The Giveaway

5

Every successful organization, pedestrian or criminal, has a hierarchy. The United States, apart from the occasional hijacked election, is the perfect example of this. Every four years, without violent civil unrest, leadership is allowed to change and, with it, ideology. Countries with dictators also have a hierarchy and within it change also frequently occurs. That change might not include the murderous head of state, but on a local level ministers and department heads move around, different mullahs are favored more than others, and the occasional bureaucrat makes a leap because of a well-timed snitch operation. But belief systems rarely change in dictatorships because no one wants to die for beliefs anymore. Well, unless there’s a coup, and then those beliefs are probably the ones people like me have, at some point, put into motion.

Even then there are rules. Break them and people will die, or at least lose their job, or die and lose their job, depending upon just how serious the violation.

You’d think the Ghouls Motorcycle Club wouldn’t have an extensive operating constitution; its members would understand that their jobs were to sell drugs, commit crimes and terrorize people on Honda motorcycles.

You’d be wrong.

Spread across a lovely wicker coffee table that hadn’t been dusted since Clinton was in office, there were pages and pages of the Ghouls’ rules and regulations, a manual as thick and thorough as the actual constitution. Sam and I sat in the living room of Grossman’s house going through the papers, each one stolen in the dark of night from the stash house, while Fiona sat outside with Zadie, apparently having a long conversation concerning US Magazine. From my view in the living room, it looked like they were getting along like sisters. That was Fiona’s unique ability: She could scare you or charm you, all within a few moments.

“So, just so we’re clear,” Sam said to Bruce, “you don’t want to move to Canada, right?”

I’d called Sam after Fiona told me about Bruce’s plight, and now the two of us were trying to figure out how best to keep Bruce alive. Sam’s ideas heretofore had also included face- transplant surgery and literally moving underground, like in an old bomb shelter, because trying to elude the grasp of the Ghouls was like trying to catch water in a strainer.

“I can’t,” he said. “They don’t allow ex-felons there.”

“I’ve got a buddy who could get you a very nice passport,” Sam said.

Bruce seemed to consider this.

“Says here the Ghouls have an organization in Canada, too,” I said. That the official records of the organization were kept in a stash house in the Everglades felt like perpetual stupidity, but then I thought that if I had to look for this information, the last place I’d look would be there, too. And that made sense. Stupid sense, but sense. “In fact, according to this, they have ‘colors in all the corners of the world,’ which means you better start looking at space travel. You know anyone at NASA, Sam?”

“I could make a call,” Sam said.

Bruce exhaled hard from his mouth. Apparently, he didn’t care for our line of conversation. “Look,” he said, “I can’t just disappear. I robbed that place for my mother. If I leave now, who takes care of her? And I’m fifty-five years old.”

I looked at him. He sat in a recliner that was probably first purchased so Zadie would have a comfortable seat for the moon landing. But then, the entire house had a dull, antiquated cast to it from all the cigarettes over the years. Lick the sofa and you could probably get a nice nicotine hit.

“Do you want Fiona to come in and talk to you?” I said.

A dash of wonder and pain shot through Grossman’s eyes. He did and he didn’t. “Okay, fine, sixty-five,” he said. “But my point is that I can’t start running now. I’ve never run in my entire life.”

“I understand,” I said. “But you’ve put yourself in a position.”

“I thought Barry said you knew how to help me, that you were a spy or something,” Bruce said.

“That’s right,” I said. “That doesn’t mean I have invisibility potions. If these guys want to find you, Bruce, they will find you.”

“Why can’t I just mail this stuff back to them? I used to do that all the time.”

“So that was you?” I said.

Bruce looked outside toward his mother and Fi but didn’t say anything for a minute. “Listen,” he said, “my mom? She doesn’t know about all that. She thinks I was an architect. And just to be clear, I was never tried for anything but that last job, so I’m not guilty of anything apart from that.”

“Which is why the FBI wanted to hire you as a consultant?” I said. “Because you’re a failed bank robber?”

