by Tod Goldberg
“Michael,” Fiona said, “he’s an idiot and he’s in trouble, but he’s not a liar.”
5
Every successful organization, pedestrian or criminal, has a hierarchy. The United States, apart from the occasional hijacked election, is the perfect example of this. Every four years, without violent civil unrest, leadership is allowed to change and, with it, ideology. Countries with dictators also have a hierarchy and within it change also frequently occurs. That change might not include the murderous head of state, but on a local level ministers and department heads move around, different mullahs are favored more than others, and the occasional bureaucrat makes a leap because of a well-timed snitch operation. But belief systems rarely change in dictatorships because no one wants to die for beliefs anymore. Well, unless there’s a coup, and then those beliefs are probably the ones people like me have, at some point, put into motion.
Even then there are rules. Break them and people will die, or at least lose their job, or die and lose their job, depending upon just how serious the violation.
You’d think the Ghouls Motorcycle Club wouldn’t have an extensive operating constitution; its members would understand that their jobs were to sell drugs, commit crimes and terrorize people on Honda motorcycles.
You’d be wrong.
Spread across a lovely wicker coffee table that hadn’t been dusted since Clinton was in office, there were pages and pages of the Ghouls’ rules and regulations, a manual as thick and thorough as the actual constitution. Sam and I sat in the living room of Grossman’s house going through the papers, each one stolen in the dark of night from the stash house, while Fiona sat outside with Zadie, apparently having a long conversation concerning US Magazine. From my view in the living room, it looked like they were getting along like sisters. That was Fiona’s unique ability: She could scare you or charm you, all within a few moments.
“So, just so we’re clear,” Sam said to Bruce, “you don’t want to move to Canada, right?”
I’d called Sam after Fiona told me about Bruce’s plight, and now the two of us were trying to figure out how best to keep Bruce alive. Sam’s ideas heretofore had also included face- transplant surgery and literally moving underground, like in an old bomb shelter, because trying to elude the grasp of the Ghouls was like trying to catch water in a strainer.
“I can’t,” he said. “They don’t allow ex-felons there.”
“I’ve got a buddy who could get you a very nice passport,” Sam said.
Bruce seemed to consider this.
“Says here the Ghouls have an organization in Canada, too,” I said. That the official records of the organization were kept in a stash house in the Everglades felt like perpetual stupidity, but then I thought that if I had to look for this information, the last place I’d look would be there, too. And that made sense. Stupid sense, but sense. “In fact, according to this, they have ‘colors in all the corners of the world,’ which means you better start looking at space travel. You know anyone at NASA, Sam?”
“I could make a call,” Sam said.
Bruce exhaled hard from his mouth. Apparently, he didn’t care for our line of conversation. “Look,” he said, “I can’t just disappear. I robbed that place for my mother. If I leave now, who takes care of her? And I’m fifty-five years old.”
I looked at him. He sat in a recliner that was probably first purchased so Zadie would have a comfortable seat for the moon landing. But then, the entire house had a dull, antiquated cast to it from all the cigarettes over the years. Lick the sofa and you could probably get a nice nicotine hit.
“Do you want Fiona to come in and talk to you?” I said.
A dash of wonder and pain shot through Grossman’s eyes. He did and he didn’t. “Okay, fine, sixty-five,” he said. “But my point is that I can’t start running now. I’ve never run in my entire life.”
“I understand,” I said. “But you’ve put yourself in a position.”
“I thought Barry said you knew how to help me, that you were a spy or something,” Bruce said.
“That’s right,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I have invisibility potions. If these guys want to find you, Bruce, they will find you.”
“Why can’t I just mail this stuff back to them? I used to do that all the time.”
“So that was you?” I said.
Bruce looked outside toward his mother and Fi but didn’t say anything for a minute. “Listen,” he said, “my mom? She doesn’t know about all that. She thinks I was an architect. And just to be clear, I was never tried for anything but that last job, so I’m not guilty of anything apart from that.”
“Which is why the FBI wanted to hire you as a consultant?” I said. “Because you’re a failed bank robber?”
“How do you know that?” Bruce asked.
Sam started to say something, but I put a hand up to let him know I still needed to show that I was the alpha in this organizational hierarchy, not that Sam had any idea that was what I was doing. He probably just thought I didn’t want to be interrupted. “Let’s just say I know things,” I said.
“Be that as it may,” Bruce said, like he was putting on a show for someone. There was a quality to him that reminded you of a magician, as if every moment might contain a bit of sleight of hand. “I have to stay here. My mother has friends, this is where her doctors are and if this is her last hurrah, I want her to be comfortable. You can understand that, can’t you?”
I could and I told him so. “How much money have you spent?” I asked.
“About twenty thousand,” he said. “Paid some bills, paid for a nurse for a couple days, bought my mom an air purifier. Probably too late on that one. I haven’t opened the mail today, so who knows how much the next bill will be.”
“How much does your mom have left? From the finger incident?”
“Not much,” he said. “That was twelve years ago. And she’s been sick off and on for ten years. Maybe five grand.”
“What all did you drop off at the FBI offices?”
