or even Boyce’s microscopic scrutiny of him while he does it. In fact, he’s welcomed it-welcomed anything that occupied his brain, and left room for nothing else. Not for thoughts of how blind he was, how foolish, or how wrong. Not for guilt or hungry rage.
Mostly, the job has fit that bill, but even amid the columns of numbers, the megabytes of data, and the stacks of paper, there’s been downtime. The flights are the worst, and commercial or private makes no difference. Something about the long sleepless stretches, or the darkened cabins, or the dead, cold air, or the unceasing grind of the engines, or maybe all of those things together-something summons them. Memories of Bobby and Dennis in the workhouse, in Boca-the flies and the smell-of Ray-Ray in the morgue, in Mendoza, his blackened bones and clawing fingers; of Howard Bessemer, white and bloated and spinning through the waves; of Amy Chun’s hands-
“Kitchen window,” Mr. Boyce whispers.
Carr shifts his binoculars and sees a silhouette moving in the yellow square. “Can you tell who?” he asks.
“No,” Boyce says. He touches the mic on his neck and whispers something. They watch in silence, and after a while the shadow disappears from the window. After another while, Boyce sighs and lowers his binoculars.
“You called your father last night?” he asks Carr.
“You know I did.”
Boyce nods imperceptibly. “How is he doing?”
“He’s okay. I’m sure you know that too.”
“I don’t eavesdrop.”
“Your distinctions are too subtle for me.”
Boyce smiles. “How’s he getting along with Margie?”
“As well as he does with anyone. Which is not well.”
“She was an army nurse for twenty years-I think she can handle it. Margie can stay on with him, you know. She likes it up there.”
Carr shakes his head. “After this, I go back. That was the deal-that, and the money. Nothing’s changed.”
“I just want you to know you have options.”
Carr points down the hill. A door has opened near the kitchen window, and a rectangle of yellow light falls on the patio stones. A shadow-the elongated shape of a man-fills the rectangle. The shadow is still, and Carr finds that he’s holding his breath. The door closes again and Carr sighs.
Boyce chuckles softly. “He’s like a dog, sniffing the air. His hackles are up, but he doesn’t know why.”
Carr looks at his watch and looks at the sky. Three months, and the end is a hillside away. He feels his heart rate rise, and a tightness spread through his shoulders and down his arms. “He’ll know soon enough.”
Boyce turns to look at him. “You’re sure about going in alone?”
“I’m sure. You’ll be cleaning up with sponges otherwise.”
“And you don’t want to bring anything?”
“The wire is enough,” Carr says. “There’ll be more than enough guns in there.” Three months.
Mr. Boyce reads his thoughts. “It’s been a long time,” he says in a quiet rumble. “A long time chasing. A lot of time to think. To brood. I know a little something about disloyalty, but now’s not the moment to get impatient or sloppy or… emotional.”
Carr’s laugh is quiet and rueful. “I thought I was just tired.”
“You are. Anger is tiring.”
Carr rubs a hand across the stubble on his jaw. “The light’s coming up,” he says.
Boyce checks his watch and whispers something into his mic. He waits for an answer, and then looks at Carr. “It’s time then.”
Inhale, exhale, not too fast.
49
Carr is quiet down the hillside and across the patio, but when he opens the door he knows he hasn’t been quiet enough.
Declan is looking up from a newspaper spread on a long table. He’s holding a pair of reading glasses in one big hand, and a Taurus nine-millimeter casually-almost carelessly-in the other. Neither one of them moves or speaks, and blood rushes madly in Carr’s ears.
Then Declan smiles. It’s huge and crooked, and it engages every crag and freckle on his ruddy face. His eyes gleam, and Carr would swear the light gets brighter. “You got grass stains on your knees, lad, and you look like pickled death. You better have yourself a coffee.” The brogue is stronger than ever.
Carr nods slowly. “Coffee would be good.”
“I just put the pot on. There’s breakfast too, if you like. Fry up some eggs?”
“Just coffee, I think.”
“Coffee then,” Declan says. He slips the gun into the waistband of his pajamas and pads barefoot across the tile floor. He takes two mugs from a cabinet. “And would you close the door, lad-unless your friends are comin’ too.”
Carr shuts the door. “Not yet.”
Declan smiles. “Not yet,” he repeats.
“You lost some weight,” Carr says. “And I like the beard-even with all the gray. You look good.” Actually, he looks older to Carr-leathery, smaller, and somehow desiccated, like an old boot.
“Death agrees with me.”
Carr smiles. “You don’t seem too surprised.”
“Had a feeling the past few days. Not even a feeling-more like an itch I couldn’t reach, or a yen for something, but I didn’t know what. So, not entirely surprised.”
“Surprised it’s me?”
Declan shakes his head. “When I heard you’d gotten yourself away from Prager, I figured if it was anyone, there was a better than even chance it’d be you.” He points a thumb across the open living room, at what Carr knows is a bedroom door. “I told her that. And I told her yesterday that something was up. But she wasn’t havin’ any. She said I was paranoid -an old woman was how she put it. She can be… unkind.”
Carr nods. “Yes, so I’ve seen.”
The coffee is ready, and Declan pours it out and carries the mugs to the table. He fetches a can of condensed milk from the pantry, shakes it, and punches the top with a can opener. “I remember you like this stuff,” he says. Carr pours some milk in, stirs, and takes a sip. Declan smiles. “I can see you’re feeling more spry already.”
Carr nods, but actually he’s more exhausted than ever. He studies Declan across the table and tries to find some other feelings. Rage? Hatred? Disgust? He’s harbored them all over the long months-nurtured them, savored them sometimes-but now they’ve abandoned him. He tries to conjure them up, recalling images of Bobby and Dennis, of Howard Bessemer’s white face and Amy Chun’s pleading hands-images that he’s run from for three months-but it’s like turning out empty pockets. There’s nothing there.
Or almost nothing. He looks at Declan’s shoulders, slumped in striped pajamas, his gray-streaked beard and graying hair, the little gold hoop-that’s new too, and even more ridiculous than the beard-his reading glasses and bloodshot eyes, and finds a speck of something. A grain of… pity? It confuses Carr, and he’s relieved to have questions to fall back on.
“So, how was it supposed to work?” he asks.
Declan drinks some coffee and smiles ruefully. “Not to put too fine a point on it, lad, but you weren’t supposed to walk away from Prager’s.”
“It was hardly a walk.”
“I can only imagine. But if you’d stayed put, it would’ve looked like your crew had fucked you, and then fucked one another: three down and the other two in the wind, and no one to say different. Boyce could beat the bushes for them as long as he wanted, but in the end who would he find?”
