by Tod Goldberg
“How much did they give you?” Sam asked.
“They were supposed to give me twenty grand,” Maria said, “but they only gave me five hundred up front and then came by my parents’ place and told me to get out of town before they did me like they did Nicky.”
“They said that?” Sam said. When Maria didn’t respond, he added, just for the sake of continued clarity, “They told you they’d do you like they did Nicky?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Where are you?” Sam said.
“Out of town,” she said.
“Out of town?”
“I’m in the Ranchero, okay?”
“Don’t go anywhere,” Sam said. “I’ll send someone to come and get you.”
“And what?”
A good question. He’d have to find out if Madeline was prepared to take on more houseguests. He imagined Maria might be somewhat surprised to find Bruce Grossman living and breathing when she got there, but he’d deal with that later. Maria Cortes was now evidence.
“You get to use a bathroom inside and we’ll keep you safe,” Sam said.
“Who are you again?”
“Not the cops,” Sam said. “Ask your stepdad.”
Silence. And then: “Okay,” she said, “but my dog comes, too, okay?”
Oh, Madeline would love that. “Thirty minutes,” Sam said and then had to hang up. A woman with a human hand in a brown bag was knocking on the passenger window. He unlocked the door and Brenna Fender slid in. She smelled of formaldehyde with a hint of Chanel No. 5. Classy.
“How are you, Sammy?” she said. All smiles. Big eyes. Friendly. Like this was something she did every day. She set the bag down between them.
“I’m good,” Sam said. He wondered how much a hand weighed. Two pounds? Three?
“Which is why you need this hand?” No smiles. Small eyes. Not terribly friendly. Like this was something she did every day and then, later, showed up in uniform to arrest the perpetrators.
“Complicated situation I’m working on,” Sam said. “You’ve heard of the Kobayashi Maru, I assume.”
“No,” she said. That was good… since Sam was pretty sure the Kobayashi Maru was something from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, which he’d watched in bed after getting home from dueling with the Gluck brothers.
“Well, then, I’m afraid I can’t divulge the exact reasons behind our need for the hand. For our eyes only and all that, you understand.”
Brenna regarded him with real skepticism, but Sam decided he’d stay firm. She’d already brought him the hand, after all, so she couldn’t be feeling too moral about the situation.
“Take a look, then,” she said. “Make sure you got what you need.”
Sam was afraid she’d say that, but he opened the bag and took a peek. “Yep,” he said, “that’s a hand.”
“Anything else you need, Sam, before I lose both of my jobs?”
There was one thing that vexed Sam. “Who did this belong to?”
“You read about that pimp who got cut up by about ten of his girls a few nights ago?”
“Must have missed that one,” Sam said.
“That’s because it wasn’t in the paper,” she said.
“No?”
“Nope.” Brenna got out of the car but didn’t close the door for a moment. She looked both ways, presumably to make sure no one was watching, good guys or bad guys, and then poked her head back inside. “They never found the body,” she said. “You have a good day now, Sam Axe.”
15
There’s no easy way to fake your own death anymore. Used to be all you needed to do was squirrel away the cash you’d need to make a new life, get a fake passport from your local forger, and then roll your car off a cliff in the middle of the night. Twenty-four hours later, and a continent or two away, you’d be sitting on a white sand beach, or at an outdoor cafe, or just beneath the majesty of the Alps, plotting your next life.
Now, just getting through security at the airport would be a challenge. Sneaking into Mexico might not be terribly difficult, provided you’re able to get to a border city without leaving a trace of your real self along the way-there are cameras everywhere now, even if you’re not aware of them-which is where the complications might arise. And then once you’re in Mexico, provided you don’t die of swine flu, or get kidnapped, or get murdered in the crossfire of a drug war, you’ll realize that Mexico isn’t exactly paradise lost and you’ll want to find greener, less smoggy, less dangerous pastures. And then you’re back to the same problem of traditional air travel.
Terrorism may have made air travel annoying for those of good legal standing, but it’s made it damn near impossible for those attempting to fake their death. Minus that, there’s just so much DNA we all leave behind now-fingerprints, hair fibers, saliva, urine-that if you really feel like you need to fake your death, you might want to consider actually killing yourself.
At least that way you won’t get caught.
In Bruce Grossman’s case, he was actually taking his death pretty well. He sat wedged between his mother and my mother on the sofa and watched one of those “I have terrible taste and need help” programs on HGTV. Maria Cortes and her dog were asleep in Nate’s old bedroom. After Maria got over her initial surprise at seeing Bruce alive and well-Sam had to convince her that he wasn’t a ghost and that no one was avenging anyone, at least not in my mother’s house-she quickly made herself comfortable. Apparently sleeping in a car had left her exhausted.
