The Giveaway

by Tod Goldberg

  “What would we do with Sam?”

  “They have a place here called Shake’s Bar and Grill. They have hot peanuts and cold beers. He’d make do.”

  “I’ll have my assistant get on that,” I said. “Where are you with the plan?”

  “A lovely Craftsman came available today,” he said. “Only cost me five thousand to get the tenants out, another five thousand to get them to Hawaii.”

  “Real money?”

  “Mike, it’s North Dakota.”

  “Right. Okay, it looks like Bruce and his mother are on the way. I’ll let you know for sure soon. There any chance you know any dependable muscle in that part of the country?”

  “I got some favors I could call in,” he said. “Might cost a bit.”

  “Barry,” I said, “you’re the client. Remember?”

  “This is odd for me.”

  “I know, we’ll work through it. In the meantime, I need guys who wear suits,” I said. “Maybe ex-feds who now use their powers for evil. Know anyone like that?”

  “I only know you and Sam,” he said. “What about ex-Coast Guard? Miami is filled with ex-Coast Guard.”

  “Just a few guys who can sit behind the wheel of an American car in front of the Craftsman periodically. Let Bruce and Zadie know they are being watched, but in a good way.”

  Barry made a noise into the phone that sounded a lot like a painful groan. As if maybe he were having a root canal without Novocaine.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Just thinking about the cost,” he said. “How do people afford all of this? Isn’t it easier to just go to the police?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You should do that.”

  Barry groaned again. “I see the fly in the ointment here,” he said.

  “That’s the problem with being a criminal, Barry. You just can’t turn to the police when you really need to.”

  “You know, Mike, I didn’t realize this was going to become an international incident. I would have just booked a cruise for Bruce and his mom if I had—one of those Alaskan ones? You know where you’re on board for a month and you tour icebergs?”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “These things happen when you’re a small-business owner.”

  “I know,” he said, “I’m just trying to make it clear to you that getting me involved in something this large as payback would be, you know, within reason. I’m just not looking forward to the part where some Cold War relic comes searching for you and decides to take me out first to send a message. I’ve seen that before.”

  “You have?”

  “Get cable, Mike,” Barry said. “You’ll learn a lot.”

  I told Barry he’d hear from me shortly, to stay by one of his fifteen phones and be prepared to possibly book a charter flight out of Miami. This news did not make him happy, either.

  I hung up with Barry and briefed Sam and Fi. “Next time you speak to Barry,” Fi said, “let him know I could use a few ex-Coast Guard boys, too. I have a couple of shipments coming into town that they might be just right for. Grenade launchers can be very cumbersome to carry.”

  “Cubans again?” Sam said.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe I’ll just keep them for July Fourth.”

  I tried to steer the conversation back toward something near productivity. “What else did you guys pick up on the bug?”

  “Banshees are ready to move,” Sam said. “They just don’t know where to hit.”

  “Maybe we should show them,” I said.

  “I don’t know how fast those bikes we have are,” Sam said. “They growl and they look nice, but if I’m being chased by a hundred angry bikers, I’d like to have some extra juice.”

  “How long would it take you to install a new power tube and ignition?” I asked.

  “Couple hours, give or take,” he said.

  “Before midnight?”

  “If it’s the difference between being fast and being slow?” he said. He reached for a pencil and made some calculations on a scrap of paper. “Says here a six-pack of Corona and some limes and a nice wrench set will assure that the bikes are tricked out by eleven.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out my wallet, gave Sam whatever I had—somewhere around five hundred bucks, the last of the cash Barry gave me to front this job—and then watched Sam leave the loft. He was somewhere between giddy and joyous. Hard to tell the difference in a man like Sam, but I had a feeling that the money I gave him would cover the parts, the six-pack and probably another six-pack or four.

  That left Fiona and me alone. There’d been something brewing between us these last few days—not exactly flirting, because Fiona was constantly flirting, but just a reminder that there existed a bright aura of availability.

