by Tod Goldberg
The other weird thing was that the ME’s office was located on a side street off of Northwest 10th called Bob Hope Road. Somewhere, Bing Crosby was laughing his ass off.
Sam was to meet his buddy Brenna Fender in fifteen minutes. She worked in the ME’s office as a nurse, but that was just a ruse: She’d been in the office for the last six months doing an undercover operation involving black-market organ sales.
Normally, Sam would steer clear of someone like Brenna, but they’d gone out for drinks on a couple of occasions and Sam honestly liked her—she knew the value of Sam Time and wasn’t all clingy about things. Truth be known, Sam was of the opinion that maybe Brenna wasn’t clingy about anything—she just liked to have a good time and then go on back to sniffing out the dark underworld of spleen sales.
Anyway, she was the one person Sam knew who could give him a hand, literally. And maybe, if things went well, they’d hook up later in the week. See about catching a movie or getting a beer or six. Provided he lived through the week. Or maybe that would be the payoff from tangling with a bunch of murderous bikers: an evening on the town (or on the sofa) with Brenna Fender.
Sam’s cell rang, breaking his reverie.
“Is this the person who came looking for me?” a woman’s voice said after Sam answered.
What an incredibly stupid question, Sam thought. This was not a person who knew much about staying alive. “That depends,” Sam said. “Is this the person I’m looking for?”
There was silence while the woman—who Sam presumed was Maria; hell, he prayed it was Maria, since the idea of more than one person making a phone call like this gave Sam vertigo—pondered her answer.
“I guess,” she said after another couple of beats. “You know Nick? Is that what this is about? Because I haven’t seen him in, like, a week. I don’t even know where he is.”
The problem with most people is that they feel like the best way to get through an interrogation is to give way too much information, as if being forthright will somehow absolve them of any guilt, even if what they are saying is an absolute lie. Hadn’t she spoken to her stepfather? Didn’t she know what Sam already knew? Was she this stupid?
“No,” Sam said, “but I know a friend of his. Bruce Grossman. That name mean anything to you?”
There was a silence again as Maria tried to work through the equation. Bruce Grossman probably wasn’t the most important name for her to remember, especially if Nick kept his business and personal life separate, but they had dined together. That meant something, didn’t it? Didn’t breaking bread count for anything anymore?
“Yeah,” she said. “They did time together, right?”
“Right.” He decided to stay consistent and said, “Bruce’s dead now, is the thing. Bikers got him. Did him ugly. Any idea why?”
Another long pause, which didn’t engender a lot of faith in the answer when it came. “No,” she said.
Something Sam learned in the military is that if you’re not happy with an answer, give it back to the person in the form of a question. The weak- minded were incapable of dealing with this technique and invariably ended up giving you the very information they were attempting to conceal.
So Sam said, “No?”
“Not really,” Maria said.
“Not really?”
“Who are you again?” Maria said.
“Chuck Finley.”
“And how did you get my name?”
“Nick was one of the last people Bruce called before he got done in,” Sam said, figuring the girl had seen enough of those cold case and forensics programs to put the rest of it together. She was scared, clearly, and had some story she’d practiced, since nothing was coming from her in any sort of natural way.
“Nick said they were doing some business together,” Maria said.
“They were doing some business together?”
“Bruce sold him some drugs.”
“Bruce sold him some drugs?”
“Okay, fine,” she said. “Bruce just gave them to him. Okay? Is that what you were looking for?”
Maria made Sam worry about the future of America. If everyone was as easy to pull information from as Maria was, what chance did the country have of beating back terrorism? Didn’t anyone lie convincingly anymore? Didn’t anyone just hang up the damn phone? It’s not that he was upset with Maria, only that he recognized in her a failure: People just didn’t know how to shut the hell up. Which maybe would create jobs in the future, actually, Sam came to reason. People like himself wouldn’t become obsolete because people like Maria would need to be protected.
