by Tod Goldberg
“Dismissed,” I said.
I watched her walk back into the living room. She plopped herself into a chair and immediately fell into the program on the television. For a woman who weighed ninety-five pounds on a day when she wasn’t armed, she sure did like those cooking programs.
She’d have her hands full with Bruce and Maria, but I didn’t think for a moment that she’d be unable to take care of it. Especially since there was no sense in dragging a dead man out in public, lest he do something stupid, so keeping Bruce at the house was of the utmost importance. And since I knew he’d happily stay wherever Fiona was, I was confident that at least that avenue would be clear.
This was particularly important, since if the Ghouls knew where Bruce’s mother’s house was, they might have known who his mother was as well. With Nate taking Zadie to the doctor by himself, there was less of a chance that something beyond my control might happen. The Ghouls would be unlikely to make a move on an old woman since even bikers had a modicum of ethics.
Sam and I were going to handle the Ghouls and that meant Nate would handle Zadie.
“Nate,” I said, “you need to get Zadie into and out of that radiation appointment unscathed. Don’t let her talk to anyone. Don’t let her mention her son. We have no idea who might be on the Ghouls’ payroll by now, so you take her in, you watch her, and you take her right back out. You feel like anyone is on your tail, head for the police station. Just like last time. Okay?”
“How about if I notice anyone,” Nate said, “I’ll just bring them here and Ma can handle them. I mean, Michael, we need to talk about what just happened. Right? We avoid it, isn’t it like all that crap we avoided as kids that now has you all screwed up? Isn’t that right?”
“No, that’s not right,” I said. “We just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“If I end up with post-traumatic stress,” Nate said, “it’s on you.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll make sure I have a trauma nurse waiting for you here when you get back.”
“You don’t find what just happened odd, Sam?” Nate said.
“Nate, my boy, I have seen things that would make you question your own sanity. Papua New Guinea, fall of 1988, I saw a band of pygmies fell an elephant with spears and then climb into the elephant through its mouth and then out its backside,” Sam said.
“What?” Nate said. “What?”
“That’s my point,” Sam said. “I didn’t sleep for three days after that. So your mother? Just a quirk. She’ll probably think she dreamt it herself. People under stress, Nate, they do crazy things. I ever tell you about the time I saw a toddler lift a car off of his father? Side of the road. Kid knee- high to a grasshopper just picked a car right up. Damnedest thing. Right, Mike?”
“Uh, right,” I said. “Nate, look, just do this job for me. Keep her safe. You can do that. I know you can.”
Nate huffed and puffed a bit, but it was clear to me he was just happy to be part of the group. Even if it’s hard to depend on him to always do the right thing, it’s easy to depend on him emotionally. He is, after all, my brother and if there’s one thing I know about Nate, it’s that he wants to perform well. It’s not his fault that he doesn’t always have the natural ability.
Well, he might have the natural ability, actually. It’s not his fault he’s cultivated it toward stupidity on occasion. Not everyone is cut out to be a spy.
Besides, people tended to like him. Like Zadie, who put her arm through Nate’s and let him guide her outside to his car, which left me and Sam alone in the kitchen.
“Superman,” I said.
“No, no,” Sam said. “I’m just a regular guy like you, Mike.”
“No, that story. About the kid. That’s from the first Superman movie.”
“You saw that?”
“Everyone saw it,” I said.
“Not Nate, apparently,” Sam said. “Anyway, what do you think? We get out of this alive?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t read my tea leaves this morning.” I pointed down at the hand. “Maybe we get a palm reader over here and find out what his palm says and go from there.”
“Good idea,” Sam said. “Maybe get a Ouija board, too?”
I laughed. It felt pretty good. “This won’t be the hardest thing we’ve ever done,” I said. “All we need to do is walk into a hornet’s nest and not get stung.”
“It’ll be like that time in the Sudan,” Sam said. “Remember that?”
“Which time?”
“1993?”
“Were we there then?”
