Thick as Thieves

10

No palms on this street-barely any green at all besides a runty saw palmetto, and its fronds are mostly gray. Bobby was right about the house; it’s crap: a low concrete bunker the color of dishwater, with barred windows, a tin-roofed carport, and a sagging school yard fence. In a neighborhood where chipped breeze block and auto parts on the lawn make up an architectural school, it’s still the worst house on the street. But the locals don’t worry much about how the hedge next door is clipped, or if they do, they know better than to say. Which makes the house crap but also ideal. A jet passes low, directly overhead. It casts a broad shadow and shakes Carr’s stomach, and leaves behind the tang of spent kerosene.

Carr has been here only twice before, but still it’s more than familiar to him, a cousin to every workhouse they’ve ever used, in more bleak neighborhoods, by more airports, harbors, and rail yards than he can count. He knocks twice and waits. His head aches, the midday glare makes his eyes water, and, though he had nothing stronger than soda water the night before, he feels hungover. The kerosene smell settles in his hair and clothing. He can feel it on his skin. Dennis opens the door.

The lights are on in the living room, and all the shades are drawn. There’s music playing, propulsive Colombian hip-hop, but it’s fighting a losing battle with the air conditioner rattling in the wall. The living room furniture-a spavined sofa, a lumpy recliner, some battered kitchen chairs, a side table pitted with burn marks-is pushed up against the walls, and the center of the space is dominated by two long tables with plastic tops and folding legs. Bobby and Latin Mike sit at one, peering into the same laptop screen. Dennis folds himself at the other, behind an uneven berm of equipment-laptops, printers, routers, modems, a laminating machine, and a tangle of cabling. Like every other workhouse.

Carr winces at the music and the odor-of cigarettes and burned coffee-and locks the door behind him. He places the white paper bag he’s carrying on Bobby’s table and tears it open. The smells of tomato sauce and grease waft up to mix with the entrenched aromas.

“Two meatball and two sausage and pepper,” Carr says.

“Just in time,” Bobby says. “Denny was starting to look like a plate of wings to me.” Bobby reaches across, takes two of the foil-wrapped torpedoes, and passes one to Dennis. Latin Mike sighs and takes a long pull on his cigarette.

Bobby tears the wrapping off his sandwich and takes a bite. He makes small grunts as he chews, and red sauce runs down his chin. Latin Mike shakes his head. “You never heard of a napkin?” He reaches across Carr for a sandwich and carefully peels the foil away.

Bobby looks at Carr. “You not eating?”

Mike laughs. “ Jefe don’t need to eat with us. He’s got that nice cafe by his condo. All those white tables, and the waitresses in their aprons, right, jefe? Not a place for workingmen like us, Bobby.”

Carr looks at Mike, who smiles and eats his sandwich. There’s nothing in the grin beyond his usual bullshit-the theater of labor versus management that he’s compelled to perform every time he has to report progress. He did it when Declan was alive, and Carr has learned to bear it.

Carr smiles. “Yeah, they wax your Bentley with every meal. How about telling me what’s up with Bessemer.”

Dennis giggles behind his monitors. Mike wipes his mouth and hands carefully. “Well, it looks like Howie’s got himself a job since gettin’ out. And he’s been busy at it. Eight days take from the wires we planted, and we got what we need. Howie’s making valuable contributions to his community.”

Dennis giggles again. “Real valuable,” he says.

“A public servant,” Bobby adds, laughing.

Carr sighs, and the throbbing in his head is more insistent. “Dennis, you want to turn down the music? And how about we skip the banter?”

Dennis kills the hip-hop. Latin Mike smiles and turns his laptop toward Carr. “Look for yourself. This is off one of the cameras we put in his house-the one behind his desk.”

A window opens on the laptop and fills with a murky image: the back of a leather chair, the surface of a desk-scuffed wood, a blotter, a green shaded lamp, a computer keyboard and monitor. Beyond the desk, beside a darkened window, is a pair of green leather club chairs. Howard Bessemer is in one, and Daniel Brunt, his frequent tennis partner, is in the other. Their voices are muffled but entirely intelligible, and they both sound slightly drunk.

“ Is her name actually Natasha?” Brunt says. “They can’t all be named that, can they? And is she even Russian, or is she from Latvia or one of those other places?”

“ I have no clue where she’s from, Danny. Really, I don’t ask. ”

“ But you know she’s eighteen, right?”

