The Giveaway

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 little 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.”

“Mom,” I said, as calmly as possible, “wake Nate up and tell him to secure the house. He’ll know what to do.”

I didn’t actually know if this was true, but it would take me ten minutes to get home and with what we already had in place surrounding the house, all Nate really needed to do was turn off HGTV, close the shutters and make sure he had plenty of bullets nearby.

“What about me?” she asked.

“Grab your shotgun and stay low,” I said.

There was a pause. This was not a time for pauses.

“Where’s your shotgun, Ma?”

“In the car with Bruce.”

No.

No.

No.

This was not happening.

We were already out of the loft, running down the stairs. The bikes were there, as was the Charger. I wasn’t looking especially biker-ish in my worker uniform anymore, so I didn’t bother with the artifice. At some point, disguises and poses and your ability to sidle up to someone become irrelevant.

In those cases, a bad man with a bad woman, armed to the teeth with automatic weapons and driving a 1974 Charger usually suffices.

“Where is Bruce?”

“Don’t use that patronizing tone, Michael. He’s an adult.”

“Ma,” I said, “those two men out in front of the house are there to kill Bruce. They are also there to probably kill me. The odds are fair that if they see you first, they’ll kill you, too, so pretty please, with sugar plum fairies, tell me where Bruce went.”

“He ran out to get us all some dinner. He said he had steaks in his freezer at home.”

I pressed down on the gas and the Charger lunged forward. “I will be there in seven minutes,” I said. “If those two men get any closer to the house, shoot them.” I hung up and called Sam. “Change to the itinerary,” I told him. “The Ghouls are staking out my mother’s house.”

“That’s not good, Mikey.”

“Understatement,” I said. We came to a stoplight and, after safely checking both directions of oncoming traffic, and properly flashing my lights and honking the horn… I blew through it going about ninety-five. Beside me, Fiona was loading guns and strapping knives to herself, which, while hot, would not be a great experience if we happened to get sideswiped.

Or pulled over by a cop.

Like the one I didn’t see hiding behind a parked RV until I was already fifty yards beyond him and screaming toward my mother’s house.

His lights immediately went on, as did the blaring siren.

“Do I hear a siren?” Sam said.

“No,” I said.

“That’s good,” Sam said. “Because for a minute I thought maybe highway patrol was chasing you.”

“It’s actually a siren and a horn you hear,” I said. I looked in the rearview mirror. “And he looks like a regular traffic cop.”

“That’s a relief,” Sam said. “You have some direction for me, Mikey?”

“One moment please,” I said. We were approaching a school zone and even though it was early evening, police tend to hang out near school zones to pick up speeders. And drug dealers. And gangbangers. And if they got lucky today, they’d get a former bank robber for the IRA who now sold guns to Cuban revolutionaries and a burned spy, both of whom had enough artillery on them to take down Guam in a bloody coup.

The motorcycle cop was still behind me and by that point was probably actively working the radio. If it was a slow crime day, they’d probably scramble a helicopter, which would then get the news helicopters in the air, which would then get all of this on the news.

This could work to my advantage, so I gunned the Charger through the school zone, my own horn honking, my own lights blinking, trying to get as much attention as possible.

“Bruce is either dead or hiding somewhere near my mother’s, so I need you to drag the Banshees there.”

“I’m not sure if the rental van can outrun a bunch of hogs,” Sam said.

In my rearview mirror, I could see the motorcycle cop gaining on me. He wasn’t close enough to see my plate and we hadn’t traveled far enough for this to be considered a high-speed chase, because a reasonable lawyer could conjecture that while the cop was on my tail, I was driving so recklessly as to not notice. Plus, I was driving fairly conservatively, if incredibly fast. Safety first and all that.

“You have to try,” I said. “How close are you to the weed house?”

“I can be there in five minutes,” he said.

“When you get there,” I said, “shoot it up. Maybe take out the SUV, make a big bang, big enough that they’ll follow you quick.”