  “You ready?” I said.

  “James Bond could get a jet pack and anti-shark repellent in less than hour,” Fiona said. She’d settled down onto my bed with another cup of yogurt, though she was eating it with some apparent distaste. She was much more of a carnivore. “And here you are, eleventh hour, sending Sam out for parts.”

  “And beer.”

  “James Bond would have us drinking martinis.”

  “You fell for the wrong spy,” I said.

  “Pushed,” she said. “Led by unseen forces beyond my control.”

  I sat down beside her on the bed. I wasn’t sure why. But things were feeling . . . positive.

  And then the phone rang.

  “Michael,” my mother said when I picked it up, “there’s a man with a beard standing across the street.”

  “They’re back in fashion,” I said. I was still leaning in toward Fiona, things still seemed like they might well work in a direction I could be comfortable with, at least until I became uncomfortable and even that would be okay, I supposed . . .

  “There’s another one standing next to him holding a bat. They look like Laurel and Hardy.”

  . . . and then I was bolt upright.

  The Glucks.

  Something, somewhere, had gone wrong in the plan.

  “Where’s Nate?” I said. I went to the kitchen and grabbed my gun. And then another gun. And then one more. Fiona didn’t know what was happening, but she took my aggressive arming as a sign and did likewise. She now looked palpably more excited than she had when it appeared I was about to kiss her.

  “He’s taking a nap. He’s had an exhausting day taking Zadie back and forth to appointments, so I didn’t want to bother him. But he and Maria seem to be getting along very well. She might be a nice girl for him, Michael. Like Fiona could have been if you hadn’t messed that up.”

  “Mom,” I said, as calmly as possible, “wake Nate up and tell him to secure the house. He’ll know what to do.”

  I didn’t actually know if this was true, but it would take me ten minutes to get home and with what we already had in place surrounding the house, all Nate really needed to do was turn off HGTV, close the shutters and make sure he had plenty of bullets nearby.

  “What about me?” she asked.

  “Grab your shotgun and stay low,” I said.

  There was a pause. This was not a time for pauses.

  “Where’s your shotgun, Ma?”

  “In the car with Bruce.”

  No.

  No.

  No.

  This was not happening.

  We were already out of the loft, running down the stairs. The bikes were there, as was the Charger. I wasn’t looking especially biker-ish in my worker uniform anymore, so I didn’t bother with the artifice. At some point, disguises and poses and your ability to sidle up to someone become irrelevant.

  In those cases, a bad man with a bad woman, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons and driving a 1974 Charger usually suffices.

  “Where is Bruce?”

  “Don’t use that patronizing tone, Michael. He’s an adult.”

  “Ma,” I said, “those two men out in front of the house are there to kill Bruce. They are also there to probably kill m
e. The odds are fair that if they see you first, they’ll kill you, too, so pretty please, with sugar plum fairies, tell me where Bruce went.”

  “He ran out to get us all some dinner. He said he had steaks in his freezer at home.”

  I pressed down on the gas and the Charger lunged forward. “I will be there in seven minutes,” I said. “If those two men get any closer to the house, shoot them.” I hung up and called Sam. “Change to the itinerary,” I told him. “The Ghouls are staking out my mother’s house.”

  “That’s not good, Mikey.”

  “Understatement,” I said. We came to a stoplight and, after safely checking both directions of oncoming traffic, and properly flashing my lights and honking the horn . . . I blew through it going about ninety-five. Beside me, Fiona was loading guns and strapping knives to herself, which, while hot, would not be a great experience if we happened to get sideswiped.

  Or pulled over by a cop.

  Like the one I didn’t see hiding behind a parked RV until I was already fifty yards beyond him and screaming toward my mother’s house.

  His lights immediately went on, as did the blaring siren.

  “Do I hear a siren?” Sam said.

  “No,” I said.

