“But you didn’t do your paperwork for your real job,” Michael clarified.
“My real job’s sort of douchey,” Carl told him. “They have lawyers that will wiggle through the eye of a needle just to stitch themselves into the right side of the law.”
Michael was nonplussed. “Great metaphor, suit guy, but what does it mean?”
He heard Carl’s sigh. “It means that insurance companies are like gambling with your life—or your life savings. The customer is obligated to pay into their policy, but the insurance company only makes money if they don’t have to pay out. I work for a property insurance company, thank God, because if I worked for a health insurance company, I’d have to worry about all sorts of things that give me ulcers: drug prices, shitty customer care, giant deductibles, patient debt…. I couldn’t do it. It would break my heart. See, I signed on because I had an art history degree and I was getting a degree in international law. I wanted to be an art broker, because it sounds great and I’d get to go to museums around the world.”
“Wow,” Michael breathed, impressed. “I bet your family is totally into art, right?”
“No,” Carl replied bluntly. “My father was distant and seemed sort of consumed with his company job. And my mother’s a chain-smoking nightmare who will forever be ashamed of me. But art is….”
He paused for a moment, and when Michael glanced at him, he was gazing off into space, not seeing the traffic on the freeway or the bright, crisp September day. “Art takes you places,” he said after a moment. “It takes you to different times, to different people. If you’re looking at a statue by John Flaxman, for example, you’re not just looking at the art of Regency England. You’re looking at the poetry of Homer and Dante and the drama of Aeschylus. You’re looking at libraries and cathedrals and the process of making sculptures using relief methods. You’re looking at Wedgewood, who was Flaxman’s boss and one of his most famous contemporaries, and you’re looking at all of the things Wedgewood had his name on that Flaxman had a finger in. You’re looking at the most beautiful memorial sculptures you’ve ever seen and the way people look at grief and sadness and a belief in redemption. And you’re looking at the art of Regency England, but you’re also looking at the art of the Renaissance and the Restoration. You’re looking at the art of ancient Greece and Rome. Because it all went into the work of a small man with a big head who used to draw in his father’s workshop, after being educated by his father’s friends. That’s one artist, and he’s an entire solar system of humanity.” He paused while Michael tried to catch his breath. “Think about how many galaxies a museum has.”
Michael couldn’t think. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t breathe.
“What?” Carl asked, sounding a little grumpy.
“You have that—all of that—just floating around your head?” He remembered Carl’s dreaminess when he’d been looking at the injured falcon, his fascination with the sage grouse. It was like he’d seen a teeny bit of the depths of this man in that moment, but he had no idea what an ocean there was underneath.
“You asked why art,” Carl replied, because naturally an insurance investigator would love something with that sort of operatic intensity. “That’s why art. And I got recruited by Serpentus, and I thought, ‘Hey, I can be an investigator. That sounds sort of romantic. I can chase criminals, and that will make me a good guy!’”
“But that’s not what happened.” Obviously not if Carl was working with a crew of thieves and con men.
“It’s not even that the thieves were more interesting than the insurance company,” Carl said ruminatively. “It’s that they were more motivated. They stole cars because they loved cars, and they loved to drive fast, and they loved the vehicle they rode in. They stole art to save their family business, which they’d put their entire lives into. They committed fraud to fund something that they needed—and sometimes it was heartbreaking things. Medical treatment because the health insurance company wouldn’t pay. Stealing back a family heirloom because it had been repossessed forty years ago and their grandmother missed it. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Most thieves aren’t noble, and a lot of them are reckless and violent and don’t care what happens to the people they encounter as they steal. And a lot of them are motivated by the same thing that motivates the company—pure, unadulterated greed. But there is always the chance that greed is the furthest thing from someone’s mind.” He sighed. “Sometimes the thieves are more human. That’s all.”
“It’s hard to find a noble thing to do in this world,” Michael said thoughtfully. “Being a police officer is supposed to be noble, but you see stories all the time about how the job has been corrupted. Being a lawyer is supposed to be good, but sometimes they’re working for the bad guys, even if they’re on the side of Johnny Law. Chuck got me a good lawyer—he got away with the money, but he put a lot of it aside for me, right?”
“I know the story,” Carl said, probably because Chuck had told him. As much as Carl seemed to think he was extraneous, Michael had seen the way the other people in the crew respected him and seemed to think his opinion was important. Chuck may have come across as a good ol’ boy, but he was careful about whom he trusted.
“What he didn’t tell you was that he spent a fortune on a guy who got me two years instead of five, like my brothers are serving. And he got me sent to a different prison because my brothers probably would have killed me. Or shot their mouths off about me being a faggot and gotten me killed. And my lawyer was smart, and he was competent, and he worked real hard, but he was straight-up motivated by his fee. You could tell by the way he talked. Chuck’s opinion was more important to him than mine at every juncture because Chuck was paying the money. I hold no grudges, but it hurt knowing I was just a paycheck. You… I mean, I know you got your problems with your company and all, but at least you weren’t doing it because of a paycheck. I worry, that’s all. That you’ll get busted helping Felix and Danny and all and you won’t even have that.”
“I’ve got plenty saved,” Carl said. “I made some good investments. Honestly, mostly by following what Felix did. I figured anybody who could do the things the Salingers did and not get caught would know a thing or two about making money, and they do. I’m not worried. If I get fired, my severance package alone would provide for me for a couple of years. And the company gives me good cover and good contacts. That’s part of the reason I’m going to DC tomorrow—to talk to the people I know who can help us.”
Michael let out a breath. “You really are their secret weapon as a man in a suit, aren’t you?”
“I’m a small part of their operation, Michael,” he said, like he was trying to let Michael down gently.
“Nope. You’re exactly who they need you to be.”
There was a silence then. Not a comfortable one because Michael could tell Carl wasn’t good at taking a compliment.
“What?” Michael goaded after a minute.
“I don’t know. I’m wondering, how did you end up robbing that bank?”