The fix bn-1

by Tod Goldberg

  Mix them together.

  Stand back.

  You're done.

  Potassium permanganate and glycerin: best friends for young arsonists and prospective spies alike. You have children and want to get their attention away from their iPods, video games and the Internet? Teach them to blow things up.

  We saw our dad create that particular explosive concoction in the garage one afternoon by accident. It's one of my few good memories of him. Anyway, it taught me how to make things go bang during a bad situation.

  Which got me thinking about Dixon Woods again. I had to figure out a way to draw him out, get close enough to him to figure out where the money was, or where it had gone, and why he needed it in the first place. I figured if he just wanted a quick score, he could have had one. Coming back for more, getting married, all that-it screamed of intricacy. Greed was one thing. But this kind of personal involvement was something different.

  "You say you're doing something online with my mother?" I said.

  "Online. Offline. We are getting very close." Fiona was already working through another issue of Palm Life, this one with a picture of Priscilla Presley gracing the cover. She sat on the hood of a Bentley beneath a headline trumpeting a charity called "Hound Dogs for Humanity." Fiona flipped a page and I saw her eyebrows rise in actual surprise, rare coming from Fiona. She slid the magazine over to me. "How do you dance when you're hooked to an oxygen tank?"

  "Slowly," I said. In the foreground of the photo, a man in pink gabardine slacks and matching liver spots was doing a kind of palsied shimmy alongside his tank and a girl-she wasn't a woman, at least not in the conventional sense, particularly since her most prominent parts didn't look much older than toddler age-in a tight black dress and about a quarter million dollars in diamonds.

  But that wasn't what Fi was surprised by. In the background of the picture was a woman who looked a lot like Cricket O'Connor doing a shimmy of her own, but the man she was dancing with was blurred by movement. The paragraph beneath the photo indicated that it was taken during a fund-raiser for literacy… held at a nightclub called Love/Blue. Not a lot of things that happen in Miami make sense when you look at them directly. A benefit for literacy at a nightclub didn't even register on my egre-giousness barometer. But the picture was a nice reminder: Scan the background, dig a little, you'll find the dirt you expected.

  In this case, there were likely hundreds of shots taken at this event-probably two dozen of this one moment alone, particularly if the photographer had a sense of humor-and that meant there was a strong likelihood a photo of Dixon Woods, whoever he really was, would be in one of them and we'd be able to start making good on one of my core beliefs: that people frequently do illegal things out of desperation and stupidity. It was clear Dixon was desperate for money-and that whoever he'd screwed was desperate to get their money back, too-but it was also clear Dixon was stupid in a very basic way: He made poor, sloppy decisions, and that meant he was probably already juicing someone else like he had juiced Cricket, or was about to.

  Figuring out what the hell he looked like would be a good start. Cricket's description of him-"tall wavy brown hair, brown eyes, a little thick in the middle, a very hairy chest and a body like Sam's"- boiled him down to about three billion men. Not a good statistical control.

  Nevertheless, Sam was going to spend the afternoon checking a bit more deeply into Dixon, though we both knew that it was unlikely to lead us anywhere directly related to Cricket's problem. We also knew that to know Dixon Woods' name in the first place meant that whoever was pulling this grift knew more than he should.

  It was a level of the game we didn't impart to Cricket. I figured it could wait. First, we had to figure out who we were dealing with. I told Fiona that I thought it would be nice if she used her online time-in between her Learning Annex classes with Mom-to create an enticing profile on one of the singles support groups Cricket had originally used, a plan she immediately embraced.

  "Maybe I'll get a bit of an eyebrow lift, too," she said.

  We'd need to see about a photo, no matter what. The offices of Palm Life might turn up the evidence Cricket couldn't. Predictably, according to the masthead, the offices for Palm Life, which covered the good life of the golden years under the palms, were located in a fashionable neighborhood of Coral Gables, a good dozen miles from even a marginal life. I made a bet with Fiona that the offices would be surrounded by palm trees that not a single drunken couple had managed to desecrate and that they'd be happy palms, unlike the ones near my mother's house, which have that sad, dead look caused by too many fruit rats using them as their winter homes.