  “That’s good,” Sam said. “Because for a minute I thought maybe highway patrol was chasing you.”

  “It’s actually a siren and a horn you hear,” I said. I looked in the rearview mirror. “And he looks like a regular traffic cop.”

  “That’s a relief,” Sam said. “You have some direction for me, Mikey?”

  “One moment please,” I said. We were approaching a school zone and even though it was early evening, police tend to hang out near school zones to pick up speeders. And drug dealers. And gangbangers. And if they got lucky today, they’d get a former bank robber for the IRA who now sold guns to Cuban revolutionaries and a burned spy, both of whom had enough artillery on them to take down Guam in a bloody coup.

  The motorcycle cop was still behind me and by that point was probably actively working the radio. If it was a slow crime day, they’d probably scramble a helicopter, which would then get the news helicopters in the air, which would then get all of this on the news.

  This could work to my advantage, so I gunned the Charger through the school zone, my own horn honking, my own lights blinking, trying to get as much attention as possible.

  “Bruce is either dead or hiding somewhere near my mother’s, so I need you to drag the Banshees there.”

  “I’m not sure if the rental van can outrun a bunch of hogs,” Sam said.

  In my rearview mirror, I could see the motorcycle cop gaining on me. He wasn’t close enough to see my plate and we hadn’t traveled far enough for this to be considered a high-speed chase, because a reasonable lawyer could conjecture that while the cop was on my tail, I was driving so recklessly as to not notice. Plus, I was driving fairly conservatively, if incredibly fast. Safety first and all that.

  “You have to try,” I said. “How close are you to the weed house?”

  “I can be there in five minutes,” he said.

  “When you get there,” I said, “shoot it up. Maybe take out the SUV, make a big bang, big enough that they’ll follow you quick.”

  “You sure Fiona got all the C-4?” Sam asked. “I’d rather not add a meteor crater to the list of Miami’s attractions.”

  I turned to Fiona—she was quietly sharpening a knife against a mortarboard, as calm and detached as if she were doing her nails (while driving ninety-five miles per hour with the cops on her tail). “All of the C-4 is out of the SUV, right?”

  Fiona lifted one shoulder.

  “Yes or no, Fi, because Sam is going to blow it up in about three minutes.”

  “I guess he’ll know when he blows it up,” she said. “I’d advise him to stand at least one foot from any open flame.”

  “Sam,” I said, “do the drive-by like the kids do these days. No stopping to admire. But hang back enough for the Banshees to see you. We need to draw them out right now and get them heading toward my mother’s.”

  “On it,” he said and hung up.

  As soon as the phone was off, it rang.

  Nate.

  I handed the phone to Fiona. “Would you mind taking a message?” I said. “I need to not accidentally kill anyone.”

  “You really need to get a Bluetooth,” Fiona said. “It’s very dangerous to talk on the phone while driving.”

  We flew through an intersection just as another motorcycle cop came peeling into view.

  We were now being chased.

  This would take some explaining, but that was fine. I’d be happy to explain that I was coming to help my mother, who apparently was being held hostage by a brimming motorcycle gang turf war.

  Provided I could get to the house before shots started getting fired.

  Fiona answered the phone, said a few words, and then dropped it in my lap. “It’s your brother,” she said.

  Sometimes Fiona is difficult just to be difficult. It suits her, but it’s not always an enjoyable aspect of her personality.

  “Nate,” I said, just as we passed a Starbucks that used to be a coin-op laundry Nate and I used to steal quarters from (a knife, a paper clip and a can of WD- 40 were all you needed to pry open the coin depository on the old washers). “I can’t really talk. I’m being chased by the police.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I hear a bunch of sirens. That you?”

  “I’m about half a mile away,” I said, “coming from the east. That where the sound is coming from?”

  “Actually, it’s coming from all over. In stereo, pretty much.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Is there something you wanted to talk about, Nate, or can this wait until after I’m done evading capture?”

