The Giveaway

by Tod Goldberg

  “And how long to dispose of the man in the hall? What did you call him?”

  “The Hobbit was less than five seconds. One motion and then to the ground he went.”

  “Less than five seconds, really?”

  “It happened so quickly it couldn’t even really be measured in time,” Fiona said.

  The medical plaza teemed with activity, but thus far no one who looked like they manufactured crystal meth for fun and profit. Most likely, those people were trying to figure out how one tiny woman was able to get by three different men without a peep being made. There was a good chance that at least Clete would claim there was more than one person involved, as his pride was likely so high that admitting the truth was worse than the pain of the truth itself.

  That is, if they didn’t kill him for letting someone in. The phone recorded fifteen minutes of conversation, ending with the sounds of a person picking up the phone and slamming it into something, most likely the toilet. Maybe the wall, but certainly something solid enough to destroy it.

  If they were smart, they would have checked to see the last number dialed by the phone and then maybe they’d try to get that traced and then maybe they’d show up at a server somewhere in Lawrence, Kansas, or wherever eVoice was based. And maybe, if they were really smart, smarter than I or anyone might justifiably give them credit for, they’d muscle out the e-mail address where the recorded messages were sent, which would be good investigative work indeed, except that e-mail address doesn’t exist anymore.

  Plus, judging from the recording, the phone was destroyed.

  There’s a reason some people are in biker gangs and some people are spies.

  “How long do you think it will take them to find Bruce’s name?” Fiona asked.

  “Not long,” I said. The truth was that all they had to do was go to the Florida Department of Corrections Web site and type in the last name “Grossman” and work their way through the list of released inmates, something I did about five minutes after Fiona delivered her news.

  It was a short list.

  Only twelve men with the last name Grossman had been released from Florida prisons in the previous ten years. There were only five men named Grossman actually doing time.

  If the Ghouls tended toward the alphabetically inclined, they’d hit Bruce Grossman second on the list of released inmates, right after Abe Grossman. Abe was seventy-seven at the time of his release nine years ago, he’d been incarcerated for twenty- five years and would now be eighty-six.

  If they were methodical, maybe they’d look at each person’s sentence and crime and decide who would be the likely candidate to rob their stash house. Abe and Bruce seemed least likely, since at sixty- five Bruce probably seemed just as dangerous as old Abe. So maybe they’d try out Kelly Grossman, a twenty- eight-year-old who did time for assault. Or Pierce Grossman, aka Thomas Pierce, aka Pat Gross, forty-three, and released after six years on a fraud charge.

  It didn’t matter how they conducted their business, really. After what went down that afternoon, the Ghouls would hit Bruce’s house soon.

  Maybe that night.

  The advantage working in Bruce’s favor was that he was living at his mother’s. It would take the Ghouls more time to locate that record, since it wasn’t public. But that’s the nice thing about having leverage against common workaday civilians—like, say, the knowledge that they’ve purchased illegal drugs—if you need information, there is a good chance someone you know can supply it.

  That might buy us ten hours. No more than twenty-four.

  There was a lifetime of information inside Zadie’s house, which meant we needed to change our plan.

  I called Sam. “We’re going to need those bikes tonight,” I said.

  “No problem,” Sam said. “My guy delivered them both to your place today. Let me tell you, Mike. You’ve not lived until you’ve taken one of these choppers through South Beach. Now, I get my fair share of ladies looking my way, there’s no question about that, but it’s a whole different level of attraction when you’ve got all that horsepower between your legs.”

  “That’s great, Sam.”

  “You ever see Easy Rider?”

  “Once or twice,” I said.

  “Different time, different place, that could have been us, Mikey, just taking the trails, the lone road, all that. You and me, Mikey, heading to Florida, looking for America.”

  “Didn’t everyone die at the end of that movie, Sam?”

  “Well, I’d get a rewrite on that part,” Sam said. “I’m just saying, the wind in your hair, smell of coconut oil, ladies in bikinis hopping on the back for rides. It’s a little addictive, Mikey.”

  “That’s just great,” I said. “What did you learn about Maria?”

  Sam told me about his experience with José and the dog. “She hasn’t called yet,” he said. “But her old man, he wasn’t the kind that seemed to scare easy, so I’m going to guess that he probably sent his daughter away. Or his stepdaughter. Whatever she is. Maybe she isn’t even family. Who knows? He might have played tough with me, but I can’t see him just letting her run off.”

  “She calls you,” I said, “you need to lean on her to come in, get her to Ma’s house. That’s one more person who knows Bruce, that’s one more person who could be dead by tomorrow. These guys don’t play around.”

  “Got it,” Sam said.

  “And I need you to call your friend at the DMV again,” I said. “I need to know who owns this car.” I gave him the license number of the gold Lincoln.

  “Yeah,” Sam said, “about that friend. He’s gone rogue. I might need to get this from someone else.”

  “Get it from Captain Crunch,” I said, “it doesn’t matter to me. Then let’s meet at Grossman’s in an hour. We’ll need to see about finding some clothes appropriate for a mission.”

  “Body armor?”