“Oh,” Sam said, “I can’t remember anymore. But what I remember is that we ended up as the last two people alive and we fought our way out using nothing but our good looks and sharp wit. And then we had mojitos afterward. Ring any bells?”
“That was in Venezuela,” I said. “2002.”
Sam closed his eyes. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I do remember. Lotta water under our bridge, Mikey.”
I pulled out a drawer and found a big Ziploc freezer bag and slid the hand into it. “Well,” I said, “then let’s go make some waves.”
16
Just as it’s nearly impossible these days to fake your death, there’s also no easy way to prepare for your likely actual death other than recognizing that it’s one of several possible outcomes. Normal people don’t usually possess this ability. It’s an existential conundrum and most people can’t even define “existential” or “conundrum” much less handle the philosophical questions of being. When you’re trained by the government to kill, you get a crash course in desensitization. From the first day of boot camp onward, you speak of death-both the death of your enemy and your own.
From the cadence chants of basic training to the man-shaped silhouettes you’re taught to fire at, to the new virtual-reality simulations that allow you to take on an entire city of people, you become inured to the common fear of death that a sane person might have. You’re willing to walk into enemy fire because you’ve already survived.
The result of this training is a series of skills that most humans really shouldn’t want, including the inability to feel fear when they really should.
Give this training to the wrong person and you just might give a platform for a burgeoning sociopath.
Give this training to the right person… and you end up with me and Sam riding howling hogs down a street in Miami, our saddlebags filled with paperwork and patches belonging to the Ghouls Motorcycle Club and one human hand, minus a severed pinkie.
We pulled up across the street from Purgatory and parked our bikes. It was barely 11:00 A.M. and traffic was light, but regular. Even a cop drove by once, but he didn’t bother to slow down. A block up the street was a 7-Eleven. A block down the street was a McDonald’s. There was a used-car lot within fifty feet of where we stood. And at 11:00 A.M. all had customers.
In front of Purgatory was the gold Lincoln and two bikes. Clete wasn’t holding up the front door, for obvious reasons, but his replacement looked to be cut from the same piece of cloth. Neck tats, arms the size of barrels, sunglasses, jeans, a bat.
He also had an iPhone, which he was playing with and therefore didn’t notice me and Sam staring directly at him. Not even the Ghouls can get a decent security detail, apparently.
“That guy is pretty scary-looking,” Sam said. “If a softball game breaks out, we’re done for.”
“Be careful,” I said. “He might also text you to death.”
“Kids,” Sam said, “they love the texting.” Another cop drove by. It wasn’t that odd, really. It wasn’t the best neighborhood in the city, or the worst, but it was also only about a mile from a substation where, a few months earlier, a delusional gangster had decided he’d go Terminator and try to shoot several police officers using a paintball gun. It didn’t go well, which told me that at least the cops were pretty good shots.
“Nice that there’s a legal presence here,” Sam said. “It would be a real shame if they just let a criminal organiza
tion roost here under their nose.”
“Alleged criminal organization,” I said.
If the Ghouls were really savvy, they’d call the cops as soon as we got anywhere near them. We were in possession of stolen property, after all, and they knew we’d be strapped.
Which gave me an idea.
I called 911.
“Yes, hello,” I said, “an eighteen-wheeler holding about ten cars on it? Toyotas? Maybe Hondas? Anyhoo, I think they are foreign cars? Well, I just saw one of those crash into one of those big apartment buildings on 142nd Avenue. Pardon me? Oh, the south part. Maybe south and to the west. There’s a huge fireball. Such pretty colors!”
Before I could continue with the show, the 911 operator told me authorities were on the way and disconnected me.
“Nice,” Sam said. Twenty seconds later, we heard the first sirens in the distance. An ambulance raced by us shortly thereafter, followed by two fire engines and two police cars.
“Good response time,” I said.
“Unless one of us needs an ambulance,” Sam said.
I tossed my cell phone into the street and watched as a second ambulance drove right over it, crushing it to pieces. Making a prank call to 911 isn’t advisable. They tend to track you down, arrest you, and put you in jail. It would be slightly more difficult to find out who I was with my burner crushed into the pavement. It was okay, though; I had another phone on me and another fifty or so at home.