Fiona, Sam, Nate and I were in the kitchen, along with a brown bag containing what would be the proof of Bruce Grossman’s death, provided someone was able to chop the appropriate finger off. More important, however, if this was all going to work, I needed to make sure Maria was going to be the witness Bruce would need to really disappear safely. As it stood now, I felt like we could forestall the Ghouls by giving them the hand and then selling them their own goods back. Maybe they’d engage in an even bloodier war with the Banshees, but eventually, because he was Bruce Grossman and couldn’t keep his mouth shut for more than ten seconds at a time, he’d tell someone about how his best score was the time he robbed the Ghouls twice. And once with a spy! And then, well, then one day the Ghouls would show up at his house with bats, and acid, and there wouldn’t be a way out.
Bruce Grossman had to give the Ghouls back the works and then he had to disappear. And somehow, we needed to keep Zadie safe, too. The best option was not one I suspected Bruce would leap at.
“Do you think Maria would go on the record about Nick?” I asked Sam. “Because if she can deliver the evidence that there was a bounty on him, along with what Fi recorded at Purgatory, there’s probably enough to get Bruce and Zadie into protective custody.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, “but he did rob that stash house. You think the FBI is going to smile on that?”
“They wanted him once before, didn’t they?” Fiona said.
It was true. Back when he was in prison they’d offered to make him a consultant, but he was a different guy then. Younger. Dumber. And probably more skilled. Plus, his mother wasn’t dying. If he went into their hands now, she’d get the best medical care.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He doesn’t seem like much of an asset anymore.” In the living room, Bruce was arguing with my mother over whether or not tile floors or hardwood were the better flooring for the couple on the television, particularly since neither had the hall-marks of something he kept calling “divine design.”
“It’s not about whether or not he can rob banks still,” Sam said. “They’d probe him. Find out what made him rob banks. Find out his psychology.”
“I wonder what they’d make of me?” Fiona said.
“You might create a whole new field of study,” I said.
“Mikey, how many guys have the forethought to let someone whack off their finger in prison for insurance money?” Sam said. “He might seem like an old man in an ugly sweater, but that guy, he’s a treasure trove for some headshri
nker.”
“And you, Michael,” Fiona said. “What would they do with you?”
“I think they’re already doing it,” I said.
All of what Sam said was certainly true, but when mixed with the issues at hand, there was some massaging that was going to need to be done. If Bruce refused custody, or if the FBI didn’t care to relocate him, and if the Ghouls came up with the $500,000, which would be enough to take care of Zadie no matter where Bruce might have to run to, it wasn’t as if Bruce would have zero problems toting $500,000 in loose bills. If they actually paid up, we’d need Barry to facilitate a few banking issues, none of which were legal, which might then put Bruce in a perilous situation yet again.
There was also a pretty good chance the Ghouls might not find the story about the Banshees setting this into motion all that believable. Oh, certainly the Gluck brothers believed it, but they weren’t running the show. Someone like Lyle Connors, a guy with a gold Lincoln, he might see the flaws in it. If we really wanted to pit these two groups against each other, we’d have to rob the Banshees, too, and make it look like the Ghouls did it.
Depending upon how this afternoon turned out, all options were open, which is what I told Fiona and Sam. I didn’t really say it to Nate, because he wasn’t listening. He was busy staring inside the bag at the hand.
“Let me know when we get to do that robbing of the Banshees bit,” Fiona said. “I have a few new moves I’d like to try out. And a few things I’d like to buy, too, so perhaps you’ll let me blow their secret vault.”
“I’m not so sure these guys have a secret vault,” I said.
“Everyone’s got a secret vault,” Sam said. “Right? I know I do. Working on getting that undersea lair together, just in case the North Koreans send a bunch of nukes our way.”
I didn’t answer Sam for fear that he might honestly be building an undersea lair. Instead, I focused on Nate, who was oblivious to everything going on around him, save for whatever he saw in the brown bag.
“Nate,” I said, “you’re either a part of this or you’re not.”
“You know, it doesn’t really smell,” Nate said. “At least not from here.”
Great.
I checked the clock on my mother’s 150-year-old microwave. It was ten thirty. Nate was due to take Zadie to radiation in about forty- five minutes. We had to get moving in all areas.
Which included the task at hand, so to speak.
“All right,” I said, “who wants to cut off the finger?”
No one jumped at the chance.
“One of us has to do it,” I said.
Still nothing.
“It’s not as if it’s even a hand anymore. It’s completely disassociated from the body. And it belonged to a bad guy, right, Sam?”
“Right,” he said, “but candidly, Mike, it’s hard for me to disassociate the hand from the person if you keep reminding me it used to be on a person.”
“Would it be easier if he said it was on a goat?” Fiona said.
“Was that you volunteering?” Sam said. “Ladies and gentlemen, Fiona Glenanne will be performing her magical finger-removal trick now. Fiona?”
Fiona, for the first time in her life, didn’t have a quick missile to launch in Sam’s direction.
“What about you, Nate?” I said.
“I’m not the globe-trotting assassin,” Nate said.
“I’m not an assassin, Nate,” I said. “I’m a spy.”
“Right,” he said. “Sorry. My mistake. I’m not the globe-trotting spy who occasionally killed people for the government. Is that better?”
“It’s just a hand,” I said, a truth I was in the process of reminding myself when my mother walked into the kitchen.
“What are all of you fighting about? I can hear you all the way in the living room.”
