by Tod Goldberg
I walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. I listened for an echo, but instead the bell was muted inside the house. Even from just outside the door, I could feel the electric energy from inside. There was a discernible hum coming from just beyond the portico where I stood. I waited, and when nothing happened after a few minutes I rang the bell again.
This time I heard the sound of someone walking. The shutters beside the door opened and I made out a man’s face. I waved at him and smiled. Just a guy on your porch to tell you that fungus is going to explode under your house. The shutters closed and a moment later that door cracked open.
“I don’t want whatever you’re selling,” the man behind the door said.
“Not selling. Just telling. We got a situation involving noxious—” Before I could finish, the door slammed shut.
I rang the bell again. It opened just a crack again. “You know how to take a hint?” the man said.
I couldn’t make out the man’s face, but his voice made him sound like maybe he was missing something crucial, like, say, initiative.
Drive.
Will.
It’s the sort of lazy drawl that creeps into common intonation when you tend to get high from your own supply.
I wedged my foot between the door and the frame and then pushed the door open a few feet. The man didn’t even say anything. He just looked at my foot as if it were an interesting bug or a colorful leaf. Surprisingly, the man didn’t look anything like a biker. He was maybe twenty-five, wore a plain white T-shirt and tan cargo shorts, and had on a pair of Crocs. He looked like he could be sitting in a lecture hall at UC Santa Cruz learning about the fascinating sex life of the tsetse fly.
“You gotta get out of here,” he said. “This is private property.”
“Sir,” I said, “look around. We’ve evacuated all of your neighbors. There’s a noxious fungus growing beneath your house. You don’t get outta here, you could die. We need you out of this house in ten minutes.”
The man cocked his head slightly, like he was figuring out an equation. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
I checked my clipboard, flipped over a couple of pages, and then took a pencil from behind my ear and started scratching out some notes.
If you want someone to fear you, take notes in their presence. If you want someone to fear you who might be naturally paranoid due to an overconsumption of marijuana, take notes and ignore the person completely.
“What are you writing there?” he said. I didn’t reply. “You can’t take notes about me. That’s against the law. You can’t just start falsely recording my words, man. You hear me?”
Nothing.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t even live here. I’m just watching the place for some friends. I can’t just leave the house. I promised them I’d stay until they got back. They got, uh, valuable stuff and things and stuff here. You know?”
I looked up from my clipboard. “I’m just noting your refusal to leave here on the form. When the fungus catches fire—did I mention the fungus is flammable?—the state isn’t responsible for any loss of life. So if you’re gonna stay, maybe let any pets out before they get cooked.”
The man stared at me, his mouth slightly agape. It was more than he could take in at one time, apparently.
“Nine minutes,” I said. “That’s how long you’ve got now.”
“Man, you don’t understand,” he said. “The people I work for will be pissed if I leave. Pissed like they will beat me to death pissed. These aren’t nice people.”
“Then why do you work for them?”
“Man, I ask myself that all the time. What I think? My dad was not a big part in my life. All I can figure.”
I looked over my shoulder. Sam stood behind the Volvo with his arms crossed. He was smiling, which told me he appreciated the fine workmanship that went into rigging that SUV up to take out most of the block.
“What’s your name, son?” I said.
He shifted from foot to foot, like maybe he had to pee but didn’t want to tell his dad. “Max Yennie,” he said. “Are you going to write that down?”
“No, Max,” I said.
“Good, I mean, because this shit here, man, it’s not permanent. It’s, like, my passion, but not my permanent passion. Does that make sense?”
“Eight minutes,” I said.
Max Yennie looked into the house and then back at me. “This fungus, it won’t blow up the house if I get out in eight minutes?”
“It won’t blow up if we are able to get underground and stop it, in seven and a half minutes now.”
“See, the thing is—” He started rambling on about the government and about legalization of drugs and about his dad, so I did the only thing I could to close this situation out in a timely fashion: I hit Max Yennie in the face. I grabbed him on the way down and brought him to the floor lightly so he wouldn’t blow out his knee. I punched Max in the chin, not hard enough to do any permanent damage but just enough to keep him out for long enough to get him away from the house.
I waved Sam up to the door.
“You perceive a clear and present danger here with Spicoli?” Sam asked.
“He wouldn’t stop talking long enough for me to convince him to get out,” I said. “Evasive action needed to be taken.”
“What are we gonna do with him? Your mom’s house is getting a little crowded.”
“Let’s drag him inside and tie him up. We’ll figure it out from there. Where’s Bruce?”
“They’re parked about two miles away,” Sam said. “I gotta tell you, Mikey, Fiona is slightly agitated.”
“How can you tell?”
“She texted me. She said she was slightly agitated. Apparently Bruce keeps asking her out for dinner. She’s thinking she might drive him off of a pier if things turn out adversely.”
“I thought she wanted to pick his brain,” I said. “She should be enjoying this quiet time with him.”
