takes no searching to find them: they’re in the living room, Bobby sideways on the sofa, Dennis genuflecting by a card table. Carr can’t tell how long they’ve been dead.

He stands over Bobby’s body and runs the flashlight up and down. There’s a beer bottle on the cushion next to him, and the remains of a cigarette that scorched his pants and the flesh underneath. The flies buzz and hover and Carr shoos them away from Bobby’s head. He can see the entry wounds then-one to the back of the neck, one to the back of the head. He can’t tell if there are powder burns.

Dennis also has two wounds, also to the head and neck. His laptops are missing, but his clothes are there, still packed in a duffel, as are Bobby’s. Mike’s are not. Carr stands stock-still as a van drives slowly past, and then he leaves. He waits until he’s in the alley, two blocks away, before he throws up.

There’s only one place left for Carr to go, but it isn’t late enough yet, and he needs a shower. He takes a room at a Fairfield Inn near the airport and stands under the spray for a long time. He uses all the little bars of soap and all of the shampoo, but still it’s not enough. Wrapped in a towel, lying on the bed, he tries to work the puzzles-the efficient double taps in both bodies, the lack of struggle, the missing laptops, no Mike-but nothing will sit still. He sees Dennis, dumped like lost luggage beside the table. He sees Bobby’s wry, irritated, tired face. Fuckin’ Carr, he hears him say. He can hear the flies and feel them lighting on his hair and arms.

Amy Chun’s gated community has decent security, but the golf course abutting it does not. The cart path that runs along the sixth fairway is bordered on one side by palms and lush plantings, and on the other side by an eight-foot wrought-iron fence. Amy Chun’s house lies just beyond, across an empty street. Crouched on the golf course side, Carr watches. Just past midnight, just after the security cruiser makes its half-hourly run, he climbs over.

The house is modern and glass, all planes and angles, and the landscaping is all about privacy-tall bamboo, fanning palmettos, and long ornamental grasses. Path lights pick out a white gravel walk that disappears into the foliage.

All the windows that Carr can see are dark. He crosses the street quickly, finds heavy shadows, and waits. Nothing moves, nothing but bugs make a sound. Carr is quiet approaching the front door. It is massive and metal clad, and there’s a discreet sign nearby, warning of alarms and armed response. Carr would be more concerned if he couldn’t see the control pad through the door sidelight, and the status indicator glowing green, for disarmed.

He follows a path around the back to a long deck. It looks out on a man-made pond and a garden of rocks and combed gravel. In the dark it looks to Carr like the surface of the moon. Glass doors run the length of the deck, but the glass is dark, and Carr can see nothing inside. He takes out his phone and tries Valerie’s number, and then Mike’s. He gets no answer, and hears nothing from inside. He’s not sure if he’s relieved. Then he punches Amy Chun’s number.

The phone is loud through the glass. It rings five times, and then the voice mail kicks in. Amy Chun’s voice is crisp and businesslike, and her message is brief. Carr closes his phone and pulls on his plastic gloves. He turns on the flashlight, takes out the screwdriver, and takes a deep breath.

Amy Chun’s air-conditioning is efficient, but the cool temperature doesn’t mask the odor. It hits Carr harder this time, and he has to hold the door frame until his head stops spinning. He turns on the flashlight, shrouds the beam with his hand, and follows the smell.

Through the living room, down a short hall, to a frosted-glass door, half-opened and marred by a jagged crack. Amy Chun’s office. Despite the overturned chairs, the crooked pictures on the wall, and the books and papers on the floor, Carr recognizes it from Dennis’s spycam video. The desk is askew, but Chun’s Isla Privada laptop is there, along with the other hardware-the password generator, the fingerprint scanner, and Chun’s cell phone. And there is blood too.

It’s on the edge of the desk, and the arms of the chair, but most of it is on the floor, in the corner, around Amy Chun’s body. Her back is against the wall, and one bare leg is bent beneath her. The other is straight out in front. Her arms are at her sides, and her hands lie palms up on the floor-a supplicant’s hands, Carr thinks. Her head hangs down, and her long black hair hides her torso. Carr is grateful he can’t see her face.

The smell is stronger here, and Carr’s head is spinning again. He can’t look away from her hands, her pleading fingers, and he feels embarrassed-as if he’s come upon her in the midst of something deeply private. The flashlight seems a terrible invasion, and Carr turns it off, but even in the dark he can see her hands.

He remembers her walking with Valerie beneath the arcade, their heads bent close, their fingers brushing. He remembers the bar in Houston, the green paper lanterns hanging, the smell of beer and cigarettes, Bobby and Dennis watching Valerie. He sees Howard Bessemer’s pale hands, and his pale, round face drifting away. And suddenly, desperately, he needs air. Carr turns and the beam hits him full in the face.

It’s a hard blue light, and he can’t see who is behind it, but the glint of the chromed gun barrel is unmistakable, and so is the bass rumble of the voice. Like thunder, but not at all distant.

“Where are you rushing to?” Mr. Boyce says. “And where the fuck is my money?”

Inhale, exhale, not too fast, Carr tells himself, and he shifts carefully in the long grass.

November is early summer down here, but to Carr the predawn sky looks like winter, and the ocean-dead calm-looks frozen. The beach below is like a field of ice, and the sun-still a waxy splinter on the horizon-looks coated with frost. Carr knows the forecast calls for another warm day, but there’s nothing warm about the ground he’s lying on, and nothing soft about the grass. It feels like winter ground to him.

Carr moves the binoculars slowly along the coastline, but there is little to see. Some fishing boats to the north; to the south something larger, and farther out at sea. A tanker maybe, or a cargo ship. The beach is empty but for a stray dog worrying a carcass-a gull’s perhaps-a quarter mile away. He can hear a jet far off, but can’t see the lights. The only other noise is the wind. Of the ten armed men ranged along the hilltop with him, he sees and hears nothing. Even the man beside him is practically invisible, which is a considerable achievement given his size.

“Watch the flare off the lenses,” Mr. Boyce whispers. Carr nods and scans the binoculars down, to the house at the bottom of the hill, at the edge of the sand.

It’s a modest house by local standards, a cottage really, without the cantilevered decks, sweeping windows, or vast infinity pools common to its newer neighbors. But still, a nice house. Thick, whitewashed walls, red tile roof, fences and patios of rough local stone, a vegetable garden in back. Carr studied the site survey at the records hall, in town, and knows it sits on nearly a dozen acres-from beachfront to the top of this hill. Nice, and not cheap.