Again, a look of shock crossed Bruce’s face, but he tried to play it off, or maybe he just realized I really did know things. “A couple role sheets,” he said. “Thought if the FBI arrested the crew, they’d be off of me.”
“Good idea,” Sam said, “but you can’t just arrest someone for being an asshole anymore. You actually need to catch them breaking the law. Or breaking their leg while breaking the law. That counts, too.”
Bruce shrugged, like: What can you do? You can’t do nothing.
“What makes you think they’re on to you?” I asked.
“These people have connections everywhere,” Bruce said. “They might even have guys in the FBI for all I know.”
I was about to say I found that unlikely, but then I thought better of it. If anything is true, it’s that every organization has retention and, conversely, leak problems. One person says one thing to the wrong person, and in some cases, an entire spy operation in Moscow could be wiped out. Or a thief in Miami living with his mother could be fingered for a job.
Better to deal with known possibility than wishful thinking.
“Have you told anyone about the job?”
“Just Barry,” he said. “He’s the one told me they were making inquiries, which got me thinking, you know, don’t be a schmuck, get rid of whatever you can and ask for help. Was that wrong?”
“Barry you can trust,” I said, already feeling relieved. If he’d told only Barry, we could close the circle, solve the problem, get everyone back to living in peace and harmony and…
“And I might have mentioned it to Nick Balsalmo.”
He said the name like it should mean something. It didn’t. At least not to me. I looked at Sam, whose expression was likewise blank. We all stared at each other for a while, until it became clear none of us was going to offer more information, so Sam finally said, “Of the Miami Balsalmos?”
“We know each other from Glades,” Bruce said carefully, as if he already knew that it was the wrong thi
ng to say.
“You might have told someone you did time with that you robbed the Ghouls?” I said. There is no might in these situations, just like I told Barry the previous day. People either do or don’t do things. I had a feeling I knew the answer.
“Technically,” Bruce said, “I didn’t know it was the Ghouls when I told him.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Sam said. “Or else you might have told him the total truth.”
Bruce took off his watch and started rubbing at his wrist. You spend enough time around people used to being in handcuffs and you’ll begin to notice a similar compunction when they realize they’ve put themselves in a position to be back in cuffs… and soon. “I owed him a favor and knew he could get rid of the drugs I grabbed,” he said. “Just having them in my mother’s home was a shanda. Nick is trustworthy. He always had my back.”
If you’re sent to prison, it’s important to understand that the people you’re doing time with are not, by definition, trustworthy. One of the first rules of incarceration is simple: Don’t owe anybody anything. As soon as someone has you, they have you forever. This means inside and outside. You might not know it when it’s happening, but eventually the scales will tip.
“Was Nick Balsalmo part of a prison ministry program?” I asked.
“Uh, no,” he said.
“Does Nick Balsalmo work for the police department?” I asked.
“Uh, no,” he said again. He was beginning to get the path of this line of questioning.
“Does he work in hazardous waste disposal?”
“No.”
“No,” I said. “No, I’m going to guess Nick Balsalmo is a drug dealer. Would that be an accurate description?”
“More like a courier. He doesn’t sell on the streets. I couldn’t trust a guy who sold drugs to kids or something.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Who could?”
The sarcasm was lost on Bruce.
“Right, right, my feeling exactly. But he works with bigger businesses, I guess you could say.”
“A middleman,” Sam offered.
“Exactly, exactly,” Bruce said. “A middleman.”
“So it might stand to reason that Mr. Balsalmo would be in the business of selling your stolen drugs to people who suddenly found themselves, say, low on product? Would that sound plausible?” I said.
“Uh, yes,” Bruce said. And there it was. Dawning.
“When did you speak with him last?”
“Three, four days ago. He called to thank me. Said he was having good luck moving the stuff, wanted to know if I wanted, you know, a cut. I said no, of course.”
“Of course,” Sam said.
“Of course,” I said. I gave him a big smile and then said, “You might want to give him a call. See if he’s still alive.”
The color left Bruce’s face then. He’d known this was serious before, certainly, but for some reason he hadn’t seen all of the consequences of his actions. I tossed him my cell phone and he dialed Nick’s number on speaker. After a few rings, an automated voice announced that the voice mail was full.
“What kind of drug dealer doesn’t check his messages?” I said.
“Maybe he’s out of town?” Bruce said.
“That’s why people have voice mail, Bruce, so they can get their calls anywhere. Especially drug dealers. Do you know where he lives?”
“He lives with a Cuban girl out in Little Havana. I went over there for dinner once. Nice place.” There was a matter-of-factness to Bruce that sometimes felt very odd: He was essentially a very simple guy. For a person who did twelve years, he didn’t seem to be all that jaded, or damaged, which meant that for some reason he hadn’t had a terrible experience in jail. Or not as terrible as others.
“What did you owe Nick for, exactly?”
Bruce got a pensive look on his face and started rubbing at his wrist again. When he finally spoke, it was just above a whisper. “He did my finger.”
“Could you speak up, Bruce?” Sam said. “I can’t quite hear you. Ten percent hearing loss in my right ear from the Falklands.”