“ I know what they tell me. ”

“ Because the last thing I need, Bess, is underage issues. ”

“ You don’t need any issues, Danny. Nobody does. ”

Carr taps the mousepad and the video pauses. He looks at Mike, who is smiling. “Whores? They’re talking about whores?”

“Russian whores, jefe. ”

“Howie takes Brunt to his poker parties?”

“Not that we’ve seen,” Bobby says around a mouthful of meatball.

“So…?”

“Howie is a player, jefe. This little Pillsbury pendejo is a pimp. ”

Dennis clears his throat. “I think he’s more of a pander, technically, or a procurer. I mean, the girls don’t work for him.”

“Whatever,” Latin Mike says. “The point is, he’s lining ’em up for Brunt. And not just whores.”

“And not just for Brunt,” Bobby adds.

Carr looks at the image of Howard Bessemer, frozen on the laptop screen-the round, unlined face, the high forehead catching the dim light. Carr shakes his head. “What else besides whores?”

“Danny here likes his Vicodin,” Bobby says.

Latin Mike turns the laptop around again, and works the keyboard. “We got the best stuff from the cameras in his house, and the mics in his car and his tennis bag,” Mike says. “They all know better than to put this shit in e-mails. This one’s from the car.” He turns the laptop around again. There’s no picture, but a voice comes on. It’s lazy, low, entitled. Carr doesn’t recognize it.

“… more of that stuff you got last week? That was very nice-very mellow. ”

Carr stops the playback. “This is who?”

“Nick Scoville,” Dennis answers. “Howie sails with him. He’s got a smack habit.”

Bobby laughs. “And his golfing buddy Tandy-he likes coke with his whores. He likes really fat whores, by the way. The other golfer, Moyer, is into ice, and lots of it.”

“Nice friends,” Carr says, and hits PLAY again. Bessemer’s voice comes on.

“ I’ll talk to my guys and see what they can do. ”

“ See what they can do with price, Bess. I mean, it’s pretty shit but it’s not cheap. ”

Carr hits STOP. “Who are these guys he’s talking about?”

Mike takes the laptop again and brings up a photo. He turns the screen back to Carr. “They’re brothers,” Mike says.

There are two men in the photo, both stocky and dark, one muscular, the other just fat. The muscular one wears a gray suit and a white shirt, open at the collar. The fat one wears jeans, a black T-shirt, a rumpled blue blazer, dark glasses, and a three-day beard. Carr recognizes the backdrop: the frosted glass front of the Brazilian restaurant beneath which Bessemer spends his weekends.

“Mister GQ is Misha Grigoriev,” Bobby says. “The dough boy is his baby brother, Sasha. Russkies, in case you couldn’t guess. Came over when they were teenagers, by way of Jersey. Now they’re local bad boys, with a little bit of everything going on. They own the Brazilian place and two others like it in Jupiter and Vero Beach. They got a string of high-end call girls here in town, and a couple of small-time dope guys on staff. They got a gambling joint down in Boynton Beach. Like everybody else around here, they got a construction business to pump the money through, though these days I can’t see how that flies so well.”

Carr looks sharply from Bobby to Mike and back. “Where’d you get all that?”

Latin Mike scowls and mutters something in Spanish. Bobby puts up his hands. “Don’t worry-we didn’t leave tracks. I bought drinks for a stumblebum vice cop who couldn’t find his own dick to piss with, and doesn’t know me from Adam. And Denny did some crazy shit with a fed computer.”

“A DOJ server,” Dennis says, and smiles sheepishly. “And I made it look like all the traffic went in and out of Moscow.”

Carr nods and looks at the Grigorievs on the screen. “Are they connected?”

Bobby shakes his head. “According to the feds they’re independents.”

“And Bessemer works for them?”

“He’s a middleman,” Bobby says. “A freelancer. He’s buying the dope from the Grigorievs’ people, marking up the price, and selling to his buddies.”

“He’s fronting the money?” Carr asks, and Dennis nods. “For the whores too?”

Another nod. “Yeah-with a markup. He relays the where, when, and how many to the Grigorievs’ man, and the whores show up.”

“He making much money?”

Bobby shrugs. “His margins look pretty thin. The Russkies aren’t giving him any breaks on price. Play the one with Sasha, Denny-from Howie’s car.”

Dennis fiddles at the keyboard until another voice comes on. This one is deep and impatient, with a trace of an accent.

