The two men exchanged glances—not of worry, so much, but of planning.
“Go,” the taller one instructed. “Get food. I’ll see what’s taking so long.”
“Oui,” the shorter one said, and then they shared a touch—brief as it was—of hands.
And Carl rethought everything he knew about them again.
He had no excuse to linger on the steps, so he breached the door and stood for a moment, orienting himself and wondering how to speak to the head docent. As he was scanning the various corridors and displays, looking for the standard “offices” or something similar, he saw an exquisite woman rushing by, dressed in a pencil-thin black skirt and a red sweater, with her blond hair swept up almost like Grace Kelly by design. She turned a brilliant smile over her shoulder and spoke a quick patter of French, thanking the docent manager for being so very, very kind.
The man in turn called out, “Mrs. Thomakins, you and your husband may return any day. We are always so pleased to meet a donor.”
She cast another dazzling smile at him and, as Carl watched, blew outside to snag the taller man by the hand. Together they rushed after the other man and the boy, off to find a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a Parisian café, and Carl turned to the docent manager in a dream.
“Did you say Thomakins?” he asked the little man with the incredibly earnest face who was swishing his handkerchief after the exquisite blond woman with something like worship.
“Oui! Their family is so very gracious. They found a lost Renoir. Can you imagine that? They donated it to our museum. It will be ready for display in a matter of weeks!”
“That’s, uhm, generous,” Carl said, his mind racing. “I’m, uhm, Carl Soderburgh. From Serpentus?” They’d given him a cover name, and he used it whenever he was in Europe. He wasn’t sure exactly what it did to keep him safe, but, well, company policy. “I’m here to look at your John Flaxwood statue, but would you mind if I looked at that Renoir as well?”
Both the statue and the Renoir were 100 percent authentic, although only the statue’s right to be there was contested. Carl wasn’t able to pay the client who’d contested, though. As he’d thought, nobody named “Thomakins” existed at Serpentus.
Carl was able to interest the company enough to give him some investigative leeway, which was where his obsession with the “Thomakins” family was allowed to take root and flourish.
Even after the trip to rehab and the sad, doomed affair with Danny Mitchell, fox-featured master thief who could sing the theme to SpongeBob in four languages to occupy a little boy, he would forever be grateful to the four thieves he’d seen at Quai Branly that day.
They helped make his life extraordinary.
By Any Other Name
CARMICHAEL CARMODY had never liked his name—even when it was shortened to “Car-Car” since working on cars was what he did best.
Now that he had a new life, a new job, a new him—an out and proud gay him, working for people who gave zero shits about the gayness—he wanted a new name.
And he really wanted to try it out on a new person.
A specific person.
A tall blond-haired green-eyed Viking who wore sportscoats and spoke formally and always smiled at him and nodded when he borrowed the cars or boarded the planes that Car-Car… erm, Carmichael—wait, Michael—tended and kept ready to use.
Should the tall blond-haired green-eyed Viking ever smile at him specifically and say his name, Car-Car—Michael—wanted to be able to suggest the name change easily, as if it was butter and rolled smoothly off the tongue.
It didn’t quite happen that way.
“Got your bag packed, Car-Car?” Chuck Calder asked as he wandered through Michael’s end of the hangar, the part that housed Felix Salinger’s planes and some of his other vehicles. Part of Michael’s job was to make sure all the vehicles at the mansion were in top form. He tended to rotate them out once a month to service them—there was always something to do. If nothing else, the trip from the mansion in Glencoe to the airstrip in outlying farm country took up nearly an hour, and Michael had nothing to do there but drive those nice cars and let the breeze blow his hair back, listening to classic rock played at top volume.
It was like a little vacation at work.
He didn’t need to go any of the places the airplanes went to be happy.
“Nobody needs me to fly to Belgium,” Michael told Chuck. “Besides, I don’t even know what you’re doing there.”
Chuck grinned. He was a handsome, raw-boned good ol’ boy with a wicked smile and a divot in his chin. He and Michael had been lovers once, but that was long over, and now? He was a friend, which was good. Michael had grown up in Texas, and now that he was trying to make a new life in Chicago, he could use all the friends he could get.
“Honestly, they don’t need me either,” he confided. “They need Carl and Liam Craig. You don’t know him. He’s from Interpol. But Carl didn’t want to go alone. I get the feeling he’s spent a lot of alone time in Europe, and he’s over it.” Chuck shrugged, the action drawing his T-shirt tight against his broad chest. “Since my boyfriend is off making trade deals with China this week, I volunteered. That’s what friends do.”
Michael bit his lip. Chuck still felt like he owed Michael for some shit that went down a long time ago. Nothing could be further from the truth, but boy, Michael wouldn’t mind cashing in on a little of that goodwill now.
“Uhm, Chuck?” he asked, smiling prettily. His teeth were the faintest bit crooked, but he knew he had big limpid brown eyes and an appealing smile. His ex-wife had told him often enough that he could get all sorts of things for the smile alone. Sadly he hadn’t wanted those things from her, but she was such a sweet girl, she’d given him pointers for how to use that smile to get someone he could love the way he couldn’t love her.
“Car-Car?” Chuck asked, as footsteps sounded on the far side of the hangar.
Oh, Michael knew those steps: firm in hard leather-soled shoes, with a long, solid stride. He’d been hearing them echo through his hangar for the last two months, ever since he’d started working for the Salingers and had gotten to know the other people who worked for them—or with them—as well.
“That’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about,” Michael said, wincing. “See, Car-Car is someone you knew in Texas. Someone who went to jail. And he was… well, sort of a wreck. I was wondering if you could, you know, maybe call me something else?”
Michael. Call me Michael!
“Sure!” Chuck sounded all easygoing, but then he had to go and ruin it all by calling to the owner of those footsteps. “Hey, Soderbergh, get over here. We gotta find Car-Car a new name.”
Carl Cox—Michael had no idea why people called him Soderbergh—changed the direction of his stride from the plane, which sat near the hangar’s opening with the staircase descended, to the back of the hangar where Michael’s area was neatly arranged, including an office toward the rear with a bathroom, a shower, and a little sleeping area he used maybe three times a week when he worked late and didn’t feel like driving back into the city.