Thick as Thieves

13

Bobby calls in the morning, to say that Bessemer has broken his routine.

“He’s playing tennis with Stearn today-just the two of them, no Brunt. And they’re having lunch afterward. That’s new and different for a Thursday.”

Carr’s head is like bad fruit, but he drags himself to a sitting position and tells Bobby he’ll meet him in an hour. He raises the shades and squints into the milky sky. Then he stumbles to the shower, where the blast of water hurts, and then helps.

Carr finds street parking and meets Bobby in the alley behind the Barton Golf and Racquet Club. Bobby has traded the painter’s van for a gray sedan. He has the AC on and the cold air is like a second shower. Bobby is drinking a blue slushie from a plastic cup the size of a sap bucket.

“Howie’s jumpy today. He got that way when Brunt called, and told him it was just going to be Howie and Stearn on the tennis court. Got more that way when Stearn called to invite him for lunch after.”

“Stearn makes him nervous?”

“Haven’t seen them alone together much, but I think so. He lets him win at tennis. Double-faults if he’s about to beat the guy.”

“He does the same with Brunt, and he lets those other guys beat him at golf. That’s Howie’s thing. We know what Stearn does for a living?”

“Rich and retired, like most of Howie’s friends. Denny tells me he was over in London for twenty-plus years, with an American bank-a portfolio manager or something. Got fired in a merger, and came here after that. On a couple of boards around town-the hospital, the art museum. On the board of a prep school, up north.”

“He married?”

“Wife spends the summer in Maine. Kids are grown.”

“Nothing obvious that would make Howie nervous.”

“Come on, the guy looks like some kind of zombie scarecrow. He makes me a little tense.”

Stearn wins the second set when Bessemer double-faults, and the men sling their racquet bags and walk to the clubhouse. Bobby pulls the car around and they follow Bessemer’s BMW as it follows Stearn’s Mercedes from the Barton.

Lunch isn’t far. They travel south from the Barton, then east, then south again, on South Ocean Boulevard. Carr and Bobby are a hundred yards back when the Mercedes and then the BMW pull through the black iron gates of Willis Stearn’s estate. Driving past the entrance, Carr catches a glimpse of lawns like carpet and, in the distance, a mustard-colored villa. He swears softly.

“We’ve got a mic in Howie’s racquet bag,” Bobby says, as they round the corner, “but I’m betting he leaves it in the car.”

“Which means we’re deaf and blind.”

The properties here are large, and private, and the security patrols are not lazy. The closest parking spot Bobby finds is nearly half a mile away, a dirt patch at a construction site. It’s beyond the range of the mic in Bessemer’s bag, and just at the limit of the one in his car, but in any event there’s nothing to hear besides distant traffic and the occasional growl of thunder. Bobby switches off the engine.

“The GPS will tell us when he moves,” Bobby says. He reaches for a laptop on the backseat and balances it on the console between them. Then he settles himself lower behind the wheel and runs his straw around the bottom of his empty cup.

Carr takes a deep breath. “Dennis come up with anything else on Bessemer’s friends?”

“He’s looking. Mike’s on it too, or will be when he gets back from Boca.”

Carr turns in his seat. “What the hell’s he doing down there?”

“Val needed a replacement for one of the cameras she’s gonna use in Chun’s house. Mike brought it down.”

“Why the hell didn’t she call me?”

Bobby puts up a hand and arranges his meaty face into as close as it comes to a conciliatory look. “She calls me direct sometimes. She’s done it before. It’s not a problem.”

“It’s a problem for me, Bobby. I want to know who’s doing what, and where. And if she called you, how come you didn’t go down there?”

Bobby clears his throat and suppresses a smile. “ ’Cause I’m here with you, looking at Howie.”

Carr sighs and peels his shirt from the upholstery. “Run the AC.”

Bobby does, and the two of them sit without speaking, watching some stonemasons build a long wall. They are shaping and fitting the rocks, and their hammers sound like gunshots to Carr. The air conditioner dries the sweat on his skin but does nothing for the throbbing in his temples. Tina’s words reverberate there: Bertolli was short almost two million euro. Two million euro-Declan thought there’d be more.

They were in Port of Spain, in the bar at the Hyatt Regency. Wind was shaking the windows, and the city lights were lost behind low clouds. The place was empty, and they were all a little drunk. Declan was like a red-faced witch over a cauldron.

“The bastard doesn’t trust banks or bankers,” he said. “Oh, he uses them-he’s got to with the feckin’ money he makes on all that crap he smuggles in-but he likes to keep some cash on hand. Nothing big, mind you, we’re talking three to five mil in euros-he prefers them to dollars. Keeps enough around for incidentals and traveling funds, in case he has to move in a hurry, which he’s done a few times-out of Sao Paulo, out of Ciudad del Este, out of Argentina and back again. He’s quite the jackrabbit, Senor Bertolli is.

“I had this job lined up years ago-had it all worked out-but the fat fuck skipped on me. Hightailed it out of Argentina when a new government came in, with his wife, mistresses, and various bastards in tow. Got away about a minute before the PFA knocked down his door. Took all his cash with him too. But that party’s gone now, and so Bertolli and his money have come home.”

Carr was slow on the uptake. He’d been working on the Prager job all day-peering at floor plans and wiring diagrams. His eyes were gritty and his head full of numbers, and he didn’t get the point right away. Declan was annoyed.

“Wake up, Carr-it’s the feckin’ expenses. The up-front costs on the Prager job are running twice what we expected, and they’ll run higher still. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be paying such a big chunk of my take in finance fees to the grand Mr. Boyce. It’s usury what he’s chargin’! This deal is lovely-a quick in and out, three bucks easy, and then we don’t need his feckin’ financing.”

That was all he’d had to say to convince Mike and Bobby and Ray-Ray, who were already antsy from too much planning, and who were never happy paying anyone for anything. Some part of Carr had known right there that it was a losing battle, but still he spent the next week in increasingly heated, increasingly pointless argument with Declan. He and Valerie both-though that night, in the Hyatt bar, she’d just stared into her drink and said nothing at all.

Carr’s head drops, and he realizes he’s been dozing. Bobby is watching him. “Up late?” he asks.

Carr wipes his chin. “Anything from Bessemer?”

“His car hasn’t moved, and there’s nothing on the mic but seagulls.”

Bobby has a cooler in the back, and Carr pulls a bottle of water from it. He takes a long pull and looks at Bobby. He doesn’t want to ask about it-doesn’t have the energy today-and besides, he knows what the answer will be. But still… Bertolli was short almost two million euro. He clears his throat.

“At Bertolli’s place that night,” Carr begins, and at the mention of the name Bobby’s face colors with surprise and anger.

“You’re fucking kidding me with this!” he says, and then the laptop pings twice, loudly.

Bobby sits up fast. “Bessemer’s moving,” he says, and he throws the car into gear and guns it through the dirt lot. There’s a curtain of dust around them; the laptop slides from the console and Carr catches it mid-flight. Bobby pushes through the side streets and they hit South Ocean Boulevard in time to see Bessemer’s convertible pull out of Stearn’s place. His top is still down and his thin hair is flying as they pass him going north.

“Fast lunch,” Bobby says, and he slides the car through an easy U-turn and into the northbound lane.

“I’m not surprised,” Carr says. “Did you see Bessemer’s face? He looked like he was about to throw up.”

Two miles up South Ocean Boulevard they watch him do just that, in a garbage can by the side of the road.