Two hundred twenty-seven thousand dollars in neatly bundled cash; three million, give or take, in loose polished stones.
5
When the adrenaline washes out, Carr thinks, it’s like another country-another planet altogether. On this planet, on this evening, they look like film stars by the swimming pool: Valerie in a slate-blue shift, dark glasses, and a loose French braid; Dennis, Bobby, Mike, and Carr himself all freshly showered, shaved, in crisp shirts and shades of their own. The late-day sun throws sheets of orange light across the pool, the fieldstone deck, the wrought-iron chairs and tables, the sinuous olive trees, and a wide swath of Napa Valley hillside below. The waitress delivers another bottle of Chardonnay, another plate of cheese, and another basket of warm bread to their table. She leaves, and they have the terrace to themselves again.
Latin Mike sips and sighs and stretches in the cooling air. “Nice,” he says. “Whose choice?” Carr nods toward Valerie, and Mike smiles. “You can book all my hotels, chica. ” She lifts her wineglass and smiles back.
“Lucky to be here, no, jefe?” Mike continues. “Those two stoners could’ve screwed us up but good.”
Carr shakes his head. “The luck was that you didn’t start banging away. Otherwise we’d be picking brains off our lapels around now, instead of drinking wine.”
“That’d work too,” Mike says. “My tastes are simple.”
“So instead of nobody knowing anything, we’d have had maybe ten minutes to haul ass before the cops got there. And that works for you?”
Mike shrugs. “Not everybody’s so squeamish, cabron. ”
Carr takes off his sunglasses. “Not everybody’s so stupid, either.”
“You saying Deke was stupid, bro? ’Cause he didn’t mind a little juice.”
“He didn’t mind when there wasn’t another option.”
“Traffic moves fast. There’s not always time to figure the options.”
“Which is why you’re not supposed to figure anything-you’re supposed to listen to me. For chrissakes, Mike, we’ve put months into this gig, and you nearly ended it in the first act.”
Valerie mutters something, and Dennis shifts nervously in his chair. Bobby clears his throat. “Which is something we’ve been wondering about,” Bobby says, “ending it in the first act, I mean.”
It was hard travel from Houston-dusty, hot, and bumpy-and though he’s washed off the grit, Carr can still feel the ride in his shoulders. He looks at Bobby and then at Latin Mike. “We made a deal,” he says, “a commitment. We’ve got big sunk costs in this thing, and so does Boyce. He’s not going to like it if we walk away.”
Mike clasps his hands behind his head. “ Senor Boyce-el padrino. ”
“Fucking ghost, more like,” Bobby says.
Carr rises from the table and walks to the terrace railing. He looks at the darkening vineyards and sighs. He’s been down this road before with Mike and Bobby, more than once-do the job, don’t do the job; one last run, or not-but with three and a quarter million in swag in a room upstairs, the potholes and blind curves are less theoretical now.
“You’ve worked for him longer than I have, Mike,” Carr says. “You were working for him when I signed on.”
“True that, cabron, but I’ve never met the guy. None of us have had the honor-only Deke and you.”
“I didn’t ask for it-it’s the way Deke set it up. It’s the way Boyce wants it.”
“But you see how it makes a guy nervous.”
“You never had a problem before-no worries about the intel he feeds us, or the logistics; no complaint about the splits or the banking service; no gripes at all that I heard about.”
Latin Mike nods slowly, but concedes nothing. “Still, a guy gets older, he starts to like the bird in the hand, right, Bobby?”
Bobby smiles. “Three bucks and a quarter-we used to call that a nice payday.”
There’s wood smoke in the air, something fragrant, mesquite maybe, mixing with the scents of warm earth, bay laurel, and sage that rise from the hillside. Carr breathes in deeply.
“Back when Declan brought me on, you guys thought half a buck was Christmas morning. Times change; prices rise. Three and a quarter isn’t what it used to be, especially after expenses. It’s not beach money anymore.”
Mike empties his wineglass. “And you’re all about retirement, right, jefe?”
“I thought we all were. I thought that’s what we said the last five times we had this conversation. But if you’re saying something different, let’s not dick around. Tell me now and I’ll tell Boyce when I see him day after tomorrow.”
Bobby pops up, as if he’s sat on a tack, but he’s smiling. “Nobody’s saying anything. We’re just thinking out loud.”
Valerie’s laugh is like ice in a glass. “Is that how you split the labor, Bobby-Mike thinks, and you do the out loud part?”
Bobby flips her the bird, but he’s laughing too, and so is Dennis, and so-finally-is Mike. Carr is still watching purple shadows spread over the valley when the waitress reappears and says that their table is ready.
It’s set with heavy linen, battered silver, and votive candles in thick blue glass. Valerie is at the head, between Bobby and Latin Mike, and Carr sits at the other end, between Dennis and the vacant chair. Valerie’s playing hostess tonight, smiling, laughing, keeping glasses filled and conversation weightless. It’s a part she plays well: conspiratorial and flattering with Mike; flirtatious and profane with Bobby; and with Dennis simply present to be gazed upon. Carr can relate; he can’t look away either.
Candlelight flickers on her arms and throat and softens her elfin features. Her green eyes glow and, as the night wears on, her braid loosens and two honey-colored strands slip down to frame her face. Always in motion, the face, the hands, the voice-lifting, lilting, insinuating. It must be exhausting, Carr thinks-it exhausts him just watching her, but he watches just the same. The room darkens, the crowd thins, wine bottles march steadily past, good soldiers all, and by the time the entrees are cleared Carr is drunk and drifting backward again, to Costa Alegre.***
It was off-season in Chamela-white mornings, the narrow pastel streets empty until noon-and Carr was on R amp; R between jobs, nursing a row of bruised ribs. He was sticking close to his rented casita, swimming, reading, sleeping, and he’d never have seen her if not for Fernando.
Fernando did alarms for Declan when Carr first joined up, and his brother Ernesto did surveillance, but their skills didn’t line up with Declan’s ambitions and they’d slipped into retirement about a year later-Neto to a sport fishing business on the Riviera Maya, and Nando to invest in Jalisco real estate. Carr had always liked the brothers, their unfussy competence and soft-edged cynicism, and he’d been happy to hear from Nando and accept his invitation to drive up the coast for lunch by a hotel pool.
Nando was thicker, darker, and more jocular than he’d been the last time he and Carr had shared a meal. He was working steadily through a platter of chicken tacos and a long story about some condos he was building in Manzanilla when he paused and pointed with his beer to the far side of the pool. “ Oye, cabron -you like a little mystery?”
She wore a green two-piece, and her skin was the color of toast. Her hair wasn’t blond then, it was a sun- streaked copper, cut blunt to her shoulders, and there was a tattoo on her lower back, a tangle of blue Sanskrit, that looked as if it had been there a while, but which proved to be window dressing. The freckles were real though, and so were the quick green eyes. And the catch at the back of his throat. And the ache he felt through his arms and fingers.
“ Muy bien, no?” Nando continued. “At first I think she’s a tourist, but then I’m not sure. All week I see guys make their play, and all week she’s ice. She shuts them down before they get a word out-even me, if you can believe it. Then these skinny guys check in a couple days ago, from up north, and suddenly she’s Miss Congeniality. She lets them buy her drinks, lunch, dinner, whatever, and they’re practically slitting each other’s throats to get next to her.”
“You think she’s a working girl?”
