by Tod Goldberg
"I was in eighth grade when we invaded Grenada," I said.
"A shame," Sam said. "We could have used you. You know, I still have a tiny piece of shrapnel in my left big toe from that. Cold days, it's like someone's sticking a fork into my foot."
It was probably very near the time Sam was storming the beach that I was last on Fisher Island, though it didn't look quite like it did on this day, at least not in my memory. My father and mother were fighting, throwing dishes and frozen food at each other, so Nate and I sneaked out of the house and just rode the buses around Miami. Nate had stolen a bunch of transfer passes, so we ended up going clear across the city and found ourselves at the very marina Sam and I had just departed from. We sneaked onto the ferry-a very different ferry, as I recall, since the island was not yet the address it is now-and made it all the way to the island before a security guard noticed us trying to walk off the ferry by ourselves. We were taken to the resort and sat in the guard shack there for three hours while we waited for one of our parents to pick us back up after security finally managed to finagle our phone number out of Nate. We both prayed it would be our mother who'd show up, but it was dad who rolled up in our old Ford Fairmont station wagon. We could see him through the window, his face scraggly with a week's worth of beard, a Marlboro dangling between his lips, his eyes covered by those narrow black Ray-Ban sunglasses he used to wear, even though it was near dusk by then. He didn't bother to turn the car off and come inside the shack; he just leaned on the horn.
"That your pop?" the guard asked. When neither of us answered, he sighed deeply and opened the door. I don't remember if the guard seemed pained by the experience, embarrassed or just happy we were leaving, though I'd like to think it was pain I heard in the sigh. "Well, get on, then," he said and we did. I expected Dad would snap at us or take a swipe at our heads, but he just drove home in stony silence the entire way, chain-smoking and listening to talk radio, which was even more upsetting. It was predictable that he'd blow. This new quiet was something larger and somehow more aggressive, so that when we got home and found our bedrooms trashed, the posters torn off our walls, our beds turned upside down, Star Wars action figures and GI Joes tossed about, it all made sense and made me happy we'd sneaked out to this odd piece of paradise, if only to save ourselves from something that was apparently far worse.
"Here we are," Sam said. We'd pulled up in front of a two-story cream-colored compound. As we made our way onto the property, I put down the windows in the Cadillac and inhaled deeply to erase the old memories and to get acclimated to the new situation. The house was surrounded by a dozen swaying palms and row after row of three-foot-tall rosebushes that sprinkled the light breeze coming in off Biscayne with a sweet, florid fragrance, but I noted that they were in desperate need of trimming. I turned and looked behind me and saw that the box hedges lining the front of the drive were more like dodecahedron hedges. There was an acre-wide expanse of lawn along the eastern side of the house; it was also overgrown. Clouds of aphids could be seen here and there, as well, moving about in the humid afternoon.
In front of the house was a circular drive around a tasteful marble fountain, the water blooming out from the center and falling down like strands of hair. The house itself was a testament to natural light, with huge picture windows dominating the face of the home and wrapping around the length of the residence, the ocean visible even from the front yard.
Clarity on my creeping nontopiary suspicions came when I stepped out of the car and noticed a sign plastered to the garage door of the home, its corners reinforced with duct tape, announcing a public auction of the property and its contents in ten days' time.
"You didn't mention this," I said, pointing to the sign.
"Are you looking to move?" Sam said.
"It speaks to a certain amount of emotional and economic instability," I said.
"I said she was difficult," Sam said.
Before I could respond, the front door opened and a woman in her early fifties stepped out onto the front porch. Cricket O'Connor was tall, maybe five foot eight, and had shoulder-length blond hair, which she nervously tucked behind both of her ears when she saw us standing on her drive. I hoped she hadn't heard our conversation, but it was quickly apparent she had.
"I've tried to take the notice down," Cricket said. There was an absent, resigned quality to her voice, which belied her confident demeanor. She was dressed in a yellow St. John knit sweater set that revealed a tan expanse of neck and a thin gold necklace bedazzled with diamonds. A matching bracelet was wrapped around her left wrist. She wore a single diamond ring on her wedding finger and what looked liked a charm bracelet that dangled a single item on her right wrist. "But it's apparently against the law. Someone drives by every couple days to make sure it's still there, and if it's down, they put another up. It's not as invasive as the people who come to take photos, so I've learned to live with smaller inconveniences, even if it speaks to a larger instability."
"That's all anyone can be expected to do," I said. I walked over and extended my hand. "I'm Michael Westen. You have a lovely home."
Cricket forced a smile, shook my hand gingerly and then toyed with her single charm, which I saw was actually a military dog tag, before responding. "Well, for now at least. Please come in."
The difference between trained liars and your garden-variety fibbers is that specific training allows for certain insights into the human condition not normally acquired while playing shell games on the pier or trying to con your waitress out of more change. At the (grateful) expense of the American tax payer, you're taught to look for signals of weakness so that whatever your particular cover might be or whatever your particular lie is eventually targeted to mete out can have its most effective power.
