Thick as Thieves (26 page)

“I don’t like surprises any more than—”

“It’s not your ass on the line.”

Tina’s face is without expression and as white and still as carved bone. Her eyes are invisible behind her dark glasses, and her voice is without affect. “You want me to say it’s a fuckup? Fine—it’s a fuckup. You feel better now?”

“No,” Carr says. He presses his fingers to his temples. “If Rink’s still got
federal wiring, then Greg Frye won’t last. He’s not built for that. He’s good for a quick look-see—a criminal records check, or somebody trying to confirm that he and Bessemer were at Otisville together—but for somebody with fingerprints and access to AFIS …”

Tina nods. “She’ll run right through Frye to you.”

Carr looks down at the foam-covered rocks. “They took my prints when I applied, at every one of my interviews, on my first day at Langley, and a half dozen times afterward. Dennis is good, but he’s not good enough to scrub all that away.”

Tina leans back and chews on her straw. “Your minders still around?”

“We wouldn’t be meeting here if they were. They were with us to Prager’s office this morning, but not afterward, and they’re not at the hotel.”

“You left Bessemer there?” Carr nods. “How’s he holding up?”

“He was nervous before we met Rink; he’s bat-shit now. Bobby’s probably scraping him off the ceiling, if he hasn’t actually killed him yet.”

“How’s Bobby doing?”

“Pissed off, scared, ready to pack his bag.”

And Bobby wasn’t the only one. After parking Bessemer in the suite and phoning Tina, Carr had arranged a conference call with Valerie, Bobby, Mike, and Dennis. His story of what happened at Prager’s office was met first with silence, and then angry, colliding voices. Bobby’s was the loudest and most poetic.

“What the
fuck
? We pay Boyce for intel, and this is what we get—a steaming pile of dog shit? This is fucked, brother—up, down, and sideways—and I’m heading for the fucking airport.”

Dennis had been slightly less noisy but no less upset, and Mike had done his yelling in Spanish. Only Valerie had been quiet, and Carr swore he could hear the gears turning in her head.

“Everybody else feel the same as Bobby?” Tina asks.

“What do you expect? The boss doesn’t bring on a new security chief because he wants to keep things the same. So what we knew about Prager’s personal security, and what we could infer because of Silva, is all subject to change now. The same with Isla Privada’s network security, and even Amy Chun’s protection—all out the window. And I didn’t even tell them about the prints. Once they find out about that they won’t even bother to pack.”

“So don’t tell them,” Tina says. She looks out at the ocean, and Carr
watches the breaking waves in her black lenses. She tosses her straw into an ashtray. “Four weeks isn’t a lot of time in a new job,” she says. “It’s barely enough to figure out what changes you want to make, much less to make them.”

Carr squints at her. “You think Rink hasn’t changed anything yet?”

“She hasn’t even been there a month.”

“That’s a fucking big
maybe
—and let me point out that we saw some changes today.”

“We’d have to take a second look at things, of course—verify that nothing important has—”

“And you think we’ll get it right on the second look? Or maybe the third? Come on, Tina.”

She takes off her sunglasses. Her gray eyes catch the light and glitter like broken glass. “So your bag’s packed too, is that it? I just want to make sure I get it right for when Boyce asks me.”

“I don’t know that there are any other options here.”

“Bags packed—yes or no, Carr? ’Cause if it’s yes, I’ve got to get the accountants working on what you owe us. And by the way, I’m going to want those diamonds back, as a down payment.”

“I’m not pulling out on a whim, Tina, or because I decided it was all just too much work. This is about the wheels falling off because of an intel fuckup.
Your
fuckup.”

“No one’s arguing that, and trust me there’s a certain lazy bastard who has a date with the inside of an oil drum, but when Boyce asks me if I think this whole thing is irretrievably screwed, I’m going to tell him no.”

Carr’s laugh is bitter. “Everybody in the stands gets an opinion. They just shouldn’t confuse watching with being on the field.”

“Is that really how you want to approach this?” Tina says quietly. Her smile is thin and chilly and doesn’t reach her eyes. After a moment Carr looks away.

There’s a gull hanging in the breeze above the terrace, eyeing the paper scraps on the table and, Carr thinks, eyeing him. He waves a hand at it, but the bird is unimpressed. He looks back to Tina. “Even if Rink hasn’t made many changes to Prager’s security—and even if we could verify that—there’s still the issue of my prints. A day or so from now, she’s going to know I’m not Greg Frye. How do you make that go away?”

