The Giveaway

17

When you’re out for revenge, you tend to lose the ability to think beyond the act of retribution, the fleeting emotion of righting a real or perceived wrong. While I didn’t care for the existence of the Ghouls Motorcycle Club, the fact was they hadn’t actually tried to come at me. They’d only come at Bruce Grossman because he made the error of robbing the wrong damn stash house. That he wanted to give back what he couldn’t use, while admirable, didn’t make him any less guilty of a crime, nor did the fact that he robbed them in order to provide medical care to his dying mother.

When you live in a civil society, you must adhere to the rules. Without rules, only the toughest, most aggressive of the pack will survive.

Bruce Grossman wasn’t tough.

Bruce Grossman wasn’t particularly aggressive.

Bruce Grossman wasn’t even a great bank robber. He was just a lucky one, whose adventures had become romanticized lore, such that even Fiona had heard of him and the FBI wanted to employ him.

And now I had to protect him, which meant two things.

I needed to dispose of the Ghouls and everything of theirs that Bruce possessed. If I could sell it all to the Ghouls, that would make for a perfect order of life, but I knew well enough that come midnight, there would be war.

Bruce Grossman had to stay dead. If he managed to get arrested again, the Ghouls would know, and then he would be dead again, but with a headstone and appropriate services.

I sat in my mother’s living room and explained both of these things to Bruce. He nodded his head once but then didn’t say anything at first. Sam and Fi were in the kitchen working on a laptop to get some pertinent information and pretending not to listen to our conversation, though every few seconds I heard Fiona sigh or mutter something like, “Oh, just put him on the rack, for God’s sake!” Luckily, Bruce’s hearing wasn’t so swift.

Zadie, my mother and Maria kept themselves busy at the kitchen table trading People magazines back and forth. I could tell my mother was getting jittery from the lack of tar in her body but she was somehow managing to not smoke inside her own home. My bout of childhood bronchitis cursed her.

“So,” Bruce said, as though he’d downloaded my thoughts, “you grew up in this house?”

“I did,” I said. “Nate, too.”

“And your dad, where’s he?”

“Dead,” I said. “But he haunts the linoleum in the laundry room.”

“And you liked it here?”

“Can’t say that I did.”

“Your brother? Did he?”

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t always the happy place it is now. We only put the razor wire in for you.”

“But this is home, right?”

“For better or worse, Bruce, this is home.”

“I go and work for the FBI,” Bruce said, “I never see home again. I lose everything that’s me. What if they stick me in Phoenix or something? Me and Sammy the Bull get to hang out together? Is that what my life would be? I’d rather be in prison.”

“Sammy the Bull is in prison,” I said.

“See what I mean?” Bruce said.

“Listen to me,” I said, “you go to prison, you’ll be dead in twenty- four hours. There are Ghouls in every prison in the country. You turn to the feds, they’ll put you up somewhere where your mother can get help and maybe you have to sit around talking about robbing banks all day, or maybe you don’t do anything, because what you have here of the Ghouls, all of this information, that’s one deep cover the feds don’t have to run. You’d be saving lives. Most notably your own and, for a while, your mother’s.”

That seemed to resonate with Bruce. “Okay,” he said, “okay. I get that.”

“One thing,” I said. “If Sam can swing this, you have to recognize that your life of crime is over.”

“What about, say, I see a pack of gum at the CVS and no one is around?”

“You wait at the counter with your fifty cents.”

“What about running red lights? I still get to run red lights every now and then? What about cheating at cards? Is that against the law?”

Bruce was getting agitated, just as I figured he would, which is why I left out one key ingredient to this conversation. One dangling carrot that I knew Bruce could not resist if offered.

“There’s maybe one thing you could do,” I said.

“Yeah? Cheat at bingo?”

“How would you like one more score?” I said.

“I’ve seen this movie,” he said, but, oh, there was a spark in his voice, so I played it out.

“Never mind, then,” I said. “Sam will call the feds, see what we can work out.”

“Let’s not be hasty,” Bruce said. “You haven’t even told me the score.”

I smiled. “That’s the super criminal we know and love,” I said. I waved Sam and Fi over.

“Finally,” Fiona said, this time loud enough that everyone could hear.

Sam sat down between Bruce and me on the sofa and handed him the laptop. “You recognize this?” he asked.

On the screen was a two-story house in what appeared to be a nice neighborhood. The lawn was cut. The windows had white shutters. In the driveway was a Volvo SUV. You could almost hear the sound of a gold dog barking and small, adorable children telling their J. Crew-model mother that they were bored.

Suburbia personified.

“Am I supposed to?” Bruce asked.

“It’s a stash house belonging to the Banshees,” Sam said.

