by Tod Goldberg
Before I could continue, Cricket dropped the bundle on the coffee table and I saw that these were different kinds of photos. Men-boys-with missing arms, legs, feet, eyes were smiling up in photos. Entire families. I sifted through the letters. Some were those annoying Christmas rundowns on fancy printed paper, others were handwritten in crayon. Some were Hallmark cards that inside simply said thank you a hundred times. Pictures of babies. "What is this?" I asked.
"The day Devin was killed," she said, "he was on a mission in Tikrit. He and fifteen other boys were going house to house looking for weapons. Suffice to say, they found some. Seven of those boys died, the rest suffered horrible, horrible injuries. I've been using whatever resources I have to take care of those families. Most of them have nothing, you know, just what the government gives them. So I've paid for what I can. Pyschiatric care. Car payments. Mortgages. Whatever they have asked for, I have been happy to help with. And you know what the funny thing is, Mr. Westen?"
I couldn't think of anything funny.
"They hardly ever ask. So I ask them. Every night. I send out a hundred e-mails, probably, to these poor boys and their families, and I ask what they need. And they need so much, but they so rarely feel like they should. That's what I was using that money for, Mr. Westen. That's what I have stopped doing these last few weeks. That is what I must do. Do you understand?"
"I do," I said. I did. I really did. Cricket O'Connor smelled like a victim and that was a shame.
"I may be stupid, but I'm not evil. I'm trying to do good things. I'm trying to give someone the same opportunities my son had. I'm trying to help people. I thought this money was legitimate. I thought Dixon was legitimate."
"Okay," I said. "Okay. I get it. Now, when did the drug dealers start threatening to kill you?"
"Why would you think that?"
"Experience. Intuition. The very fact that Sam has me sitting here with you in the first place when I could be at home doing sit-ups."
Cricket looked over at Sam, who just shrugged. He looked smart in his sport coat, which probably made her think he was the brains in the operation and I was the muscle, or at least she figured Sam understood her better since he was sleeping with Veronica. "Just after Dixon left for Afghanistan again," she said. First, she told us, it was just a series of phone calls asking for Dixon and when she told the callers that Dixon was gone, wouldn't be back for months, that if they had a problem they should contact Long-street, the security firm he was employed by. This was met by laughter, which she found disconcerting. By the last phone call, her responses were met with simple threats upon Dixon's person. It was a few days later that she noticed the same boat circling past her property over and over again. And then, finally, the knock on her front door.
At three a.m.
When she opened the door, there were three men standing there with guns.
"Dixon told me that there might be trouble one day," she said. "But I didn't expect this."
"Really," I said. "Pretty prescient on his part." There was nothing about Dixon Woods, at least in Cricket's description, that made me think he was anything like a Special Forces guy. Guys like Dixon Woods, if he thought his wife was in danger, would have guys like me, or guys like Sam, waiting for the trouble and in a place to defuse it.
"He said that in his line of work, sometimes people got angry. That for my own safety, it might be important for us to assume new identities, things like that."
"And that wasn't a red flag, Cricket?" Sam said. His voice was plenty calm because he was trying to sound sensitive, I suspect, but I also think he couldn't believe what he was hearing now, either.
"I thought it was exciting. I thought it would be an adventure. I haven't been a happy person and this offered me a release. Neither of you are women. You don't know what it feels like to be with a person who is dangerous. It's exhilarating."
The funny thing was, I did know what she was talking about. Fiona and I had once had the very same conversation. At least Fiona knows how to handle herself. "Who did you think you were going to be," I said, "Nick and Nora Charles?"
"I didn't think at all," she said.
The men came inside, searched the house for Dixon, sat down where Sam and I were sitting at that moment and gave her a very clear ultimatum: They'd like their money back. Now. She gave them what she had on her-a few thousand dollars-and then they began taking things like jewels and furniture.
"Back up," I said. "When was the last time you saw Dixon?"
"It's been almost three months," she said. "He was in Afghanistan for a few weeks, came home and then left again."
"Uh-huh," I said. "This Dixon, what's his waist size?"
"Like on a pair of pants?"
"Exactly."
"Well," she said, "I'm not sure."
You want to know how well a woman knows her husband, ask her the size of his pants. You want to know how well a woman doesn't know her husband, ask her the same question. I knew the answer to the next question, but I asked it anyway. "Do you have a picture of him, Cricket?"
"No," she said, "he never allowed that. He said it was a security issue."
"Of course he did," I said. "Did he ever refer to himself as a spook?" Cricket reached for her neck and I actually heard Sam give out a little groan. I took that as an affirmative. "And how long have you been married?"
"A year."
"And how much money did he need?" I asked.
"The last time?"
"God, yes, the last time," I said.
"A million dollars," she said.
"And you just cut a check?"
"He's my husband," she said.
"And how much did the bad guys want?"
"Two million dollars," she said.
"And you cut another check?"
"No," she said. "I took equity from my home. And then they came back. And then they came back again. They keep coming back asking for more and more money, or they'll kill me and kill Dixon, as soon as they find him. And now, well, now I'm going to lose everything and so will those families, Mr. Westen."