“
I
don’t,” Tina says, and then she picks up her phone and walks to the far corner of the terrace.

She’s on for a long while, walking a tiny square while she talks. The wind carries her voice in pieces. Carr can’t make out the words above the beating of the surf, but her tone is tense and urgent. Her face, when he can see it, is blank, and her shoulders are rigid. The longer she speaks, the tighter his chest becomes.

Tina closes her phone, leans against the terrace rail, and looks out at the waves. For a moment Carr thinks she might throw the phone into the sea, but she slips it into her pocket instead and walks back to the table.

“Boyce?” he asks. Tina nods. “And?”

“We have to wait and see.”

From half a mile out, from beneath the canopy of an open fishing boat rocking gently on flat water, the Prager compound is impressive even to the naked eye. The sweep of sand is like a quarter-mile curve of new snow. The bordering palms are lush, lithe, and synchronized in the breeze. The stone stairs, terraces, and retaining walls are meticulous gray lines. The boathouse, at the end of a spidery pier, is a trim, white chapel. The three-hole golf course is like a velvet swag across the east end of the property, and the corner of a house, visible between palm trees at the west end, is like a slice of pink cake.

“Let me have the binoculars,” Carr says, and Bobby passes them over. Carr adjusts the dial and details emerge in the bobbing frame. Shadowed foliage becomes careful landscaping, dense green with generous dollops of color—hibiscus, bougainvillea, ixora, and red ginger. A swimming pool casts a shimmering web on a striped awning. A gust of wind swirls tennis court clay into a thin red cloud that settles at the edge of a croquet lawn. The slice of cake turns out to be the corner of a guesthouse—a pink stucco confection with a satellite dish. Of the main house, only a section is visible—an acre or so of terra-cotta barrel tile, a length of colonnaded portico, and a line of French windows that catch light off the ocean.

“We got them curious,” Bobby says. “On the beach, at the bottom of the stairs.”

Carr scans the binoculars from west to east and sees them, two security grunts: crew cuts, polo shirts, dark glasses, and earpieces—first cousins to the minders at his hotel. “Didn’t take long,” he says. He drops his sunglasses back on his nose, pulls his ball cap down low, and hands the binoculars back to Bobby.

“I make it six minutes.”

Carr nods. “Me too. Get a head count.”

Bobby peers through the binoculars and Carr steps around the center console, keeping his back to the shore. He fiddles with the fishing rods and the lines that run off the stern.

“I got five,” Bobby says. “The guys on the beach, one more by the guesthouse, and two at the pier, who look like they’re coming to say hello.”

Carr glances up and sees two men donning float vests and pulling at the lines of a red-hulled Zodiac moored near the boathouse. “Plus the two we saw on the gate,” he says, reeling in the lines.

“And who knows how many inside,” Bobby says. “That’s seven-plus on a weekday afternoon, with nothing much happening. With a party going on, it could be twice that.”

Carr stows the fishing rods and returns to the console. He flips a switch and the twin outboards start. There’s a puff of pale exhaust at the stern, an upwelling of foam, and a throaty rumble that echoes across the inlet. He lifts the binoculars and sees thick faces turn, can feel their sharpened interest. The men are climbing into the Zodiac now, and Carr hears their outboard whine.

“I don’t need any more,” Bobby says. “How about you?”

“We’ve seen what we came to see,” Carr says, and he pushes the throttle, turns the wheel, and carves a long white crescent in the ocean.

What they’ve seen is bad to worse, and it’s been the same everywhere they’ve looked the past two days—since Carr agreed with Tina to make a hurried reconnaissance of Isla Privada’s security arrangements. In George Town, at Isla Privada’s back office, the new guards are practically tripping over the old ones. From Boca Raton, Valerie called to report that Amy Chun’s lethargic driver is due to be replaced in the coming week by an armed one, and that her house will be swept even more frequently for unwelcome electronics. Curtis Prager’s personal protection has gone from one paunchy ex-cop to three muscular crew cuts. And here at his
compound on Rum Point Drive, the household detail has grown from four to something north of seven. Only Dennis has yet to report in, on the all-important state of Isla Privada’s network security. If that has changed, Carr told Tina, it’s game over.

