Thick as Thieves

41

Curtis Prager grips Carr’s arm and steers him back toward the terrace bar. Rink and her security man fall in behind them. Prager’s face is flushed and shining and fixed in a wide smile. Rink’s scowl deepens.

Prager sweeps his arm in the direction of the beach. “Not bad, eh? Raising how much today, Kathy?”

“About two hundred thousand,” Rink says.

“For who?” Prager says.

“Hospital,” Rink answers. “Kids’ wing.”

“Kids’ wing.” Prager chuckles. “I’m a hero. They ought to pay me to grip and grin with this crowd for so long. Be a relief to get on the plane tomorrow.”

Carr nods appreciatively. Prager leans on the bar and orders a ginger ale from the barman, who pours it into a tall glass and disappears at some unseen signal from Rink.

“Kathy spoke to your man in Singapore,” Prager says.

Carr smiles and manages not to look at his watch. “How’d it go?”

“It went fine,” Rink says. “He says you’re tough, and reliable, and discreet, and smart, and that you generally walk on water. Which I’m guessing doesn’t surprise you. It would’ve been pretty stupid to point us at someone who wasn’t gonna say good things.”

Carr shrugs. “So besides learning I’m not stupid, it was a waste?”

Rink starts to speak, but Prager shakes his head. “Not a complete waste,” he says, “but we don’t know this guy. We don’t know any of the names you’ve given us so far. The bottom line is, Greg, we need to talk to someone we know. Someone we know, who also knows you. You understand-we need a reference.”

Carr hears an engine drone, and for a moment he thinks it’s Bobby and Mike, but it’s too fast and too far off-an airplane. Carr nods. “I get what you’re saying-I just don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know about you, but most of the people I deal with don’t want their names traded back and forth.”

“So maybe there’s nothing else to talk about,” Rink says, and she drums her fingers impatiently on the bar. Carr appreciates the sentiment.

Prager shakes his head. “Or maybe Greg can think about some of the people he buys stones from. Maybe we can talk to some of them.”

Carr nods, as if he’s actually considering it, as if he’s thinking of anything besides getting to the house. And then he hears another engine drone.

It’s two engines, this time-close, throaty, rough running, like dirt bikes-coming from the water. His three minutes are up. Prager glances toward the beach and knits his brows.

Carr clears his throat. “I’ll think on it,” he says, nodding, and the engine sounds grow louder. And now the ambient chatter of the beach crowd changes. A collective chuckle rises, and then a gasp.

Prager shakes his head and peers down at his bay, and his party guests, gathered on the sand. Carr leans left and catches a glimpse of two WaveRunners chasing each other through the whitecaps, rooster tails flying, engines stuttering and echoing across the bay. Bobby is on the red one, Mike the gray. Both of them wear flowered trunks, muscle tees, and aviators. They weave in close to shore-fifty yards or less-and Carr can hear their whooping and hollering and see the bottle of beer that Bobby is waving around. It’s a nice touch, but Prager doesn’t appreciate it.

He turns to Rink, and his face has darkened. “What’s going on, Kathy? Who are those assholes in my backyard?”

Rink is blushing, and already on the move. She waves to the security man at her side, pointing him to the shore, and she puts her cell phone to her ear, but it’s all too slow for Prager, who strides angrily toward a stairway that leads to the beach. Kathy Rink hurries behind, saying something into her phone. All Carr catches is “boat in the water,” and then she’s gone. He checks his watch and heads toward the main house.

He tells himself not to run, but it’s hard to listen. On his way across the lawn, he sees a pair of security guys who have no such inhibitions: they’re in full sprint toward the beach, with their radios squawking. Carr sees the fieldstone patio ahead, and before he comes within range of the camera, he veers right.

He is quick across the patch of lawn at the corner of the house, and quick into the stretch of heavy plantings. He keeps low as he moves between the greenery and the house, and stifles a yell when two red birds dart screaming from the bushes. He fights to keep his breathing under control, and when he reaches the dense hibiscus and kneels by the window whose latch he has broken from inside, he has to struggle to hear the buzzing of the WaveRunners over his own gasps. But there they are, along with exclamations from the crowd. Carr looks at his watch and figures that Mike and Bobby have begun their game of chicken.

Carr peers into the laundry room, takes a last look around the grounds, and sees no one. He dries his hands on his sleeves, works his fingers around the frame, and swings the window open. He checks the flash drives in his pocket again and climbs quietly in.