“You sure Fiona got all the C-4?” Sam asked. “I’d rather not add a meteor crater to the list of Miami’s attractions.”

I turned to Fiona-she was quietly sharpening a knife against a mortarboard, as calm and detached as if she were doing her nails (while driving ninety-five miles per hour with the cops on her tail). “All of the C-4 is out of the SUV, right?”

Fiona lifted one shoulder.

“Yes or no, Fi, because Sam is going to blow it up in about three minutes.”

“I guess he’ll know when he blows it up,” she said. “I’d advise him to stand at least one foot from any open flame.”

“Sam,” I said, “do the drive-by like the kids do these days. No stopping to admire. But hang back enough for the Banshees to see you. We need to draw them out right now and get them heading toward my mother’s.”

“On it,” he said and hung up.

As soon as the phone was off, it rang.

Nate.

I handed the phone to Fiona. “Would you mind taking a message?” I said. “I need to not accidentally kill anyone.”

“You really need to get a Bluetooth,” Fiona said. “It’s very dangerous to talk on the phone while driving.”

We flew through an intersection just as another motorcycle cop came peeling into view.

We were now being chased.

This would take some explaining, but that was fine. I’d be happy to explain that I was coming to help my mother, who apparently was being held hostage by a brimming motorcycle gang turf war.

Provided I could get to the house before shots started getting fired.

Fiona answered the phone, said a few words, and then dropped it in my lap. “It’s your brother,” she said.

Sometimes Fiona is difficult just to be difficult. It suits her, but it’s not always an enjoyable aspect of her personality.

“Nate,” I said, just as we passed a Starbucks that used to be a coin-op laundry Nate and I used to steal quarters from (a knife, a paper clip and a can of WD- 40 were all you needed to pry open the coin depository on the old washers). “I can’t really talk. I’m being chased by the police.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I hear a bunch of sirens. That you?”

“I’m about half a mile away,” I said, “coming from the east. That where the sound is coming from?”

“Actually, it’s coming from all over. In stereo, pretty much.”

“Good,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Is there something you wanted to talk about, Nate, or can this wait until after I’m done evading capture?”

“I just wanted to apologize,” he said. “I think these guys found the house because of me.”

“Why is that, Nate?”

I turned left, which was technically away from the house, but I wanted to get a sense of how many police were potentially following me. I knew of two at least, but hadn’t seen any air support.

I used my blinker.

My seat belt was on, and apart from the cache of guns in the car, I was really only guilty of speeding at this point.

And failure to yield.

And some red light problems.

But I was thinking of killing my brother.

“I dropped Zadie off and ran a couple of errands. When I got back she said she had a really nice conversation with a young lady in leather pants about me. Zadie points her out in the parking lot, so I go over and drop a little game on her.”

“Drop a little game on her?”

“I talked her up, told her I was staying out at Mom’s, and, you know, to call me there. Maybe we’d get together and watch religious television together and hand-knit bedspreads. Couple hours later, I realized, you know, maybe that she was a plant.”

“Maybe.”

“And, well, now there’s about fifteen bikers circling the house. I’m really sorry, Michael.”

“How about instead of apologizing, maybe load a couple of guns?”

“Mom is on that,” Nate said. “And Maria is pretty handy around a nine. Zadie’s boiling water in case they break the perimeter. She said that’s how we won World War One.”

I looked into the rearview mirror and saw… nothing. I looked to my right: nothing. I looked to my left: nothing. I looked at Fiona. She’d put away all of her weapons and was now texting with someone.

And I didn’t hear any sirens.

“Nate,” I said, “I’ll be there in two minutes. Don’t let anyone into the house. And if the cops come, stay indoors.”

I pulled over at an intersection only a few blocks from my mother’s.

“What are we doing?” Fi asked.

“Waiting,” I said.

“Is that the best idea?”

“Do you see any police?”

Fiona did the same compass pass I’d just performed. “Where are they?” she asked.

