“There’s something we’re not seeing,” Carr says again.
“You’re saying you want to wait?” Bobby asks.
He shakes his head slowly. “I’m saying between now and Friday, I want to know what’s going on.”
“And how the hell we gonna find out?” Mike asks, disgusted.
“That’s not your problem,” Carr says.***
On his apartment’s balcony, Carr switches to rum. He puts his bare feet on the railing and tilts back in his chair, and his thoughts skid like bad tires. He thinks about the rain and the heat, and sees Bessemer, slumped over the wheel of his BMW, and wonders again what hold Prager has on him. He sees a light on the water, bobbing and blinking in the dark, and he wonders who might be out there-so far out-on a night like this. He leans forward and squints, but loses sight of it.
The wind shifts, and the smells of wet earth and decaying vegetation come in. He thinks about his father’s house, the gray light, his father’s eyes, the list of nursing homes Eleanor Calvin has given him, and the messages from her that he’s continued to ignore. The light reappears on the water and vanishes again when he tries to fix on it-like a dust mote, he thinks, almost imaginary.
The wind shifts again and a sweet smell-some night-blooming flower-washes across the balcony. He thinks about Valerie-Jill-and Amy Chun leaning close, and wonders how they’re spending this rainy evening. He thinks about Tina, curled like a cat on his sofa, about Bobby and Mike, and Bertolli’s missing money. He thinks about the wreckage of the van, and Ray-Ray and Declan, and the morgue smell that still rises sometimes from his clothes.
And he thinks again and again about Dennis-his red face, his reedy voice, his disgust. Are you saying we’re just going to sit there and watch while this shit happens? It seems to Carr he’s been doing that for a while now, one way or another. With Declan, and before that with Integral Risk.
It was raining in Mexico City, a halfhearted drizzle on a warm spring day, when Carlos Morilla summoned him to his office tower out in Santa Fe. He was chairman and CEO of Morilla Farmacias, and Integral Risk’s largest client in Mexico. Carr was the account manager.
Morilla’s face was dark and shuttered as he told Carr to have a seat. His voice was rumbling, and his English without accent. There was not the usual offer of coffee. Morilla slid a blue Integral Risk folder across the desk.
“You are telling me that my Patricia is homosexual?” he said. “My only daughter-a lesbian? This is your finding?”
Carr took a deep breath. “The report draws no conclusions, sir. You requested that we observe Patricia and her friend for a period of time and document their activities. That’s what we’ve done.”
Morilla frowned. “Is there another conclusion one could reach?” Carr said nothing and Morilla’s face had grown even darker. Morilla sighed. “She is very young, Patricia, and she has led a sheltered life. She is very impressionable-susceptible to the influence of… of the wrong sort of person. So there is something else I would like you to take care of.”
Carr thought he’d never gotten proper credit for the patience he’d shown. He hadn’t interrupted Morilla’s commands, even when the executive’s voice had shaken, his face had reddened in a way that reminded Carr of his father’s, and he’d snapped his Montblanc pen in two. Carr remained quiet and composed throughout, and when Morilla was done, Carr had taken a deep breath and explained things slowly and carefully.
“Integral Risk is a corporate security firm, sir, and while we deeply value the business we have done together, this is simply not the sort of job we can undertake. It is neither in your best interests, nor in ours. I think, with time to reflect, you might also see that this is not the wisest course for your family.”
It was this last suggestion-that someone else, the hired help no less, might know what was best for the Morilla family-that Carr realized too late he should have kept to himself. Morilla had colored deeply, but said nothing for a long time. Then he picked up the phone and called the general manager of Integral Risk Latin America-Carr’s boss’s boss.
Carr hadn’t minded the weeklong enforced vacation. He went to the seashore. He swam every day, and read and drank at night. What he’d minded was learning, when he returned, that Luisa Rios, an art student at UNAM, had had her face slashed from her left earlobe to the corner of her mouth and her right arm broken in three places.
The wind rises, and the sounds of the rain and ocean and thrashing palms merge into a great wave, and Carr’s chair is slipping out from under him, falling backward, and Carr with it. The jolt knocks the breath out of him, and his glass breaks on the balcony deck. He carries the pieces inside and dries his face. Then he picks up his cell phone.
“You up for a road trip?” he asks when Valerie answers.
18
The cheerleader figure is sloppy now, and the etched features are blurred. Her skin is lined and lax, like her paint-stained jeans, and her brown eyes are wary. The avid smile-so much on display in the wedding announcements Carr found online-is nowhere in sight, and her hair, lacquered chestnut in those photos, is curled by the ocean air, sweat-dampened, and streaked with gray. The cheerleader’s older sister, Carr thinks: wiser certainly, but angrier too, with little left in the way of expectations. He is certain that more than just time has worked these changes on Tracy Holland-six years of marriage to Howard Bessemer doubtless played a part.
Holland lays her roller in the metal tray, and wipes her hands on her T-shirt. She sweeps hair off her forehead and gazes at Carr suspiciously.
“We rang the bell,” he says, smiling. “But no one answered.”
Holland frowns and looks at Valerie. “You’re the one who called yesterday, about the film? Megan…?” Her voice is scratchy.
Valerie walks through the French doors. She steps around the ladder and the paint cans and extends a hand. “Hecht, Megan Hecht. Looks like we caught you in the middle of something.”
“A place this age, there’s always something,” Holland says.
Carr nods. The white shingle pile, all porches and dormers, must be 150 years old at least. It sprawls against a hillside, above a rocky stretch of Maine coast and a choppy sea-Townsend Gut emptying into Boothbay Harbor.
Valerie pushes her plaid sleeves above her elbows and looks around the dining room. She smiles appreciatively at the meticulous paint job-dove gray with intricate eggshell trim. “This looks like a pretty big project.”
“Scraping and sanding were the hard parts; this is just boring,” Holland says. She looks at Carr. “Who is he?”
“Brian,” Carr says, putting out a hand.
“Brian helps me with research,” Valerie says, “and scouting locations.”
“And getting coffee,” Carr adds, but still there is no smile from Tracy Holland. She wipes a forearm across her brow, drinks from a sweating bottle of Sam Adams, and moves through the French doors to the porch. Carr and Valerie follow.
“A documentary about Wall Street wives,” Holland says, doubtfully. “Not the most sympathetic subjects in the world, are they? Probably do better with a reality TV show-some crap about a bunch of women you love to hate. That’s more like it.”
“You may have a point,” Valerie says. “But as I mentioned on the phone, our director thinks women like you have some interesting stories to tell. A perspective on the crash that we haven’t seen before.”
“ Women like me,” she says. “I’m not sure what that means.” Holland leads them to a pair of wicker armchairs. She and Valerie sit, and Carr leans on the porch rail.
“Do you mind if we tape?” Carr asks, and reaches for the camera case slung over his shoulder.
Holland frowns. “Yes, I mind. I’m still not sure if I want to be involved in this.”
“Sure,” Valerie says soothingly. “Talking is great.”
“But why talk to me? It’s not like Howard and I were boldfaced names in New York. The most coverage he got was when he got arrested.”
“The kind of storytelling we do-it’s about taking the particular experiences of individuals and finding the
