The Giveaway

18

Even in the face of a natural disaster-like, say, Hurricane Katrina-people still cling to the belief that they alone can stop Mother Nature and, in the process, save their homes. Looked at unemotionally, it seems silly: Your life for wood, drywall, and furniture? But people tend to form bonds with places, to the point that it’s nearly impossible to separate a person from their possessions.

So if you absolutely must get people to leave their homes, you have to make it seem like their possessions are actively causing the problems.

Most people don’t know anything about their homes. Oh, they know the address. They know which bedroom is drafty in the winter, which is broiling in the summer; they know that the microwave takes thirty second to melt butter and ten seconds to warm up pie; they might even know how to turn off their gas in the event of a leak.

What they don’t know, however, is what they cannot see or choose to avoid… which is why I went door-to-door in the cul-de-sac where the Banshees’ weed farm was located to let people know that there was noxious fungus growing underneath their over-mortgaged dream homes. In order to appear to be an absolute authority on the topic, Sam and I rolled up in front of the homes in a white van. A van and a clipboard could get you into the Kremlin at the height of Communism.

“Noxious?” the man who answered the door at the house next door to the Banshees’ said.

“Yup. Yup,” I said. I possessed two things at that moment meant to instill perfect confidence in this fine gentleman: I was holding a clipboard and I had on a denim shirt. I also had a red bandanna in my hand and every few seconds I used it to wipe off my forehead. “And flammable, too.”

“Flammable?” The man was horrified.

“Yeah, seems like it’s one of those funguses that feeds off of water-based paints. You probably been reading about that? Yeah, see, what had happened is that, you know, back further on in the day when people didn’t care so much about the environment, well, they just dumped their used paint into the gutter. Come to find, ten years later, that stuff is coming to roost. House on Fisher Island blew just this morning.”

“Oh, my,” the man said. “Well, how much time do I have to gather my belongings?”

“None,” I said. “We found a fester under this street. We gotta get all of you out so we can get a hazmat team down there to spray it all with one of those secret government potions.”

“I have a dog. Can I grab my dog?”

“Yeah, old Fido is probably more susceptible, actually. I’d get him out in the next ten minutes there, buddy.”

“Why wasn’t this on television?” he said. It was a good question for him to ask. He should have asked it about five questions previous.

“Sir, we can’t have a pandemic on our hands. We start telling people there’s a fungus-humongous growing in the ground that will blow them up, we’ll have widespread panic. National Guard would get called out. It would just be like giving Al Qaida a blueprint on terror, you know?”

There was no color left in the man’s face five minutes later when he came running out of his house-a barking Maltese under one arm, a laptop under the other. On the corner, Sam ushered a family of five out of a cream-colored split-level.

That left just one more house on the cul- de-sac to evacuate: the Banshees’ smartly appointed factory. Over the course of the last twenty minutes, while Sam and I flushed out the other six families found on Me-Laina Court, I kept my eye on the house for any activity. I saw nothing. The same Volvo SUV that was depicted in the photo Sam pulled up on his computer was parked in the driveway, but oddly there wasn’t a drip of oil to be found beneath it on the pavement.

I walked up behind the car and acted very interested in my clipboard while I took a basic inventory of what was known.

The back window of the Volvo SUV was covered in stickers. OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT.MY SON IS AN HONOR STUDENT AT CASTLE ROCK

ELEMENTARY.

MIAMI DOLPHINS. WE LOVE OUR COCKER! All innocuous enough, except that the window was caked with dirt and the stickers were pulled away from the window.

Inside the Volvo?

Nothing.

Not a scrap of paper.

Not a bottle of water.

Not a toy or a patch of fabric pulled up by the beloved Cocker.

I knelt down to tie my shoe and to see the underside of the carriage.

The SUV had a lattice of thin metal cable running in between all of the tires, in effect locking the car in place. If you tried to tow the car, you’d need a flatbed truck and special equipment-in short, you’d need to make a production of the event, which would provide the homeowner plenty of time to take note of the activity.

If you want to keep law enforcement from sending a battering ram into your garage, park an immobile 4,500-pound block of metal directly in front of the garage door.

Better yet, rig it with explosives. The Banshees did that, too. There was a bundle of C-4 between the two back tires. There was a bundle between the two front tires. There was also a bundle under both passenger doors.

The gases in C-4, when they explode, expand at over 26,000 feet per second. One pound of C-4 would be enough to blow up just the SUV and kill anyone within fifty feet.

There were at least twenty-five pounds of C-4 rigged to the SUV, or enough to take out the house, the truck and the rest of the cul-de-sac, leaving just a steaming crater behind.

The Banshees clearly understood the value of their property. If they’d put that much C-4 on the SUV, what was the inside of the house like?

I walked up to the front door and rang the doorbell. I listened for an echo, but instead the bell was muted inside the house. Even from just outside the door, I could feel the electric energy from inside. There was a discernible hum coming from just beyond the portico where I stood. I waited, and when nothing happened after a few minutes I rang the bell again.

This time I heard the sound of someone walking. The shutters beside the door opened and I made out a man’s face. I waved at him and smiled. Just a guy on your porch to tell you that fungus is going to explode under your house. The shutters closed and a moment later that door cracked open.