“Where’s Nick? I need to talk to him,” Sam said, deciding to just keep moving forward, irrespective of what he thought Maria should know already, since if she was going to play stupid, he was going to play stupid, too. Just to even the playing field.
“He’s dead, too, okay? For like a few days. You talked to my stepdad, you know this, right?”
“Oh,” Sam said, “right. I just wanted to hear you say it.”
“You sound like my stepdad,” she said, which made Sam kind of proud.
He liked José, especially since it turned out he was true to his word, even if Maria’s call was a few hours overdue. He wasn’t sure Maria was the same type of person, so he said, “What made you tell the Ghouls Nick had their stuff?”
There was another of those grating pauses, but this time Sam thought he heard sniffling. “Nick, you know,” Maria said quietly, “he wasn’t a good person.”
“He wasn’t a good person?” Sam was annoying himself with the repeated phrases, but it was a system that seemed to work with Maria, so he just kept tossing the lines out there, figuring when she stopped biting, he’d change the bait.
“He liked to hit me,” she said. “Broke my collarbone. Messed up my shoulder. One time, I told him I was pregnant, just to get him to leave, right? Instead, he tried to kick me in the back. So when I heard there were people looking for a big haul of drugs, you know, stuff that wasn’t normal in our neighborhood, and that they were offering a reward, I might have said something.”
“You set him up to be killed?”
“No!” she said, her voice rising. “No. No. I just thought, you know, these guys would mess him up. Get their drugs, mess him up, I’d get some money and, you know, get a new life. Get out of Little Havana.”
Sam saw Brenna Fender come out of the front of the ME’s office. She had a plain brown bag in one hand and her purse in the other. She wore a cute pair of scrubs—Sam thought all scrubs were cute, really, a lasting impression from being in a secret military hospital in Bucharest and meeting a very friendly nurse while pumped full of Dilaudid—and didn’t seem to bother with looking inconspicuous. Brenna stopped next to the garbage can and chatted with the three other people in scrubs who stood there smoking. Sam never understood how you could work at a hospital and still smoke.
“How much did they give you?” Sam asked.
“They were supposed to give me twenty grand,” Maria said, “but they only gave me five hundred up front and then came by my parents’ place and told me to get out of town before they did me like they did Nicky.”
“They said that?” Sam said. When Maria didn’t respond, he added, just for the sake of continued clarity, “They told you they’d do you like they did Nicky?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Where are you?” Sam said.
“Out of town,” she said.
“Out of town?”
“I’m in the Ranchero, okay?”
“Don’t go anywhere,” Sam said. “I’ll send someone to come and get you.”
“And what?”
A good question. He’d have to find out if Madeline was prepared to take on more houseguests. He imagined Maria might be somewhat surprised to find Bruce Grossman living and breathing when she got there, but he’d deal with that later. Maria Cortes was now evidence.
“You get to use a bathroom inside and we’ll keep you safe,” Sam said.
&
nbsp; “Who are you again?”
“Not the cops,” Sam said. “Ask your stepdad.”
Silence. And then: “Okay,” she said, “but my dog comes, too, okay?”
Oh, Madeline would love that. “Thirty minutes,” Sam said and then had to hang up. A woman with a human hand in a brown bag was knocking on the passenger window. He unlocked the door and Brenna Fender slid in. She smelled of formaldehyde with a hint of Chanel No. 5. Classy.
“How are you, Sammy?” she said. All smiles. Big eyes. Friendly. Like this was something she did every day. She set the bag down between them.
“I’m good,” Sam said. He wondered how much a hand weighed. Two pounds? Three?
“Which is why you need this hand?” No smiles. Small eyes. Not terribly friendly. Like this was something she did every day and then, later, showed up in uniform to arrest the perpetrators.
“Complicated situation I’m working on,” Sam said. “You’ve heard of the Kobayashi Maru, I assume.”
