Thick as Thieves

22

Carr is sitting in an armchair, drinking soda water from a highball glass and leafing through a month-old copy of The New Yorker , when the teddy bear groans and lifts his head from the waste can. Carr places his glass on an end table and watches as Bessemer’s gumdrop eyes dart about the room-ceiling to floor, wall to wall, lingering over the laptop, and coming to rest finally on the highball glass on its coaster and the Glock beside it.

Carr smiles benevolently. “All done throwing up? You want some water now?”

Bessemer shakes his head and sits back on the sofa. He runs a hand through his thin hair and across his mouth. His eyes dart some more, and then light on a brass clock atop the liquor cabinet.

“Yes, it is getting late,” Carr says. “Time to call Stearn, and Lamp. Tell each of them that the other one has canceled on you. Tell them that you don’t know why, and that you’ll have to get back to them to reschedule. Best to be brief and vague.” Bessemer looks at him and squints, as if straining to remember something. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some water?” Carr asks again.

“Who are you?” he asks.

Carr shakes his head and calls out: “Can we get Howie a phone?” Latin Mike emerges from the kitchen with one of Bessemer’s cell phones. He tosses it to Bessemer, who jumps as if it’s a hand grenade. Mike laughs.

“Stearn,” Carr says, “and then Lamp. Then we’ll talk.”

“Who…?”

“Make the calls, Howie.”

And Bessemer does. He’s both brief and vague, and all the time he talks, he never takes his eyes off the gun on the end table. When he’s done, he hands the phone back to Carr and lies back on the sofa. He closes his eyes, presses his fingers to them, and opens them again. He looks surprised to find Carr still there.

“I’ll have that water now,” he says.

Carr goes into the kitchen and brings out a glass, with ice. Bessemer sits up and drinks it all. “Who are you?” he asks Carr.

“Gregory Frye,” Carr answers, and puts out his hand. Bessemer’s grip is soft and damp. “And I’m not a cop.”

“Then what the hell are you doing in my house, acting like it’s your goddamn house? Who are you, and what the hell do you want from me?”

Carr chuckles and finishes his drink. “I’m the guy who doesn’t care what you’re doing with Willis Stearn or Daniel Brunt or Nick Scoville, or Tandy or Moyer, or Lamp, or the Grigoriev brothers.” Carr points at Bessemer’s glass. “Refill?”

Bessemer blanches, and Carr wonders if he’s going to vomit again. But Bessemer rights himself, smooths his hair, and sits up straight. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Carr shakes his head. “Let’s not do that, Howie.”

Bessemer wipes his forehead. “I’m going to call the police.”

Carr sighs and hands him the telephone. “Really, Howie, the dramatics are a big waste. You pretend, I threaten, and round and round we go. Why put yourself through it? You must be tired after the past few days. All that worrying. All that running around. It’s a long way from the Upper East Side, isn’t it? From Otisville too-though maybe not quite as long.”

“I don’t know what you’re-”

“It’s hard to argue with video, Howie.”

Bessemer sits frozen with the phone in his hand. His polo shirt is mottled with sweat, and his face is a crumbling mask of fear and confusion. His eyes race around the room again and come to rest on his Persian rug. He doesn’t resist when Carr takes the phone from him.

“What do you want?” Bessemer asks softly.

“I want to meet a friend of yours.”

Bessemer squints again. “Who-Willis? Nicky? Danny Brunt?”

“None of those guys.”

“Well, I don’t have any other friends. Not anymore.”

“You’ve got at least one, Howie-an old friend.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know who-”

“Curtis Prager. I want you to introduce me to Curtis Prager.”

Bessemer straightens his shoulders, and lines of defiance appear around his eyes. “Who is-”

Carr sighs. “You steered investors to him when he was starting Tirol Capital. You put your own money in. He helped you hide some of it when your wife was divorcing you.”

“He didn’t-”

“Your wife’s lawyers thought he did, even if they couldn’t prove it.”

Bessemer’s mouth stiffens. “I don’t know him.”

Carr shakes his head regretfully, and his voice falls to a whisper. “I’ll put up with a certain amount of drama, Howie. I suppose it’s unavoidable. But I won’t tolerate lying. And especially not this kind of thing-it’s insulting. You might as well call me an idiot. My clothes, my grammar, my reading this magazine and bringing you water, may have given you the wrong idea about me. You may think I’m very different from Lamp and the Grigorievs and the other trash you’ve been hanging with, but in the ways most relevant to your health, I promise you I’m not.”

Bessemer’s body softens and slumps. Carr claps him lightly on the shoulder and carries his highball glass to the kitchen. He returns with it refilled and Bessemer looks at him.

“What do you want with Curtis?” he says.

