Thick as Thieves

27

They’re followed from the airport on Grand Cayman-two men in a muddy blue Nissan, as inconspicuous as it’s possible for a single-car tail to be. Carr spots them as he turns the Toyota onto Dorcy Drive.

“They were at the rental counter,” he says, “but that’s not a rental car.” Bessemer starts to turn in his seat, but Carr puts a hand on his arm. “Use the mirrors,” he says. Bessemer does, and his brows crease in confusion.

“The driver was outside passport control,” Carr says, “but he wasn’t on our flight.”

“You think they’re following us?”

“I know they are. You ever see them before?”

“I don’t think so,” Bessemer says, and there’s worry in his voice.

“This a usual thing for Prager?”

Bessemer shakes his head. “If it is, I never noticed.”

They’re quiet after that. Bessemer watches the Nissan in the rearview. Carr watches traffic and looks at the landscape of the northern edge of George Town, which is flat, cluttered, and homely under a pale sky. Carr lowers his window and the smell of ocean rushes in, mixed with odors of asphalt and exhaust and brackish salt marsh. He glances at Bessemer, who is still looking in the mirrors, and whose face has tightened with fear.

“Strip malls and SUVs,” Carr says. “Just like Florida.”

Bessemer nods stiffly. “The north side’s nicer. This your first time down here?” Carr smiles but doesn’t answer, and Bessemer’s eyes dart back to the mirror.

“They’re just watching, Howie. They’re not going to do anything.”

Bessemer’s nerves have been fraying since the call to Curtis Prager, which, when it finally happened three days before, had gone as well as Carr could’ve hoped. Bessemer had stayed on script and had managed to sound convincing about it. And, because Prager doesn’t like phones, he hadn’t had to talk for long. Bessemer told Prager that a good friend, Greg Frye, was in town, looking for a money manager. And when I heard about the business opportunity Greg’s got, I thought of you right away, Curt.

Prager asked how good a friend this was and how Bessemer knew him. When Bessemer explained that he was an Otisville friend, Prager went silent for a long while-so long that Carr wondered if they’d been cut off. When Prager finally responded, he was brief.

“You know I’m always happy to meet prospective investors, Bess. So if you’ve got the time, you and your friend should come down here. We’ll hit some balls, we’ll put some lines in the water, and we’ll see what bites.”

Bessemer started fretting as soon as he hung up. “I thought all you wanted was an introduction, Greg. I think I’ve held up my part of the bargain.”

“So far, so good,” Carr said.

“You never talked about a trip.”

“It’s a short trip, Howie.”

“But you never said-”

“Prager invited both of us down. It would be a little awkward if I showed up by myself.”

Bessemer paced and worried his lower lip. “It’ll be awkward for me if Curtis thinks I’ve lied to him. Awkward as in dead.”

“Don’t be dramatic.”

“ Dramatic? I’m not the one holding somebody hostage in his own house, or blackmailing him into being part of some kind of scam. I’m not the dramatic one.”

Carr had almost smiled. “Don’t be so negative, Howie. This doesn’t have to be complicated: we go down there, we hang out, and then we’re done. Stay focused on what you get out of this: your money, your life back, a fresh start.”

“I don’t know,” Bessemer said, shaking his head and walking to his liquor cabinet.

“The upside, Howie-focus on the upside.”

They’re on Tibbetts Highway now, the Nissan still with them, a quarter-mile back. They come up a gentle rise and on his left, beyond the big hotels, Carr sees the beaches, the ocean, and the cruise ships at anchor, each one as graceless as a Soviet apartment block. Away to his right, North Sound is like a pale blue plate, and the feathered wake of a powerboat like a fracture line across it. Closer on the right is the broad dome of a landfill, with a thousand white gulls wheeling above. Carr glances at Bessemer, who is drumming his fingers on the armrest and still staring at the mirrors. Carr understands nerves-his own are like confetti.

He saw Valerie the day before he left Palm Beach. She drove up while Amy was at work, and he took a room at the Marriott. She said not a word about Miami or Nando or Mike, and Carr managed not to ask. Managed not to speak much at all that afternoon, unless spoken to-and there wasn’t much of that at first. Later, when the sheets and pillows were on the floor and they were sideways on the bed, Valerie had questions of her own.

“They’re set up down there?” she asked.

“Dennis went yesterday. Bobby and Mike go tonight.”

“They must be happy to get out of that dump.”

“They were getting stir-crazy. Forward motion calms everybody down.”

“Everybody, including you?”

“I want to get it done as much as anyone.”

“And afterward?” she asked softly, and slid a bare foot up his calf. “You ever been to New Zealand? It’s really something down there-Middle Earth, just like in the movies. I know a place where we could have a cottage to ourselves, just us, a few thousand acres, and some sheep. Nothing to see out the windows but cliffs and sky and ocean. What do you say-you take care of the airfare, and I’ll pick up the tab at the Wharekauhau?”

“New Zealand’s a long way.”

“You can afford it. And besides, isn’t that what you want-something far away?”

He had no answer for that, so he nodded vaguely and went into the bathroom. When he came out, Valerie was standing by the balcony doors. She’d opened the drapes to the width of her shoulders, and she wore nothing but the long bar of light that came through the glass. Carr stared at her for some time, looking for he didn’t know what. A mark? A sign? Some sort of clue? But there was nothing except that body, slender, wanton, tinted pale saffron by the streetlight. She turned to look at him, and her face, half in shadow, was suddenly exhausted.

“We moved a lot when I was a kid,” she said quietly. “Base to base-never anyplace longer than a year or two. My mother was useless around the house, but my father could do things, and he’d always try to fix up whatever crappy billet we’d been assigned. He’d paint, hang pictures, plant a window box, that kind of thing. But those places weren’t ours, and all the petunias in the world couldn’t change it-couldn’t make us belong somewhere. I get the feeling you know what that’s like.”

“I know.”

“I’ll be glad when this is done. I’m tired of hotels and furnished apartments and putting on these lives like somebody else’s clothes. I want someplace I can sit still. Someplace that’s mine.” The air conditioner came on and she shivered in the breeze. She wrapped her arms around herself. “I want my skin back.”

Carr swallowed hard, and Valerie stepped away from the window and began to collect her scattered clothes. “Something’s on your mind,” she whispered.

Did they show, he wondered-the questions that still spun through his head? He shrugged. “Prager, Bessemer, a bunch of things.”

“You need help,” she said. “Let me help you.”

The resort grounds are vast: a golf course, clubhouse and marina on the sound, and, across West Bay Road, a curving, coral-pink hotel complex on Seven Mile Beach. The Nissan doesn’t follow when Carr turns through the main gates, but any relief he feels is short-lived. There are two more men in the lobby, watching them from behind day-old newspapers.