  “More like a vest with a nice logo on it, something that says ‘dangerous biker gang member.’”

  “I’m ahead of you,” Sam said. “My guy gave me a nice stash of vests to choose from.”

  “Who is this guy?”

  “Top secret.”

  “They’re all top secret, Sam.”

  “You ever see Billy Jack?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “He’s like that guy. Deep cover, though. He said they still use his cover method as a teaching tool in the Czech Republic to this day.”

  I saw Bruce and Zadie walk out of the medical center, but didn’t see my brother, Nate. That wasn’t good. “Gotta go,” I told Sam and hung up.

  “Where’s Nate?” I asked Fiona.

  “Isn’t it good you can’t see him? Wouldn’t that mean he’s doing his job?”

  “He’s not that talented,” I said.

  I got out of the car and started cutting through the parking lot. Even though I didn’t see anything dangerous, that didn’t mean there wasn’t something nearby. We were parked a good hundred yards from the entrance to the medical facility, close enough that I could see everything, far enough that Zadie wouldn’t see us and freak out. Keeping her sane and feeling safe was job one.

  But now they were standing in the wide open—an easy shot for anyone. This wasn’t exactly a biker haven—the medical center where Zadie went for her radiation was just a block from CocoWalk, the make-believe downtown of Coconut Grove, so most of the people on the adjacent streets had that vacant zombie-look of people who just want some Hooters wings or a slice of fifteen thousand-calorie Cheesecake Factory cheesecake. But in the last decade, biker gangs in Miami haven’t been shy about fighting right out in the open. It’s sort of their thing—what would you do if you saw fifteen men with bats smacking the crap out of someone?

  If you were smart, you’d not intervene.

  At that moment, I didn’t see anyone with bats, but I wanted to make sure that if they showed up Bruce and Zadie would be safe.

  The only issue is that a parking lot in front of a medical center in Coconut Grove is
more dangerous than a minefield.

  I dodged a Cadillac driven by a hundred-year-old woman that was backing up whether or not anyone was behind it and a Land Rover driven by a 120-year-old man who couldn’t see above the wheel and didn’t seem to mind. A Mercedes with a handicap placard nearly ran me over from the side, perhaps because the car’s windows were tinted black, to the point that you’d need a flashlight just to find your seat belt.

  All that and I still managed to keep my eyes on Bruce and Zadie.

  Where was Nate?

  A black Lincoln Town Car skidded to a stop in front of me, ten yards or so from the front of the medical plaza. Just as I was about to reach for my gun, the window rolled down.

  “Easy there, big shot,” Nate said. “This isn’t a pedestrian state.”

  “Actually,” I said, “it is. And this pedestrian almost shot you in the face. Where have you been?”

  “I wasn’t going to just sit here in the parking lot,” Nate said. “What if someone made me?”

  “What if?” I said. Nate didn’t have an answer. He got out of the car and walked over to Bruce and together they helped Zadie across the short path of the parking lot. Her face was flushed red and she was sweating.

  “How are you?” I asked her.

  “Nuclear,” she said and then got into the backseat without saying another word.

  “She’s always pretty fired up after radiation,” Bruce said. “She’s both wired and tired at the same time. It’s a terrible way to be.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  There was a sad look on Bruce’s face. I had to imagine that none of this was what he wanted from this life. But we make choices and we deal with the ramifications. His mother’s illness was beyond his control; everything else he’d done belonged to him. “I guess we all get old,” he said finally.

  “That’s the hope,” I said, though I wasn’t convinced that Bruce was going to get to be as old as his mother. He’d pissed off the wrong people.

  “Where’s that Fiona?” he asked, his demeanor brightening noticeably.

  “She’s sitting in a car about a hundred yards from here,” I said. “She’s probably got a gun pointed at you, but don’t take it personally.”

  “I don’t,” he said. “May I ask you a personal question?”

  “No,” I said.

  He ignored me. “Is she your . . . uh . . . girlfriend? Is that the right word?”

  “Yes,” said Nate.

  “No,” I said.

  “So, if it’s no,” Bruce said, “do you think I could, if everything works out here with us, ask her out?”

  “No,” I said.

  “No,” Nate said.

  At last, we agreed on something.

  Bruce shrugged. “I thought I’d ask,” he said.

  “Get in the car, Bruce,” I said.

  Bruce opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it and then walked around to the other side of the car and got into the front passenger seat.

  “Interesting guy,” Nate said.

  “That’s not the word I’d use,” I said.

  “Last night? After you guys went to sleep, we sat up telling war stories. You know he robbed something like a hundred banks?”

  “That’s what he says,” I said.

  “Never once used a gun. Never even hurt anyone.”

  “That’s what he told you?”

  “He even had a nickname. You wanna hear it?”

  “The Idiot?” I said.

  “The Gray Grifter,” Nate said.

  “Fiona said he was called the Safe-Deposit Bandit,” I said.

  “That’s not much of a nickname,” Nate said.

  “No,” I said. “And he wasn’t gray when he was robbing all of those banks.”

  “No?”

  “No,” I said. “A hundred banks. Really?”