Carr closes the window and stands between the washing machine and the utility sink, listening. He hears the cycling of the air conditioner, the gurgle of water in pipes, the pounding of his heart, and nothing else. He looks at his watch again. Bobby and Mike have promised him a minimum of five minutes, of which two are gone. He crosses the room, drops to the floor, and looks through the gap beneath the door. There’s no one in the hall, and he stands and opens the door a crack. A blade of air slips in, and cools his face. Behind it come voices.

They drift down the stairwell-men speaking and, through a screen of radio static, the voice of Kathy Rink. Carr can’t make out her words, but her anger is unmistakable. The men find it funny.

One voice is Southern and deep: “Pine and Colley don’t get that fucking Zodiac going, the old broad’s gonna swim out there herself-turn those drunks into chum.”

The other has a Midwestern twang: “Sounds like she’s gonna make chum out of Pine and Colley. For chrissakes, how hard is it to flip a fuckin’ starter switch?” Carr smiles to himself. They can flip all they want, he thinks, it won’t do much good with the battery unhooked.

The laughing voices recede, and Carr opens the door wider. He touches the flash drive in his pocket again, like a charm, takes a deep breath, and climbs the stairs.

He is in a wide, windowed hall with white paneled walls and a view onto a courtyard garden. Too much glass-not a place to pause. To the left is the game room, and Carr can see green felt-the corner of a pool table. To the right is the music room, and the gleaming lid of a grand piano. Carr goes right, the floor plans unfurling in his head-music room, hallway, office. His ears are straining; the muscles in his legs are quivering.

The music room is an exercise in monochrome-black piano, white rugs, black leather chairs, white leather sofas-but still too much glass for Carr’s comfort. His footsteps are silent on the rugs, and he crosses quickly to the opposite door. And freezes.

A maid comes from behind the curving staircase, and it is only the basket she carries, and its high pile of linens, that saves Carr. He drops beside a white leather settee, crams his heart back into his chest, and listens as she climbs the stairs. Sweat runs down his face and along his ribs, and when he stands again it’s like lifting a boulder. Somehow he manages to place one foot before the other.

He cuts across a sunny atrium and makes it to the final hallway. He pauses, listens, and hears voices in the library. It’s at the end of this same hall, across from Prager’s office. Which means it’s on the ocean side of the house, and has an ocean view. The voices are low, and Carr is trying to decide whether they belong to the security staff when a radio squawks and answers the question.

Carr checks his watch: his five minutes are gone-he’s in overtime now. So, wait or go? The radio chatter cuts in again-an angry, urgent blast: something’s happening on the water. Something worth watching, Carr hopes. And then, behind him, there are footsteps approaching. So much for waiting.

Six paces down the hall. Six paces through quicksand. Through wet cement. Six paces without air or sound, and with his vision a narrow tunnel, the office door at the distant end. And then he’s in. He doesn’t bother to check if anyone else is there, but no one is. His shuddering sigh is almost sexual, and for an instant he’s giddy and light-headed. The windows are big and bright and full of palm trees and sky. The Rothkos rise above him like twin suns. He’s transfixed by them, and imagines lifting them from the wall, prying them from their frames, rolling the canvases. He takes a deep breath, laughs, and shakes his head.

Carr reaches into his pocket for the flash drive and steps to the aluminum desk and stops. He stares at the desk, and at the flash drive in his palm. He squints and his eyes run over the desk, from end to end. He walks around it, and looks beneath it. He looks around the starkly furnished room for a drawer to search, or a cabinet, but there are none. He returns to the desk, thinking he must somehow have missed it. His gaze returns to the nearly bare surface. Phone, monitor, cable .

“Fuck,” Carr whispers.

Prager’s laptop is not there.

“Fuck,” he says again. Only the voices in the library keep him from shouting it.

He puts the flash drive in his pocket and rubs a hand across the back of his neck. Where would Prager take the thing? Not to the Isla Privada offices-he doesn’t go there. So where else? He probably takes it on trips. Trips like the one he’s making tomorrow, to Asia, by way of Europe. Leaving tomorrow, so packing today. So he’s packed the laptop and left it… where? Where’s his fucking luggage?

Two places jump off the floor plan: a cloakroom, just off the main entry hall, and Prager’s bedroom. Going to the cloakroom means crossing the entire main floor of the house; going to the bedroom-the master suite-means going upstairs. So, the bedroom first.