  I checked my watch. It was just past noon. Plenty of time to play dress-up with the media folks.

  "You feel like going on a field trip?" I asked.

  "Depends," she said. "Are we stopping by the Hotel Oro first to exact some bloody revenge?"

  I figured I had two choices here. Tell the truth or lie. The problem in dealing with Fiona is that either response was likely to end up with violence. Fiona didn't think fondly of Natalya, to say the least. She never really appreciated knowing anything about anyone I'd ever been with who wasn't her; tended to react poorly upon meeting these women, tended to react with escalating anger, then violence, then protracted gun battles and high-powered explosives. Best-case scenarios involved the pulling of hair.

  Gut punches performed with brass knuckles.

  Car bombs.

  Certain treaties being revoked.

  This situation? The threats against her? The threats against me? Well, that was the sort of deal that would take some massaging, particularly if I wanted her to help me, which I would. Eventually. Not quite yet. But soon.

  "That turned out to be nothing," I said.

  "Did you know that I have perfected the Palestinian hanging technique?"

  I took a bite of lamb and peppers, and chewed thoughtfully. "This really is excellent."

  "What is so interesting is that you don't even really hang. It's more like death by crucifixion, minus all of that awful martyrdom. A slow, excruciating death." Fiona took the fork out of my hand, stabbed a chunk of gristle that I'd pushed to one side of the plate, and then ate it, smiling all the while. "This is lovely. You're right."

  "Fi…" I said.

  "Of course," she said, "I've been reading quite a bit about this new torture technique they're testing now in Pakistan. It's really very revolutionary. You take a conventional hot box and you throw in a live electrical wire. As the humidity in the room rises from the prisoner's labored breathing, the air actually turns electric. Like a lightning storm in a room. Only done it on rats thus far, but I'd be willing to bet that a human would make it work spectacularly."

  "Fi," I said, "listen. I handled the situation. Everything is going to be fine. A little issue of mistaken identity. But I cleared it up and everyone involved is sorry that you were ever in jeopardy. They'd even like to buy the guns."

  "That's so sweet," she said. She reached over and touched my cheek and I thought, Huh, I didn't think that was going to work. Especially that part about the guns. That was a real stretch. How am I going to make good on that? And then I realized that the touch Fiona was giving me was actually gaining in intensity, that she was now actually gripping my face, was digging her thumb into my jaw. Was sort of affecting my breathing.

  "Fi," I said, but it came out sounding more like flea because my jaw wouldn't open and my tongue's movements were impeded.

  "Natalya Choplyn? Really, Michael? You're lying to me about her again? I have to hear it from Sam?"

  I liked it better when Fiona and Sam didn't get along, kept secrets from each other, used me only as a sounding board for complaints and threats. For the better part of a decade, it was one of those points I knew would remain fixed. For the first month I was back home, I was fairly certain Fiona would shoot Sam, provided Sam didn't dime her to one agency or another, foreign or domestic. There was an incident several years ago-money was lost, bullets were fire
d, flesh wounds were had-that left both feeling, well, distrustful of each other.

  Things have changed.

  Having them in cahoots makes things far less predictable, far more personally painful, at least as this situation started to present itself.

  I could have just grabbed Fiona's arm and flipped her over her chair, pinned her to the ground, put an elbow to her throat and told her to believe me, but I didn't have time to have an entire afternoon of acrobatic, angry, vengeful sex with Fiona. Not that I didn't want to. Not that I probably didn't need to. But that I couldn't. Vows have been made: Keep things less personal. More professional. The fewer nude exchanges the better. I knew better than to engage Fiona physically. It never ended well emotionally and I've been trying to be more neutral there.

  Search for ennui.

  Find inertia.

  Avoid foreplay at all costs. And fighting with Fiona was better than a dozen roses, diamond earrings and a steak dinner combined.

  "I was going to tell you," I said. It came out sounding a lot like I was going to kill you, so Fiona let go of my face. An expression of eager anticipation glossed over her. I swiveled my head around and reset my jaw. I have to admit, she did look pretty cute when she was ready to really hurt you. "First," I said, "I want to remind you that when Natalya and I had our… summit… you and I were not you and I. And that you and I are not you and I."

