by Tod Goldberg
I came back to the photos of the house in Aventura. From the outside it looked like a standing set from Miami Vice: the facade was faux Art Deco and statues of pink flamingos dotted the lawn. In the driveway, however, was a yellow Ford Fairmont station wagon, replete with wood paneling and a luggage rack.
“How sick is the mother?” I asked.
“Gets radiation five days a week,” Sam said. “Maxed credit cards. Looks like Medicare is picking up some of the rudimentary stuff, but I guess cancer isn’t all that rudimentary.”
I thought about my mother, who smoked like Chernobyl but miraculously didn’t have cancer. Meeting Bruce’s mother might be a nice object lesson. Or it might just give her someone to smoke with. “Is she dying?”
“Old people die,” Sam said. “Old people with cancer don’t have improved odds, they just die more painfully.”
“Let me ask you something,” I said. “Why should I take this job?”
“All the people you’ve ever helped, you think he’s half as bad as most?”
“He’s a bank robber,” I said.
“So is Fiona,” Sam said. “And for a terrorist organization, I might add.”
“That’s not been substantiated,” I said. “There’s some muddy area concerning whether or not she knew she was working for the IRA.”
“She also sells guns to criminals,” Sam said. “As in she had me watch her back yesterday while you were meeting with Barry. Sold a trunkful of Russian GSh-18 pistols to some Cubans.”
“Cubans?”
“Planning a revolution or something. Real beauties. Anyway, I admit that when Fiona does a little crime, it’s hot, real hot, but you can’t pick and choose your bad guys. Plus, while Fiona probably wouldn’t smother her dying mother, she’s not known for her Florence Nightingale tendencies, Mikey. At least Grossman is doing all he can to save his mother. Or at least make her comfortable.”
When Sam is the voice of reason, I know there’s something fundamentally wrong. But then he added, “And you owe Barry, Mikey.”
Again with the voice of reason . . .
I took out my cell and called Barry.
“I’ll meet with Grossman on one condition,” I said. “I take this, I need some cash, you pay my fee. I don’t want whatever money he’s holding on to.”
“That makes me think you don’t trust him,” Barry said.
“I don’t,” I said.
“You realize I don’t work nights at a Christian charity, right?”
“Your stolen money is cleaner,” I said.
“That’s kind.”
“I also know where you live.”
There was a pause on the line. “You do?” he said finally.
“Tell Grossman I’ll be at his house in two hours,” I said and hung up. Best to leave some questions unanswered.
3
No spy wants to work with a double agent. Even if you might want to give off the impression that you’re only in the game for the money or the glory or the opportunity to visit lovely Third World nations and assassinate their leaders, even the most jaded spy probably still has a love for his country. You spend too many years training to suddenly realize you hate everyone and everything about the country you’ve been sworn to protect.
A double agent, however, has allegiance only to himself, and thus goes through the training because he sees a way to prosper personally. This makes trusting him nearly impossible, cornering him unrealistic. The best way to get a double agent to acquiesce to your demands, or just play nice in the sandbox, is to present him with another double agent to confuse him. Two people out for only themselves causes a certain amount of friction, particularly when there’s only one of whatever they both want.
Which is why I brought Fiona with me to meet Bruce Grossman. And why I first gave her a tour through Aventura’s hottest suburban spots. There’s something about suburbia that makes Fiona homicidal, and Aventura is one of those master-planned communities developed in the 1970s and 1980s to remind people what they thought the world was like in the 1950s and 1960s. Back then, the future occupants of Aventura lived in Chicago or New York or Detroit and had an idea that the suburbs would be a good place to retire to, only to find that by the time they actually retired, the suburbs were filled with the people that now scared them.
Shops and outdoor cafés dotted the streets, and every few feet there was a cluster of octogenarians in close conversation. In front of a retro-cool-looking joint called the Blintz there were two women who literally had blue hair, which would have been surprising if not for the other two making their way along Northeast 207th toward the Shoppes at the Waterways. Across the street was a cluster of high-rise condo complexes, and I imagined that at night the windows glowed blue, and not from all of the running televisions. Beside me in the Charger, Fiona made a clucking sound with her tongue, which she sometimes did when she was particularly sickened by something.
“Promise me you will shoot me if I ever do that to my hair,” Fiona said.
“I promise,” I said.
“Mean it,” she said. “Tell me what you’d use. I want to be sure I will die.”
“I’m going to guess a Russian GSh-18 would do the trick,” I said.
Fiona slapped her hand against the door. “Does anyone know how to keep a secret anymore?”
“Selling arms to Cubans doesn’t seem like a great idea.”
“They were using them for strictly democratic aims,” Fiona said. “And they paid double.”
“Why didn’t you ask me to cover you?”
“Because I didn’t want you skulking in the background,” she said. “Cubans would think you were bad juju. Sam emits good juju.”
I could only shake my head. Used to be Sam and Fiona hated each other, or, at the very least, distrusted each other immensely. Now they probably pinkie-swore on their mendacity. “Fi, you don’t know what could have happened.”
“Michael, are you saying you were worried?”
“No,” I said.
