by Tod Goldberg
"Woods," I said when I was near him. I'd make this quick.
"Westen?" he replied.
Shit again.
"Yes," I said. I tossed my head from side to side. "You have to pardon me. I am drunk!"
"Belgrade, right?"
"I wasn't there," I said.
"Neither was I," he said.
I pointed at him. He pointed at me. It was like we were in a very bad boy band and about to do a dance number. I grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a big man hug. He had a gun on his back, probably a nine. I nudged his leg with mine and felt something solid on his ankle, probably a knife.
"What are you doing here?" I said far too loudly, all joy and conviviality.
"Business." He looked around. Not nervously. Just checking the scene. "Let me ask you: You ever hear of a guy named Hank Fitch? I'm supposed to meet him here."
"That kind of business," I said. I shook my head. "I try to keep my nose straight, know what I'm saying?"
"I hear you," he said. "Bills, man. You know how that goes. I'm working private now."
"Where've you been?"
"Fighting Jihads, making money," he said. Just two old friends we were. Now he was sizing me up. "You were a bad man."
"Weren't we all," I said. I pointed at the table where Fiona and Natalya were still sitting. That they hadn't come to blows yet was nothing short of a miracle. "Why don't you join us for a drink?"
Dixon looked around. Thought about it. "I'm meeting that guy," he said. "Fitch."
"One drink," I said. "Won't kill you, right?"
"I haven't been back in Miami in a long time," he said, feeling the vibe now himself, acting like people do when they wish they were drunk. "A drink won't kill me. You-you I'm not so sure about."
"Belgrade," I said, like we had been in a fraternity together, and I was remembering the Alpha Phi mixer. "A crazy time."
I put my arm over his shoulder and guided him to the bar, where we picked four beers out of a bin filled with ice tended to by a woman in a gold string bikini, then walked back to our table in time to hear Natalya say, "I know you don't care for me, Fiona, but I could use a person like you."
"1 don't get used," Fi said. She stood up abruptly. "Ever."
"Ladies," I said, stopping Natalya from whatever she was about to say. "I wanted to introduce you to an old friend just in town for a few days on business." I had my arm around Dixon and could feel him tensing. He knew this wasn't right. I just kept slurring right along. "This is Dixon Woods. He runs an opium operation out of Afghanistan, but he's also very active in the real estate market here, and he's employed by Longstreet Security, though I'm going to guess he's not telling them he's here this evening meeting with all of us."
"You're drunk," he said. "My name is-"
"No," I said, squeezing him tighter, letting spittle gather between my words. I kept his arms pressed against me so he couldn't reach for his gun, not that I thought he'd pull a gun in the middle of a crowded hotel.
But I would.
"Don't even bother. We're all friends. For instance, that's Natalya Choplyn. She's ex-KGB. You don't know it, Dixon, but you guys are now business partners. You should chat. Get to know each other."
I gave Fiona a glance, but she didn't need any signs from me. She already had two vials of tear gas in her hand. But she is much smarter than me, so she also had a glass of water in the other, and she promptly hurled the water on Natalya, soaking her.
At the same time, I slid my hand down Dixon's back, grasped his gun, and squeezed off a round through his pants, which sent him to the ground in a screaming heap, even though the bullet had buried itself in the ground. The scorch alone would put a man down, never mind the factor of surprise.
Not to be outdone, and probably because she'd been wanting to do it for years, Fiona grabbed Natalya by the throat and cracked a vial of tear gas right across her face and then flung another toward the bar, where the other Russians were now crouching from the gunfire.
Here's how tear gas works: It attacks wet spots on your body-tear and saliva ducts, mucous membranes, your tongue, your eyes, sweat glands-and creates an unbearable amount of pain and suffering, particularly if you get hit with it directly. If you happen to have your entire face covered with water, and you happen to be sweating, perhaps because you've just been involved in a multimillion-dollar deal with a spy who, in the process, has convicted you of economic espionage, it's likely to hurt quite a bit more.
Sam was supposed to set off his small explosions by now, but for some reason, as Fiona and I sprinted out toward the ocean, away from the toxic fumes of tear gas, nothing had happened yet.
The plan was for the Malibu lights to set off a series of small explosions that would sound like gunfire. He told me he was going to wire the solar fuses to a nichrome wire coated in solder, run them wire to wire, dip them in a dusting of gunpowder and surround them with match heads so that when the lights heated up-a reaction caused by their dip into darkness-he'd have a series of explosive squibs. Or just a really loud electrical match. He'd toss a blanket over them, and then, a few seconds later… things would go boom.
Sam promised me nothing would actually explode.
Sam promised me that it would just sound like gunfire.
Sam promised me that it would be enough to get Eddie Champagne, who he said he was going to lock in the bathroom, arrested without getting him killed.
I was thus more than a little surprised a few moments later, when Fiona and I were already lost in the crowd on the beach, when there was an enormous explosion that propelled most of the balcony of room 511 into the pool of the Hotel Oro, deck chairs, chaise longues, a lovely side table all airborne in fiery glory. Most of the crowd had already scattered, which was good, since little flaming bits of Malibu lights were raining down all around.
