The Giveaway bn-3

by Tod Goldberg

  While Sam got the van, I took a look inside the house. The entryway was nicely tiled and the living room looked like it had been cut and pasted from a Pottery Barn catalog. But one thing you can’t hide with nice tile and furniture is the smell of an entire forest of marijuana being cultivated inside of a house, particularly since the temperature in the house was at least eighty-five degrees, which gave everything a dank, swampy feel.

  I opened a door at the end of the entry hall and found what used to be a kitchen. There was still plenty of counter space and a nice sink in place, but the flooring had been ripped out and a series of tubes and cables crisscrossed the place where the floor used to be. Water sprayed periodically into the air from one of the tubes and a whirring overhead fan spun lazily. For a moment I was reminded of Havana, until I remembered that when I was in Havana I never saw ten- foot-high marijuana trees inside a $500,000 house.

  I heard a sound behind me and saw that Max was starting to stir. I would need to handle this situation delicately. I knelt down in front of him.

  “Max,” I said, “you’ve been hit in the face.”

  “My jaw really hurts,” he said.

  “It’s going to for about a week. You might want to see a dentist if your bite feels off.”

  Max processed that. “You’re not here to kill me?”

  “No,” I said, “but I am going to need to kidnap you for a little while. When we release you, I’d advise you to find another line of work. Because eventually? Your bosses would find a reason to kill you and that’s no kind of job security.”

  “Yeah,” Max said. “The economy, man, you know.”

  “I know,” I said. Sam pulled the van around, so I stood Max up and walked him outside. We put him in the back of the van, which didn’t seem to bother him, since he just kept jabbering on.

  “Should I duct-tape his mouth?” Sam said.

  I thought for a moment. “No,” I said, “let’s see if we can find him some pork rinds.”

  “Good plan,” Sam said and closed the door on Max.

  After we got the van moving, I called Fiona. “You ready?” I asked when she picked up.

  “What am I doing again?”

  “You’re indulging a fantasy,” I said. “And probably saving a life.”

  “And what do I earn on this?”

  “Steal whatever you like,” I said.

  “No one to beat up, then?”

  “I think you’ve done enough.”

  “I just assumed there’d be some terribly scarred and intermittently stoned caretaker I could engage.”

  “No, I took care of that,” I said. “The house is empty. The street is vacant for at least thirty minutes, so get in and out and make as big a mess as possible.”

  “Yes, about that.” Fiona lowered her voice. “Bruce wants to break in through the roof.”

  “So break in through the roof,” I said.

  “Michael, I don’t want him falling on me,” she whispered.

  “The front door is open,” I said. “Tell him to check it first and then get in and out.”

  “That’s a plan I can support,” she said, a hint of mischief in her voice. Happy again. Nothing like the freedom to do a rush bang-and-run job to get Fiona off the bubble.

  “Just make sure to leave enough evidence,” I said.

  “Michael, if Bruce keeps hitting on me, I might leave a body,” she said. “Anything else?”

  “Don’t touch the SUV in the driveway,” I said. “It’s wired with enough C-4 to take out the eastern seaboard.”

  “Nice touch.”

  “And if any soccer moms return to their homes early, try not to do anything that might accidentally send the SUV up in flames. Or any of their SUVs.”

  It’s not that I think Fiona would actually do these things. Rather, it’s important to point out to her that I know she’s capable of doing these things, which will put the seed in her head, true, but will also remind her that she’s not allowed to blow up everything in the vicinity. These days, with no one protecting me and no one protecting Fiona but me, it’s wise to keep a buffer between myself and wholesale destruction.

  “You are the enemy of fun,” Fiona said. “Would you like to speak with Robin Hood before we initiate our crime spree?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Great, here he is,” Fiona said and then Bruce said, “Hey, buddy. This is going to work great.”

  “Fantastic,” I said.

  “I’ll show our little Irish friend a trick or two.”

  “You do that.”

  “And Michael?”

  “Yes, Bruce?”

  “Thank you,” he said. “For all of this. I’m an old man. And I know that.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said and meant it.

  “If something happens to me,” he said, “you’ll take care of my mother?”

  “Nothing is going to happen to you,” I said.

  “But if something did.”

  Working with clients is often more about human resources management than actual hand-to-hand fighting or innovative spying technology. People, at the end of the day, want to be protected and want their families to be protected. Bruce, on the other hand, had already done the most he could to try to keep his mother safe, had sacrificed time-years, really-a finger, and was willing to commit a crime against a gang of men who’d just as soon kill themselves as let him walk the earth knowing he’d gotten over on them.

  It wasn’t guts, exactly.

  It wasn’t heroism.

  It was probably a lot like love.

  We do things for our parents because even if we have issues with them, there’s a genetic responsibility. There’s a reason I fixed up the Charger and there’s a reason I’ve fixed my mother’s disposal ten times in the last eighteen months.