“Listen,” I said.

In the distance I could make out the faint sound of about a hundred sirens humming alongside the growling of motorcycles. There was a good chance the cop following me was called off pursuit for a larger, more dangerous issue-namely, a horde of thugs speeding through residential Miami.

I called Sam.

“ETA?” I said.

“I’ll be there in about five minutes,” he said. “I’ve got a posse on my back that you wouldn’t believe.”

“Any shots fired?”

“Not yet,” Sam said.

“If you pass an open field, bury a bullet.”

“I like that idea,” Sam said.

“Tell me what street you’re on,” I said. He did and then I hung up with him and called 911.

“Yes, thank you, I’d like to report a very serious situation. There are approximately two hundred men on motorcycles chasing a man in a white van down Reston Avenue. One of the motorcycle people just fired a gun. Yes. Very frightening. My name?” I paused for one moment and thought it through. “Clifford Gluck,” I said and then hung up.

“This is exactly how you planned it, right?” Fiona said.

“This is all contingency training, Fi,” I said. “Textbook stuff.”

“Funny,” she said. “Oh, yes, the old pit-two-enemies-together-to-k ill-each-other-off-so-a-third-party-can-prosper textbook. I heard about it on Twitter. The kids love it. Always such a winning plan.”

“Vietnam?” I said.

“Yes, that ended up particularly well.”

“Iraq?”

“Another solid victory for the good guys,” she said.

I kept thinking and watching the intersection, waiting for the inevitable flurry of action. Two or three minutes later, it flashed by: a hunk of white followed by what looked liked a swarm of giant flies. The police were not yet on the scene, but I could already feel the ionic change in the air-a helicopter was nearby, but it was also the release of anxiety and breath and sweat by the people on the street.

When people talk about sensing fear, this is what they mean. When you’re scared, your sweat emits a different smell, a genetic marker that one can pick up on and exploit. The breeze rolls by and things smell and feel different and you start to feel anxious and aware, it’s usually because you’re perceiving someone else’s fear.

“We need to ditch some guns,” I said. If I was going to show up at my mother’s at the same time cops were, it would be wise not to have an arsenal of illegal guns on my person, nor would it be great if Fiona came sliding out of the Charger strapped like Bigfoot was coming after her stamp collection. A pretty face and a cute walk go a long way, but a pretty face and a cute walk and several guns in front of twitchy-fingered beat cops could mean a bullet.

And I really didn’t want Fiona shooting anyone.

“Do you propose I walk into the Chick- fil-A and just hand them what I have?”

She had a point.

I looked around the area. There was indeed a Chickfil-A, but there was also a library, a gas station and three houses. In front of one of the houses was a gutter.

“We’ll dump them in the gutter,” I said.

“I have to tell you that I find this offensive on every level,” she said, but then she gathered up what we had, leaving us each with one gun, and threw the rest into the drain system. She got back into the car silently.

A girl separated from her guns is never a time for joy.

I started the car back up and drove at a natural rate of speed toward my mother’s, though with the windows down so I could hear the sirens and any shots.

The sirens were easy enough to hear-they came in crashing waves.

And then came the gunfire-a wail of shots echoed into the air as I pulled onto the street adjacent to my mother’s. It was mostly small-arms fire from what I could hear, which made sense. The gangs weren’t known to be stocked with a lot of rifles and submachine guns. What was clear, however, was that there was a volley going on-an all-out assault vs. an all-out assault. You could hear the call and response of battle.

This would be good for home values in the neighborhood.

If everything was working as planned-or, at least, as recently devised-the Ghouls and the Banshees were now doing a bit of mutual assured destruction. The police would be arriving soon enough, but one thing police are keen to do is let bad guys kill bad guys. It’s a lot less paperwork in the short and long term. If we got lucky, the Ghouls would be so busy with the Banshees, they’d be forced to forget about Bruce for at least a few minutes, and that meant they’d forget about my mother’s house and all of the people inside.

