“Not just now, Howie,” Carr says, and he hands Bobby one of the grocery bags he’s carrying. “Let’s make coffee.”
Bobby follows Carr to the kitchen and empties the bag onto the counter. Egg sandwiches, bagels, fruit salad in a plastic tub. There’s a TV on the counter and Carr switches it on and turns up the volume. He tosses Bobby a pound of ground coffee. “Late night?” Carr asks, his voice low.
“Howie couldn’t sleep. He wanted to play cards, so we played.”
“You get high too?”
Bobby yawns and flips him the bird. “Yeah, baby, I’m trippin’ on Coca-Cola and potato chips.”
“You hit him?” Carr asks. Bobby spoons coffee into the machine. “Bobby?” Carr says again. Bobby fills the coffeemaker with water and presses the button. He looks at Carr but stays silent. “Bobby?”
“It was nothing. Mike was a little torqued up, and Howie was whining about something and Mike told him to shut up. Howie got mouthy and Mike got pissed.”
“And hit him.”
“Barely.”
“For chrissakes, Bobby, we need him in one piece.”
“Hey, I broke it up right away. And it’s not like we’re keeping the guy around long-term.”
Carr frowns. “While we’ve got him, we need him happy.”
“I’m down like two hundred bucks to the guy. That’s not happy enough?”
Carr shakes his head. “What’s got Mike twisted up?”
“Who the fuck knows?” Bobby says, unwrapping a sandwich. “It’s gettin’ so he’s almost as moody a bastard as you.”
Bessemer has finished his joint when Carr carries a sandwich and a cup of coffee into the dining room, and he’s stacking his chips into neat columns before him.
“I make it two hundred fifteen dollars I’ve taken off him,” he says.
“He’s good for it. Sorry about the bruise.”
Bessemer shrugs. “Your other friend is kind of an asshole, Greg. No fun to hang with at all.”
“He’ll take it easy as long as you do, Howie. Everybody’s a little stir-crazy, and the sooner we move things along, the better.”
“Amen to that,” Bessemer says, and takes a slug of gin. Carr takes the glass from him and slides the sandwich and coffee in front of him.
“Let’s do breakfast now, Howie. Then we’ll do the story.”
It takes Bessemer two sandwiches, three cups of coffee, and a long shower before he’s ready, and then he and Carr settle in Bessemer’s office. Sunlight seeps around the edges of the shades, but Carr leaves them drawn. He sits at the desk and turns on a brass lamp. Bessemer sprawls in a studded leather chair.
“Take it from the top, Howie,” Carr says.
And Bessemer does. He’s got the facts down cold: how he met Greg Frye in Otisville, where Frye was serving out the last months of a federal sentence for trafficking in stolen diamonds; how Frye had helped him learn the ropes there, and avoid the predations of the rougher trade; how they’ve kept in touch over the years; and how Frye has come down to Palm Beach in search of a banker, and-possibly-a business partner. And his delivery is solid: offhand, uncomplicated, adorned with enough detail to be convincing, but not enough to be dangerous. Bessemer is an apt pupil-at home with deception-but Carr knows that drills are one thing and live fire something else entirely.
Bessemer yawns and rubs his eyes. “I might crash right here, Greg,” he says.
“Not yet,” Carr says. “You think Prager’s going to be interested?”
Bessemer smiles. “You’re asking me now? I thought you knew it all.”
There’s a drinks tray on the credenza behind the desk, and Carr pours a gin and hands it to Bessemer. “You actually know the guy.”
Bessemer sits up, and curiosity sparks in his bloodshot eyes. He sips at the gin. “Curt will be interested enough to talk. Why wouldn’t he be? I’ve referred clients to Isla Privada before, and even if he doesn’t take them on, he always talks. Talking’s free, he says. Besides, he’ll like the synergy.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning a client who can broaden his business model is better than a plain old client to him. Curt will like the idea of taking your money-assuming there’s enough of it-but he’ll like the diamonds even more. Someone who can take cash in exchange for diamonds, and who can do it in quantity-that’s going to appeal to him. Diamonds are a lot easier to move than cash. And if you tell him you’ve got a network of people around the world who can do the transaction in reverse-take in diamonds and pay out cash-well, that’s a new model.” Bessemer takes another drink and smiles at Carr. “Assuming your story is solid.”
“It is.”
“Because if it isn’t-if it’s not granite-”
“It is, Howard.”
“You’re confident,” Bessemer says, finishing his drink. “That’s good.”
“You should be confident too. You should be thinking about what you want to do afterward, when you get your money back.”
Bessemer sighs and looks at his empty glass. “I have been thinking about it.”
“And?”
Bessemer furrows his broad brow. “I don’t know. I’m skittish about making plans. Seems whenever I do, things never work out. Sometimes I think the best way for me to make sure that I don’t do something is for me to make a plan to do it.”
Carr shakes his head. “Kind of self-defeating, isn’t it?”
“Self-defeat’s my best thing.”
“Maybe this is an opportunity to turn over a new leaf.”
“That kind of plan is always the most disappointing.”
“Then start small.”
Bessemer nods slowly. “I could get myself cleaned up-lose some weight, ease up on this.” He holds up his glass. “Maybe try to get fit.”
“All good ideas.”
“Then maybe I could spend some time with my kid. He’s twelve now, and I haven’t seen him in… a long time.”
“Baby steps, Howie. Baby steps.”
Bessemer stretches out on the office sofa and dozes. He shifts around occasionally and murmurs words that Carr can’t make out. Asleep he looks younger, Carr thinks, and much like his son. Carr empties ashtrays and fills the dishwasher and makes himself another cup of coffee. He looks out the window, at a jet crossing the sky, and thinks about Tina, flying down to Santiago, and Guerrero, who may have been Declan’s pilot. He thinks about Declan, and his hastily sketched exit plan from Mendoza, and he remembers Valerie’s words on the wharf in Portland.
You’re remembering a different guy, she said, and Carr knows she’s right. Sometimes it seems that he’s remembering several different guys. It’s like a hall of mirrors, and everywhere there’s a version of Declan-short, tall, skinny, fat…
There’s the grinning red pirate who recruited him in Mexico; the wise mentor who taught him the ropes; and the tough, charismatic soldier who executed plans with precision and economy, improvised like Coltrane whenever things went sideways, and always led from the front.
Then there’s the melancholy, whiskey-voiced raconteur, sitting in a darkened bar, spinning out tales of his days in the service-in Ireland, the Middle East, and at unnamed stops along the Silk Road-of the hell he raised with other crews, and the swag he hauled away. And there is the weary campaigner, aging, aching, and contemplating retirement with a mix of anticipation and dread. Those incarnations didn’t turn up often, and when they did it was always just before a job, or just after one.
And then there’s the Declan Valerie had in mind-the erratic, reckless Declan, the willful, capricious one. It’s hard-impossible, really-for Carr to reconcile her version with those others, but he can’t say he hasn’t seen them before. He has, in bits and pieces, several times over the years. And especially toward the end.
He hears Valerie’s voice again: There was Cesar, and before that the Russians. They were the last jobs they
