by Tod Goldberg
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. Par
ticularly 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?”
“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.
“What’s that?”
“A fatty acid found in your skin,” I said. “Old people make more of it. Their skin sloughs off and suddenly everything smells like a wet book.”
“In this context, what’s old?”
“Over forty-five.”
We set the sofa down outside, next to where Fiona was working on her arts and crafts. She had several small sheets of plywood that she’d cut into the shape of cat’s heads. Beneath the head of the cat, the plywood descended into a spike. The plywood was painted black and glass beads, inlaid into tinfoil, were placed along the face to form reflective eyes. She’d made ten of these cat heads. The plan was to plant them throughout the house-in the living room, the entry hall, and since the kitchen was inexplicably carpeted, the kitchen, too. In the dark, they would reflect any ambient light and give the impression that the house was filled with wild, or, preferably, feral, animals.
If you want to scare someone, anyone, make them think they are surrounded by animals. The mammalian brain does not like this. The mammalian brain will ask you to flee. The mammalian brain doesn’t care if you’re a biker or a priest or Britney Spears.
I picked one up and caught the fading sun with the eyes. “Nice work,” I said.
“I know,” Fiona said.
Sam sniffed his arm. “I’m good, right?”
“I think alcohol and suntan lotion probably help neutralize the odor,” I said. “Or I’m just used to the way you smell. So I guess you really can’t be sure, Sam.”
“I’m sure,” he said.
“Then you’re fine.”
“Fiona?” Sam said.
“You smell like mothballs and sweat-soaked back hair,” she said.
Sam’s cell rang before he could respond to Fi, which was good news. Anything to reboot him was always good news. He stepped inside to take the call, so I took a moment to survey our work. We’d moved all of Zadie’s living room furniture into the backyard. Fiona was putting the finishing touches on our slight bit of diversion. Oh… and there were two huge custom choppers with engines that sounded like F-16s parked just a few yards from the open sliding glass doors that led back into the house.
Our plan was simple enough: We turned off the power to the inside of the house at the fuse box, but left the outside lights on, brought the garage door down and parked Zadie’s station wagon in the driveway. I even went outside and put some magazines and junk mail into the mailbox. The Ghouls were likely to hit at night, particularly in this neighborhood, so we’d wait for them. When they broke in, they’d find a house filled with animals… and then they’d get the real animals.
Sam came back outside a few moments later holding a tube of Jergens hand lotion. He squirted out a large dollop of it and began working it into his hands, forearms, elbows and up under his shirt.
“It’s too late,” Fiona said.
“It’s never too late,” Sam said. He put his arm under Fiona’s nose. “How’s that smell? Huh? Like pure, blue air, that’s how.”
“Where’d you find that?” I asked.
“Guest bathroom,” Sam said, “along with five hundred rolls of toilet paper and a tube of Bengay.”
“I’d check the expiration date,” Fiona said. “I found sour cream in the refrigerator that went bad in 2002.”
Sam smelled his hands. “Fresh and clean doesn’t have an expiration date, my friend. Good is still good. Still real good.”
Fiona picked up one of the cat heads and poked Sam in the gut with the pointed end. “Why don’t you apply some of that lotion to those fatty acids?”
I could watch Sam and Fiona fight all day, except that eventually Fiona would stop playing around and Sam would get hurt, so I put a stop to it by asking Sam who was on the phone.
“That was my guy Philly in the FBI,” Sam said. “I decided to step over the DMV and just go straight for the crime database, you know? Besides, Bruce dropped off their roll. I thought maybe they’d have worked through it by now and could just deliver all the information we could ever need.”
“Your guy at the DMV is that bad?”
“You have no idea,” Sam said. “Anyway, Philly says the Lincoln is registered to Cindy Connors.”
“None of the three guys in the Lincoln looked like a Cindy.”
“Yeah, that didn’t sound right to me, either,” Sam said. “So I had Philly run Cindy’s name. Turns out she’s the sister of one Lyle Connors. Also one Jeb Connors, one Kirk Connors and one Victor Connors, all of whom have resi
ded in federal custody at least once.”
“Lovely family,” Fiona said. “It’s like you and Nate, Michael.”
“Funny,” I said.
“Anyway, Lyle seems to be the big guy,” Sam said.
“How do you figure?” I asked.
“He’s the only one not in prison currently.”
“Your deductive powers are amazing,” I said.
“That’s Uncle Sam’s intelligence training right there,” he said.
“Can you get a sheet on him?”
“My guy is gonna e-mail it to me as soon as he can sidestep all of his superiors and the electronic filters,” Sam said. “So, probably first thing tomorrow.”
“And people wonder how terrorists slip into the country,” Fiona said. She gathered up all of her cat heads and went inside.
“Any word on Maria?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Sam said. “I had my guy run her, her mother, her stepfather, gave him everything I had from the DMV, but you might be surprised to learn that the number of Maria Corteses in the world prevents a thorough accounting. But look, Jose said she’d call. I believe him.”
“Why?”
“He’s lived in the same house for fifty years. If you can’t trust someone who has lived in the same place for fifty years,” Sam said, “who can you trust?”
That sounded reasonable and I said so. If she didn’t call, there was still a good chance she’d show up at Nick Balsalmo’s funeral and we could talk to her then, whenever that might be. The Ghouls were smart enough not to say anything directly about Balsalmo’s death even when they thought they were safe at their clubhouse, but I still felt like Maria knew something. Enough, anyway, that between her and the information we were compiling, plus what we intended to do that night, we might be able to keep the Ghouls away from Bruce Grossman.
I had to hope, at least.
The key to a successful operation is patience. If you’re going to work in intelligence, you must be willing to survive boredom. You must become the king of the mundane.
As a kid, if I got bored I’d go into the garage and find something to blow up. I was particularly fond of using Aqua Net as an accelerant, particularly while using Nate’s bicycle to reenact Evel Knievel’s failed jump over the Snake River Canyon. The best way to defeat boredom, I learned, was to create conflict. Even if I got in trouble, at least it was better than having nothing to do at all.