"Okay," I said, "but tell me you're not doing this for Dixon, too."
"He's my husband," Cricket said again.
"Probably not," I said.
And that was when the tears really came. It might have been smart to get Fiona involved in this situation ahead of time, since, when she wants to, she can provide feminine comfort and that sort of thing. But instead it was me and Sam watching this put-together woman of means break down into sobs. Sam got up and guided her back over to the ottoman, sat down beside her, patted her knee, told her to settle down, that we'd get through this together and that we'd get the bad guys who were putting her through all of this, though I didn't really have any concept of who the bad guys actually were or what this was. I got the Dixon Woods part, but I didn't see who else was involved. I figured Sam didn't either, but that Cricket was one of Veronica's friends and he needed to be sensitive to that.
Or, like me, the crying was starting to make him frantic.
What I'd figured out and would have happily elucidated to Cricket was that it was highly unlikely Dixon Woods was anywhere near Afghanistan. I would have also told her that she'd probably been scammed out of her money (and I didn't know yet how much money in total that equaled) and that she was better off looking into a trade of some kind, or maybe dialing up one of the famous people whose arm she'd found herself on when she had money and asking them for a small loan to get out of town with. I might have also told her that I had real doubts that Dixon Woods was actually Dixon Woods, but then Cricket blew her nose, dabbed her eyes and thanked Sam for his kindness.
And just like that, Cricket O'Connor was perfectly composed again. There was something about Cricket O'Connor that I found troubling: how a person who seemed so capable of handling life could be so incapable of seeing how much she was risking before it actually happened.
It reminded me of Natalya.
"You'll have to pardon me," she said. "I understand, Mr. Weste
n, that you think I'm a fool, but I wonder if you've ever found yourself in a situation beyond your control."
If she only knew. "There've been occasions."
"I fell in love with Dixon," she said. "That was probably a mistake. We don't always make the right choices in whom we love, but I believed in him and I believed him when he told me he'd been in the Special Forces and I believed him when he told me he was providing private security in Afghanistan and I believed him when he told me he was in trouble and desperately needed my help. And I believed the men who came to my home and threatened to kill me if I didn't turn Dixon in. I loved him, Mr. Westen. I love him. Maybe people like you and people like Dixon can just turn real emotion on and off, but for the rest of the human race, things are a bit more trying." She paused then and tried to smile, as if changing her facial expression could change the outcome of all that had come before. "And I believed Sam when he said you would help me. If I go to the police, these men will find Dixon and they will kill him. And I know they will kill me. And…" She paused again. "I don't want this to be in the paper. As soon as the police know about this, it will be all over the papers. I'll be a mockery. I have nowhere else to turn. I can't pay you much, but whatever I can give you, I will. Please, Mr. Westen."
"These bad guys," I said, "they give you a way to contact them? A drop zone for the money? Anything?"
"They gave me a cell phone," she said.
"Go get it," I said.
A few moments later, Cricket came back with a burner, a prepaid cell you can get in any half-assed check-cashing front shop in Little Haiti or the nicest sundry shop on South Beach. Used to be only drug dealers and sixteen-year-old girls whose mothers didn't trust them not to abuse their minutes had burners. Now, half the world. They're impossible to get a wire on because once you're up on them, they're already dead.
"They call on this, make sure I'm home, then come for the cash," she said.
"When are they due to call again?"
"Thursday. The fifteenth. It's always the fifteenth."
"Pay day," Sam said.
"Not anymore," I said.
"So you're going to help me?" Cricket said.
When you're a spy, or a former one, or just one trying to figure out how your life got turned upside down by someone else's choices, someone else's agenda, someone else's ego and hubris and wanton disregard for who you are as a human, sometimes, well, a soft spot opens up for people in a similar situation.
"I'm going to get your money back," I said, "as much as I can. Enough for you to live. To help the other people. But you have to listen to me. You have to do as I tell you to do. And you have to understand one thing."
"Anything," she said.
"You're not married to Dixon Woods," I said. "You've probably never met him. This guy you're not married to is a criminal, and he's gaming you. When I find him, after I get your money, he's likely going to be hurt. He might be dead. He might well be going to prison. And this house? This lifestyle? It's over. It's not yours. You want to help people. To really help people? I'll get that back for you if I can."
Cricket closed her eyes. Her head moved slightly in agreement.
"Why don't you go upstairs and pack a bag?" I said. "Sam will come back later and take you somewhere safe."
Sam and I watched Cricket mount the stairs toward her bedroom and then, when we heard the sobbing begin, let ourselves out of the house.
"Nice speech," Sam said once we were outside.
"These people," I said, "don't know how lucky they have it."
"Yeah," Sam said. "Still. Quite a bit of oration there."
I put on my sunglasses and walked back along the side of Cricket's house. From there I could see Biscayne Bay, full this day with sail boats and yachts lazing back and forth through the shipping lanes. Sam came and stood beside me. "Nice view," I said.
"If you like this sort of thing," Sam said.
"I could get on a boat from here," I said. "Sail all the way up the Eastern Seaboard. Park in New York. Hop on a train, be in Washington D.C. in no time. Start pounding on doors. Who'd ever know?"
