clings to her as if it’s wet, and her bare arms and legs are gleaming. Her dark blond hair is pinned in a haphazard pile, and her long, limber body is like a burning fuse as she twists through the crowd.
Every eye in the place-male and female-follows her back to the table, though Carr tries to avoid watching. Looking is what she wants, he thinks, and it feels too much like strings being pulled. Still, over the top of his glass, he looks-and so do Bobby, Latin Mike, and Dennis. Because, despite how long they’ve known her, how many times they’ve seen her work a room, there is always with Valerie the promise of something they haven’t seen before.
Their table is in a far corner, and the four men sit with their backs to the low cinder-block wall that separates the patio from the surrounding hardpan lot. Carr watches the crowd, which is watching them, and he doesn’t care for the attention. Valerie slides the pitchers into the center of the table and sits next to Carr. “What’s your problem?” she asks.
“You riled up the natives, chica,” Mike answers, before Carr can speak.
“Place needs something,” Valerie says. “The music sucks.” She’s smiling and her cheeks are flushed.
“He don’t want them noticing us, right, jefe?”
Carr leans back and looks up through the rafters and the open roof-at the hovering mosquitoes, the flickering bats, the washed-out stars above. A warm breeze works its fingers beneath his shirt. He’s had three beers, and there’s a pleasant foaminess somewhere around his forebrain. He knows where Mike is going and he’s too tired to follow. He keeps quiet but it doesn’t help.
“Like they took us for locals before she crossed the floor?” Bobby says.
Mike gives Bobby a low five. “We blend in, cabron; we natives.” Latin Mike looks at Carr and frowns. “They get a bad vibe from us, jefe. ”
Carr drains his beer glass. “Vibes are one thing; Vee makes us memorable.”
“Memorable for sure,” Bobby says, and winks at Valerie, who winks back.
Mike snorts. “Face it, pendejo, we fit better in Caracas or Recife than we do up here.”
Dennis wipes sweat from his face and joins in. “Down there we’re just norteamericanos -oil workers, contractors, whatever-nobody gives a damn. Just a few more Yankees passing through.”
“Speak for yourself, yanqui,” Mike says. “But the point is, what the fuck we doing up here? Too much homeland security horseshit-what we need the headaches for? It’s not like we have problems finding work.”
Carr sighs. “Not this kind of work.”
Mike downs half his beer and points a finger at Carr. He’s smiling, but with him that’s a tactic. “This kind of work is too fucking complicated-too many moving parts.”
“You used to worry about the same shit five years ago, if I remember right, but things turned out okay.”
“Damn straight I was worried. We had a good thing going, fishing where the fish were stupid-why mess with what works? But Deke was a man with a plan, and there was no arguing with him. Plus, I had faith in the guy.”
“And you don’t in me.”
“No offense, cabron, but you’re not Deke.”
Carr leans forward. “Sure, Mike, no offense.”
“For chrissakes!” Valerie says, and slams her own glass on the tabletop. “Why don’t you two get a room if you’re going at this bullshit again. This was supposed to be a party.” Bobby smirks and Dennis giggles with relief. Under the table Valerie’s hand finds Carr’s thigh. He doesn’t jump, but it’s a near thing. Her palm is hot through the fabric of his jeans. Carr nods slowly and reaches for a pitcher. He proffers it across the table.
“Let me top that off,” he says, and Mike holds out his glass.
Valerie is right, Carr knows: they’ve gone around like this a dozen times or more, and there’ll be time enough to go around again. But not now. Now, the night before they work again, it’s time to drink. It’s a lesson he had from Declan, who was ever alert to the peril of idle hands.
“Busy is best for these nippers,” he’d told Carr. “Otherwise it’s all worry and gossip and chewin’ the arses off one another. Keep ’em busy, and when they’ve done their chores, get ’em pissed.” More than tradition, these outings are an antidote to the jitters and jumps and sheer stir-craziness that come to a boil on the eve of every job. But like so much else he’s learned from Declan, Carr knows he doesn’t do it quite as well. Pirate king, father confessor, jolly Jack Falstaff-Carr is none of these, though he has developed other talents: watchfulness, patience, an attention to detail-the talents of a planner, a technician. Not exactly inspirational, he knows. Not like Declan. Still, one does what one can.