“I don’t want whatever you’re selling,” the man behind the door said.

“Not selling. Just telling. We got a situation involving noxious-” Before I could finish, the door slammed shut.

I rang the bell again. It opened just a crack again. “You know how to take a hint?” the man said.

I couldn’t make out the man’s face, but his voice made him sound like maybe he was missing something crucial, like, say, initiative.

Drive.

Will.

It’s the sort of lazy drawl that creeps into common intonation when you tend to get high from your own supply.

I wedged my foot between the door and the frame and then pushed the door open a few feet. The man didn’t even say anything. He just looked at my foot as if it were an interesting bug or a colorful leaf. Surprisingly, the man didn’t look anything like a biker. He was maybe twenty-five, wore a plain white T-shirt and tan cargo shorts, and had on a pair of Crocs. He looked like he could be sitting in a lecture hall at UC Santa Cruz learning about the fascinating sex life of the tsetse fly.

“You gotta get out of here,” he said. “This is private property.”

“Sir,” I said, “look around. We’ve evacuated all of your neighbors. There’s a noxious fungus growing beneath your house. You don’t get outta here, you could die. We need you out of this house in ten minutes.”

The man cocked his head slightly, like he was figuring out an equation. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

I checked my clipboard, flipped over a couple of pages, and then took a pencil from behind my ear and started scratching out some notes.

If you want someone to fear you, take notes in their presence. If you want someone to fear you who might be naturally paranoid due to an overconsumption of marijuana, take notes and ignore the person completely.

“What are you writing there?” he said. I didn’t reply. “You can’t take notes about me. That’s against the law. You can’t just start falsely recording my words, man. You hear me?”

Nothing.

“Look,” he said. “I don’t even live here. I’m just watching the place for some friends. I can’t just leave the house. I promised them I’d stay until they got back. They got, uh, valuable stuff and things and stuff here. You know?”

I looked up from my clipboard. “I’m just noting your refusal to leave here on the form. When the fungus catches fire-did I mention the fungus is flammable? — the state isn’t responsible for any loss of life. So if you’re gonna stay, maybe let any pets out before they get cooked.”

The man stared at me, his mouth slightly agape. It was more than he could take in at one time, apparently.

“Nine minutes,” I said. “That’s how long you’ve got now.”

“Man, you don’t understand,” he said. “The people I work for will be pissed if I leave. Pissed like they will beat me to death pissed. These aren’t nice people.”

“Then why do you work for them?”

“Man, I ask myself that all the time. What I think? My dad was not a big part in my life. All I can figure.”

I looked over my shoulder. Sam stood behind the Volvo with his arms crossed. He was smiling, which told me he appreciated the fine workmanship that went into rigging that SUV up to take out most of the block.

“What’s your name, son?” I said.

He shifted from foot to foot, like maybe he had to pee but didn’t want to tell his dad. “Max Yennie,” he said. “Are you going to write that down?”

“No, Max,” I said.

“Good, I mean, because this shit here, man, it’s not permanent. It’s, like, my passion, but not my permanent passion. Does that make sense?”

“Eight minutes,” I said.

Max Yennie looked into the house and then back at me. “This fungus, it won’t blow up the house if I get out in eight minutes?”

“It won’t blow up if we are able to get underground and stop it, in seven and a half minutes now.”

“See, the thing is-” He started rambling on about the government and about legalization of drugs and about his dad, so I did the only thing I could to close this situation out in a timely fashion: I hit Max Yennie in the face. I grabbed him on the way down and brought him to the floor lightly so he wouldn’t blow out his knee. I punched Max in the chin, not hard enough to do any permanent damage but just enough to keep him out for long enough to get him away from the house.

I waved Sam up to the door.

“You perceive a clear and present danger here with Spicoli?” Sam asked.

“He wouldn’t stop talking long enough for me to convince him to get out,” I said. “Evasive action needed to be taken.”

“What are we gonna do with him? Your mom’s house is getting a little crowded.”

“Let’s drag him inside and tie him up. We’ll figure it out from there. Where’s Bruce?”

“They’re parked about two miles away,” Sam said. “I gotta tell you, Mikey, Fiona is slightly agitated.”

“How can you tell?”

“She texted me. She said she was slightly agitated. Apparently Bruce keeps asking her out for dinner. She’s thinking she might drive him off of a pier if things turn out adversely.”

“I thought she wanted to pick his brain,” I said. “She should be enjoying this quiet time with him.”

We gathered up Max Yennie and tied his hands behind his back with his own belt. It was made from hemp, so it had nice strength. We needed to get him out of the way so that when Bruce and Fiona “broke into” the house, he wouldn’t pose a problem. It would have been easier for me to run in and do the job myself, but in order for us to get Bruce aboard-really, to save him from himself-I needed to have him feel like he was the mastermind of a great crime. Having Fiona help him was just a bit of sugar; something he could hold on to in the future when he was working with suits on issues related to bank security.

Or that was the plan provided Sam ever heard back from his buddies in the Bureau. If he didn’t hear back from them, we’d need Barry’s help. “Bring the van around,” I said to Sam once we had Max restrained appropriately. “Let’s get this guy out of sight.”

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!”