We gathered up Max Yennie and tied his hands behind his back with his own belt. It was made from hemp, so it had nice strength. We needed to get him out of the way so that when Bruce and Fiona “broke into” the house, he wouldn’t pose a problem. It would have been easier for me to run in and do the job myself, but in order for us to get Bruce aboard—really, to save him from himself—I needed to have him feel like he was the mastermind of a great crime. Having Fiona help him was just a bit of sugar; something he could hold on to in the future when he was working with suits on issues related to bank security.
Or that was the plan provided Sam ever heard back from his buddies in the Bureau. If he didn’t hear back from them, we’d need Barry’s help. “Bring the van around,” I said to Sam once we had Max restrained appropriately. “Let’s get this guy out of sight.”
While Sam got the van, I took a look inside the house. The entryway was nicely tiled and the living room looked like it had been cut and pasted from a Pottery Barn catalog. But one thing you can’t hide with nice tile and furniture is the smell of an entire forest of marijuana being cultivated inside of a house, particularly since the temperature in the house was at least eighty-five degrees, which gave everything a dank, swampy feel.
I opened a door at the end of the entry hall and found what used to be a kitchen. There was still plenty of counter space and a nice sink in place, but the flooring had been ripped out and a series of tubes and cables crisscrossed the place where the floor used to be. Water sprayed periodically into the air from one of the tubes and a whirring overhead fan spun lazily. For a moment I was reminded of Havana, until I remembered that when I was in Havana I never saw ten- foot-high marijuana trees inside a $500,000 house.
I heard a sound behind me and saw that Max was starting to stir. I would need to handle this situation delicately. I knelt down in front of him.
“Max,” I said, “you’ve been hit in the face.”
“My jaw really hurts,” he said.
“It’s going to for about a week. You might want
to see a dentist if your bite feels off.”
Max processed that. “You’re not here to kill me?”
“No,” I said, “but I am going to need to kidnap you for a little while. When we release you, I’d advise you to find another line of work. Because eventually? Your bosses would find a reason to kill you and that’s no kind of job security.”
“Yeah,” Max said. “The economy, man, you know.”
“I know,” I said. Sam pulled the van around, so I stood Max up and walked him outside. We put him in the back of the van, which didn’t seem to bother him, since he just kept jabbering on.
“Should I duct-tape his mouth?” Sam said.
I thought for a moment. “No,” I said, “let’s see if we can find him some pork rinds.”
“Good plan,” Sam said and closed the door on Max.
After we got the van moving, I called Fiona. “You ready?” I asked when she picked up.
“What am I doing again?”
“You’re indulging a fantasy,” I said. “And probably saving a life.”
“And what do I earn on this?”
“Steal whatever you like,” I said.
“No one to beat up, then?”
“I think you’ve done enough.”
“I just assumed there’d be some terribly scarred and intermittently stoned caretaker I could engage.”
“No, I took care of that,” I said. “The house is empty. The street is vacant for at least thirty minutes, so get in and out and make as big a mess as possible.”
“Yes, about that.” Fiona lowered her voice. “Bruce wants to break in through the roof.”
“So break in through the roof,” I said.
“Michael, I don’t want him falling on me,” she whispered.
“The front door is open,” I said. “Tell him to check it first and then get in and out.”
“That’s a plan I can support,” she said, a hint of mischief in her voice. Happy again. Nothing like the freedom to do a rush bang-and-run job to get Fiona off the bubble.
“Just make sure to leave enough evidence,” I said.
“Michael, if Bruce keeps hitting on me, I might leave a body,” she said. “Anything else?”
“Don’t touch the SUV in the driveway,” I said. “It’s wired with enough C-4 to take out the eastern seaboard.”
“Nice touch.”
“And if any soccer moms return to their homes early, try not to do anything that might accidentally send the SUV up in flames. Or any of their SUVs.”
It’s not that I think Fiona would actually do these things. Rather, it’s important to point out to her that I know she’s capable of doing these things, which will put the seed in her head, true, but will also remind her that she’s not allowed to blow up everything in the vicinity. These days, with no one protecting me and no one protecting Fiona but me, it’s wise to keep a buffer between myself and wholesale destruction.
“You are the enemy of fun,” Fiona said. “Would you like to speak with Robin Hood before we initiate our crime spree?”
“No,” I said.
“Great, here he is,” Fiona said and then Bruce said, “Hey, buddy. This is going to work great.”
“Fantastic,” I said.
“I’ll show our little Irish friend a trick or two.”
“You do that.”
“And Michael?”
“Yes, Bruce?”
“Thank you,” he said. “For all of this. I’m an old man. And I know that.”
“You’re welcome,” I said and meant it.
“If something happens to me,” he said, “you’ll take care of my mother?”
“Nothing is going to happen to you,” I said.
“But if something did.”
Working with clients is often more about human resources management than actual hand-to-hand fighting or innovative spying technology. People, at the end of the day, want to be protected and want their families to be protected. Bruce, on the other hand, had already done the most he could to try to keep his mother safe, had sacrificed time—years, really—a finger, and was willing to commit a crime against a gang of men who’d just as soon kill themselves as let him walk the earth knowing he’d gotten over on them.
It wasn’t guts, exactly.