“That’s very sweet,” she said. She reached over and squeezed my cheek. Hard. To the point that I had to really focus with my left eye so that I didn’t slam into the traffic in front of me. “I like that you were worried for me long after any danger had already passed.”
“How am I supposed to know if I should be worried if you don’t even tell me what you’re doing?”
“You’re the hero, Michael,” she said. “I’m just the damsel in distress.”
Sometimes I want to kiss Fiona. And sometimes I have, and more. And then, sometimes, I wish I was in Abu Dhabi negotiating a transfer of black-market pearls into the hands of a terrorist, who would then get arrested at the airport while smuggling them into the States and I’d get to interrogate him for a nice long night.
Ah, the good times.
“I’m just saying,” I said, “that I want you to be careful. People might come through you to get to me. Just be vigilant.”
“Just so we’re clear,” she said, “this is actually about you?”
“No,” I said.
Fi looked at me for a second, and I couldn’t tell if she was taking all of this seriously or not. I wasn’t sure if I was at first, but I was by the end. “That’s terribly sweet, Michael,” she said softly. And then she slapped me. “And that’s for not being sweet enough to pay attention in the first place and forcing me into this weird serious conversation with you.”
My face hurt. “You feel better?”
“Somewhat.”
We drove in silence for a few minutes while I did jaw exercises to get my bite back in line and Fiona calmed down from her brief flirtation with actual human emotion and physical violence; her two basic states of being.
I turned down a palm tree-lined side street just off of 207th and parked in front of Zadie Grossman’s house. All around the home were the long shadows of the high-rise condos, which gave the street an eerie darkness even in the middle of the day. The house also seemed anachronistic compared to the luxury we’d pass
ed on our way here—one- and two-million-dollar homes, driveways lined with Lincolns and Cadillacs, all the plastic surgery a ninety-year-old needs in order to feel seventy—in that it just looked like a poorly decorated starter home. There were the flamingos, of course, but also a rock lawn and palm trees that looked closer to dead than paradise. It seemed oddly familiar.
And that station wagon, too.
“If he’s a bank robber,” Fi said, “why does his mother live in such a hideous home?”
“He’s been in prison for twelve years.”
“How long has he been out?”
“Six months,” I said.
“That’s plenty long to get a decent score. At least get rid of those flamingos. Dreadful taste.”
This could have been my childhood home, I thought. I suppose I could have ended up robbing banks, too.
“And why am I here?” Fiona asked.
“To keep Bruce honest,” I said. “Crook to crook.”
“You might not like what you hear,” she said.
“I’m prepared for that.”
Fi got out of the car and I followed her up the walk, but even before we got to the door, Bruce Grossman opened it up, stepped out and closed it quietly behind him. “My mom’s sleeping,” he said, his voice just above a whisper.
He was tall—at least six-three—and had a body roughly the shape of a pear. His head, neck and chest were skinny, but his stomach slouched over his belt line and his legs were chubby, too. He wore a button-down blue shirt that he’d tucked into cargo shorts. On his feet were sandals and socks. He looked, essentially, like a tourist. I couldn’t fathom him robbing a stash house, much less one belonging to a motorcycle gang.
Bruce reached into his back pocket and pulled out a photo and handed it to me. It was of an old woman, her hair gone, sitting poolside reading that morning’s Miami Herald.
“What’s this?” I said.
“Barry said you might want a proof-of-life photo,” Bruce said. I handed it to Fiona, who looked at it for a moment, shook her head and gave it back to Bruce. “Do you want a lock of hair or something?”
“The picture is fine,” I said.
Bruce looked at the photo for a second and a smile crossed his face. “When I was a kid? She had a perm. One of those tight ones, remember? Crazy, right?”
I nodded.
“And now she’s bald. She always said I made her pull her hair out, but this isn’t my fault,” Bruce said. He laughed then, though it wasn’t very funny. “Anyway, I appreciate you coming by. Do you want to see all the loot? And then, what, we just drop it off?”
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“Bruce, this is my friend Fiona,” I said.
“Friend?” Fiona said. She was angry. I’ve tried my whole life to avoid angry women. Avoiding angry Fiona should be a national pastime.
“Associate,” I said.
“Associate?” Fiona said.
I looked at Bruce. He seemed perplexed.
“What is the right answer, Fiona?” I said.
She cocked her head at me and then ran her tongue over her teeth. I’ve seen nature videos where panthers do the same thing. “What is it you want me to do here?” she said. “That will determine my answer.”
I took a deep breath. “Bruce, this is Fiona. She’s going to interrogate you about your story, because you’ve clearly lied to Barry about how you came across this information you need returned. I feel like you’ll probably lie to me, which will cause both of us great pain and sorrow, so I thought my . . . Fiona . . . could get the truth out of you without either of us getting hurt in the process.”
Bruce got a queer look on his face. “Is she going to torture me?”
“Maybe,” Fi said.
Bruce took a step back toward the door.
“No,” I said. “No, she is not. No, she is absolutely not. Are you, Fiona?”
“Everyone is so dull around here,” she said, a noticeable pout in her voice.