"That's not good," I said, but the truth was, it was better than I could have hoped, since it happened just as police and men wearing IRS windbreakers came storming into the pool area, followed, in due course, by James Dimon (snapping photos that were doubtlessly present in the moment) and scads of Longstreet men who found themselves armed to the teeth with no one to shoot or guard, since both Dixon Woods and Natalya Choplyn were right where we'd left them, on the ground, clawing at their own eyes from the tear gas, Fiona's BlackBerry still sitting on the table, loaded with all the documents anyone with a badge would need to piece together the workings of Natalya Choplyn and Dixon Woods, particularly the intimate details of how she was defrauding our mortgage system for the Russians.
I put my hand in Fiona's. "Nice work," I said.
"You surprised me with that gunshot," she said.
"I surprised myself," I said. "You know, you can blind someone by hitting them directly in the face with tear gas."
"Not permanently?"
"No," I said, "not permanently."
We moved through the thickening group of gawk-ers rushing to the hotel, our pace leisurely, just a nice couple out on the promenade, unconcerned with the sounds of sirens. We'd been seen, of course, but the people who really mattered-Natalya, Dixon and Eddie-didn't have any way to roll this toward us, so being relaxed wasn't just a pose.
My phone rang.
"How'd you like that bang?" Sam asked.
"It was supposed to be a little something less," I said.
"I must have gotten carried away with gunpowder," Sam said.
"Where's Eddie?"
"I'd say about five seconds from being cuffed for good. If you don't mind, while things are under way over here, I'm going to go get my car."
"Of course," I said.
"Tell Fi I expect some recourse," he said.
"Of course," I said again, though I'd let them fight that one out. I closed my phone and squeezed Fiona's hand. "Dinner?" I said to Fiona.
"Dessert?"
"No," I said. "Not tonight." But Fiona's hand was warm, the air was brilliant, and we'd won, so anything was possible.
Epilogue
Wha
t you can never tell about people in love is how they'll react when the person they profess to hate the most-usually the person who has done them the most wrong-is right in front of their face.
In Cricket O'Connor's case, that happened on the television the day after the explosion, when Eddie Champagne was a footnote to the local news reports of odd doings at the Hotel Oro. Apparently, on the same day a significant foreign spy was arrested for espionage, a low-level grifter accidentally blew up his hotel room. She was still at my mother's then, and I was there helping Cricket negotiate the transfer of some of her money back into the U.S. Legally.
When she saw Eddie on television, she went into the kitchen and spit into the sink.
"I still feel so stupid," she said. "I've lost so much."
"It will continue to eat at you," I said. "There's no cure for shame."
"Having some security again will help," she said. She meant her money.
"What are you going to do with it all?"
"I have to pay my mortgage," she said, and it looked painful for her to say. "And then after I do that, I'll sell the house, get what I can. Get out of Miami. Help who I can help from my son's unit along the way. See if it can't erase some of this."
"There will be others, too," I said.
"I know," she said.
"No," I said, "others who will come for your money."
"I know that, too," she said. On television, Eddie was shown being arraigned in court. "What will happen to Dixon?"
"Eddie," I said.
"Right. Eddie."
"I think he's going to prison. But he'll have company."
I'd see Cricket O'Connor a few times over the next couple of days, and though she offered me money for the work we did to help her, I declined it. It didn't stop Nate from offering to help her move when the time came. But over the next few weeks, I did watch with interest as White Rose Partners fell under federal indictment, as Eddie Champagne and a stunned, and always saddened-looking, Dixon Woods were tossed to the wolves, as Natalya Choplyn was hailed as one of the biggest counterintelligence arrests of the last ten years and then, like everything else, it all disappeared from the papers and, eventually, even I stopped thinking about it.
Then, two things happened on the same day.
First, Fiona finally received a very exciting e-mail.
From Hank Fitch.
From: HFitch911@gmail. com To: RubyRedKitty@yahoo. com Subject: Up late in Miami?
I saw your profile tonight for the first time and I wanted you to know that you don't have to be alone with your sorrow. There are many of us still struggling with our grief but I've found that being together makes it easier. A little bit about me: I'm ex-Special Forces, which you've probably been told by every person online, but I play it as it lays, Ruby. Would you be interested in meeting for a drink sometime? I'm presently incarcerated, which isn't much of a selling point, but I should be out soon and I'd love to meet up when I'm out. I've attached a photo of myself on my yacht so you can see I'm not some kind of serial killer ©
"Nice," I said. We were in my kitchen. I was eating yogurt after working out. Fi was gloating after rushing over to show me her good news. "You and your uncommon breasts should go visit him."
"Maybe I will," she said.
Second: My cell phone rang.
It was a blocked number, but I took it anyway. I'd already spoken to my mother once that day anyway and was due, in forty minutes, to drive her to her thousandth doctor appointment of the year.
"You should look up more often, Mr. Westen," the voice said. It was mechanical, run through voice-changing software. It might just be voice-recognition software, no human at all on the other end. Just a program.
"Maybe I should," I said.
"There is a plan," the voice said.
"Of course. There always is," I said, but the line was already dead.
I looked out my window and saw Sam pull up in his Cadillac, the windows repaired, the rims shining, the tires fully inflated. It was noon and yet when he got out of the car, he was holding a six-pack of something in one hand and a grocery bag in the other, and I actually saw him mumbling to himself, like he was practicing a presentation of some kind, getting his words right, as if he might need to convince someone to get involved in something.
Again.
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