After the authorities passed on by, traffic returned to normal. A city bus rolled by. A low-flying plane pulled an advertisement. A man pushing a taco cart walked in front of Purgatory but didn’t even look up from his feet.
Not a great time to open fire on a city street. Which was good. I didn’t want to get shot.
But sometimes, you need to let the neighbors know you’re home.
“Do you want to shout the hard-core thing or should I?” I asked Sam.
“I’ve got a couple of lines I’ve been working on,” he said.
“Please, no more John Wayne,” I said.
“You’ll have to wait and see.” We both pulled out our guns. He shouted, “Wagons forward, ho!”
I fired two shots into the gold Lincoln, taking out two of its tires. Sam fired two more shots, taking out the other tires. The guy guarding his iPhone surprised us both by throwing down his iPhone and ducking for cover, which was the smart move.
“Hondo?” I said.
“It was on television.”
I stepped out into the middle of the street, my gun on the crouching Ghoul. I could see that he was trying to get something out of his pants; his gun, most likely, which proved yet again how stupid it is to keep your gun in your belt, since it’s not very easy to retrieve it when you’re crouched down hoping to save your life. I walked a few more steps and then said, “Don’t do that.”
The Ghoul looked up at me. “Don’t do what?”
“Your gun. Don’t take it out and don’t try to shoot me with it. If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead. And if you’re not careful, you’re liable to blow your right testicle off. So stand up and pull your gun out slowly and then toss it into the gutter.”
Sam had followed me but was still about ten yards behind me. Cars swerved around him on the street, but no one seemed to be the least bit surprised that two guys with guns were stalking around. The man with the taco cart was about a block away, but hadn’t bothered to turn and look at the commotion. McDonald’s was still serving up Quarter Pounders. Gas was still being pumped. For some reason, the rest of the Ghouls hadn’t stormed out of Purgatory yet, which led me to believe they were expecting a show, which probably meant that the Ghoul on the street was not their most treasured asset.
“Man,” the un-treasured asset said, “you’re in the wrong place,” but he tossed his gun into the gutter anyway.
“People keep telling me that,” I said. “And yet, here I am. I wonder why that is?”
“Do you know who you’re shooting at?” he asked. He sounded incredulous. It was the default sound of tough guys who can’t believe other people don’t think they are tough.
“If you have to ask that question,” I said, “then the answer is yes. Now, run inside and tell your boss that there are some bad men outside who’d like to talk to him.”
The Ghoul didn’t move.
“He gonna shoot me in the back?” he asked. He indicated Sam with a lift of his chin.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Duke, you gonna shoot him in the back?”
“Out here, due process is a bullet,” Sam said, which only confused the Ghoul.
“That means no,” I said, though that wasn’t true. It just meant Sam had also seen The Green Berets recently. “But walk backwards if it makes you feel more comfortable.”
The Ghoul did just that, but before he made it up the steps to the door, it opened and Lyle Connors stood in the doorway. He wore a linen summer suit with no tie. His hair was parted conservatively to one side and his face was freshly shaved.
He walked down the steps, shoved the doorman aside and stepped past both Sam and me to look at his car. He walked around it twice, checking for damage. There wasn’t any, apart from the tires. He seemed content with that.
“Feds don’t knock anymore?” Lyle said to me.
Not what I was expecting.
“Wouldn’t know,” I said. “But I figured trying to get past your man at the door would be difficult.”
Lyle laughed. “You send a woman to do your work yesterday and you’re scared of one guy? The FBI isn’t what it used to be.”
“I don’t know who you think is FBI,” I said, “but it ain’t us.”
“No?” Lyle said. “Since when are the Redeemers back in business in Florida?”
“Since Oregon stopped being profitable,” I said. “And since we got tired of having the FBI wearing our colors and riding our bikes.”
Lyle regarded me for a few seconds. I couldn’t tell if he was looking for cracks in the veneer or if he was just trying to apply some silent pressure, see if I or Sam started babbling or backtracking.