Carr has the boat planing now, and just coming even with the jagged peninsula that marks the western edge of Prager’s property. He looks back along their wake. The protected inlet is dwindling behind them, and so is the red Zodiac, which has barely made it to the reef, two hundred meters from shore. Carr begins a wide curve around the rocks. He sees the Zodiac slow and then turn back. He looks ahead, and in the misty distance he can make out Rum Point.

Bobby calls to him over the engine and the rush of wind and water. “You want a beer?” Carr shakes his head. Bobby reaches into an ice chest beneath his seat and pulls out a bottle of the local brew. He takes a long swallow and sighs. “This stuff sucks.”

“It’s what they had at the store.”

“No wonder,” Bobby says, and takes another drink. “This Rink chick has been busy.”

Carr nods. “Seems that way.”

“She’s got people nervous.”

“I know, Bobby.”

A third swallow and he pats his mouth with the back of his hand. “I fucking hate surprises.”

It’s pretty much all Bobby has said for two days—how much he hates surprises, how fucked up Boyce’s intel was, and that they should be thinking about packing it in. And Carr has explained, over and over, that if they can’t get a handle on what changes Rink has made, or if she’s changed anything material to their plans, then they would indeed call it a day. The message has a half-life of about five minutes in Bobby’s brain. Dennis is even more anxious but, mercifully, more inhibited about saying so, and Carr is glad he took Tina’s advice and made no mention of Rink taking his fingerprints.

As wearing as Bobby’s and Dennis’s worry is, Valerie’s and Latin Mike’s seeming lack of nerves is somehow even more so. After his initial outburst, Mike has uttered no other word of complaint or concern, but simply set about reconnoitering—an uncharacteristically cooperative soldier. Valerie has yet to say anything.

They are approaching Rum Point, and there are other fishing boats ahead, pushing north out of the sound, and swimmers closer to the beach. Carr eases up on the throttle and turns the wheel a couple of points northwest.

Bobby pulls off his T-shirt, wipes his brow with it, and leans back in his seat. His body is thick and white, a fish from a different sea. “Could be twice the security when he has a party, could be three times—we really don’t know,” he says. “We’re just guessing at what Rink might’ve changed. We don’t know shit.”

Carr sighs. “There was a lot we didn’t know when Silva was in charge.”

“We knew he was a lazy drunk, and that was …” Bobby puts up his hands, searching for a word.

“Comforting?”

“There you go,” Bobby says, raising his beer bottle. “We’re just feeling around in the dark now, and I like it better with the lights on.”

“Like I said, Bobby—if she’s changed anything important to our plans, then we don’t go. If all she’s done is add muscle—”

“You sound like Mike now.”

“Yeah? I haven’t heard Mike say much lately.”

“Well he’s saying the same shit as you—how it’s all manageable, how we should keep on keepin’ on. Personally, I think his perspective’s fucked.”

“Which means that mine is too?”

Bobby shrugs. “You can’t like a job so much you lose sight of the basics. You can’t get locked in. You gotta be willing to cut your losses if it’s the smart thing.”

“And you think I’m not willing?”

“Hey—I want to finish this as much as anybody. I got the same time in—the same sunk costs. But there’ll be other jobs.”

“Not too many others this size, Bobby.”

“See what I mean—locked in,” Bobby says. “That’s the kind of attitude that gets you killed, brother.” He drains the rest of the beer, pulls a fresh one from the locker, and holds the bottle against the side of his face. He closes his eyes.

Carr swings the boat farther north. They pass day-sailers and catamarans coming out of the sound, and divers massed along the reefs of Stingray City. When the sea around them is empty of other boats, Carr cuts the engines and lets them drift.

Bobby sits up and looks around. “What—we fishing for real?”

Carr shakes his head. “You know, I had a talk like this with Declan, just before the Mendoza job—”

“Oh for chrissakes!”

“About getting hung up on a job, and losing sight of the fundamentals.”

“Motherfuckin’ Carr—”

“You think that kind of attitude got him killed, Bobby, or was it something more specific?”

“I thought for sure we were done with this crap.”

“We’re done when I say so, and I’m not there yet. But here’s where I am, Bobby: I’m down to the short strokes on the last job I ever want to work; I’ve had a nasty surprise with bad intel; and whenever I’ve asked a question in the last four months about what happened in Argentina I get answers that are at least fifty percent bullshit. So I’m nervous. And I don’t want to be nervous anymore. I’m fucking tired of it. I’m tired of wondering who’s got my back and who’s going to stick something in it. If I’m going to finish this job, I need to know what’s what, Bobby, and you’re going to tell me.”