  “If a tsunami rolls into Miami,” I said, “or a hurricane or a plague of locusts or every motorcycle gang in the country, know that all of them will need to go through me to get to your mother. And then Fiona, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” I said.

  “Okay, then,” he said. He gave the phone back to Fiona.

  “All taken care of,” I said.

  “Wonderful,” Fiona said and then, in the background, I heard Bruce shout, “Let’s do some crime, little lady!”

  19

  If you really want to violate someone, to make them feel afraid and lost and vulnerable, steal something from them that appears to have zero street value. Stealing a computer or a television or a car is an understandable crime-there’s a tangible reward along the line. But if you steal someone’s shoes, or their photo album, or a single candlestick, the person you steal it from is going to have complex emotions of loss coupled with the sense that their lives are somehow being perpetually invaded.

  Which is why Fiona stole all of the Banshees’ C-4 from beneath the SUV.

  And the steering wheel from the SUV.

  And the Obama sticker.

  And destroyed the hydroponic system in the kitchen and set off a fire extinguisher in the upstairs bedrooms, which is where packages of marijuana were being packed and readied for shipment.

  So while Bruce carted away enough marijuana to start his own summer reggae tour-which he and Fiona then promptly dumped into a canal-Fiona carted away the security the Banshees had.

  Not only had they been robbed.

  Not only was their man of the house missing.

  Not only had their means of continued production been destroyed.

  On top of all of that, they also had been made to look weak and foolish.

  And the Ghouls had done it.

  Or, well, that’s what they clearly understood the situation to be, which we overheard since Fiona left a bug in the house, too, which was helpful. After taking Bruce back to my mother’s, the three of us-Sam, Fi and I-listened to the recording from the bug while eating a healthy snack of multiflavored yogurts in my loft.

  The Banshees sounded, not too surprisingly, a littl
e on the salty side of things.

  “I don’t know if what that guy called the Ghouls is anatomically possible,” Sam said.

  “You should learn how to stretch your back muscles,” Fi said.

  “I stretch them plenty,” Sam said. “Carrying Michael around takes a lot of strength, Fiona, don’t kid yourself.”

  I took a bite of my yogurt and tried to concentrate on the men, not on the warring factions of Sam and Fiona. Fi and Bruce had done an excellent job destroying the house and what they stole-including the C-4-indicated a desire not just to rip off the Banshees but to humiliate them, to show them that not only were they weak, but they were vulnerable. And instead of leaving a loose patch-one that maybe had been inadvertently torn from clothing while destroying the house, Fiona took it one step further: she burned the word “Ghouls” into the nice manicured lawn in the backyard.

  Give Fiona thirty minutes and she’ll give you wholesale destruction of real property.

  The Banshees were mad. They wanted revenge.

  Things were finally-finally-falling into place.

  “What he just said, about the lead pipe? That’s not possible unless you’re in zero gravity,” Sam said and then his cell phone rang. We’d been waiting all day to hear back from the feds, see if they’d take Bruce and his mother in.

  “That them?” I asked.

  “Looks like it,” he said and answered it. He mumbled a few words, nodded his head, suggested that the person on the other end of the phone line might, in fact, want to try out a zero-gravity chamber sometime in the near future, and bring a lead pipe with them, and then clicked his phone off.

  “No dice,” he said.

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  “I tried making his file look better, even tied him into a bank job in Manila in the early nineties, but it seems like it would have been impossible for him to be there.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I do say,” Sam said. “Apparently he was in court that day. In Michigan. As a juror.”

  “If he wasn’t smart enough to get out of jury duty,” Fiona said, “why on earth would your government want to help him?”

  “Well, that and the recession. My guy tells me that Witness Protection spending got cut in half, so they’re only taking people who really need protecting. You know, like those Bear Stearns people. Looks like it’s on Barry to set him up.”

  This wasn’t the best result. But we could make it work. What I knew was that in order to get Bruce to go along quietly, to not rob any more places, to actually go on his own accord to North Dakota, we’d need to convince him he was going under protection.

  Fortunately, he had a bit of money and Barry could get him more, plus a North Dakota-good identity. He would need to stay there at least until all the Ghouls in Miami were somewhere else. Even still, we’d give them back their treasured paper and fabric. All of this for paper and fabric.

  In the meantime, we had to make sure that the Ghouls and the Banshees met somewhere in the middle of this action, so that they might just cancel each other out. Or, better yet, find themselves locked up for several years-enough time to get Zadie set up in permanent care and Bruce in a place where he couldn’t hurt himself.

  So while Sam and Fiona continued listening to the bug, I called Barry and told him what he needed to know.

  “Complicated,” Barry said.

  “Busy week, Barry,” I said.

  “Mike, Valley City is a very calming place,” he said. “Maybe you and Fiona should rent a cabin here and rekindle the passion when this is all through.”

  “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.”