“Nice taste,” I said. I looked at the address. It was a neighborhood only a few miles from my mother’s that was once just open fields but was now a housing development absurdly called Coconut Commons. Still, the homes were the kinds thirtysomethings imagined in their Pottery Barn dreams.

“The Banshees just know how to protect their interests,” Sam said.

Sam was probably correct. Houses in nice neighborhoods don’t get robbed as often as houses in bad neighborhoods and just because the Banshees were criminals, it appeared they at least read the newspaper more often than the Ghouls did. Pick up the Miami Herald on any given day and you’re more likely to see a home invasion robbery in the toughest parts of Liberty City or Miami Gardens than in the toniest areas of Key Biscayne.

“So you never cased this place?” Sam said.

“No,” Bruce said, “it doesn’t look familiar.”

“What’s inside?” I said.

“My buddy who did undercover? He says they have a couple houses like this all through Miami that they grow marijuana in.”

“In?” I said.

“Yeah,” Sam said, “they gut all the rooms and turn the entire place into a hydroponic farm. Maybe have two or three guys living in the place, tending to the crop.”

“What’s there to steal?” Bruce said.

“Finally,” Fiona said, “someone asks a good question.”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Sam said. “They don’t keep cash here, or if they do it’s just a small amount, and we don’t know if they’ve got a new crop that they are cutting and bagging, so could be that the worst case is that all there is to steal is a bunch of trees, which might be hard for Bruce to hustle out.”

“He wouldn’t be going alone,” I said.

“I dunno, Mikey,” Sam said. “You get caught walking out of that house holding a bunch of trees, that’s not something you can easily talk your way out of if the nosy neighbors get the law involved. Last thing you need is to get picked up by the police.”

“I can think of worse things,” I said.

“You don’t want to be locked in one place for too long,” Sam said.

“Well, that’s true,” I said. “Besides, I thought Fiona might enjoy this.”

“There is no ‘might,’” Fiona said. “I will enjoy this. Provided you don’t slow me down, Bruce.”

She gave him one of those looks that makes men do stupid things in hopes of seeing it again, maybe with fewer clothes involved. Bruce, naturally, had no chance with Fiona, but then very few people did.

I’d seen that look a few times. Never regretted the outcome. Too much, anyway.

“What if there is a new crop?” Bruce said.

“You don’t need to take all of it,” I said. “Just enough to make the Banshees angry.”

“How will they know who they are mad at?” he asked.

“I’ve got that worked out,” I said and told him what our plan was. All the Banshees would need to see was a single Ghoul patch left on the floor. No one had access to Ghoul colors but the Ghouls; or at least that was the case prior to Bruce Grossman’s booty. Fiona and Bruce would leave just enough evidence to point the Banshees in the right direction. And then we’d do the rest.

“What if this doesn’t work?” Bruce asked.

“That’s not a possibility,” I said.

“You can say that,” he said, “but you’ll pardon me for saying that I’ve never done a job with a partner before. You want me to break into the place without ever having seen it. I normally spend a few days, maybe a week, making sure I know every angle. How much time do we have for this?”

I looked at my watch. “None,” I said. “We case it now. Then we make our move.”

“I don’t get it,” he said. “How can you be sure the Banshees will be out of the house? And what about the neighbors? Have you thought any of this through?”

When you’re a spy, sometimes the best way to explain a complex plan is to lie. It saves everyone a lot of worrying and heartache.

“It’s all taken care of,” I said. “We’ve actually been planning this for months, Bruce. Really. Since long before you came on the scene.”

“Really?” he said. He looked to all of us and we all nodded.

Yes.

Sure.

Absolutely.

It didn’t matter, really. Bruce wanted to hear the positive responses because he wanted to do the job. The only thing that could dissuade him would be if I told him it was going to end with him in a body bag. Bruce was a good bank robber, but he wasn’t a “please go on without me, I’ll just die right here” kind of guy.

“Okay, then, I guess I’ll have to put my trust in you, Michael. And Fiona,” he said. “I trust you, Fiona.” Bruce gave Fi a smile that was probably very enticing over at Sherman’s Deli but didn’t do much for women under seventy.

“Okay,” I said. “You agree to this, then you’re agreeing to Sam making a few calls to see what can be done for you. There’s no guarantee. If the feds don’t want you, your friend Barry is going to have to find you a new life. Either way, your time as Bruce Grossman is done. Understand?”

“Being Bruce Grossman was never that great, honestly,” he said. He looked down at his hand, at his missing finger, and shook his head. “You know, if I had to do it all over again, I think I would have made a pretty good spy. What do you think, Michael?”

“Maybe something a little less interactive,” I said.

He chuckled. “Hmm, maybe so. You know what I might like to do in this new life? Maybe get a wife and settle down. After my mom is all taken care of, of course. Get a house in Big Sur. Maybe have a couple dogs or chickens or hamsters, you know? Something I have to take care of that I can’t mess up too badly. That sounds like a good life, you ask me.”