Still, I had to be there to be sure.

I started to get out of the car, but Fiona stopped me. “You can’t be seen there,” she said. “You walk into the middle of that gunfight and you’ll either be killed or arrested. And if you’re arrested, you have no idea if you’ll ever see freedom again.”

She was right, but I couldn’t stand by, either.

If you’re a good spy, you don’t need to be the instigator of violence to be effective. Sometimes it’s enough just to be the guy who makes everyone else feel safer.

“I’ll be fine,” I said. “Take the car back to the loft. I’ll call you when it’s over.” I leaned over and kissed her once on the cheek before jumping out of the car. I hurdled the Evanses’ side fence, took the Strongs’ back gate in a nice swing move, scaled the Williamses’ block wall, shimmied under the Mecklenburgs’ bougainvillea bush (which was just a sprig when I was a kid) and then wormed my way into my own backyard.

The sound of gunfire was intense, but the sound of approaching sirens was pervasive. I looked up and saw not one but three helicopters hovering.

The news has always loved to televise bad people doing bad things to one another, especially when they do so in unusual places, like, say, neighborhoods filled with blue light specialers.

My main goal now, however, was to navigate the labyrinth of razor wire I’d prepared in the yard, as I’d become accustomed to having two Achilles tendons and had every intention of growing old with both. I put my head down and watched every step, remembering the pattern of the wire, the circle pattern meant to ensnare even the most limber advancing army, which in this case would be me. All I knew was that I had to get into the house and make sure all was okay.

“Don’t take another step or I’ll blast you.”

I looked up to find Zadie clutching a shotgun. She didn’t have her glasses on, so I was likely just a blur moving through the yard. She was looking to her right. I was standing about twenty feet to her left.

“Zadie,” I said, “it’s Michael. Don’t shoot.” I took a step forward and she fired a single shot that conveniently found its way into the dirt about five feet behind me and to the left.

“Are you dead?” she asked.

“No, Zadie, I’m still standing right here.”

“You didn’t run off?”

“No, Zadie, I didn’t. Now put that gun down before you hurt someone.”

“You say you’re Michael?”

“That’s what I say, yes,” I said.

“How do I know it’s you?” she said.

“You could go inside and get my mother,” I said. “Just don’t tell her you shot at me. My mother reacts very poorly to people who try to shoot her son.”

I could almost see the gears working in Zadie’s head. Eventually she lowered the gun. It must have made sense to her, so I kept walking until I was directly in front of her and then gently removed the shotgun from her hands.

“Let me take that,” I said.

“In my day I was a pretty good shot,” she said.

“I’m sure you were,” I said.

The gunfire on the street had come to a stop and now I heard the barking of police officers, shouting, screaming, moaning, and the approaching sound of more than one ambulance. I didn’t know where Sam was, or his condition, only that he’d brought a war zone to bear on my mother’s street and the likely result was that the bad guys were now about to be the incarcerated guys. My first concern, however, was the collateral damage.

I looked Zadie over. She was unwounded. She didn’t even seem all that nervous. “Are you okay?” I said.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve heard people fighting,” she said.

“That was a bit more than a fight,” I said.

“I ever tell you about my husband robbing buses?”

“Yes,” I said.

“So maybe sometimes he wasn’t alone.”

You learn a lot about someone if you know how to get the right stories out of them.

I put my arm through Zadie’s and guided her inside the house, where we found Nate crouched behind a sofa, my mother and Maria beside him. Maria’s dog stood panting over them. There was no blood and it didn’t look like any bullets had come sailing through the windows. I peered out the window and saw a dozen police cruisers, SWAT members, three ambulances and a lot of people on the ground.

This was going to be on the news. Probably nationally.

What I didn’t see was a gold Lincoln. Lyle Connors was behind a desk somewhere following all this on his BlackBerry while sitting in a management course. A good leader has plausible deniability. A great leader has actual deniability.

I also didn’t see a white van. Where was Sam?