"I would," Sam said.
"Or I could just go due south. Find a sandbar and call it home. Forget this burn notice and everything else."
"Ah, Mikey, that's not your life," Sam said.
And the truth, the sad truth, was that he was right.
4
There's nothing easy about having a lot of actual cash money, particularly if your job description is something other than armored-car driver. If you sell drugs, extort cash from socialites or happen to be running an international cartel funded by Colombians and protected by Russians, or just happen to be a grifter with a way with women, you still need to find a place to keep your money other than the bank, because a million actual dollars weigh a ton. Literally. You get a million dollar bills, they will weigh a ton. You get your million dollars broken down into hundreds, it's only twenty pounds.
You still need to find a way to pay your bills. So you have to clean that money, get it into the system so that you can live.
Because even if you're a malicious crime lord or evil genius, you probably still have cable, water, power and HOA fees to take care of at your secret hideout, which, usually, is just a very large home in a master-planned community since underground lairs, hollowed-out volcanoes and bases on the dark side of the moon have become harder and harder to come by. But beyond that, if someone hands you a check for a million dollars, you can't just deposit it and you can't just cash it.
Fortunately, Miami is only a puddle jumper away from the Caribbean, where illegal banking is practically a spectator sport. Or, if you're really industrious, you can go on a run from the Caribbean down to Guyana, where money laundering and the drug trade make up a sum close to fifty percent of the country's economy. So if you're a drug dealer, have a few million dollars in American cash and the ability to set up a nice shelter corporation-say, a timber company, which in Guyana is the favored business of drug dealers looking to get legit return on their dollars-and have a fast boat, or a decent plane, or enough contacts, you can do just about anything to get your money back into the U.S. in a way that it comes back smelling like Tide.
I had a pretty good idea that the money being moved around the perimeter of Cricket O'Connor's life was being cleaned by someone, somewhere. First rule of dealing with assholes: Follow the money.
"When I was robbing banks for the IRA, it wasn't so difficult to move money," Fiona said. I'd gone to her condo in the marina after meeting with Cricket, and Sam went off to do a little snooping. I filled Fiona in on the details, plus some of my suspicions, and then sat at her kitchen table and thumbed through a stack of society magazines that Cricket O'Connor had given me earlier in the day, hoping to catch a glimpse of the man she called Dixon Woods in the background of someone else's photo spread, since she told me the two of them had "made the scene" whenever he was in town. The "scene" looked to be something like the senior prom, but with elaborate ice sculptures instead of balloon art and no one under fifty-five to be found, but in pretty much the same gaudy outfits.
While Fiona cooked a Persian dish that had a lot of onions, peppers and lamb in it, and that smelled vaguely like the month I spent living above a cafe in Iran a few years back, I also tried to figure out how to approach the whole Natalya issue. I hadn't told Fiona about Natalya yet, knowing that it would be the sort of thing that would probably cause her to purchase guns for her own personal use, and I wanted to control that situation for as long as I could.
"You walked in," Fiona continued, her voice downright wistful, "shot a few people in the knees, locked a few others in the vault and then took what you needed. You drove down the street, ran up the stairs of the flat, dumped the money out on the bed, rolled around a bit and then went out for a pint."
"A simpler time," I said. The magazine I was reading-and by reading, I mean flipping through with a growing unease-was something called Palm Life, a magazine dedicated to, according to the slug lin
e on its masthead, "the good life and golden years beneath the palms." There weren't any actual stories in the magazine, just elaborate photo spreads with a descriptive paragraph about who was in the picture and why those people were, I guess, living the good life beneath the palms. "Tell me something, Fi. What is the allure of being seventy and wearing a tiger-print miniskirt?"
"Being trashy isn't just for young women anymore, Michael," she said. Fiona set a plate of sizzling vegetables and meat in front of me and took the magazine from my hands. "You could do quite well in this world. Find yourself a refurbished wife and just stand by her side while she gets her picture taken. You'd need a better tan, though. And a pair of yellow pants wouldn't hurt, apparently."
"If that's the good life, I'll stick with whatever this is."
"It's funny how none of these women have any wrinkles," she said, flipping the pages.
"None that you can see." I ate a few bites of the dish. It was surprisingly tasty. "When did you become such a good cook?"
"Your mother and I are taking an online cooking class together," she said. She'd stopped on a double-page spread of a pool party at some mansion. There were men in Speedos who would have been better off in girdles.
"When I was a kid," I said, "if it wasn't made from a box of macaroni and cheese or wasn't served in a tin foil dish courtesy of Swanson's, it wasn't homemade."
"You're a little old to be blaming your bad childhood for anything," she said. "At least not anything you've done since you met me."
Fiona was probably right. But I'd learned plenty about being a spy by being a kid. First improvised-explosive device I ever made was in the backyard of a neighbor's house after Nate and I were kicked out one evening for complaining about the culinary options. You want to blow something up but are afraid you just don't have the skill set? Go into your garage, grab some disinfectant. Better: If you live in a place like Miami, you probably have a high-grade pool cleaner, but even if you don't, your local home-improvement store does. Buy a gallon. Grab some liquid soap.
