Thick as Thieves

19

“Portland to JFK at eight,” Carr says as he comes down the wharf. “Then we pick up a rental and drive to East Hampton.”

Valerie grimaces. “Eight a.m.? Do we have to be such fucking early birds?”

Carr smiles at her. She takes his hand, and they walk farther out. “There’s a worm waiting for us,” he says. “At least, I hope there is.”

Valerie nods. “Tracy was pretty clear about it,” she says. “The date it went from merely intolerable with Bessemer to call-in-the-lawyers bad. She knew when it was, and where he’d been, and she knew that whatever he was doing, he’d been doing it with Prager. Of course, the fact that it was the weekend of their fifth anniversary, and Howard was supposed to have been at home with her, probably helped it stick in her mind.

“Before that weekend-according to her-he was just a middling-to-bad husband and dad, out drinking with clients too often, paying no attention to her or the kid when he was at home, whining all the time. After that weekend was when it went south in a big way: the gambling and drugs and whores-usually with Prager as his wingman. Or vice versa.”

“Sounds like a worm to me,” Carr says.

What’s left of daylight is sputtering out in the low brick skyline of Portland. The sodium lights along the wharf cast an amber glow on Valerie’s face. Her hand is warm in his. She leads Carr to the railing, and they look out at the swaying boats.

“She didn’t like you,” Valerie says after a while.

“Yeah, I got that.”

“You shouldn’t take it personally-she doesn’t like men. She’s permanently angry.”

“I got that, too. Is it all thanks to Howard?”

“He just finished the job. Her dad started it, and there were others in between.”

“You got all that from a beer?”

“It was six beers, each, and it helped that you made yourself scarce.” Valerie unwinds her hand and slips it around his waist. “Besides,” she says, “I’m a good listener. People open up to me.”

“So I’ve seen.”

“Most people, anyway.” She looks at the harbor again and starts to whistle something Carr almost recognizes.

He is fairly certain she isn’t drunk-he’s seen her drink much more than the beers she had with Holland and the bottle of wine he and she shared in the hotel lounge, and with no discernible effect. No, this evening she’s something different-something open and unguarded, and seemingly without calculation. A Valerie he hasn’t seen before? A performance he hasn’t seen, anyway. She leans against him at the rail, and her scent mixes with the smells of diesel and low tide.

“You like the water, don’t you?” she asks. “Diving, sailing-all of that.”

“I do.”

“You grew up around it?”

“I learned to sail when I was a kid.”

“Who from?”

“My father.”

“You were close to him?”

Carr looks at the bobbing lights and the water, nearly black now. He shakes his head. “I liked it in spite of him.”

“An asshole?”

“Like Tracy Holland-permanently pissed off.”

“At you?”

“At life; at the world; at my mother. I was a convenient proxy.”

The wind picks up, colder now, and Valerie shivers beside him. Carr takes off his blazer and hangs it around her shoulders. Valerie rubs her hand up and down his forearm. “Poor baby boy,” she says, chuckling.

“Are you making light of my troubled childhood?”

“Did they smack you around? Or each other?”

“No.”

“Then we have different definitions of troubled. ”

“You have that kind of trouble?”

She looks up. Her face is flushed from the wine, and Carr can feel the heat rising from her. “I was too cute to get mad at.”

“Even then?”

She nods. “Still, it sucks having an asshole for a dad. Probably sucks worse for a guy. Role models, and all that.”

“You’re watching too much daytime television down in Boca.”

Valerie wraps his jacket around her and laughs. “It explains so much, though-Deke’s appeal to you, his big, bluff paternal thing, why you’re still picking at what happened in Mendoza like it’s a scab.”

Carr steps back from the rail. “Definitely too much television.”

“Oprah can’t tell me shit, babe. You think I can do what I do without knowing what makes people tick? Now tell me Declan wasn’t a father figure to you.”

“I can’t say I’ve given it much thought.”

Valerie laughs. “Of course not.”

Carr takes another step back, and puts his hands in the air. “Deke had big plans, he ran a good crew, and he was a good soldier-disciplined, focused, a good motivator. He kept his head in the game, and he made us all rich. That’s what I know.”

“You’re remembering a different guy,” she says. “Yes, he thought big, and he ran a good crew-but disciplined? Focused? C’mon, Carr-that’s what he had you for. And half the time, he didn’t want to listen. Deke liked any excuse to light it up, and you know it. He got bored too easy, and deep down he was a fucking cowboy. Toward the end, it wasn’t even down that deep. Personally, I think it was some sort of midlife crisis.”

“That’s bullshit. Besides Mendoza-”

“I’m not just talking about Mendoza, and you know it. There was Cesar, and before that the Russians in Nicaragua. Before that, there was-”

“That’s enough, Vee,” Carr says, and his voice is icy.

“Don’t go all Eastwood on me now-we were almost having a conversation.”

“You were doing the talking.”

She smiles at him, and there’s a little pity in it. “Okay,” she says softly. “But you’re remembering a different guy.”

She takes his hand again and leads him down the wharf, past a yellow cigarette boat, a chrome-heavy sport fisher, and a big white catamaran. She’s whistling again, softly, and Carr sighs.

“What about you?” he asks. “No lingering mommy and daddy issues?”

She laughs. “You don’t know anybody more mentally healthy than me.”

“Most of the people I know are borderline sociopaths. Your parents stay together?”

Her laugh is sharp, and it echoes like a shot on the water. “They were both military, so they knew how to fight. It was like a nonstop cage match.”

“But you have no issues.”

She shakes her head and slips her arm around him. “It doesn’t always have to be like that, you know-like my parents, and yours. Like the battling Bessemers.”

“I haven’t seen many examples to the contrary.”

Valerie moves in front of him, and slides her hands under his shirt. They’re cold and smooth against his ribs, and a shudder runs through him. “Maybe that’s what we’ll do afterward,” she whispers. “You and me. We’ll conduct a little research to find some happy couples. We’ll be like archaeologists.”

“You think we’ll have to dig them up?”

Valerie laughs, and her mouth is hungry on his. “Early morning tomorrow,” she whispers. “We should call it a night.”