It wasn’t heroism.
It was probably a lot like love.
We do things for our parents because even if we have issues with them, there’s a genetic responsibility. There’s a reason I fixed up the Charger and there’s a reason I’ve fixed my mother’s disposal ten times in the last eighteen months.
“If a tsunami rolls into Miami,” I said, “or a hurricane or a plague of locusts or every motorcycle gang in the country, know that all of them will need to go through me to get to your mother. And then Fiona, too.”
“Really?”
“Really,” I said.
“Okay, then,” he said. He gave the phone back to Fiona.
“All taken care of,” I said.
“Wonderful,” Fiona said and then, in the background, I heard Bruce shout, “Let’s do some crime, little lady!”
19
If you really want to violate someone, to make them feel afraid and lost and vulnerable, steal something from them that appears to have zero street value. Stealing a computer or a television or a car is an understandable crime—there’s a tangible reward along the line. But if you steal someone’s shoes, or their photo album, or a single candlestick, the person you steal it from is going to have complex emotions of loss coupled with the sense that their lives are somehow being perpetually invaded.
Which is why Fiona stole all of the Banshees’ C-4 from beneath the SUV.
And the steering wheel from the SUV.
And the Obama sticker.
And destroyed the hydroponic system in the kitchen and set off a fire extinguisher in the upstairs bedrooms, which is where packages of marijuana were being packed and readied for shipment.
So while Bruce carted away enough marijuana to start his own summer reggae tour—which he and Fiona then promptly dumped into a canal—Fiona carted away the security the Banshees had.
Not only had they been robbed.
Not only was their man of the house missing.
Not only had their means of continued production been destroyed.
On top of all of that, they also had been made to look weak and foolish.
And the Ghouls had done it.
Or, well, that’s what they clearly understood the situation to be, which we overheard since Fiona left a bug in the house, too, which was helpful. After taking Bruce back to my mother’s, the three of us—Sam, Fi and I—listened to the recording from the bug while eating a healthy snack of multiflavored yogurts in my loft.
The Banshees sounded, not too surprisingly, a little on the salty side of things.
“I don’t know if what that guy called the Ghouls is anatomically possible,” Sam said.
“You should learn how to stretch your back muscles,” Fi said.
“I stretch them plenty,” Sam said. “Carrying Michael around takes a lot of strength, Fiona, don’t kid yourself.”
I took a bite of my yogurt and tried to concentrate on the men, not on the warring factions of Sam and Fiona. Fi and Bruce had done an excellent job destroying the house and what they stole—including the C-4—indicated a desire not just to rip off the Banshees but to humiliate them, to show them that not only were they weak, but they were vulnerable. And instead of leaving a loose patch—one that maybe had been inadvertently torn from clothing while destroying the house, Fiona took it one step further: she burned the word “Ghouls” into the nice manicured lawn in the backyard.
Give Fiona thirty minutes and she’ll give you wholesale destruction of real property.
The Banshees were mad. They wanted revenge.
Things were finally—finally—falling into place.
“What he just said, about the lead pipe? That’s not possible unless you’re in zero gravity,” Sam said and t
hen his cell phone rang. We’d been waiting all day to hear back from the feds, see if they’d take Bruce and his mother in.
“That them?” I asked.
“Looks like it,” he said and answered it. He mumbled a few words, nodded his head, suggested that the person on the other end of the phone line might, in fact, want to try out a zero-gravity chamber sometime in the near future, and bring a lead pipe with them, and then clicked his phone off.
“No dice,” he said.
“Yeah, I got that.”
“I tried making his file look better, even tied him into a bank job in Manila in the early nineties, but it seems like it would have been impossible for him to be there.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do say,” Sam said. “Apparently he was in court that day. In Michigan. As a juror.”
“If he wasn’t smart enough to get out of jury duty,” Fiona said, “why on earth would your government want to help him?”
“Well, that and the recession. My guy tells me that Witness Protection spending got cut in half, so they’re only taking people who really need protecting. You know, like those Bear Stearns people. Looks like it’s on Barry to set him up.”
This wasn’t the best result. But we could make it work. What I knew was that in order to get Bruce to go along quietly, to not rob any more places, to actually go on his own accord to North Dakota, we’d need to convince him he was going under protection.
Fortunately, he had a bit of money and Barry could get him more, plus a North Dakota-good identity. He would need to stay there at least until all the Ghouls in Miami were somewhere else. Even still, we’d give them back their treasured paper and fabric. All of this for paper and fabric.
In the meantime, we had to make sure that the Ghouls and the Banshees met somewhere in the middle of this action, so that they might just cancel each other out. Or, better yet, find themselves locked up for several years—enough time to get Zadie set up in permanent care and Bruce in a place where he couldn’t hurt himself.
So while Sam and Fiona continued listening to the bug, I called Barry and told him what he needed to know.
“Complicated,” Barry said.
“Busy week, Barry,” I said.
“Mike, Valley City is a very calming place,” he said. “Maybe you and Fiona should rent a cabin here and rekindle the passion when this is all through.”