“That so?” he said. “How come we haven’t seen any soldiers? You two and your crazy woman, that’s the whole unit?”
“You don’t believe me, that’s your business. Doesn’t change the fact I got this.” I reached inside my vest and pulled out the Ziploc bag now holding Bruce Grossman’s hand-or, well, the hand portraying Bruce Grossman’s hand-and dropped it at Lyle’s feet. I’d shoved a couple of the Ghouls’ patches into the bag, too, just for effect. “I also got a bunch of maps in my saddlebag that list all the safe houses you got between Tallahassee and here. That’s gotta be worth something to someone, right, Duke?”
“You got that right,” Sam said. “Put it on eBay. Get the Banshees and the feds to bid against each other.”
Lyle’s right eye twitched. He didn’t look horribly mad, but that twitch wasn’t because he was over-caffeinated.
“What’s your name?” he asked me.
“You can call me Jasper.”
“Okay,” he said. “Tell me something, Jasper, what makes you think I’ll do business with you?”
“It doesn’t matter. Either you do business with me or you don’t, I’ll still get what I want. Professional courtesy, I came to you first, seeing as the Banshees tried to screw both of us. You don’t pay up, we take over this territory. I make my money either way.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Lyle said.
“You would,” I said. “Because we’d be wearing your colors. We’d go door-to-door looking for old ladies to smack up. We’d set up shop outside elementary schools to move meth. We’d pimp out thirteen-year-old girls. And when the police got close? We’d take them to your safe houses. We’d leave a trail out to your processing plant in the Glades. We’ll go out to Sturgis, Oklahoma City, Houston and we will shoot at people. And when we get tired of that? We’ll come back here to Miami and maybe we’ll kill some Cuban Mafia don and then a cop and a rabbi and a pri
est and maybe we’ll kidnap Dwyane Wade. All in your colors.”
That twitch? A full-blown blink.
Lyle scratched absently at his neck until a thick red line rose up from the skin just above his Adam’s apple. “Maybe you’re not feds,” he said. Lyle looked down the street, his eyes squinted into narrow slits, like he was trying to make out something very important in the distance that he knew should be there but wasn’t. “You hungry?” he asked. “I can’t negotiate on an empty stomach.”
I looked at Sam. He gave a quick shrug. “We could eat,” I said.
Lyle reached down and picked up the bag with Bruce Grossman’s hand in it. He unzipped it, pulled out the Ghouls’ patch, and then took a moment to examine the evidence before dropping it back onto the pavement with a dull thwack. “Buster,” he said to the doorman, “get rid of this. Put it in the incinerator. Chop it up. Feed it to your pit bull. Just get rid of it.”
“Got it,” Buster said.
“And tell the boys inside that I’m going down the street to McDonald’s for a business meeting,” Lyle said, “and that if I don’t come back in an hour, they should go kill everyone named Grossman in Miami. Got that?”
The McDonald’s down the street from Purgatory didn’t have a Playland. It was one of those recently renovated McDonald’s that looks like a Starbucks slathered in trans fats and encourages people to come in with their laptops and spend the day eating French fries and Oreo McFlurrys while sucking down the new McDonald’s espresso drinks.
So even though there was no area dedicated to screaming children, there were plenty of postcollegiate men with messenger bags and wire-rim glasses working on their novels or resumes or letters to Parade magazine about the state of Jennifer Aniston’s romantic relationships.
Lyle insisted on buying us lunch, so Sam and I found a circular table with a good view of the door and of Lyle. Sam watched the door. I watched Lyle. Not that we didn’t trust him, aside from him being a murderous biker gang leader, but it just made good sense to watch the hard target and pay mind to any soft ones coming through the door.
It probably made sense to Lyle, too. We’d already proved that we weren’t afraid of taking him on in what would otherwise be the sacred ground of Purgatory, and that we could predict his moves enough so that we were waiting on his men at Zadie’s. Going to McDonald’s? That wasn’t something I could have honestly assumed.