  “He said he didn’t have an exact number. Anything more than three or four is nails.”

  “Right,” I said. “Nails.”

  “Way he explained it,” Nate said, “he ended up only keeping the stuff he needed. Gave back most of it. Only stole from people he thought could really afford it. That seems okay to me in the long run.”

  It was time to give Nate an object lesson. “Where’d you get this car?”

  “It’s a rental,” he said. I didn’t believe him. But that was an issue for another day.

  “So if I saw you on the street,” I said, “it would appear you’d have enough money to weather the loss of whatever you might keep in your safe-deposit box, right?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Precisely,” I said.

  “He said he’d show me some tricks.”

  “And Dad and Mom once vowed to love each other through sickness and health,” I said. “Not everything is as it seems.”

  Nate sucked on his bottom lip for a second. I always had to remind myself not to be so hard on Nate, but the problem was that he was like a dog who never learned to stop peeing on the rug. You loved the dog, but, man, you got sick of cleaning up after it made a mess.

  “Listen,” I said, “things are heating up. I need you to get Bruce and Zadie back to Ma’s, but I want you to go a different route than the one you took here.”

  “How many routes are there?”

  “Do you remember when we were kids?”

  Nate smiled. Of course he remembered. He was still a kid. Perpetually sixteen or so. “Yeah, I remember that.”

  “Remember that time I stole that Corvair from the neighbors?”

  “The white one?”

  “Uh . . . no. The black one,” I said.

  “Right, right,” he said. “That was a classic.”

  “Remember how we drove it around the neighborhood, but never crossed the same streets? So that we made a big, growing box around the house?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s what I did. That’s what I want you to do, but do it the opposite way. Go wide and then narrow down to the house. Anyone following you is going to become obscenely obvious.”

  “And what do I do if someone is following me?”

  “You know where the county jail is?” I said. Nate gave me a grave look. “Don’t go in. Just park in front of it and then call me.”

  “That’s just like stealing a Corvair,” he said. He got into the Lincoln and I watched him pull out into traffic. He’d be fine, I knew that. It didn’t hurt to give him some advice now and then. Particularly since I was going to spend the rest of the evening risking my life, it seemed like a fair trade-off.

  When I got back to the Charger, Fiona was filing the serial number off of the .380 she’d taken from Clete.

  “Thanks for the backup,” I said.

  “I watched the whole thing,” she said. “That woman in the Cadillac was a true menace.”

  “Zadie looked awful,” I said.

  “She just had radiation,” Fiona said. “She’s not supposed to look good.”

  “What’s worse, the cancer or the cure?”

  “You should tell your mother to stop smoking,” Fiona said.

  “I have.”

  “Then you’ve done your job,” she said. There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

  “This isn’t about me,” I said.

  “Michael,” she said, “you can always try harder for the people you love. Look at Bruce. He went to prison for his mother. And he had his finger removed, too. And he robbed a biker gang. All for his mother. That’s devotion.”

  It was something. I wasn’t sure it was devotion.

  “He told Nate that he’s robbed hundreds of banks,” I said.

  “Maybe he has.”

  “Doesn’t that make him worse than me?”

  Fiona put the .380 into her purse but didn’t say another word.

  She didn’t have to, I suppose. Any woman filing the serial number off of a .380 has her own set of rules.

  “We need to go to a hardware store,” I said. “You up for an arts-and-crafts project?”

&
nbsp; “I love it when you sweet-talk me,” she said.

  12

  When you ambush somebody, it’s not merely about surprise and suppression. You can only surprise someone once in a given situation. You can only suppress someone for as long as they feel you hold the upper hand in terms of power. With deficient manpower and against a worthy opponent—which is typically the scenario that would necessitate an ambush—that isn’t a very long period of time.

  A proper ambush surprises, suppresses and then creates institutional control.

  Provided the goal of the ambush isn’t to kill every single person, the result of a successful operation is to strike fear into the enemy, to make them think you know their every move and already have a counter in place. This creates fear and suspicion in the rank and file, which leads to paranoia in the leadership.

  In an organization like the Ghouls, where by definition the membership is made up of felons, a successful ambush will act like a magic pill. Suddenly everyone is looking over their shoulder. And the big boss man in the gold Lincoln? He’s looking for a scapegoat just to quiet the troops.

  I already knew that was his specialty.

  The man in the gold Lincoln burned down the stash house and killed the men who ran it. He also killed Nick Balsalmo (or likely ordered the job), probably just for having the Ghouls’ drugs and for not being forthcoming with the information on Bruce Grossman.

  Or, well, allegedly he’d done those things. Anyway, I couldn’t help but assume that life was not looking particularly rosy for Clete, Skinny and the Hobbit now, either. At the moment it wasn’t my largest concern, as Sam, Fiona and I were busy prepping the Grossman house for the eventual arrival of the Ghouls. We were in the process of moving most of the Grossmans’ furniture out into the backyard when Sam asked me an important question.

  “Tell me something, Mikey,” Sam said. “What creates that old-lady smell?”

  “Palmitoleic acid,” I said.