Bruce didn’t know quite what to make of Sam, so for a moment he glared at him in a rather benign way, as if to say, You could say please. It didn’t last. “He did my finger, okay? Spent two months in the hole for it. When he got out, there was this meshugass with my mother’s illness, and so I couldn’t pay him what I owed him initially, but he was cool, really. The dinner and all that. Ever had Cuban pork chops? Authentic Cuban pork chops?”
“Once,” I said.
“Where?”
“In Santiago de Cuba,” I said.
“But I thought that…” He stopped for a minute, thought about where he was going, opted to change lanes. “Anyway, he was perfectly sweet about everything, but it was clear he wanted what was his.”
“Let me get this right,” Sam said. “Guy takes off your finger and you have to pay him? That’s inflation for you. Mikey, you hear that?”
“I hear that,” I said.
“It doesn’t make sense on the outside, I know,” Bruce said. “But it’s a different set of rules in prison.”
“How much did you owe him?” I asked.
“Fifty grand,” he said.
“How much do you think he could get for the drugs you gave him?”
“Enough that he felt comfortable offering me a cut,” Bruce said.
“Real gentleman,” Sam said.
The problem here was that even if Bruce wanted to give the Ghouls back their drugs-presuming Nick hadn’t already tried to sell them their own stuff-a good sum of it was already gone. And I didn’t feel comfortable giving anyone back a bunch of drugs-there’s no way into that situation that is safe and I didn’t particularly want to kill anyone that week. Or be killed, for that matter.
“Nick, he’s a good guy,” Bruce said. “He just has a bad job. But who doesn’t?”
Bruce made a convincing argument, but it might just have been his delivery. Having a sixty- five-year-old man give you a slice of prison wisdom does have a certain charm. He wanted to explain more, but before he could, Fiona came to the sliding glass window and cracked it open.
“Zadie would like something to eat,” she said to Bruce, who jumped from his seat like he’d been shocked and went directly into caregiver mode, rushing off to the other side of the great room and into the kitchen to fix his mother a sandwich.
Sam and I both watched him for a bit, how meticulous he was in putting together a plate for her, how he put the sandwich in one corner, a bit of Jell-O in another, how he washed by hand a few leaves of lettuce and then shook pepper onto them, followed by a dash of oil and vinegar. He then poured his mother an entire glass of ginger ale, no ice.
“We have to help him,” I said quietly.
Sam nodded once.
Bruce walked past us to the patio without saying a word.
“A complication,” Sam said, still watching Bruce. “Before I got here I ran the information on the house he hit. It was burned down last night.”
“Not a surprise,” I said.
“With the occupants inside of it,” Sam said.
“How many?”
“Two. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they found this Balsalmo in a ditch in the back if he’s as savvy as our friend Bruce is.”
Page ten of the Ghouls’ constitution said, “You dishonor the Ghouls. The price is determined by your dishonor.”
I guess they meant it.
Trying to figure out how to return stolen property is like trying to un-swallow: There’s no actual opposite action that will return the property (or the food you’ve eaten) in its original form. There will always be an elemental difference. Steal from someone and even if they get their stuff back in whole cloth, they’re still going to feel that sense of violation. Steal from a criminal organization and whether or not they feel violated, they’re going to want revenge.
In Bruce Grossman’s case, he didn’t actually want to return everything he’d s
tolen. He wanted to keep the money and give back the drugs and the paperwork and the box of patches that he’d also lifted and just call it even, which wasn’t going to work. There’s no even when three hundred thousand bucks is left out of the equation. And stealing a gang’s patches is maybe worst of all. It’s silly, but these grown men live and die for a stitch of cloth.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Sam said. We were back at my loft. I was eating blueberry yogurt. Fiona was doing this thing where she sits quietly flipping through a fashion magazine but is really listening to everything and waiting to make proclamations that will solve all the problems we’ve encountered. Sam was doing what Sam does: drinking my beer and asking questions. “If you’re a criminal mastermind, like Bruce thinks he is, why would you be so stupid?”
“He’s not a criminal mastermind,” I said, “so that solves that.”
“He’s closer to a criminal mastermind than either of you are,” Fiona said. She didn’t even bother to look up from her magazine.
“Because we’re not criminals,” I said.
“Have you ever tried to break into a safe-deposit box?” she asked.
Sam and I looked at each other. She had a point. Kind of.
“I’ve cracked into a few secure locations,” Sam said. “And Mikey here could have Fort Knox renamed Fort Westen in no time. Right, Mikey?”
“Uh, right,” I said.
Fiona was heading somewhere. This was just the opening salvo. She raised her eyebrows, but kept her eyes on the magazine, turning pages casually. “I should have been a model,” she said to no one in particular. “Seems like I’d get to sit around on bearskin rugs in Uggs and a bikini, not a care in the world.”
“Is there something you want to tell me?” I said.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” Fiona said.
“I think it’s cute when you guys repeat each other’s sentences,” Sam said.
“Do you know who Bruce Grossman is, Michael?” Fiona said. “I mean, do you really know?”
“I know he’s a person with a problem,” I said. “I know he’s a friend of Barry’s. I know he’s been a fool since he got out of prison. I know his mother is going to die soon. Isn’t that enough?”