“You can get up now,” I said.

“How do you know?” Nate said.

“If you ever see more blue lights in your house than blood, you’re safe.”

Nate checked himself. No wounds. My mother stood up, walked into the kitchen, pulled open a drawer and a pack of cigarettes and immediately lit up. “If I’m going to die,” she said, “it will be on my terms.”

Maria just sat dazed next to Nate, absently petting her dog. This had not been a particularly good week in Maria’s life.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Pretty far from that,” she said. “Can I go home?”

“Soon,” I said.

I looked back outside. Still no Sam, but also no Bruce. I knew Sam could take care of himself and I knew, if given a rope, Bruce had the capacity to tie his own noose. That he-or his body-wasn’t outside was good. If they’d already managed to kill him, it’s likely the Ghouls wouldn’t have bothered with the possible slaughterhouse of an entire household in a quiet Miami neighborhood.

“Maria,” I said, “do you have somewhere safe you can go if need be? A place where your family won’t be under any duress?”

“I have a cousin in Ohio,” she said.

“Ohio is nice this time of year,” I said.

There was a knock on the back door and then it began to open with the same perceptible creak it has had since 1981.

“Get the boiling water!” Zadie shouted.

“Easy there, Toots,” came a voice, followed by the welcome vision of Sam Axe, a Stella in one hand, a gun in the other.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

“Setting the van on fire,” he said.

“I thought that was a rental,” I said.

“Technically, yes, it belonged to a rental company.” Sam kicked off his shoes and plopped down on the sofa. “You know what I like?” he said.

“Being alive?”

“That the Banshees and Ghouls fight Civil War style. One on one side, one on the other. And then everyone goes bang-bang. John Wayne would be proud.”

“Any sighting of Bruce?” I said quietly, lest Zadie start to worry.

“Nope,” Sam said. “Mikey, I don’t have a great feeling about this.”

“No,” I said. I called Fiona to tell her we, at least, were all alive.

“I know,” she said.

“Where are you?”

“I ditched the car a few blocks away and am now standing at the end of the street surrounded by senior citizens in tears. Seems they never knew their neighborhood was a hotbed for criminal activity, or at least it hasn’t been since those Westen boys moved away.”

“Yeah,” I said, “listen. There’s still no sign of Bruce.”

“He’s a cagey one, Michael. He’s probably fine.”

“Keep an eye out,” I said and hung up.

I checked my watch. We didn’t have much time before the police would begin canvassing the neighborhood for information, which meant a bunch of people with a cache of guns and dubious backstories was not going to be good news for anyone.

“Listen up,” I said. “In about ten minutes a cop is going to come to the door. Ma, I need you to collect all of the guns and put them in the laundry room. Inside the dryer and the washing machine will be fine. Put the shotgun in a closet. Maria, for the next hour, you and Nate are a couple and you’ve come over for lunch to meet Nate’s mother. Okay?”

Maria nodded once. Nate seemed happier about this than was reasonable for the circumstances.

“Zadie, you’re…” I paused. “Zadie, you just be yourself.”

“What about me, Mike?” Sam asked.

“You’re Sam Axe, friend to the helpless and downtrodden,” I said.

“Got it.”

I sat down next to Sam on the sofa and took a sip of his beer.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I have no idea anymore,” I said.

It took two hours, but the police eventually came by my mother’s house.

“Everyone okay here?” the cop asked. He was looking at his notebook and didn’t even bother to make eye contact with me.

“Fine, fine,” I said. “Just ruined a nice afternoon for us is all.”

“Seems like there was an explosion here a few months ago?”

“Yes,” I said. By my count, there’d probably been five or six in the last two years. “Faulty wiring. You know how these old houses are.”

“There a good reason there’s razor wire in the bushes out front?”

“My mother’s house has been egged repeatedly by neighbor kids,” I said.

The cop finally looked up at me now with something close to sympathy in his eyes. “Kids can make you crazy.”