“No,” she said. That was good . . . since Sam was pretty sure the Kobayashi Maru was something from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, which he’d watched in bed after getting home from dueling with the Gluck brothers.
“Well, then, I’m afraid I can’t divulge the exact reasons behind our need for the hand. For our eyes only and all that, you understand.”
Brenna regarded him with real skepticism, but Sam decided he’d stay firm. She’d already brought him the hand, after all, so she couldn’t be feeling too moral about the situation.
“Take a look, then,” she said. “Make sure you got what you need.”
Sam was afraid she’d say that, but he opened the bag and took a peek. “Yep,” he said, “that’s a hand.”
“Anything else you need, Sam, before I lose both of my jobs?”
There was one thing that vexed Sam. “Who did this belong to?”
“You read about that pimp who got cut up by about ten of his girls a few nights ago?”
“Must have missed that one,” Sam said.
“That’s because it wasn’t in the paper,” she said.
“No?”
“Nope.” Brenna got out of the car but didn’t close the door for a moment. She looked both ways, presumably to make sure no one was watching, good guys or bad guys, and then poked her head back inside. “They never found the body,” she said. “You have a good day now, Sam Axe.”
15
There’s no easy way to fake your own death anymore. Used to be all you needed to do was squirrel away the cash you’d need to make a new life, get a fake passport from your local forger, and then roll your car off a cliff in the middle of the night. Twenty-four hours later, and a continent or two away, you’d be sitting on a white sand beach, or at an outdoor café, or just beneath the majesty of the Alps, plotting your next life.
Now, just getting through security at the airport would be a challenge. Sneaking into Mexico might not be terribly difficult, provided you’re able to get to a border city without leaving a trace of your real self along the way—there are cameras everywhere now, even if you’re not aware of them—which is where the complications might arise. And then once you’re in Mexico, provided you don’t die of swine flu, or get kidnapped, or get murdered in the crossfire of a drug war, you’ll realize that Mexico isn’t exactly paradise lost and you’ll want to find greener, less smoggy, less dangerous pastures. And then you’re back to the same problem of traditional air travel.
Terrorism may have made air travel annoying for those of good legal standing, but it’s made it damn near impossible for those attempting to fake their death. Minus that, there’s just so much DNA we all leave behind now—fingerprints, hair fibers, saliva, urine—that if you really feel like you need to fake your death, you might want to consider actually killing yourself.
At least that way you won’t get caught.
In Bruce Grossman’s case, he was actually taking his death pretty well. He sat wedged between his mother and my mother on the sofa and watched one of those “I have terrible taste and need help” programs on HGTV. Maria Cortes and her dog were asleep in Nate’s old bedroom. After Maria got over her initial surprise at seeing Bruce alive and well—Sam had to convince her that he wasn’t a ghost and that no one was avenging anyone, at least not in my mother’s house—she quickly made herself comfortable. Apparently sleeping in a car had left her exhausted.
Fiona, Sam, Nate and I were in the kitchen, along with a brown bag containing what would be the proof of Bruce Grossman’s death, provided someone was able to chop the appropriate finger off. More important, however, if this was all going to work, I needed to make sure Maria was going to be the witness Bruce would need to really disappear safely. As it stood now, I felt like we could forestall the Ghouls by giving them the hand and then selling them their own goods back. Maybe they’d engage in an even bloodier war with the Banshees, but eventually, because he was Bruce Grossman and couldn’t keep his mouth shut for more than ten seconds at a time, he’d tell someone about how his best score was the time he robbed the Ghouls twice. And once with a spy! And then, well, then one day the Ghouls would show up at his house with bats, and acid, and there wouldn’t be a way out.
Bruce Grossman had to give the Ghouls back the works and then he had to disappear. And somehow, we needed to keep Zadie safe, too. The best option was not one I suspected Bruce would leap at.
“Do you think Maria would go on the record about Nick?” I asked Sam. “Because if she can deliver the evidence that there was a bounty on him, along with what Fi recorded at Purgatory, there’s probably enough to get Bruce and Zadie into protective custody.”