  "Oh, yes, I recall," she said. "That was one of your sabbaticals." She picked up my plate of food, which I wasn't finished with, walked over to the sink and scraped it all into the garbage disposal.

  "Fi, do you want to know what's going on, or do you want to fight about things that happened in the last century?"

  "I'm listening," she said. "I am also passing judgment, but don't let that stop you from spinning your little yarn." I told her everything there was to know. I didn't even leave out the part where Natalya told me I was looking good… except I tweaked that a bit to say she'd just complimented me on my suit and asked where I got my sunglasses. All the while, Fiona kept her back to me and pretended to clean her kitchen. As I neared the conclusion, I saw that she'd actually taken out several guns and was lining them up in an orderly fashion aside the drain board. The way the sun cut through the windows in her place made them shine across the room, so that I was nearly blinded by Fiona's passive-aggressive nonchalance.

  "What do you propose to do?" Fiona asked.

  "Well, first thing, I guess I need to find out why someone in our government is trying to get the Russians to kill me or have me tried for treason, or just pegged as a drug kingpin, none of which seem like great outcomes. And then figure out how to get Natalya to accept that I haven't done what I'm accused of. And, then, if all else fails, see where to get my hands on whatever vig she's in for. Or…" I paused and thought about it. "Or I guess I figure out how to get rid of her."

  This brightened Fiona's mood considerably. "Why don't we just jump to the last choice?"

  I explained, again, to Fiona that this was a person with kids. With a husband. With a life. That I couldn't just leave a trail of bodies around me wherever I went. Plus, I had the impression that Natalya had… changed. At least incrementally. I told Fiona, "When I said get rid of her, I didn't mean via a bullet to the back of the head and then a watery grave."

  "I envisioned a threshing machine. No bullet at all. Very little residual evidence."

  The truth was that I was prepared to do what I had to if she came at me.

  Or my family.

  Or Sam.

  Or Fiona… again.

  "Let's see where the Gandhi approach takes us first."

  "It's nice you could have such humanistic feelings for a person who would have had me killed had I not been ten times more intelligent than she is," Fiona said. "Does she still have that awful hair? I recall her having awful hair and a very sinewy body. Or at least that's how she looked through my rifle scope. Terrible hair and truly repugnant taste in men."

  When you're planning to infiltrate a hostile environment, it's important to take into consideration important factors: topography, weather, special equipment needs, disposition of the enemy, need for air support. You want to know the mind-set of the people you'll be dealing with so that you won't be surprised by the choices in logic they make. You want to know how to escape if everything collapses.

  You want to avoid Coral Gables.

  Specifically, the Alhambra Plaza, home to a pink stone Hyatt Regency and a complex of high-end office spaces and busy courtyards designed to make you feel like you're in Italy on the muggiest day in history. Coral Gables was one of the first planned communities in Florida, which means there are plenty of places for tourists to walk around with wall-eyed wonder at the shops and restaurants, for college students from The U to ride their bikes drunkenly down the wide paseos, and for four-way stops that bottle traffic while drivers consult their maps. A simple clue: Home is to the north. When you hit Canada, stop.

  Palm Life's offices occupied the top floor of the Alhambra Plaza and were a testament to the power of pink. Pink marble on the ground. Pink sofas and chairs-all stuffed to the point of cotton explosion- in the lobby. Pink roses in towering vases placed in every corner. If I followed the receptionist home, I'm sure she'd have a little pink house.

  As it was, she was young, beautiful, lithe and tanned to the point of crispness. I suspected that her name was probably Star, too, and that if I looked over her resume it would indicate a booming career updating her MySpace page and a degree in Face-book. Unlike the reservation clerks at the Oro, the receptionist here was actually allowed to sit behind a desk, albeit one made of pink marble, too. There were back issues of Palm Life fanned out around her, but I noticed she had an issue of US open on her lap. Didn't anyone read Soldier of Fortune anymore?

  "Can I help you?" she asked. I noticed she had her fingernail pierced. Very classy.

  "Yes," I said. "I'm Jay Gatz and this is Daisy Miller. We have an appointment with the photo editor concerning our upcoming charity event."