“How do you know that?” Bruce asked.

Sam started to say something, but I put a hand up to let him know I still needed to show that I was the alpha in this organizational hierarchy, not that Sam had any idea that was what I was doing. He probably just thought I didn’t want to be interrupted. “Let’s just say I know things,” I said.

“Be that as it may,” Bruce said, like he was putting on a show for someone. There was a quality to him that reminded you of a magician, as if every moment might contain a bit of sleight of hand. “I have to stay here. My mother has friends, this is where her doctors are and if this is her last hurrah, I want her to be comfortable. You can understand that, can’t you?”

I could and I told him so. “How much money have you spent?” I asked.

“About twenty thousand,” he said. “Paid some bills, paid for a nurse for a couple days, bought my mom an air purifier. Probably too late on that one. I haven’t opened the mail today, so who knows how much the next bill will be.”

“How much does your mom have left? From the finger incident?”

“Not much,” he said. “That was twelve years ago. And she’s been sick off and on for ten years. Maybe five grand.”

“What all did you drop off at the FBI offices?”

Again, a look of shock crossed Bruce’s face, but he tried to play it off, or maybe he just realized I really did know things. “A couple role sheets,” he said. “Thought if the FBI arrested the crew, they’d be off of me.”

“Good idea,” Sam said, “but you can’t just arrest someone for being an asshole anymore. You actually need to catch them breaking the law. Or breaking their leg while breaking the law. That counts, too.”

Bruce shrugged, like: What can you do? You can’t do nothing.

“What makes you think they’re on to you?” I asked.

“These people have connections everywhere,” Bruce said. “They might even have guys in the FBI for all I know.”

I was about to say I found that unlikely, but then I thought better of it. If anything is true, it’s that every organization has retention and, conversely, leak problems. One person says one thing to the wrong person, and in some cases, an entire spy operation in Moscow could be wiped out. Or a thief in Miami living with his mother could be fingered for a job.

Better to deal with known possibility than wishful thinking.

“Have you told anyone about the job?”

“Just Barry,” he said. “He’s the one told me they were making inquiries, which got me thinking, you know, don’t be a schmuck, get rid of whatever you can and ask for help. Was that wrong?”

“Barry you can trust,” I said, already feeling relieved. If he’d told only Barry, we could close the circle, solve the problem, get everyone back to living in peace and harmony and…

“And I might have mentioned it to Nick Balsalmo.”

He said the name like it should mean something. It didn’t. At least not to me. I looked at Sam, whose expression was likewise blank. We all stared at each other for a while, until it became clear none of us was going to offer more information, so Sam finally said, “Of the Miami Balsalmos?”

“We know each other from Glades,” Bruce said carefully, as if he already knew that it was the wrong thing to say.

“You might have told someone you did time with that you robbed the Ghouls?” I said. There is no might in these situations, just like I told Barry the previous day. People either do or don’t do things. I had a feeling I knew the answer.

“Technically,” Bruce said, “I didn’t know it was the Ghouls when I told him.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Sam said. “Or else you might have told him the total truth.”

Bruce took off his watch and started rubbing at his wrist. You spend enough time around people used to being in handcuffs and you’ll begin to notice a similar compunction when they realize they’ve put themselves in a position to be back in cuffs… and soon. “I owed him a favor and knew he could get rid of the drugs I grabbed,” he said. “Just having them in my mother’s home was a shanda. Nick is trustworthy. He always had my back.”

If you’re sent to prison, it’s important to understand that the people you’re doing time with are not, by definition, trustworthy. One of the first rules of incarceration is simple: Don’t owe anybody anything. As soon as someone has you, they have you forever. This means inside and outside. You might not know it when it’s happening, but eventually the scales will tip.

“Was Nick Balsalmo part of a prison ministry program?” I asked.

“Uh, no,” he said.

“Does Nick Balsalmo work for the police department?” I asked.

“Uh, no,” he said again. He was beginning to get the path of this line of questioning.