  “I just wanted to apologize,” he said. “I think these guys found the house because of me.”

  “Why is that, Nate?”

  I turned left, which was technically away from the house, but I wanted to get a sense of how many police were potentially following me. I knew of two at least, but hadn’t seen any air support.

  I used my blinker.

  My seat belt was on, and apart from the cache of guns in the car, I was really only guilty of speeding at this point.

  And failure to yield.

  And some red light problems.

  But I was thinking of killing my brother.

  “I dropped Zadie off and ran a couple of errands. When I got back she said she had a really nice conversation with a young lady in leather pants about me. Zadie points her out in the parking lot, so I go over and drop a little game on her.”

  “Drop a little game on her?”

  “I talked her up, told her I was staying out at Mom’s, and, you know, to call me there. Maybe we’d get together and watch religious television together and hand-knit bedspreads. Couple hours later, I realized, you know, maybe that she was a plant.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And, well, now there’s about fifteen bikers circling the house. I’m really sorry, Michael.”

  “How about instead of apologizing, maybe load a couple of guns?”

  “Mom is on that,” Nate said. “And Maria is pretty handy around a nine. Zadie’s boiling water in case they break the perimeter. She said that’s how we won World War One.”

  I looked into the rearview mirror and saw . . . nothing. I looked to my right: nothing. I looked to my left: nothing. I looked at Fiona. She’d put away all of her weapons and was now texting with someone.

  And I didn’t hear any sirens.

  “Nate,” I said, “I’ll be there in two minutes. Don’t let anyone into the house. And if the cops come, stay indoors.”

  I pulled over at an intersection only a few blocks from my mother’s.

  “What are we doing?” Fi asked.

  “Waiting,” I said.

  “Is that the best idea?”

  “Do you see any police?�
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  Fiona did the same compass pass I’d just performed. “Where are they?” she asked.

  “Listen,” I said.

  In the distance I could make out the faint sound of about a hundred sirens humming alongside the growling of motorcycles. There was a good chance the cop following me was called off pursuit for a larger, more dangerous issue—namely, a horde of thugs speeding through residential Miami.

  I called Sam.

  “ETA?” I said.

  “I’ll be there in about five minutes,” he said. “I’ve got a posse on my back that you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Any shots fired?”

  “Not yet,” Sam said.

  “If you pass an open field, bury a bullet.”

  “I like that idea,” Sam said.

  “Tell me what street you’re on,” I said. He did and then I hung up with him and called 911.

  “Yes, thank you, I’d like to report a very serious situation. There are approximately two hundred men on motorcycles chasing a man in a white van down Reston Avenue. One of the motorcycle people just fired a gun. Yes. Very frightening. My name?” I paused for one moment and thought it through. “Clifford Gluck,” I said and then hung up.

  “This is exactly how you planned it, right?” Fiona said.

  “This is all contingency training, Fi,” I said. “Textbook stuff.”

  “Funny,” she said. “Oh, yes, the old pit-two-enemies-together-to-kill-each-other-off-so-a-third-party-can-prosper textbook. I heard about it on Twitter. The kids love it. Always such a winning plan.”

  “Vietnam?” I said.

  “Yes, that ended up particularly well.”

  “Iraq?”

  “Another solid victory for the good guys,” she said.

  I kept thinking and watching the intersection, waiting for the inevitable flurry of action. Two or three minutes later, it flashed by: a hunk of white followed by what looked liked a swarm of giant flies. The police were not yet on the scene, but I could already feel the ionic change in the air—a helicopter was nearby, but it was also the release of anxiety and breath and sweat by the people on the street.

  When people talk about sensing fear, this is what they mean. When you’re scared, your sweat emits a different smell, a genetic marker that one can pick up on and exploit. The breeze rolls by and things smell and feel different and you start to feel anxious and aware, it’s usually because you’re perceiving someone else’s fear.