Thick as Thieves

26

“You’re not yourself this morning, Greg,” Bessemer says to Carr. “Need some more coffee?” He reaches across the kitchen counter and fills his mug.

Latin Mike looks at Carr with no expression, and Carr looks back. “I’m going now,” Mike says, and Carr nods.

Bessemer squints at him, curiosity plain on his round face. “Rough night?”

And it hasn’t ended yet, Carr thinks. The rum brought him no sleep, and even now there’s a blur around the borders of things, and a hollow echo to every sound. His thoughts want to wander, to drift sideways, to skid. They steer the wrong way and then hit the gas until the skid becomes a dizzying spin.

They left the hotel separately-Mike first, then Valerie. Carr followed Valerie back to Boca, back to her apartment, then out again to Amy Chun’s place. After an hour of watching dark windows, he left her there. Then he drove back to North Palm Beach and started to pace. Sometime past midnight the drinking began.

Drinking, pacing, replaying how many moments, again and again, in his head. Poolside at Chamela. Her apartment in Port of Spain. More workhouses and hotel rooms than he could count. And more questions. When did his suspicions begin? What set them off? When did she meet Nando, and how? Why, along with the sensation of having missed a stair, does he feel something equally jarring-something a lot like relief?

Round and round he went, unable or unwilling to get to the middle of it, to get a purchase on the central problem: the dimensions of her betrayal. What has she done? What is she in the midst of doing? Who is she doing it with? Who can he trust, and what the hell should he do?

Howard Bessemer is still holding the coffeepot, still squinting at him. “Are we going to make that call today, Greg?”

Carr looks at him but says nothing.

Drinking, pacing, staring at the ocean. What the hell should he do ? His options are limited to exactly two: finish the Prager job, or cut and run-and the second choice is more or less a nonstarter. Mr. Boyce has fronted a lot of cash on this job, and if Carr decides to fold, he’s going to want it back-and with a nice return. Yes, Boyce is currently holding the diamonds the crew picked up in Houston, and they’ll go some way to paying off the debt, but Carr has no intention of being stuck with the balance. Neither does he want to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, waiting for Tina to appear.

Sometime before dawn, he decided he couldn’t stand his apartment any longer, and he walked across the road to the beach, leaving his shoes at the edge of the sand but bringing the rum. The sand was cold, and in the moonlight the breakers looked like white smoke rolling toward him.

He thought of Tina and looked over his shoulder and laughed out loud at the notion of telling Boyce what was going on. Or rather telling him that something was going on, but that Carr didn’t know exactly what it was. Not much of a thought, really-not much of an option. At best, Boyce would pull the plug on the job himself, and still want his money back. More likely, he’d decide the whole shit storm was an unacceptable breach of operational security-a terminal breach. And there, over Carr’s shoulder, would be Tina again.

Walking down the beach, he stepped on something slippery and colder than the sand. A jellyfish. He braced for the sting, but felt nothing and kept walking.

The bottom line is, he needs Prager’s money, needs what it can buy. A few months back he’d calculated that he had enough put away to do what he wanted for as long as he wanted, but that calculation is out of date. His father’s situation and Mrs. Calvin’s impending departure have thrown his cash flow assumptions to the wind. He needs the money.

Bessemer clears his throat once… twice. “I’m thinking that maybe you’re not into this today, Greg-that your mind is elsewhere. Greg?”

So, finish the job. Easy enough to say, but it begs the question of who he can trust while he’s doing it. He’s been asking himself that since Declan’s death, or maybe even before, but now it’s acquired a particular urgency.

Working the paranoid calculus-that’s what his instructor at the Farm had called it, an atypically neat turn of phrase from an otherwise lumpish fellow. Tracing the lattice of connections, mapping the shifting landscape of who-owes-who and who-owns-who, of loyalty, grudge, and pressure. Who’s in bed with whom? Who’s working what angle? Who benefits? Nando and Valerie. Valerie and Mike. If Mike, then Bobby as well? They were both in Mendoza, after all. And what about Dennis?

The answer-the short answer-is to trust none of them, not for a second, not as far as he can throw them, not even half that far. But nothing is ever so straightforward. The practical truth is, if he’s going to finish the Prager job, then he needs them-all of them. And they need him. They have to trust one another to carry out their assigned work-to watch one another’s backs. Like birds of a feather and bugs in a rug, arms linked in a chorus of “Kumbaya.” Thick as fucking thieves-right up until the moment they transfer the money out of Isla Privada’s accounts. Then the question becomes how to survive their success.

Dawn found him standing frozen at the shoreline, surrounded-as if in a minefield-by acres of clumped seaweed and the glistening bodies of jellyfish. His ankles ached with cold, and his head was filled with shuffling images of burned and broken metal, Declan’s skewed grin and blackened limbs, and Valerie in the dark. He could almost summon her smell and the feel of her skin, but the rising light and the ocean breeze swept his conjuring away. Surprise? Sadness? Anger? Relief? Like the seaweed, they’re tangled too thoroughly for Carr to pick apart.

Bessemer is standing now, a look of alarm replacing the curiosity on his face. “Are we calling or not?”

Carr looks at him. “Pour me another cup of coffee,” he says, “and get the telephone.”