“Does he work in hazardous waste disposal?”

“No.”

“No,” I said. “No, I’m going to guess Nick Balsalmo is a drug dealer. Would that be an accurate description?”

“More like a courier. He doesn’t sell on the streets. I couldn’t trust a guy who sold drugs to kids or something.”

“Of course not,” I said. “Who could?”

The sarcasm was lost on Bruce.

“Right, right, my feeling exactly. But he works with bigger businesses, I guess you could say.”

“A middleman,” Sam offered.

“Exactly, exactly,” Bruce said. “A middleman.”

“So it might stand to reason that Mr. Balsalmo would be in the business of selling your stolen drugs to people who suddenly found themselves, say, low on product? Would that sound plausible?” I said.

“Uh, yes,” Bruce said. And there it was. Dawning.

“When did you speak with him last?”

“Three, four days ago. He called to thank me. Said he was having good luck moving the stuff, wanted to know if I wanted, you know, a cut. I said no, of course.”

“Of course,” Sam said.

“Of course,” I said. I gave him a big smile and then said, “You might want to give him a call. See if he’s still alive.”

The color left Bruce’s face then. He’d known this was serious before, certainly, but for some reason he hadn’t seen all of the consequences of his actions. I tossed him my cell phone and he dialed Nick’s number on speaker. After a few rings, an automated voice announced that the voice mail was full.

“What kind of drug dealer doesn’t check his messages?” I said.

“Maybe he’s out of town?” Bruce said.

“That’s why people have voice mail, Bruce, so they can get their calls anywhere. Especially drug dealers. Do you know where he lives?”

“He lives with a Cuban girl out in Little Havana. I went over there for dinner once. Nice place.” There was a matter-of-factness to Bruce that sometimes felt very odd: He was essentially a very simple guy. For a person who did twelve years, he didn’t seem to be all that jaded, or damaged, which meant that for some reason he hadn’t had a terrible experience in jail. Or not as terrible as others.

“What did you owe Nick for, exactly?”

Bruce got a pensive look on his face and started rubbing at his wrist again. When he finally spoke, it was just above a whisper. “He did my finger.”

“Could you speak up, Bruce?” Sam said. “I can’t quite hear you. Ten percent hearing loss in my right ear from the Falklands.”

Bruce didn’t know quite what to make of Sam, so for a moment he glared at him in a rather benign way, as if to say, You could say please. It didn’t last. “He did my finger, okay? Spent two months in the hole for it. When he got out, there was this meshugass with my mother’s illness, and so I couldn’t pay him what I owed him initially, but he was cool, really. The dinner and all that. Ever had Cuban pork chops? Authentic Cuban pork chops?”

“Once,” I said.

“Where?”

“In Santiago de Cuba,” I said.

“But I thought that…” He stopped for a minute, thought about where he was going, opted to change lanes. “Anyway, he was perfectly sweet about everything, but it was clear he wanted what was his.”

“Let me get this right,” Sam said. “Guy takes off your finger and you have to pay him? That’s inflation for you. Mikey, you hear that?”

“I hear that,” I said.

“It doesn’t make sense on the outside, I know,” Bruce said. “But it’s a different set of rules in prison.”

“How much did you owe him?” I asked.

“Fifty grand,” he said.

“How much do you think he could get for the drugs you gave him?”

“Enough that he felt comfortable offering me a cut,” Bruce said.

“Real gentleman,” Sam said.

The problem here was that even if Bruce wanted to give the Ghouls back their drugs-presuming Nick hadn’t already tried to sell them their own stuff-a good sum of it was already gone. And I didn’t feel comfortable giving anyone back a bunch of drugs-there’s no way into that situation that is safe and I didn’t particularly want to kill anyone that week. Or be killed, for that matter.

“Nick, he’s a good guy,” Bruce said. “He just has a bad job. But who doesn’t?”

Bruce made a convincing argument, but it might just have been his delivery. Having a sixty- five-year-old man give you a slice of prison wisdom does have a certain charm. He wanted to explain more, but before he could, Fiona came to the sliding glass window and cracked it open.

