low, spinning flight over the smooth water, and it bounces and jinks more times than he can count before vanishing into a gray swell. “And down south?” he asks. “Are we making any progress there?”
“Maybe. Our guys were in Santiago, trying to locate the pilot Declan made his exit arrangements with. They went trolling at the bars near Los Cerrillos-the pilot bars-and got a hit. Found a charter operator named Guerrero. He’s got a light jet, a Hawker, and he’s apparently used to working for cash, and with no questions asked. You know the name?”
Carr shakes his head. “Is he the guy Declan hired?”
“He told my guys he took a deposit from someone that sounds a lot like Declan.”
“Declan’s plan was to go to Sao Paulo. From there, there were a lot of options to get back to Port of Spain. Where was this Guerrero supposed to go?”
“He wouldn’t say. He wouldn’t say anything else without money.”
“Your guys didn’t want to pay?”
“My guys check with me first. I told them I’d come down and see for myself. I’m flying out of Miami tomorrow.”
Carr stops and looks at Tina. The tide rushes up over their ankles and he sees a shiver run through her. “This is a lot of personal attention,” he says.
Tina takes off her sunglasses and nods. “You got me interested.”
Carr’s phone burrs as he opens the door to his apartment. He answers without looking and Eleanor Calvin’s voice takes him by surprise. She is just as surprised by his.
“I didn’t think I’d actually reach you,” she says. “I’ve tried so many times.”
“I’ve gotten your messages, Mrs. Calvin, but things have been crazy at work.”
“I’m sure, dear.”
“How’s your move coming? Are you showing the house yet?”
“I’ve got an offer on it-two, actually. The real estate agent thinks there might even be a third one coming. They all want to close soon.”
Carr stands in the darkened living room and takes a deep breath. “Oh,” he says.
“Have you settled the arrangements for your father, dear?”
“I’m working on it, Mrs. Calvin.”
“I know it’s difficult for you, but there isn’t much time.”
Carr walks to the window and leans his head against the glass. “I’m aware, Mrs. Calvin.”
“I know you are, dear, and I didn’t call to talk about this. The ambassador is a little agitated this evening, and he wants to speak with you.”
“Agitated about what, Mrs. Calvin? I really don’t have-”
“I’m not sure what’s upset him, but he’s insistent. He’s been… difficult all day, and I’m afraid he’s been drinking.”
Carr sighs. “Put him on,” he says.
His father’s voice is scratchy and attenuated across the ether, and he sounds to Carr like an old recording of FDR. Nothing to fear but fear itself. He seems at first more angry than drunk.
“She lies to me, you know. Tells me she’s done things when she hasn’t. Tells me she hasn’t done things when I know she has. And she takes things. That’s why I can never find a goddamn thing in this house.”
“Mrs. Calvin doesn’t take things, and she doesn’t lie. She’s not your maid either.”
“You’re taking her side.”
“There’s no side to this.”
“You’re just like her, you know.”
“Like Mrs. Calvin?”
“Don’t be thick. You’re just like her-always watching-like a goddamn cat. Quiet like a cat, and arrogant-no one can tell you anything, oh no. And stubborn-goddamn stubborn-just like her. Everything on your terms, and you won’t let go until you’re goddamn good and ready.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dad,” Carr says, and he sighs heavily. “What is it you’re upset over?”
“I can’t find it. I spent all day looking. Looked in her room, in your room, even got up in the goddamn attic, and I can’t find it.”
“Can’t find what?”
“The plata. I can’t find her plata. ”
Carr puts his hand out in the darkness and finds the back of a chair. It fails to anchor him in the present.
Plata. Carr gave it that name, the family story went, when he was three or so, and speaking his first words of Spanish. They were in Lima, and the plata was an S. T. Dupont cigarette lighter, a tiny, weighty slab of silver that the young Carr liked to play with. It was a gift to his mother from her sometimes tennis partner, the courtly, ever- smiling Sr. Farias-commemorating not only their success in the Club Regatas mixed doubles tournament, but also his appreciation of Andrea Carr’s help in landing the Spanish journalist an interview with the new American ambassador.
Hector Farias turned up all over Latin America, bouncing from country to country at least as often as the Carrs. And whenever they found themselves living in the same cities, Farias and Andrea Carr resumed their tennis. Carr’s recollections of him are mostly blurred and, he knows, mostly composites. Farias in tennis whites, drink in hand, his hair wavy and damp, his teeth like white tiles. Farias at a consular reception, his shirt like a cloud, his shoes like glass, smoke curling from his smiling mouth. Farias on the living room sofa, straightening his tie, tugging at his cuffs, grinning at Carr, while his mother, cheeks burning, stepped quickly to the window and smoothed her skirts. Which living room was that?
His clearest memory of Farias, though, is from a photograph in a Buenos Aires newspaper. It was already three months old when he saw it on his father’s desk, and they’d been in Stockbridge for almost that long, sorting through boxes others had packed for them so hurriedly in Mexico City. The unannounced visits from the dark-suited, block-shouldered men, their long discussions with his parents-together and separately-behind closed doors, the trips his parents made to Boston and Washington, had all grown less frequent. It was a good photo-not grainy at all-Farias with a trench coat over his broad shoulders, flanked by a pair of uniformed policemen, his hands thrust awkwardly before him, the handcuffs snug around his wrists. Un Espia Cubano was the caption.
“I can’t find it,” Arthur Carr says again.
“Why do you want it?” Carr asks.
“It’s none of your goddamn business why I want it. Maybe I want to light a cigar. Maybe I want to burn down the house. Why the hell do you care? I just want it.”
Carr drops into the chair and looks out at the empty night. He sighs again. “You’re not going to find it.”
“Because she took it. I told you, she takes things.”
“Mrs. Calvin didn’t take it.”
“Then where the hell is it?”
“It’s in the… It’s with her-with Mom. You buried it with her, Dad.”
24
“A full boat,” Howard Bessemer says to Bobby. “Jacks over eights.” He sweeps the chips from the center of the dining table into the large pile already in front of him. “It’s just not your night.”
It is nine a.m., and sunlight is streaming through the windows of Bessemer’s dining room, reflecting from the white plaster walls, refracting through the crystal ashtray, the highball glasses, the bottle of gin on the table, and the curtain of smoke above.
He turns to Carr and smiles. “Top of the mornin’, Gregory,” he says. Bessemer is a dissipated teddy bear today, in seersucker pajama bottoms, a New York Athletic Club T-shirt, and a three-day beard that is a dirty-blond shadow on his pudgy cheeks. His blond hair is bent at odd angles, his gumdrop eyes are red and shiny, and so is the new cut at the corner of his mouth. He picks a joint from the ashtray, lights it, and takes a long hit. “Deal you in?” he asks.
