Prager finally responded, he was brief.
“You know I’m always happy to meet prospective investors, Bess. So if you’ve got the time, you and your friend should come down here. We’ll hit some balls, we’ll put some lines in the water, and we’ll see what bites.”
Bessemer started fretting as soon as he hung up. “I thought all you wanted was an introduction, Greg. I think I’ve held up my part of the bargain.”
“So far, so good,” Carr said.
“You never talked about a trip.”
“It’s a short trip, Howie.”
“But you never said-”
“Prager invited both of us down. It would be a little awkward if I showed up by myself.”
Bessemer paced and worried his lower lip. “It’ll be awkward for me if Curtis thinks I’ve lied to him. Awkward as in dead.”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“ Dramatic? I’m not the one holding somebody hostage in his own house, or blackmailing him into being part of some kind of scam. I’m not the dramatic one.”
Carr had almost smiled. “Don’t be so negative, Howie. This doesn’t have to be complicated: we go down there, we hang out, and then we’re done. Stay focused on what you get out of this: your money, your life back, a fresh start.”
“I don’t know,” Bessemer said, shaking his head and walking to his liquor cabinet.
“The upside, Howie-focus on the upside.”
They’re on Tibbetts Highway now, the Nissan still with them, a quarter-mile back. They come up a gentle rise and on his left, beyond the big hotels, Carr sees the beaches, the ocean, and the cruise ships at anchor, each one as graceless as a Soviet apartment block. Away to his right, North Sound is like a pale blue plate, and the feathered wake of a powerboat like a fracture line across it. Closer on the right is the broad dome of a landfill, with a thousand white gulls wheeling above. Carr glances at Bessemer, who is drumming his fingers on the armrest and still staring at the mirrors. Carr understands nerves-his own are like confetti.
He saw Valerie the day before he left Palm Beach. She drove up while Amy was at work, and he took a room at the Marriott. She said not a word about Miami or Nando or Mike, and Carr managed not to ask. Managed not to speak much at all that afternoon, unless spoken to-and there wasn’t much of that at first. Later, when the sheets and pillows were on the floor and they were sideways on the bed, Valerie had questions of her own.
“They’re set up down there?” she asked.
“Dennis went yesterday. Bobby and Mike go tonight.”
“They must be happy to get out of that dump.”
“They were getting stir-crazy. Forward motion calms everybody down.”
“Everybody, including you?”
“I want to get it done as much as anyone.”
“And afterward?” she asked softly, and slid a bare foot up his calf. “You ever been to New Zealand? It’s really something down there-Middle Earth, just like in the movies. I know a place where we could have a cottage to ourselves, just us, a few thousand acres, and some sheep. Nothing to see out the windows but cliffs and sky and ocean. What do you say-you take care of the airfare, and I’ll pick up the tab at the Wharekauhau?”
“New Zealand’s a long way.”
“You can afford it. And besides, isn’t that what you want-something far away?”
He had no answer for that, so he nodded vaguely and went into the bathroom. When he came out, Valerie was standing by the balcony doors. She’d opened the drapes to the width of her shoulders, and she wore nothing but the long bar of light that came through the glass. Carr stared at her for some time, looking for he didn’t know what. A mark? A sign? Some sort of clue? But there was nothing except that body, slender, wanton, tinted pale saffron by the streetlight. She turned to look at him, and her face, half in shadow, was suddenly exhausted.
“We moved a lot when I was a kid,” she said quietly. “Base to base-never anyplace longer than a year or two. My mother was useless around the house, but my father could do things, and he’d always try to fix up whatever crappy billet we’d been assigned. He’d paint, hang pictures, plant a window box, that kind of thing. But those places weren’t ours, and all the petunias in the world couldn’t change it-couldn’t make us belong somewhere. I get the feeling you know what that’s like.”
“I know.”
“I’ll be glad when this is done. I’m tired of hotels and furnished apartments and putting on these lives like somebody else’s clothes. I want someplace I can sit still. Someplace that’s mine.” The air conditioner came on and she shivered in the breeze. She wrapped her arms around herself. “I want my skin back.”
Carr swallowed hard, and Valerie stepped away from the window and began to collect her scattered clothes. “Something’s on your mind,” she whispered.
Did they show, he wondered-the questions that still spun through his head? He shrugged. “Prager, Bessemer, a bunch of things.”
“You need help,” she said. “Let me help you.”
The resort grounds are vast: a golf course, clubhouse and marina on the sound, and, across West Bay Road, a curving, coral-pink hotel complex on Seven Mile Beach. The Nissan doesn’t follow when Carr turns through the main gates, but any relief he feels is short-lived. There are two more men in the lobby, watching them from behind day-old newspapers.
28
They’re in a fourth-floor corner suite-two bedrooms separated by a living room, a kitchenette, a wet bar, a terrace, and glary views of pool and ocean. While Bessemer explores the bar, Carr carries his bag to a bedroom and drops it on a luggage rack. He steps into the bathroom and runs water in both sinks. Then he opens his cell and calls Bobby.
“Not bad here,” Bobby says. “You can practically smell the offshore cash.”
“It’s very fragrant,” Carr says. “You guys clean when you came in from the airport?”
“Sure. Clean last night, clean today. Why?”
“Two guys were with us on the drive here, and another pair picked us up in the lobby. I see one of them down by the pool. I don’t know where his partner is.”
“You think they’re Prager’s?”
“I hope like hell they are,” Carr says. “We don’t need new players at the table.”
“His security guy was supposed to be a joke.”
“Maybe he’s on the wagon again.”
“Fucking drunks,” Bobby says, “you can never count on ’em. I got your stuff; you want me to bring it over?”
“And you can check out the babysitters while you’re at it. Howie and I will take a walk around the grounds, starting with the bar by the pool. We’ll meet you back here. You need a key to the suite?”
Bobby laughs. “Now you’re just being a prick,” he says, and hangs up.
The Caiman Lounge is a broad expanse of terra-cotta tile, bleached wood, and sliding glass doors that let the bar merge with the patio around the pool. Carr and Bessemer pause at the entrance. Carr doesn’t see Bobby- doesn’t see anyone besides a few off-season honeymooners sitting close. He and Bessemer take a table near a large aquarium. Carr orders an iced tea, and Bessemer a gin and tonic. Bessemer is transfixed by a green and blue triggerfish swimming lazily behind the glass.
“Ridiculous fish,” he says. “Goofy-looking. It reminds me of my ex-mother-in-law.”
“Triggers are aggressive,” Carr says. “They’ll take a chunk out of you if you get between them and the next meal.”
“Definitely my ex-mother-in-law.”
Carr nods, and then he spots the lobby men. One takes a seat at the bar and orders something. The other
