The Giveaway (22 page)

“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.

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.”