Carr doesn’t remember the trip down the hall and back across the atrium to the curving staircase, but somehow he’s climbing the stairs. There are footsteps below, and voices, and radio chatter. Carr hurries to the top.

Upstairs, the polished stone floors and raised white paneling give way to glossy wood and silk wallpaper. Carr passes a line of bedrooms, each one done in a different ocean color: sea foam, turquoise, aquamarine, and each with an ocean view. The maid is in the last one, a silhouette on a balcony, watching the action on the bay. Carr doesn’t realize she’s there until he’s already passed.

“Shit,” he says to himself.

The master is at the end of the hall, behind a pair of teak doors with gleaming brass hardware. The doors aren’t locked, and the mechanism is almost silent. Chest heaving, Carr closes them behind him.

He’s in a sitting room, with a fireplace, a big ocean view, and none of the austere minimalism of Prager’s office. The sofa and chairs are fat and silk-covered, in blue and gray stripes, the rugs are Persian, the low tables are teak, and the pictures on the wall are tinted engravings of sailing ships. Outside, through glass doors and beneath a green awning, there is a large balcony that wraps around all three of the suite’s exposures. And in the corner, near the fireplace, there is luggage: two large leather suitcases and a leather duffel, open and half-packed on folding stands. Pressed shirts, balled socks, but no laptop.

“Shit,” Carr whispers. He looks at his watch. Nearly nine minutes since the show began. He walks into the bedroom.

It’s like the sitting room, but with a king-size bed instead of a sofa and chairs, and a small teak desk near another set of balcony doors. Carr sighs deeply and smiles. Like the sitting room, only infinitely better: Prager’s laptop is open on the desk.

He nearly laughs aloud when he touches the space bar and the screen lights with a message asking for a password. He pulls out the flash drive, feels for a USB port, and plugs it in. And then Carr hears the almost silent mechanism of the teak doors, and his heart lodges in his throat.

He drops low, peers into the sitting room, and sees a door swing open and the maid walk in. She’s dark and serious-looking behind the basket of folded laundry. She crosses to Prager’s bags, picks through the basket, and places a stack of underwear on a table beside the luggage.

Carr looks behind him, at the open doors of Prager’s walk-in closet. He looks at the flash drive. Fifteen seconds to load, Dennis said, and the LED would blink. How long has it been in? Did the light blink? Fuck! The maid stacks undershirts on the table and lifts the basket, and in two quiet steps Carr is in Prager’s bathroom.

It’s like an old-fashioned bank-chrome and marble from floor to ceiling-and Carr stands behind the door, trying not to breathe. He watches through the crack as the maid stows clothing and glances out the window at the bay. She glances out often, as if something new is happening, and now she goes to the balcony doors. When she opens them, Carr can hear the buzzing of the WaveRunners along with a new sound-the angry sputter of an outboard. The Zodiac is running.

The maid stands in the open doorway, watching, shaking her head, and from down the hall Carr hears a voice.

“Yo, Sylvie!” a man calls.

“In here,” the maid answers.

“Shit,” Carr says to himself. He looks around the bathroom. It’s huge, with a soaking tub, a steam shower, double sinks, and views of the garden. And straight back, its own pair of glass doors to the other side of the wraparound balcony. He looks through the crack again, and sees two crew cuts headed down the hall. One waits at the doorway to the master suite, the other-the one whose khakis have damp knees-comes in smiling.

“You watching the circus out there, girl?” he says. “My boss’ll have a stroke if we don’t chase those boys away.” He steps onto the balcony and runs his hand over her back.

She giggles and knocks his hand away. “And so will my boss, she finds you up here wasting my time.” The crew cut laughs and slides his hand lower, but Carr is watching his partner, who still stands in the doorway.

The maid giggles again and points at the water. “Your boss got her wish. They’ve run away behind the rocks. Show’s over, I guess-no more circus.”

Carr’s whole body tenses and the crew cut on the balcony says something, but his words are lost in the flash and the whump and the rattling of windows. Carr feels the shock wave in his chest, and the maid is screaming now, and both crew cuts are on the balcony yelling what the fuck, and Carr steps into the bedroom. He stays low and pockets the flash drive, and then he’s back in the bathroom, through the glass doors, onto the balcony, and over the rail.