I handed my keys to Fiona. “Fiona is going to take you for a drive, Bruce. If she likes what she hears, she’ll bring you back here and we’ll have a deal. If she doesn’t like what she hears, she’ll drive you back here and I’ll be gone. Understand?”
Bruce looked over both of his shoulders and then back at both of us. We stared back at him. “I thought someone was going to come up and blindfold me. That’s how the FBI does it.”
“I’m not the FBI,” Fiona said. She took Bruce by the hand and guided him toward the car, even opened the passenger door for him. He looked back at me, shrugged and climbed in. Fi locked him in, which gave him a visible start.
“Don’t hurt him,” I said.
“Not even a little?” Fi asked.
“Not even a little,” I said.
Fi sighed. “One day,” she said, flirtation coming back to her, “you’re going to regret that I wasn’t allowed to hurt more people.”
She got into the car without another word, but I was pretty sure that finding out the validity of that threat would be either the best or the worst day of my life.
I watched the car round the corner at the end of the street and disappear and then made my way inside, in case Bruce’s mother woke up and needed something, because even a burned spy knows how to make a glass of water.
4
The way Bruce Grossman figured it, robbing safe-deposit boxes was a victimless crime. If people kept large sums of money in safe-deposit boxes—and there were always large sums of money to be found—that meant those people were probably crooks. If you’re a normal person, there’s no good reason to keep your money in a place hidden from use. Oh, sure, maybe you harbor fears that the Nazis are coming or the Commies are coming or the end of the Mayan calendar is nigh and the world is coming to an end, but even still, what would having money hidden away do for you? People who hide their money do it because they are doing something wrong.
That’s not to say he robbed safe-deposit boxes to get back at the bad guys, because that wasn’t the case in the least. Starting out, he just wanted to have things. A nice house. A nice car. A place for his mother in a safe neighborhood in Miami. Maybe some flash cash, just so the ladies knew he was more than a receding hairline and an odd personality, because, shit, he knew he wasn’t all that. No, starting out, that money got him places. Opened doors. Got return phone calls from smart girls.
And if he got in deep with somebody, say at the bookie’s joint, he just had to pop a score in some no-name town and come back with whatever money he needed to pay off his debts. Used to be, before a night out in Detroit—back in the 1980s, that was his place to go, right in the middle of the country, easy in, easy out—he’d find a credit union near Wayne State, get what he needed and go.
But later, it was just about cost of living. He moved his mother to Miami after his father died—this was in 1992—and her bills just started piling up. At this point in his life, Bruce considered himself excellent at what he did, to the point that, in an irony even he was aware of, he had to start keeping his money in safe-deposit boxes. He even robbed a bank he had an account and safe-deposit box in, just to deflect interest, not that he thought any was coming his way. His mom, though, was in her seventies and the ailments kept compounding. So he did what any enterprising businessperson, or good son, would do: He made as much as he could and then quietly retired to Florida.
And it was a good life, at first. Bruce spent the next few years in a condo across the street from the house he bought his mother, so that way he could come over and look in on her, replace a lightbulb or two, even take her out to dinner once a week. Most nights, he drove his red Corvette convertible down to South Beach and threw money around, met a couple nice girls, even a couple guys he considered friends, guys he’d fish with, that sort of thing. And, of course, his friend Barry, whom he helped with a few start-up business ventures initially. Importing stolen items. Understanding weak points in the ceiling mortar of old buildings. Hosting pyramid schemes.
But
there was something about retired life that just wasn’t as exciting as robbing banks. So he’d periodically case places, you know, just to stay in shape.
And then just in case happened. His mom got her first bout of cancer, in her lungs. Doctors took out most of her left lung, a bunch of lymph nodes under her arm, stuck her in chemo for six months, radiation for another three. Thing was, she had crap for health insurance, just like everyone Bruce knew, apart from Bruce. She had Medicare, but Bruce wanted her to have good doctors, not the hacks who got government money. So out of his own pocket he flew her up to Johns Hopkins, out to LA to Cedars, even to some quack in Montreal who thought she should eat only pork and drink only lime juice.
Then, one afternoon, sitting in the waiting room at the transfusion center over in Coconut Grove, a place his mom liked to go just because it had better magazines than the chemo spot in Aventura, he got an idea while hearing two nurses bitch about their husbands.
“You know,” one said—she was Cuban, so he always thought of her as Fidel—“my idiot husband, if he loses a toe, his insurance policy gives him five hundred thousand bucks. A whole foot, a million. Some nights, I think about just chopping off his big toe and getting out of town, you know?”
The other nurse, who was pretty, so Bruce just thought of her, and thought of her, and thought of her, said, “Dismemberment insurance is what keeps me sane. Bad day here, I think, cut off my pinkie, retire to the Caymans, get away from Peter forever!”
The nurses laughed and high-fived each other, but Bruce started thinking about the future, about taking care of his mom, about maybe doing something good after doing so much bad all these years.
When he got home that night, he called his insurance agent and upped his coverage, added dismemberment to the buffet, said he was doing so much fishing he was afraid he might lose something important. His agent laughed. He laughed. Even told his buddies on the boat one day. They all laughed.