“Indeed,” I said.

The cop asked a couple of questions: Had we seen anything prior to the shoot-out? Did we know of any gang members who lived on the street? Had any of us seen a white van in the area? — and after we lied sufficiently, he asked if I had any questions before he left.

“Any idea why they chose here to fight?” I asked.

He turned his palms over. “Who knows, right? Stupid people do stupid things.”

The cop was right, of course, but that didn’t explain where Bruce Grossman was.

After the police allowed us to leave, Sam and I took Maria back to her house but told her now was the time to see what life in Ohio looked like, but to stay in contact as we still didn’t know if we’d need her. The scene outside my mother’s house was grisly, enough so that it seemed likely all the players involved would have much larger concerns than the fact that one guy ripped them off for money, and information, and pride.

Still, I wasn’t convinced Bruce was alive. Fiona may have been correct about his cageyness, but I was more concerned with finding something concrete, so Sam and I drove back to Zadie’s house to see if there was any sign of him. The house looked from the outside precisely the way we’d left it-which is to say, the glass front door was broken and inside the house, tire tracks and cat heads were everywhere.

“I’m gonna guess Zadie will want this cleaned up before she moves back in,” Sam said.

“That sounds like a good way for Nate to apologize,” I said.

We moved room to room, guns out, just in case someone else was there who maybe wasn’t so friendly. When we stepped into Bruce’s bedroom, it was empty except for a single envelope on the floor with my name on the front.

“You think it’s Dolphins season tickets?” Sam said.

I opened it up and Sam and I read the letter inside: I wanted to say thank you for all of your help. I spoke with Barry and he’s going to set up care for my mother in that place you guys talked about, too, I guess. I’ve spent the last 12 years in prison and I’m not about to go back to prison again, even if it’s a whole state.

Have you ever been to that place? It’s a sweet idea, but

I’m 65. I’ll get the rest of my money to Barry shortly and then I’ll send more when my mother needs it. I’ve got a couple of places I want to check out first, if you know what I mean. Thanks again and thank Fiona for making me feel alive again. Oh-one other thing: I re- turned all of the Ghouls’ paperwork to them while they were busy plotting my death this evening. I’m good to my word, Michael, as you were to yours.

Bruce

I folded the letter in half and in half again and then ripped it into tiny pieces.

“Barry told him the truth,” I said.

“Mike,” Sam said, “they’re friends. What did you expect?”

“This was a chance for Bruce to go completely straight,” I said.

“Just like you?” Sam said. “You maybe thinking about taking a job as a security guard at a bank now? Wasn’t that someone’s bright idea once?”

We walked outside and stood for a moment on the front porch and just looked at the empty street. It was late and the air had turned cool. There were only a few more nights like this left before summer would make even the latest hour feel like noon.

A gold Lincoln pulled down the street then and stopped right in front of the house. The back window rolled down and Lyle Connors stared out at us. He blinked once and then stepped out of his car and walked toward us.

“Hello, Lyle,” I said.

“Jasper,” he said. “If that’s your name.”

“It isn’t,” I said.

Lyle ran his tongue over his lips, but he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “Fed?”

“If I were a fed,” I said, “you’d be in prison. But it’s early yet, so you never know.”

“I could have you killed,” he said.

“No, you couldn’t,” I said.

“Well, regardless, my offer to you stands. I like how you work.”

“You’re a criminal, Lyle,” I said. “And by tomorrow at this time, I can promise you that your world will be crashing down around you.”

“I’m Teflon, like Gotti.”

“Gotti’s dead,” Sam said, which caused Lyle to take a step back from us. “And just like you, he was surrounded by guys who snitched him out.”

“Who are you?” Lyle said to me. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even sad, though he should have been, since news reports said at least twenty-five men were dead between the two gangs. He actually sounded genuinely curious. Maybe he just wanted to know who was going to be behind his eventual perp walk.

“My name is Michael Westen,” I said. “I’m a spy.”