“Maybe take Maria with you,” I said. The girl was listening to Bruce prattle on, but didn’t seem upset. She had her own dreams, some of which the Ghouls had frightened right out of her.

“Naw,” she said, “I just wanna go home. But Bruce, you got the idea. Nicky? He never had no idea what he was gonna do. But you seem like a better guy. Head screwed on, but screwed on right.”

Sometimes the people you least expect to have insight are the ones who deliver the most unvarnished truth.

“We’re good, then?” I said. Bruce said that we were. “Sam,” I said, “why don’t you see if anyone might be interested in the whereabouts of a master criminal with a fascinating insight into the mind-set of bad guys the world over.”

“Will do, Mikey,” Sam said and gave Bruce a big pat on the back, the special code between men that actually means “please leave so we can talk about you,” which fortunately Bruce wasn’t aware of and thus took the pat to mean we were all part of a big team and thus walked off with a nice stride of confidence. Nevertheless, Sam, Fiona and I walked outside and stood on the front lawn to continue our conversation.

“Nice smile you gave old Brucey there, Fiona,” Sam said. “He’ll be on blood thinners by the morning.”

“We all have unique skills that help people acquiesce. It’s not my fault that I was born with unbelievable charm.”

“We’re going to need more than Fi’s charm to get Bruce FBI protection,” Sam said.

“There’s a hit squad looking for him,” I said. “Shouldn’t that be enough?”

“The fed boys didn’t even respond to him dropping off the Ghouls’ papers. He was a big deal twelve years ago, but times change, Mikey. Unless someone in the Ghouls was born in Qatar, that’s back-burner stuff. He’s not the asset he was.”

“So make him sound better,” I said.

“How am I going to do that?”

“Don’t you have any friends who could, say, improve his sheet? Make it look like he was suspected of even more than he actually has copped to?”

“I could talk to some people,” Sam said.

“Unsolved bank heists in foreign countries would be good,” I said.

“What about I get him implicated in fixing American Idol, too?”

“Whatever it takes,” I said. “I’m going to call Barry and see what we can cook up.”

Ten minutes and fifteen phone numbers later, I reached Barry.

“Michael,” he said, “good to hear from you.” In the background I heard birdsong. Pleasant.

“Sorry to interrupt your vacation,” I said.

“No worries,” he said. “Did you know North Dakota is officially the friendliest state in the country?”

“That’s great,” I said.

“Not the best-looking people,” he said, “but you make concessions when your life is at risk. They also eat everything with a cup of melted butter as a dipping sauce.”

“I need your help,” I said.

“I was afraid of that.”

“Your friend Bruce Grossman might need a new life,” I said. “We’re trying to get him a little insurance.”

“I thought that’s what you nice government people did for a living.”

“I’m not the FDIC,” I said. “And besides, he’s your friend, remember?”

“Right, right,” Barry said. “I’m just used to playing hard to get.”

“Endearing,” I said. “I take it you can handle your business from North Dakota?”

“If Lewis and Clark could, I can,” Barry said. “Did you know that they wintered in North Dakota? True story.”

“That’s great. Here’s what I need: You need to build an identity for Bruce and Zadie. Good stuff. Passports that can get them into somewhere nice with good medical care.”

“I can’t just materialize that,” Barry said. “You realize that?”

“Barry,” I said, “it’s either that or one day Zadie goes for therapy and comes out to some lead- pipe hitters. We’re working our end tonight, but I need to know there’s an out.”

“I can get decent stuff,” Barry said, “but we’re not talking about documents that can get them into Europe. Maybe South America. But even then, it won’t be permanent good.”

This was not good.

“Where are you?” I said.

“A safe location.”

“Specifically, Barry. This is important.”

“Valley City. Sign says it’s the City of Bridges.”

“What are the banks like there?”

“Nice. Filled with money.”

“Old or new?”

Barry paused, figuring out what I was moving toward. “You want me to check the safe-deposit boxes?”

“If you have the chance.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah,” I said, “rent an apartment. A nice one.”

“You’ll be surprised to know that Valley City isn’t exactly brimming with high-end condo complexes.”

“Rent a house, then,” I said. “Something big and near a hospital.”

“Anything else?” Barry asked.

“A bank account,” I said. “Fill it appropriately.”

“This part of your fee?”

“No,” I said, “this is part of you making sure your friend Bruce Grossman and his mother have a way out that does not include summering in Mozambique.”

“You put it like that…” Barry said.

“When can you get this done?”

“I’ll have it in place tonight. How will I know if it’s on?”

“If you don’t hear from me after midnight,” I said, “don’t come back to Miami.”

“I love working with you, Mike,” Barry said and hung up.