  The receptionist raised her ears and eyebrows up at the same time. I guess the look she was going for was surprise followed by deep thought. It was a neat trick. If only more cocker spaniels could do it, the world would be a different, more introspective place. "Why do I know your names?" she said to me.

  "He's exceptionally rich, darling," Fiona said. "He's in your magazine nearly every month. Maybe you don't recognize him without his oxygen tank."

  This seemed to satisfy the receptionist. She made a few clicks on the computer and then picked up her phone and called someone, presumably the photo editor. Before we'd left Fiona's, I'd checked the masthead and hadn't found a single person listed in that capacity. I figured, best-case scenario, we'd get an editorial assistant who'd just give me whatever I asked for. Worst-case scenario, Fiona would hold the entire place under siege, and I'd get whatever I asked for.

  I was hoping for a little uncontested middle ground.

  "Hi, James? I have Jay Gatz and"-the receptionist pulled the phone away from her mouth and whispered to Fiona-"I'm sorry. What was your name?"

  "Daisy Miller," Fiona said. It didn't matter. The receptionist was already back on the phone.

  "Someone here to see you about their charity event." The receptionist nodded, scribbled something down on a Post-it, made a he's so crazy face at Fiona, just two girlfriends sharing the moronic intricacies of the male sex with each other and then hung up. "James says he doesn't have you down in his Crack-Berry, but since it's you, Mr. Gatz, he's happy to get you in." She ripped off the Post-it and handed it to me. "That's Mr. Dimon's office number. His name isn't on the door yet."

  "What happened to…?" I began.

  "Gunther? Bailed to a younger-skewing magazine in Dallas. Said that was going to be the next hot place. Lots of clubs and stuff. Did you know that Lindsay Lohan bought a place out there? It's about to jump off."

  "Darling," Fiona said, "don't you own an oil field there?"

  "Two," I said.
>
  "Oil is cool," the receptionist said.

  "Like black gold," I said.

  The receptionist got up and walked us over to a twelve-foot-tall smoked-glass door and flashed an ID card to unlock it, then held it open as we walked past. Used to be the only places with decent security actually had something to protect. What were they protecting here? The good life?

  "I just love your nails," Fiona said, tapping her finger on the ring dangling off the girl's right pinky. "That style is ready to jump off."

  James Dimon's office was decorated in Bekins- boxes stacked up in every corner, a desk covered in packing popcorn-but the walls were covered in framed covers of Palm Life, some dating as far back as the eighties. The weird thing about the 1980s is that even though that's when I grew up, I don't actually remember everyone looking like they'd just been cut out of a Nagle painting. I also don't remember seeing so many people wearing shoulder pads. But there they were.

  "You'll have to excuse the mess," James said. He'd taken a seat behind his desk in a leather chair that looked brand-new after he cleared a spot for Fiona and me on an equally pristine-looking sofa, but kept getting up and moving around. Less nervous twitch, more Red Bull. "I'm still unpacking. Crazy move. I'm going to get these photos down, too. We're really changing the whole image of the magazine. Embracing the now." He wore tight, narrow-legged jeans that had a strategic tear along the left hip that revealed a splash of too-white skin. Of all the things not to be pink. He had on a black-and-silver pinstriped shirt that was unbuttoned one button too low and revealed a clammy-looking chest completely devoid of hair. His office smelled like an eighth-grade dance: too much cologne, nebulous sexuality.

  "Where are you down from?" I asked. I wasn't trying to sound like Jay Gatz, but it was working for me, so I figured I'd ride it. Plus, I've always wanted to use down in that way, but always felt like it wouldn't come off unless I had a sweater tied over my shoulders or a sailor's cap on my head.

  "Across, technically," he said. "I was working for a magazine in LA LA Land. Thought I'd give the Right Coast a try." When he said Right Coast, he made an air-quote gesture with his fingers. "I had an offer to roll in"-air quote-"the Hampty Hamps. Another shot in"-air quote-"Hot Lanta. Had another chance to go to"-air quote-"Vegas, baby"- here he laughed, because that's what guys like James Dimon do: They laugh when they say Vegas, baby — "but in the end, it's all about South Beach. Being present in the moment."