“Yeah,” Sam said, “but he did rob that stash house. You think the FBI is going to smile on that?”
“They wanted him once before, didn’t they?” Fiona said.
It was true. Back when he was in prison they’d offered to make him a consultant, but he was a different guy then. Younger. Dumber. And probably more skilled. Plus, his mother wasn’t dying. If he went into their hands now, she’d get the best medical care.
“I don’t know,” I said. “He doesn’t seem like much of an asset anymore.” In the living room, Bruce was arguing with my mother over whether or not tile floors or hardwood were the better flooring for the couple on the television, particularly since neither had the hall-marks of something he kept calling “divine design.”
“It’s not about whether or not he can rob banks still,” Sam said. “They’d probe him. Find out what made him rob banks. Find out his psychology.”
“I wonder what they’d make of me?” Fiona said.
“You might create a whole new field of study,” I said.
“Mikey, how many guys have the forethought to let someone whack off their finger in prison for insurance money?” Sam said. “He might seem like an old man in an ugly sweater, but that guy, he’s a treasure trove for some headshrinker.”
“And you, Michael,” Fiona said. “What would they do with you?”
“I think they’re already doing it,” I said.
All of what Sam said was certainly true, but when mixed with the issues at hand, there was some massaging that was going to need to be done. If Bruce refused custody, or if the FBI didn’t care to relocate him, and if the Ghouls came up with the $500,000, which would be enough to take care of Zadie no matter where Bruce might have to run to, it wasn’t as if Bruce would have zero problems toting $500,000 in loose bills. If they actually paid up, we’d need Barry to facilitate a few banking issues, none of which were legal, which might then put Bruce in a perilous situation yet again.
There was also a pretty good chance the Ghouls might not find the story about the Banshees setting this into motion all that believable. Oh, certainly the Gluck brothers believed it, but they weren’t running the show. Someone like Lyle Connors, a guy with a gold Lincoln, he might see the flaws in it. If we really wanted to pit these two groups against each other, we’d have to rob the Banshees, too, and make it look like the Ghouls d
id it.
Depending upon how this afternoon turned out, all options were open, which is what I told Fiona and Sam. I didn’t really say it to Nate, because he wasn’t listening. He was busy staring inside the bag at the hand.
“Let me know when we get to do that robbing of the Banshees bit,” Fiona said. “I have a few new moves I’d like to try out. And a few things I’d like to buy, too, so perhaps you’ll let me blow their secret vault.”
“I’m not so sure these guys have a secret vault,” I said.
“Everyone’s got a secret vault,” Sam said. “Right? I know I do. Working on getting that undersea lair together, just in case the North Koreans send a bunch of nukes our way.”
I didn’t answer Sam for fear that he might honestly be building an undersea lair. Instead, I focused on Nate, who was oblivious to everything going on around him, save for whatever he saw in the brown bag.
“Nate,” I said, “you’re either a part of this or you’re not.”
“You know, it doesn’t really smell,” Nate said. “At least not from here.”
Great.
I checked the clock on my mother’s 150-year-old microwave. It was ten thirty. Nate was due to take Zadie to radiation in about forty- five minutes. We had to get moving in all areas.
Which included the task at hand, so to speak.
“All right,” I said, “who wants to cut off the finger?”
No one jumped at the chance.
“One of us has to do it,” I said.
Still nothing.
“It’s not as if it’s even a hand anymore. It’s completely disassociated from the body. And it belonged to a bad guy, right, Sam?”
“Right,” he said, “but candidly, Mike, it’s hard for me to disassociate the hand from the person if you keep reminding me it used to be on a person.”
“Would it be easier if he said it was on a goat?” Fiona said.
“Was that you volunteering?” Sam said. “Ladies and gentlemen, Fiona Glenanne will be performing her magical finger-removal trick now. Fiona?”