She’s dressed in black shorts-very short-a black tank top, and black flip-flops. Her black sunglasses are pushed into her white-blond hair. Her arms and legs are ghostly, and her hands, long-fingered and elegant, are raised. Her gray eyes are steady.
“The door was locked,” Carr says.
“Guy like you should get better locks,” Tina says, lowering her hands. “Sorry for the surprise.”
“You could’ve called first.”
“Don’t like phones,” she says. “Besides, I like to keep in practice.”
Carr wipes his hands on his pants. “It doesn’t seem like you need much. And somehow I don’t think that’s the only reason you’re here.”
She smiles thinly. “Mr. Boyce didn’t want to pull you away, but he does want to know how things are going.”
“And he doesn’t like the phone either?” Tina nods. “So you’re here to check up?”
“More like checking in.”
“I don’t remember a lot of checking in with Declan.”
She shrugs. “Does it need explaining?”
“I’m not Declan-I get it.”
Tina sits on the sofa, slips off her shoes, and folds her legs beneath her. “No need to pout,” she says. “So how about we open a couple more beers, and you tell me what’s what, and I do the same?”
Carr looks at her more closely, and his disorientation becomes bewilderment. Tina out of school is less guarded-relaxed, almost funny. Her voice is soft and liquid-intimate in the confines of a room. And her pale, oval face, always smooth and empty at those golf course meetings, has an appealing touch of irony at the corners of her eyes and mouth.
“You want yours in a glass?” he asks. Tina shakes her head.
Tina’s had three bottles by the time Carr’s made his report, and Carr has had two more. His head is cottony, and Bessemer’s work as a procurer, though no less mystifying to him, is more amusing as he tells it to Tina.
“Maybe it’s not all that different from private banking,” Carr says, smiling. “It’s all about keeping the clients happy.”
Tina shakes her head. “Guy’s a few cards short of a deck, for sure. It’s a big gamble just to pick up some extra income. Can’t blame you for wanting to find out why.”
Carr shrugs. “And what about you? Anything new with our pal Prager?”
“Not much. His security guy, Silva, has fallen off the wagon again.”
“Christ,” Carr says, drinking the last of his beer. “It’s a wonder he has a liver left.”
“I’m not sure he does. And this time he’s fallen off the radar too. He was on a tear in Homestead last week and we lost him.”
“Probably staggered into the Everglades.”
“We’ll let you know if he staggers out again,” Tina says. “You need any help with Bessemer, or maybe with his Russian friends?”
“If I do, what’s it going to cost me?”
Her smile is chilly. “The deal doesn’t change: we front your expense money, and we get paid back-plus finance charges-off the top. Services rendered are at cost plus.”
Carr counts off on his fingers. “Expenses, finance charges, cost plus, finder’s fee, management fee. You guys are fucking crooks.”
Tina laughs, and it’s surprisingly girlish. “We don’t do pro bono.” She drains her beer bottle and thrusts the empty at Carr. “But you want to do for yourself, fund your own expenses, save a little money, it’s okay with us.”
A frown darkens Carr’s face. “That didn’t work out so well for Declan.” He takes Tina’s empties and his own to the kitchen, and returns with two fresh beers. Tina is standing at the window, watching the distant storm.
“Speaking of which,” she says. Carr takes a deep breath, trying to chase the wool from his head. He stands next to Tina. Their reflections are like ghosts in the glass. “We had a talk with somebody down there,” she continues. “Somebody who used to work for Bertolli.”
“ Somebody who?”
Tina shakes her head. “Somebody who worked security for him, up until a few months ago-security in Mendoza.”
Carr leans forward. “Did he say anything about how they knew Deke was coming? Who they got the word from?”
“He didn’t know anything about that. He was strictly an order taker; he didn’t ask questions, didn’t even think about having questions.”
“So what use is he?”
“Everything we heard about that night-everything we heard from you-says that your guys got tagged almost as soon as they pulled up to that little airstrip.”
“That’s the way it was told to me, every time-that they’d barely gotten out of the vans.”
“And they never got inside the barn? Never laid eyes on the cash?”
“That’s the way I heard it. I assume that you’ve heard something different.”
She nods again. “This guy says that your people didn’t get hit coming out of the vans; they got hit coming out of the barn. He says when it was all over that night, Bertolli was short almost two million euro.”
In the glass, Carr sees Tina watching him. “And this guy is who?”
“I told you, he worked security for Bertolli.”
“So he’s what-some brain-dead kid with a gun? And your friends down there just tripped over him? Or did he volunteer his services?”
“He’s no genius, but he’s no walk-in either. Our friends worked hard to turn him up, and they spent some money too. He was hiding out in B.A. Seems he’d had a falling-out with his crew chief up in Mendoza. Something about the chief’s sister.”
“And your friends believed him?”
“I did too.”
“You spoke to him?”
Tina nods. “Went down there last week.”
A jagged white line lights the horizon, and the afterimage flares behind Carr’s eyes. He takes a long pull on his beer. “Two million euro,” he says. “Maybe it burned with Declan’s van.”
“I asked about that. This guy said Bertolli had them sifting through the wreckage, looking for some trace. They didn’t find one.”
“There wasn’t much left of that van,” Carr says.
“If you say so.”
Carr turns to look at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tina keeps her gaze on the horizon. “You’re the one had eyes-on. You were at the salvage yard; you were at the morgue. I wasn’t.”
“Eyes-on,” he mutters, and the traces of lightning vanish from beneath his lids, replaced by twisted metal, blistered paint, melted upholstery, charred, fire-stiffened limbs, blackened flesh, and naked, shattered bone. And the smell, even days after, even in the air-conditioned bays of the city morgue… It comes over him in a wave, and the beer in his gut threatens to erupt.
“You okay?” Tina asks.
“That van was like a fucking shell crater. I’m not surprised they didn’t find anything. They blew the hell-”
“Yeah, that’s another thing,” Tina says, cutting him off. “According to this guy they didn’t run Declan off the road. According to him, they were hauling ass on Highway Seven, but Declan got way out in front. They lost sight of his van for like twenty minutes. They were thinking about turning around when they saw a flash up ahead of them, and a column of smoke. The van was wrecked and burning on the roadside when they got there, but they didn’t see it happen.”
“I saw the bullet holes-in the rear bumper, in the side panels. As twisted up and black as everything was, you could still see those.”
“He didn’t say they weren’t firing at it-in fact, he said they chewed its tail up pretty good-he just said they