“Zadie would like something to eat,” she said to Bruce, who jumped from his seat like he’d been shocked and went directly into caregiver mode, rushing off to the other side of the great room and into the kitchen to fix his mother a sandwich.

Sam and I both watched him for a bit, how meticulous he was in putting together a plate for her, how he put the sandwich in one corner, a bit of Jell-O in another, how he washed by hand a few leaves of lettuce and then shook pepper onto them, followed by a dash of oil and vinegar. He then poured his mother an entire glass of ginger ale, no ice.

“We have to help him,” I said quietly.

Sam nodded once.

Bruce walked past us to the patio without saying a word.

“A complication,” Sam said, still watching Bruce. “Before I got here I ran the information on the house he hit. It was burned down last night.”

“Not a surprise,” I said.

“With the occupants inside of it,” Sam said.

“How many?”

“Two. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they found this Balsalmo in a ditch in the back if he’s as savvy as our friend Bruce is.”

Page ten of the Ghouls’ constitution said, “You dishonor the Ghouls. The price is determined by your dishonor.”

I guess they meant it.

Trying to figure out how to return stolen property is like trying to un-swallow: There’s no actual opposite action that will return the property (or the food you’ve eaten) in its original form. There will always be an elemental difference. Steal from someone and even if they get their stuff back in whole cloth, they’re still going to feel that sense of violation. Steal from a criminal organization and whether or not they feel violated, they’re going to want revenge.

In Bruce Grossman’s case, he didn’t actually want to return everything he’d stolen. He wanted to keep the money and give back the drugs and the paperwork and the box of patches that he’d also lifted and just call it even, which wasn’t going to work. There’s no even when three hundred thousand bucks is left out of the equation. And stealing a gang’s patches is maybe worst of all. It’s silly, but these grown men live and die for a stitch of cloth.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” Sam said. We were back at my loft. I was eating blueberry yogurt. Fiona was doing this thing where she sits quietly flipping through a fashion magazine but is really listening to everything and waiting to make proclamations that will solve all the problems we’ve encountered. Sam was doing what Sam does: drinking my beer and asking questions. “If you’re a criminal mastermind, like Bruce thinks he is, why would you be so stupid?”

“He’s not a criminal mastermind,” I said, “so that solves that.”

“He’s closer to a criminal mastermind than either of you are,” Fiona said. She didn’t even bother to look up from her magazine.

“Because we’re not criminals,” I said.

“Have you ever tried to break into a safe-deposit box?” she asked.

Sam and I looked at each other. She had a point. Kind of.

“I’ve cracked into a few secure locations,” Sam said. “And Mikey here could have Fort Knox renamed Fort Westen in no time. Right, Mikey?”

“Uh, right,” I said.

Fiona was heading somewhere. This was just the opening salvo. She raised her eyebrows, but kept her eyes on the magazine, turning pages casually. “I should have been a model,” she said to no one in particular. “Seems like I’d get to sit around on bearskin rugs in Uggs and a bikini, not a care in the world.”

“Is there something you want to tell me?” I said.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Fiona said.

“I think it’s cute when you guys repeat each other’s sentences,” Sam said.

“Do you know who Bruce Grossman is, Michael?” Fiona said. “I mean, do you really know?”

“I know he’s a person with a problem,” I said. “I know he’s a friend of Barry’s. I know he’s been a fool since he got out of prison. I know his mother is going to die soon. Isn’t that enough?”

Fiona shook her head slowly, like she couldn’t believe how utterly daft I was. “Right, right,” she said. She still hadn’t bothered to put down the magazine or look at either me or Sam. “What I’m saying is that the man is near a legend, Michael. I heard of what he was doing in Ireland. He broke into every bank imaginable. And so smart about it, too. Safe-deposit boxes are bank robber nirvana, Michael.”

“And?”