“To meet him. To do business.”

“I’ll give you his number. You can call his secretary and make an appointment.”

Carr laughs. “I had a more personal intro in mind.”

Bessemer drinks some water and spills more down his shirtfront. He wipes his mouth with his fingertips, gathers his breath, and sits up straighter. “Listen, Mr. Frye, you might’ve done me a favor tonight-keeping me from doing something I wasn’t looking forward to-so I’ll give you some valuable advice, for absolutely no charge: I don’t know what business you think you want to do with Curtis Prager, but whatever it is, you don’t want to do it. Whatever it is-and I’m not asking what-I tell you, it won’t work out. It won’t end well, for you or anyone else involved. Anyone besides Curtis.”

“And who knows better than you?”

Bessemer slumps again. “What’s that mean?”

“It means your own business with Prager hasn’t panned out so well. It means he has your money and doesn’t want to give it back, so now you earn your gambling, coke, and hooker money by dealing dope to your friends and procuring prostitutes for them. And call me Greg, Howie.”

Bessemer blanches and swallows hard, and Carr smiles to himself. “Who are you?” Bessemer whispers.

“Wrong question. You should be asking, What’s in it for me? What can Greg Frye do for me?”

“And what would that be?”

“I can get you out from under, Howie-out of the low-margin fetching and carrying you do for your pals, out of your grandma’s bungalow, out of scratching at the doors of clubs that won’t have you for a member. I can get you out of this life altogether. I can get your money back-your money and then some.”

Howard Bessemer stands and shakes his head. “I… I want no part of that.”

“No part of what, Howie?”

“If you’re thinking about… I don’t know what you’re thinking about-all I know is I want no part of it.”

Carr sits back in his chair. He nods slowly and drums his fingers on the armrest. “Not surprising, I guess. You heard that offer before, or something like it, just before they put you on the bus for Otisville. Talk to us about Curtis Prager and get out of jail free. But you didn’t bite then.”

Bessemer’s eyes are wide now, and he’s pointing. “You are a cop!”

“I’m not, Howie, and don’t yell.”

“ Then who the fuck are you?”

“Again, wrong question.”

“No-I don’t care what you can do! Whatever you’re thinking, forget it. You can’t-”

Carr holds up a hand, cuts Bessemer off, and lets quiet descend on the room. He takes a deep breath. Time to climb the ladder, he thinks, and his own heart begins to pound. “If you don’t care what I can do for you,” Carr says, “then worry about what I can do to you.”

“I don’t-”

Carr cuts Bessemer off again. He works a hard look onto his face and an angry edge into his voice. “I’m not just talking about video of you and those country club shitheads doing lines, Howie. Drugs and whores are not even frosting on this cake.”

“What-”

“And I’m not one of your ex-wife’s asshole lawyers, either. I’m not stupid enough to think you kept quiet just because Prager sheltered funds for you. And I certainly don’t think it’s because you’re a stand-up guy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bessemer says, so softly Carr can barely make it out.

Carr stares at him. Time to step onto the platform. “I’m talking about the hold Curtis Prager has on you, Howard-the reason you kept your mouth shut and did your time, and the reason you’re still taking his shit today. I’m saying that I know, Howard. I know, and I have no problem using it.”

“Really, Mr. Frye-Greg-I don’t know-”

Carr takes a deep breath. Time to dive. “Sarah Cotter,” he says evenly. “Sarah Cotter.”

In the silent seconds that follow, the dive becomes a spinning, sickening free fall. Puzzlement supplants fear on Bessemer’s face, and Carr is suddenly sure that he’s gotten it all wrong-that he and Valerie somehow read too much into what Tracy Holland said, heard what they’d wanted to hear, and connected dots in East Hampton that formed no hidden picture at all, but were nothing more than… dots. Bessemer squints at him, and Carr feels his temples pound and a line of sweat slide down his spine. His mind races through unlikely alternate plans-a desperate landscape of threats and blandishments-as the silence expands. And then Howard Bessemer sways before him, his knees buckle, and he sits abruptly on the sofa, as if his spine has turned to water.

Carr breathes a long sigh and lets his voice soften. “After all these years, it’s still an open case, but I guess that’s no surprise. A young woman like Sarah Cotter-just twenty-three-hit and run so early in the morning, and not a witness to be found. No forensic evidence either-no paint transfer or tire tracks, nothing. The police out there don’t get too many cases like that.”

Bessemer is staring now, at nothing in the room. He’s paper-white, and his hands are shaking. “You’re a cop,” he whispers, and to Carr it sounds like a plea. He sits on the sofa and puts a hand on Bessemer’s shoulder.

“I’m really not,” he says quietly.