But sometimes, all you need to do is listen to someone talk and you can work out the subtext of their lives without once checking for the slight rise of red into their neck when they're sad, the sweat that appears first along the hairline when the first hint of stress appears or the involuntary reflexive shift when your intestines pick up the speed of fear.
Sam and I sat beside each other on a down-filled sofa in the middle of what was probably once a very well-appointed living room, but now looked a lot like an empty living room, save for an antique coffee table covered with old issues of Architectural Digest, including one that featured on the cover the very house we were sitting in, and an ottoman missing its chair. Across from us was a marble-lined fireplace with an elaborate mantel covered in framed photos of two men, one old and one young. The older man was pictured aboard a yacht in one photo, in black tie in another and with his arms around a much younger Cricket in yet another. The young man was pictured as a toddler, as a teen and as a Marine.
Over a dozen other framed items lay beneath one of the picture windows atop a white sheet.
Cricket stepped into the room and set a platter of cheese and crackers on the coffee table and then sort of stared at us, like she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do, which was probably the case.
"Sam tells me you have a problem," I said, because I was already starting to feel depressed about this whole situation that was about to be presented and I didn't even know what it was. Something about a six-million-dollar home up for auction and suspiciously missing most of its furniture tends to get me down. Plus, I had the general sense that every moment I wasn't figuring out the Natalya situation was another moment the target on my back got a little larger.
Cricket sat down on the ottoman and stifled a laugh as she sunk into it. "Do you know what this ottoman is worth?"
Sam leaned forward and touched the fabric. "What do you call that?"
"Chenille," she said.
"Very nice," he said. "I'd say a grand."
"I think it was a rhetorical question," I said.
"No," she said, "I'm done with rhetorical questions. I'm hoping to just get a decent appraisal. You two seem just as qualified as anyone else. Everyone seems to want a little less for good work t
hese days."
"Looks like fine Italian craftsmanship to me," Sam said. "I'd give you fifteen hundred dollars for it."
"Sold," she said. "I'll take cash."
"I'm a little short," Sam said, and the way things were going, it didn't seem like this was going to be one of those jobs that would change my financial profile, either.
"Yes, well," she said and then made a sweep of her hand across the room and her eyes started to well up.
Crying women have never been my forte, nor furniture, so I said, "Cricket, I don't mean to be rude here, and I appreciate the cheese and crackers and the emotional vulnerability, but could we jump to the part where you just start talking about things directly? I'm sort of a no-metaphor guy."
Sam shot me a look that I ignored. It was probably meant to convey disappointment.
"I'm sorry, but this is all very embarrassing. I don't know where to start."
"Why not try the beginning?" I said. "But skip over the bits you don't think I'll care about."
Cricket smoothed out an imaginary wrinkle on her shirt and smiled faintly at me, which made me feel bad about being short, but the problem with most people is that they could work out most of their problems if they didn't spend so much time qualifying their lives. Give me an assignment, let me fix it and we'll go from there.
"My late husband, Scott O'Connor," Cricket said, pointing to the older man in the photos, "was a very wealthy man, but not an exceptionally good man, I'm afraid. He bought and sold companies for a living, just like his father had done, and his grandfather, too. I was under the impression that we had a very strong marriage, that I was the love of his life and that he cherished our son above all things. When he died from a heart attack a little over ten years ago, I learned that he had other women-an uncountable number, it would turn out-and other children, at least nine, though that number tends to fluctuate depending upon the month and the lawsuit. So what was once a great amount of money was significantly less, but more than enough, certainly. Nevertheless, I've spent the better part of the last decade giving away most of the money to charities throughout Miami, trying, not so vainly, to undo some of what I think of as my husband's least admirable traits."
Cricket stood up then and went across the room, picked up a few of the framed items from the sheet and handed them to me. They were certificates of appreciation from organizations like the South Beach AIDS Project, the Homeless Fund and the American Cancer Society.
"You've done good work," I said.
There were also photos of her cozied up with numerous celebrities, including a few fellows who ran for president over the years. In some of the photos, it was hard to tell if she was out on a date and was caught by paparazzi or if she actually was doing good work, though everyone gets to make their own choices about what is and isn't work these days.
"I've tried," Cricket said. "I hate who I found out my husband was, but I still love Scott, the man I was married to, the boy I met in college. I've tried to honor that original emotion, but then everything got fouled up." She went on to explain that her son, Devin, enlisted in the Marines after September eleventh, despite being in his second year at Princeton. "It was foolish," she continued. "I tried to dissuade him from it but he said that he felt useless, that college wasn't for him, which it wasn't. He took that from me, I suppose. But he went and I'm happy to say he was a fine soldier, that he loved what he was doing." Her voice trailed off then into silence.
"I was in Iraq for a little while," I said. "Anyone who went there, who lived even a day, is a better man than anyone walking on South Beach."
"Still," she said, "I'd prefer he was alive."
"How long has it been?" Sam asked.