“And maybe he’d be good to keep around,” Fiona said. She looked up finally, smiling, flirting, batting eyelashes, doing that thing she does with the tip of her tongue along the inside of her bottom lip.

“No,” I said.

“No, what?”

I could see the wheels turning in her mind.

“No, he will not rob banks with you. No, you will not sell his services to other people who rob banks. No, you will not put him in a box and ship him to a small town in Iceland where there are very old banks. No, no and no.”

There’s not much about Fiona that remains a mystery to me, apart from her total nihilism. But it’s unusually cute, so there’s that.

“I’m just saying that in the position you’re in,” she said, “where revenue streams seem inconsistent, it might be wise to look at all avenues, Michael. It’s not every day someone from history shows up.”

“Duly noted,” I said, “and still, no.”

I went back to eating my yogurt and thinking about how to un-swallow Bruce’s problems. Fiona went back to reading her magazine, presumably thinking about the fashion shoots she’d missed in Bora Bora all these years. But Sam wasn’t doing anything. That was troubling, particularly since he’d finished his beer and hadn’t gone foraging in my fridge for another.

“Is he really from history?” Sam asked.

“The Safe-Deposit Bandit,” Fiona said. “There are probably textbooks about him.”

“As a kid, I always thought it was ‘safety’ deposit box,” Sam said.

“That’s because your American education never put the proper emphasis on enunciation. Both of you sound like you learned to speak with dirt in your mouth.”

Sam gave me a look that said, basically, What the hell?

“Something else troubling you, Fiona?”

“If you must know,” she said, “I’d like it if you found a way to describe me that didn’t make me sound like the help.”

“That’s my cue,” Sam said and headed for the door.

“Wait,” I said. “We haven’t figured out what we’re going to do with Bruce.”

“I can’t stand to hear you two fight,” Sam said, already halfway out the door of my loft. “It just breaks my heart.”

“Sam,” I said.

All that was left was his waving arm. “Call me later,” he shouted. “We’ll do some covert stuff together and it will be a great time.”

And then he was gone completely, leaving me alone with Fiona, who, in the last year or so, had become an inconsistent emotional concern. One minute she loved me, the next minute she hated me, a minute after that she was kissing me, two minutes later she was punching me in the head, five minutes later we were in bed… and always, always, there was some guilt on both ends.

And now this.

“If we’re going to talk about this,” I said, “you’re going to need to put that magazine down.”

“If I do that,” she said, perfectly calm, “I might be inclined to use it as a weapon.”

“Fine,” I said. I sat down on my bed, across from the chair she was sitting in. “Let’s hear it.”

“Well,” she said, “do you consider me your friend or your associate?”

“Yes, technically, I believe both are accurate descriptions.”

Fiona hurled the magazine at me, but fortunately she hadn’t slipped a sharp piece of broken glass into the pages beforehand, which is a nice trick if you want to really hurt someone. So the magazine just fluttered to the ground.

“Wrong answer,” she said.

“Fi, look, I’m not comfortable categorizing who we are to complete strangers, particularly not people like Bruce Grossman. He’s not exactly a confidential source.”

“I’m not speaking of him solely,” she said. “It would just be nice if, every now and then, I knew where I stood before I was offended by your boorish behavior.”

“Okay,” I said, thinking, I have no idea where we stand, moment to moment. “How would you like me to describe you?”

Fiona stood up then, went into my kitchen, poured water into a teapot and began preparing a cup of tea. It was as if I wasn’t even in the room. I watched her for a few moments, the simple, fluid motions of her actions, the lack of wasted space she conveyed. After about five minutes, the water came to a boil and she fixed her tea. She sat back down in her chair and played absently with the steeping teabag. “Any ideas come to you yet, Michael?” she asked.

“A few,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Remember them when next the moment arises.”

I nodded. “In the meantime”-I paused-“most elegant Fiona”-I paused again, to see how that went over; well, it turns out-“we need to figure out what to do with Bruce Grossman.”

“How much time do you presume he has left until the Ghouls figure out who did the job?” she asked. “Assuming Balsalmo didn’t tell them?”