Carr works a smile onto his face and fills glasses until the pitcher is empty. Valerie’s hand is gone now, and the music is louder, if unimproved. Valerie is dancing with Mike to something twangy, and Dennis watches them, tapping the tabletop in time to nothing Carr can hear. Bobby is eyeing the local talent. The peaceable kingdom. Carr finishes his beer. He leans back and looks at the wrung-out sky and thinks of limes.
Declan was cutting them the first time they met-a bet with a barman at a marble and frosted glass palace in Las Lomas. Teddy Voigt, Carr’s immediate boss at Integral Risk Associates, and the closest thing he’d had to a friend there, had arranged the get-together, not forty-eight hours after Carr had been fired and just forty-eight hours before Carr had to vacate his company-owned apartment-the graceful exit being one of the things Carr had relinquished when he’d hit his most profitable client in the face.
Hunched over the granite bar, Declan was a rhino at a tea party: red-faced, craggy, and ancient next to the silken youth that crowded the club-more like one of the bodyguards loitering on the sidewalk outside. The paring knife was nearly lost in his fist, but the edge of the blade was a blur and the slices he cut were translucent green petals. Whatever the bet was, Declan won going away, and whatever the prize, Declan declined payment and instead bought the barman a shot of Patron. Which, Carr came to realize, was essential Declan: good with bartenders, good with knives, good with tactical mercy.
Good at other things too, Carr learned as they bar-hopped across the leafy night, from Las Lomas to an English pub in Polanco to a hipster saloon in Condesa. Good at Gallic bonhomie and fatalistic, self-deprecating humor. Good at oblique but relentless interrogation. Good at large volumes of pricey tequila, chased by even larger volumes of beer. Good, despite how much he’d had to drink, at negotiating the unforgiving chaos of traffic in Mexico City.
Good too at throwing an elbow into a man’s windpipe, then breaking his wrist, for slapping a woman to the pavement. That took place in the doorway of their last stop: a workingman’s tavern in Santa Maria la Ribera that was little more than a dim hallway drenched in nicotine and sentimental guitars. The patrons seemed to take the violence in stride, if they noticed it at all, and the smile never left Declan’s face. He’d made his pitch to Carr at a table near the kitchen.
Carr comes back to the sound of breaking glass. Dennis and Valerie are on the dance floor but they’re not dancing. There’s a stunned look on Dennis’s face, and a local boy, a wide receiver gone to seed, is laughing and grabbing Valerie around the waist. Latin Mike and Bobby are on their feet, smiling eagerly as three doughy cowboys shoulder through the skittish crowd to help the wide receiver. Valerie looks angry, and looks at Carr, who has visions of broken bottles, flashing lights, the cowboys hauled off in ambulances, his crew simply hauled off.
“Shit,” he mutters, and hoists himself off his chair.
In the Ford, on the way back to the hotel, adrenaline has burned off the alcohol and left them with a different kind of buzz. Carr is at the wheel, always three miles over the limit, nice and steady, while Valerie works the radio. Dennis has his face in the rush of humid air from the open window in back, and Bobby and Mike are smoking and joking.
“Fucking Vee,” Bobby says, “that guy’s gonna be picking his balls outta his nose for a week.” He puts a fist forward and Valerie knocks it with her own.
“The way he mauled me, I should’ve kicked him again.”
Mike catches Carr’s eye in the mirror. “Three times was enough, chica,” he says. “Four would make you memorable. ” He and Bobby laugh and Carr shakes his head and pulls into the hotel lot.
Dennis is pale and wobbly getting out of the car; he crosses the parking lot at a jog and disappears into the hotel. Valerie, Bobby, and Mike take their time. Mike lights another cigarette, props his elbows on the Ford’s roof, and looks across at Carr.
“Eight o’clock tomorrow,” Carr says. Mike and Valerie say nothing. Bobby looks at the low hotel, the rows of windows, mostly black, and the vestigial balconies. He nods absently and heads for the lobby. Carr follows, rubbing the bruises on his forearms and knuckles, not listening to Mike and Valerie, who stand by the car and speak softly.