“ You have a problem, you talk to Willy, not me, right?”

“ But this stuff isn’t for me, Sash-you know that. It’s for my friends, and the price- ”

“ I don’t know about any stuff, and I don’t want to know, Howard. You don’t talk to me about this crap, you understand? What Willy says is what goes, okay? He don’t know who this is for, and he don’t care, right? All he knows is you, and shit costs what he says it costs, and that’s it, right? What you do after that is your thing. ”

Bobby hits STOP. “He’s whining about the price of coke. They charge Howie one-ten a gram, which is full retail and then some for around here.”

Carr draws a hand along his jaw. “This is a lot of risk he’s taking,” he says, “especially for a guy with a record. What the hell’s he doing it for?”

Latin Mike blows out smoke in a disgusted blast. “ Cabron, who gives a shit why he’s doing it? It’s enough we know what he’s doing. Like you said, it’s a big risk for a guy like him, and that makes it a good handle. A handle like this, we pick him up and carry him anywhere we want.”

Another jet passes, shaking the glass in the windows. Carr rubs a palm over his chin. “It’s not enough. We get only one shot at Bessemer, and we need to make it stick. We need to know all the strings there are to pull. I want to know why he’s doing it. Is it just money? Is it something else?”

“ Hijo de puta!” Mike flicks his cigarette across the room and jumps to his feet. There’s a burst of red against the cinder block, and a smoldering ember on the carpet, and Mike’s chair tips back. He points at Carr. “The fuck is up with you? This thing is lined up like dominoes. What’s wrong with knocking it over?”

When he finally answers, Carr’s voice is quiet. “I said we don’t know enough yet.”

“I tell you what’s not enough,” Mike says, and he cups a hand around his crotch.

Bobby has stopped chewing, and Dennis is frozen at his keyboard. The room is silent but for the chugging of the air conditioner and the receding rumble of a jet. Blood rushes in Carr’s ears as he stands. “I don’t recall you ever making quite that argument to Declan, Mike.”

Mike smiles and steps forward. “That’s ’cause Deke had a pair.”

Carr nods. “And most of the time he managed not to confuse them with his brains.”

Mike steps forward until his chest is nearly touching Carr’s. He looks down at Carr and smiles wider. “That’s right, pendejo, I’m just a dumbass chicano. What the fuck do I know? What kinda dumbass thing will I do next?”

Carr forces his breathing down- inhale, exhale, not too fast. He can smell the cigarettes on Mike, and the coffee, and the cologne. He studies Mike’s throat-the pulse in his carotid artery, the soft spot below his Adam’s apple-and tenses his fingers. He nearly jumps at Dennis’s nervous cough.

“I… I know what Valerie would say if she were here.” Dennis’s voice is cracking. “Something like put ’em back in your pants. Don’t you think, Bobby?”

Bobby’s laugh is too loud. “Yeah, or maybe sit the fuck down. Right, Mike?”

Mike shrugs, but his gaze never leaves Carr. “She’s not here now. And what the fuck does she care how long this takes? She’s not living in this shithole. She’s like Carr-got herself a nice apartment with a view of the water and everything.”

“But that’s what she’d say, Mike, and she’d be right.” Bobby tries to catch Carr’s eye and fails. “She’d be right, Carr,” Bobby says. “We got to keep our heads in the work.”

“She’s not here now,” Carr says quietly.

Dennis stands, still holding his sub. “For chrissakes, I didn’t sign up for this kind of thing,” he says, and backs away until he hits the wall. When he does a large meatball is ejected from the end of his sandwich. It lands with a wet thud on the carpet between his feet. All three men turn to look first at Dennis, and then the meatball.

Bobby’s voice is low and grave. “Look at that-you made the kid shit himself.”

And then, suddenly, air returns to the room and the four men are laughing. Carr’s shoulders relax, and Latin Mike rights his overturned chair. “You better clean that up, Denny,” Mike says. “I don’t want to be steppin’ in it.”

“I don’t know,” Dennis says, “I think it goes with the carpet.”

The men laugh again, and Latin Mike lights a cigarette. Carr moves to the door and turns the lock.

“I don’t want this to take longer than it has to,” he says, “but we need to know more. Give it a week-if we don’t turn up anything else, we’ll go with what we’ve got.”

Carr closes the door behind him and hears someone lock it. He walks down the cracked path, through the rusting gate, and it is only when he’s around the corner that he takes a breath.