“How many people living in Miami that they don’t already know could do the job?” I said. “Someone in Miami, other than Barry, other than Balsalmo, likely knows who Bruce Grossman is, especially if you did and you’re not even from these here parts.”

“Then maybe you should just go tell them before they find out.”

“You are elegant,” I said.

“I know,” Fi said. She got up from her seat again and poured her tea down the drain.

“You just made that,” I said.

“Merely as an instructional tool,” she said. She looked at her watch. “Have you called your mother lately?”

“No.”

“You should,” she said, “seeing as I am the only person who has the kindness to actually return her calls.”

“What does she have you doing?”

“I’ve agreed to take her shopping for lamps this afternoon.”

“You have fun with that,” I said.

She walked over and kissed me once on the cheek. “Thank you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For watching,” she said, “and for wanting to watch.”

Sometimes, just like a real person, all Fiona wants is to be appreciated.

After Fiona left, I called Sam. “That was fast,” he said.

“You just have to know the right words,” I said.

“I’m not even at the Carlito yet. Right words or not, I figured this for a good day-or-two-long fight. Maybe with injuries. You have all of your limbs?”

“Present and accounted for.”

“She even hit you?”

“Not this time,” I said.

“She’s full of surprises,” Sam said. “When she does hit you, though, that actually hurts, right?”

“It never feels good to get punched, Sam.” Sam started to respond, but I stopped him before he could begin exalting again the pleasures of the Flying Lotus, and instead I asked, “How long would it take for you to get your hands on a few bikes?”

“I got a guy I could talk to,” he said.

“Talk to him,” I said.

“How many?”

“Two,” I said.

“Sidecars?”

“This isn’t World War Two, Sam.”

“If we’re planning a full frontal assault here, Mikey, we might want to plan for every contingency.”

“I don’t see us needing sidecars,” I said. “No matter the contingency.”

“I’ll look into it. They had them at the last inauguration. Looked pretty sharp, Mikey, can’t deny that.”

“Not really the look I’m aiming for.”

“What’s the plan here? Shock and awe or more spit and shine?”

I told him Fiona’s idea-delivering Grossman, or at least delivering his identity, and maybe some of his stolen goods-to the Ghouls, and then that way we could control the situation. What that situation happened to be depended upon how much they already knew.

“First thing, though,” I said, “I need to look into the mortality of Nick Balsalmo. If he’s alive, we need to make sure he stays that way and stays quiet.”

“Gotcha,” he said. “I suppose just UPSing the Ghouls their stuff is out of the question.”

“Not going to work,” I said. “That’s why we need the bikes.”

“We’re talking choppers only here? That the look you want?”

“Right,” I said.

“Chuck Finley rides again,” Sam said and hung up.

When you’re dealing with motorcycle gangs, you have to understand that they aren’t like normal criminals. It’s an entire culture-a culture that demands loyalty above all else; and if that means someone has to die for merely being negligent, that’s not a problem. It also means if you disrespect them, it’s like disrespecting Hezbollah: They will fight you forever, wherever.

In order to help Bruce out, it wouldn’t be as simple as giving the Ghouls back what was taken. We’d have to direct them to something larger than Bruce. Another gang. A snitch within their ranks. Someone directing Bruce’s actions for something bigger, more destructive. Get them thinking Bruce was just an instrument and they’d focus their attention on fighting that war. I’d need to get close to them to figure out just what that trigger might be.

In the meantime, we just had to keep Bruce and his mother safe. And that I had a plan for.

I looked at my watch. Not enough time had elapsed, so I did some push-ups, a few sit-ups, a hundred crunches and some light tae kwon do in the mirror. When it seemed like Fi would have had enough time to cross the city, pick up my mom and then head off to Lamps Are Us, I called my mother’s house.

“Ma,” I said into her answering machine (a Record-A-Call from 1979, to be precise), “I have some friends I’d like you to meet. I’ll bring them by around dinner-time. You’re just going to love them both.”