"Two years last month," she said. Cricket started pacing the length of the room, her story flowing out of her like an avalanche of utter personal misery. It was after Devin died that things really fell apart for Cricket O'Connor, if it's possible to have your life fall apart even more than finding out the man you loved happened to love several other women and a baseball team of children. At first, she was feted in the local press, a minor celebrity for the fact that her son had perished, that her son had even enlisted in the first place, since rare is the warrior who comes from grace, and grace is something Cricket O'Connor possessed in spades. Benefit after benefit called upon Cricket O'Connor to be the face of their own grief and she just kept saying yes, giving money and time and press. And then there were the dates with celebrities.
Meetings with politicians.
A place in society.
Her hair perfect.
Her clothes designer.
Her jewels sparkling on the pages of Haute Living, the society column of the Miami Herald following her every date, South Beach naming her the most eligible woman in the city, and the most giving. Palm Life naming her one of their Fifty Most Beautiful Under Sixty.
"And then I met Dixon Woods," she said.
"Why do I know that name?" I asked.
"He did a little Special Forces time," Sam said. "The Tupac Amaru action in Panama?"
"I wasn't there," I said. "Not technically."
"Neither was he," Sam said. "Not technically. Buddy of mine in the NSA says he was also not technically in Nicaragua, Haiti and Bakino Faso, but that he's technically been in private service since 2002."
Just like every gun with a debt margin they want to work down, though I had a difficult time imagining anyone who'd done the things Dixon Woods was likely to have done somehow ending up in the arms of Cricket O'Connor. I had sensed the difficult part of Cricket O'Connor's life story was just now unfolding.
That and Sam was sort of twitching in his seat.
"Just how did you end up meeting Dixon Woods?" I said.
"On the Internet," she said.
"Pardon me?" I said.
"I'm part of several online support groups for relatives of military dead. One of them is also for singles. He contacted me there."
I already knew where this was headed. The world was simpler when people actually met each other in real life. The old model of getting drunk, dancing and doing things you regretted was a good one.
"You married him and he stole your money."
The color drained from Cricket's face. "How did you know?"
"Because predators can smell the weak even through a computer screen." What I didn't tell her: Because if I'd lived a second longer with my father, if I hadn't gone into the military after high school, I'd probably be doing the same thing as Dixon Woods.
A bully can always find a victim.
"I hate to be a cliche," she said.
"You're not," I said. "You're a foregone conclusion. That's worse, I'm sorry to say. But you don't need me to tell you that."
"That's why I need your help," Cricket said. "I needed someone to tell me that, obviously, and I need someone to help me find Dixon before I lose everything."
Need. Everyone thinks they need something. What Cricket O'Connor was really talking about was want: She wanted me to solve her problems, to fix what she'd wrecked with her own needs.
"I'm sorry your husband was a scumbag. I'm sorry your son is dead. I'm even sorry you married someone you met on the Internet. But you need to call the police. Let them handle this."
"I can't do that," she said.
"Sure you can," I said. "Dial nine-one-one. They'll ask you if this is an emergency. Say yes. Go from there."
"Sam said you'd be able to help find Dixon," she said.
"Really?" I said to Sam.
"Mikey," he said, "there're some mitigating circumstances that don't exactly scream for proper law enforcement involvement."
"Is this where the sort-of drug dealers come in, or did I miss that part?"
"That would indeed be this part, yes," Sam said.
Cricket explained that the last time she saw Dixon he informed her that he needed a substantial amount of money to pay off a debt to opium dealers he was "engaged with in Afghanistan," where, he told her, he was working under contract with a
private security firm, overseeing "certain American interests" in the opium trade. As soon as he got back from the job, he'd be reimbursed and she'd be reimbursed.
"And there'd be a little something on the back end for you, too, right?"
"Yes," Cricket said.
"How much?"
"I don't know. A couple hundred thousand. Maybe less."
"For a rich person," I said, "you sure are greedy."
Cricket began to well up, and I decided that, no matter what was going on with this woman, I was having a hard time feeling any sympathy for her. You feel like you can run with wolves, every now and then you have to expect to get bitten.
"What do you take me for, Mr. Westen?" she asked, her voice just a whisper.
"The truth?"
"It would be refreshing these days."
I told her. And then I told her if there was nothing else, we'd be on our way.
"Wait here for just a moment," she said. She left the living room and made her way upstairs. I could hear her moving from room to room, opening and closing drawers.
Sam stood up, stretched and then went over to the mantel and picked up one of the photos of Devin, the Marine. "Remember when you enlisted?"
"Best day of my life," I said. "Of the seventy-five hundred subsequently, this one is near the bottom."
"She's a complicated woman," Sam said.
"She's a socialite with a champagne problem," I said. Sam handed me the photo of Cricket's son. When I was a kid, I always thought of Marines as men, but those old John Wayne movies lied. Back before the war, you enlisted and the oldest guy you were likely to run into in your battalion would be twenty-five. Devin O'Connor didn't look old enough to change the oil in a car, much less drive a Bradley. When you're twenty, you think it will all last forever. And how long was forever these days? A month, the girl at the Oro told me.
I handed Sam the photo back just as Cricket was coming back down the stairs. In her hands was a stack of cards, letters, photos.
"Cricket," I said, "I understand: You give away a lot of money to big corporate diseases and you sleep with celebrities who give even more money and that you're very, very important and…"