Bessemer looks at him-disappointed, Carr thinks. “It was so early,” Bessemer says after a long while. His voice is low and exhausted. “The middle of the night really-no light in the sky at all-and there was fog too, like goddamn soup. I still wonder what the hell she was doing out there in the dark. Who rides a bike in the dark like that?”

“She was training for a triathlon.”

“I read that in the papers. But still-what the hell was she doing there?”

“That time of night, the fog-it must’ve been hard to see.”

Bessemer squints at him and shakes his head. “That’s what Curtis said, when I drove back to his place- even sober, you’d never have seen her, Bess. Then he woke up his security guy and told me he’d take care of everything. And fuck me if I didn’t believe him.”

Bessemer hangs his head, and a shudder runs through him. Carr claps him on the arm. “You can’t change the past, Howie, but you don’t have to be a prisoner of it.”

Bessemer shrinks from his hand. “What bullshit,” he says. “What total bullshit. What you really mean is that I can trade one jailer for another-Prager for you.”

Carr sighs, crosses the room again, and picks up his gun. He blows a speck of something off the barrel and slips it into his belt. “You’re looking at it the wrong way. I’ve put a carrot and a stick on the table: you help me out and you get your money back and get out of this life; you don’t help, and… well, we both know how that goes. With Prager, you get only the stick-and you’ve been getting it for years. I figure you’ve got to be a little tired of it by now.”

Bessemer makes a sound halfway between a groan and a bitter laugh and pushes his hands through his thin hair. “I need something more than water,” he says, and points to the liquor cabinet. Carr nods. Bessemer walks unsteadily to it, and finds a bottle of Bombay Sapphire inside. He pours some into a glass, drinks half, and coughs. He shakes his head slowly.

“You’re planning on… on stealing from him?” Bessemer struggles with the word stealing, as if just speaking it is enough to bring down thunder. Carr looks at him and says nothing, and Bessemer takes that as an answer. “If I got involved in this-if I helped you-and Curtis found out, prison wouldn’t be the problem, if you know what I mean. Curtis and the people who work for him-the people he knows-they’re capable of-”

“I know who they are, Howie, and what they’re capable of. You get your money back, you can afford to go somewhere else. To be somebody else.”

“What-an alias? A new identity?”

“You’re really happy with the old one?”

“But I… I wouldn’t know how-”

“It’s not hard, Howie. I can show you.”

Bessemer drinks the rest of his gin and massages his temples with his thumbs. He rummages again in the liquor cabinet. He comes out with a mirror, a razor blade, a silver straw, and a small white envelope. He taps a pile of white powder onto the mirror and draws it into six thin lines. He bends over the mirror and four of the lines disappear. He looks up at Carr.

“First Curtis, then Misha and Sasha, then Stearn, and now you,” Bessemer says, sniffling. “I don’t know why this keeps happening. Sometimes I feel like I have a sign around my neck- kick me, or something.”

“The Grigorievs are squeezing you?” Carr asks, and Bessemer nods. “Stearn too?” Another nod.

“The brokering that I do-with the drugs and the girls-Misha and Sasha got me into it. I ran up a big tab with them-bigger than my cash flow could handle-and they suggested a way I could pay it off. Suggested isn’t quite the right word actually.”

“Insisted?”

“That’s closer. Anyway, that’s how it got started, but this thing tonight, with Willis… I’ve never been involved in anything like that before. When I found out what he wanted, I tried to beg off. I told him I didn’t have those kinds of contacts, but he wouldn’t hear it. He said I was getting a reputation around town, and that I needed to be careful. He said things could get awkward for me if rumors got back to the police.” Bessemer offers Carr the straw.

Carr smiles. “Not just now.”

Bessemer snorts another line. “You see, I haven’t been lucky recently.

So how do I know, if I get involved with this, it won’t turn out the same? What assurance do I have?”

Carr nods and smiles sympathetically. “Other than my word as the guy holding the gun, you have none. But you also have no choice. Not to put too fine a point on it.”

Bessemer looks at Carr and then looks down at the mirror atop the liquor cabinet, at the last line of cocaine, at his own reflection. He bends, snorts the final line, and wipes his nose with the back of his hand.

“Who are you supposed to be?” he asks, sniffling. “When I talk to Curtis, what am I supposed to say?”

“I’m a guy you met in Otisville, a good guy, someone who helped you when you were inside. Say that we’ve stayed in touch, and now I’m in the market for a banker. We’ll do the details later.”

“And when you meet with him, then what happens?”

“I do a little business with him.”

“You know it won’t be that simple, right? Curtis checks. He checks on everything, very carefully, and then he double-checks.”

Carr nods and finishes his soda water. “Don’t worry, Howie. I’m double-checkable.”