“Which is ten feet away,” I said.
“What’s in that bag?” she said. She reached for it but I pulled it toward me.
“Nothing, Ma,” I said. “Go back to your television show. They’re just about to reveal the new countertop.”
“Michael, I have thirty strangers and a dog in my home right now, all as a favor to you. The least you can do is tell me what else you’ve brought into my house. What could be worse than what is already here?”
Since I’d been back in Miami, my mother had been shot at, ambushed and pulled in several directions by forces foreign and domestic. She’s aware that I work somewhere between the law and disorder. She owns a shotgun. She married my father, which was like sanctioning an emotional Cuban Missile Crisis for the whole of the 1970s and most of the 1980s.
So she can handle herself.
“It’s a dismembered hand,” I said.
“And why is it in a brown bag on my counter?”
“We need to chop off one of the fingers, so that it matches up to Bruce’s hand,” I said. “And then we’re going to use it to fake his death.”
“And what’s the problem?”
I looked from Fiona, to Sam, to Nate-three people who knew their way around a crime scene, generally-and landed back on my mother. “No one really wants to chop the finger off.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” she said. “Didn’t any of you ever work on a farm? Fiona? Didn’t any of your relatives have a farm in Scotland?”
“Ireland,” she said. “And no. Most of my family worked with their hands to steal things from other people.”
Ma regarded Sam. “Madeline,” he said, “you have to understand my rich regard for the sanctity of human life. And that I had chicken fingers for dinner last night.”
She didn’t bother reproaching me or Nate. She just shook her head and said, “Nate, reach into the drawer beside the sink and hand me that electric carving knife your father used to like to use on Christmas.”
When Nate didn’t budge-and when I didn’t let even a breath escape me-she sighed, went into the drawer under the sink, a place where the past evidently stood still, and came out with the GE Electric Carving Knife I remembered from every major holiday between my birth and leaving Miami directly after high school. My father and mother used it to cut any meat thicker than a slice of Italian salami and, occasionally, my dad used it for minor home repairs-it worked great for cutting into drywall-and anytime something in the Charger needed to be severed, which accounted for the odd saw marks I found on various hoses, tubes and fabrics when I refurbished the car not long ago.
Because it was made in the 1970s, the knife needed to be plugged in. Fortunately, it was still attached to the mud brown ten- foot extension cord Dad had put on it sometime before the first Star Wars movie. The dual blades looked dull, but that might have just been a mirage from the caked-on grease, animal blood and remnants of duct tape, since when Ma plugged it in, the 120-volt motor roared to life and the blades looked positively deadly.
The noise got Bruce off of the sofa. He examined the knife, examined his own gnarled stump and said, “That should do the trick.”
“Bruce,” I said, “why don’t you have a seat before you get hurt?”
“What’s the worse that could happen? I lose a finger?”
He waited for the laugh to come and when it didn’t, he seemed honestly disappointed. I had a feeling it wasn’t the first time he’d used that line.
“Uh, Ma,” I said, “let’s think about this.”
“Oh, Michael,” she said, which was her code for: Shut up. She took a look at Bruce’s hand, noted the approximate spot where his pinkie stopped-he had only a nub above the knuckle-and then sliced right through the finger of a dead pimp.
She calmly turned off the electric knife, unplugged it from the wall and set it in the sink while all of us stood by.
“Michael, you’ll wash the knife?” she said.
“Sure,” I said eventually.
“And maybe spray some Lysol on the countertop?”
“Will do,” I said. “Anything else?”
She thought for a moment. “Nate, when you go out to take Zadie to
her appointment, will you stop by the grocery store and pick up a gallon of milk and one of those nice rotisserie chickens?”
Nate waited for me to say something, as if I could provide any kind of insight into this person who apparently had abducted our mother. I was just hoping she didn’t get wise and turn the electric knife on me. “Sure,” I said. “Nate can do that. Can’t you, Nate?”
“Sure, Ma,” Nate said. “Whatever you need.”
Ma and Bruce went back into the living room. Their show was over, so they switched to Food TV and settled in for thirty minutes of heart-pounding excitement via a show about a guy who only eats absurd quantities of weird food.
“So,” Sam said.
“We’re not going to speak of this,” I said.
“What just happened?” Nate said.
“Fi?” I said.
She looked at the hand there on the counter for a few seconds and then said, “Doesn’t it look too fresh?”
“We’ll put it in some dirt,” I said. “So it looks like we just dug it back up.”
“Best-case scenario,” Sam said, “you just tell them we cut even more off while torturing Bruce for information. The Ghouls will appreciate that.”
“Okay,” I said. “Fi, you’re going to stay here and watch over Bruce and Maria and make sure my mother doesn’t cut anything else, okay?”
“Lovely,” she said. “Say hello to my friends at Purgatory.”
“I’m not going to do that,” I said. “But stay near the phone. We end up in a situation that needs your special attention to detail and explosives, I’ll call you.”
“Goody,” she said. “Am I excused now, professor? Because I must learn how to eat a giant pizza and it appears there’s a show all about that on the television at this very moment.”
