by Tod Goldberg
Yuri’s expression changed again. Now he seemed actually invested. Well, invested and in terrible pain. “Go on,” he said.
“The technology, we have acquired it before the government,” she said. “They call it a national security threat. So if you invest in it, if you agree to sell it for us outside our borders, we must know it will not fall into hands that might have problems with the United States.”
“That is everyone,” Yuri said. “And what do you care? You are Irish?”
“I love America,” Fiona said. “Much better weather here.”
“Where is my money? Where did that go?”
“The boy’s father,” she said, searching now, opting for truth over more fantasy. “He’s a gambler. He ran off with the money. So the boy and his father, they are under our, you could say, watch now.”
“And Big Lumpy?”
“He helps with our investments,” Fiona said.
“Your organization,” Yuri said, “what is your role?”
“I break wrists,” Fiona said, “and solve problems. Hitting people with teakettles is amateur.”
Yuri liked that answer. Fiona actually felt his arms relax a bit. It was smart for him to do that, since she was certain the circulation to his hands was pretty well staunched by now and being tense only exacerbated the situation.
“We have parties who have already expressed a financial interest in your company’s product,” Yuri said. “Your boy has caused me much stress with his lies. And I now am facing outside pressure to provide a product.”
Michael had correctly assumed Yuri’s problem. That was too bad. Fiona was hoping it was a new twist that she could impress him with. “My partners will need to know who you are selling to,” Fiona said. “Russians, we don’t mind. Your government is probably working on this, too. But we are capitalists like you, Yuri, and we believe in a free market, within reason.”
“A friend of mine from Dubai has made an inquiry,” he said.
“Does he live there or is he hiding there?”
“I don’t ask,” he said. Fiona applied some pressure. “He lives normally in Chad. Much wind there.”
Chad. The most corrupt country on the planet. At least Yuri was well connected.
“I will need to speak to my partners,” Fiona said. “But the cost will be far more than what you’ve paid. That was you being conned. You will need to add several zeros to your checks.”
“We make deal,” he said, seemingly unaffected by the change in cost. “We make another deal.”
Fiona had known this was coming. “You want the boy or the man?”
“Both,” Yuri said. “I answer to people, too.”
“Fair enough,” Fiona said. She let go of his right wrist—it seemed prudent since that hand was turning an odd shade of purple—but kept a firm grasp on his left. “I’m happy to go now, so please call to your friend Gina and let her know I’ll be leaving.”
Yuri called out in Russian and the door was unlocked and opened by Gina. He said something to her in Russian that might have meant “she’s free to go” or it might have meant “feed her to the dogs,” so Fiona said, “In English, so I know that I don’t have to kill anyone.”
“I told her to get your purse and let you go,” Yuri said. “You don’t mind, I’ll hold your gun for now. You have others, yes?”
“Yes,” Fiona said, though she did like the Sig. But she understood. An armed person might act inappropriately after being hit in the head with a teakettle and threatened with torture.
Gina left and came back a few seconds later with Fiona’s purse and set it on the table. “I hope you don’t mind,” Gina said, “but I borrowed your lipstick. I liked the shade and didn’t think you’d be needing it.” Gina smacked her lips together. “My apologies.”
“No problem,” Fiona said. “I’ll see myself out.” She bolted up from her seat and cleanly snapped Yuri’s left wrist before Gina could even react. Not a compound fracture, but he’d need a cast. She dropped his arm, grabbed both teakettles and smacked Gina on either side of her head, aiming for the ears but content to make contact anywhere. If she hit her ears, Gina would be dizzy for a month.
Judging by the way Gina fell into a heap on the floor, and judging from the blood seeping from her ears, Fiona was pretty confident she’d found her target.
Yuri was curled on the ground and moaning in Russian. His hand was pointed in the wrong direction, which seemed to cause him some consternation, so Fiona picked up the bag of ice she’d been using and dropped it beside him on the floor.
“The ice will help the swelling,” Fiona said. “But you should really get yourself to the hospital. And drink more milk, too. Your bones are very brittle. I’ll see myself out, but expect to get a call from us tomorrow concerning our agreement.”
Yuri groaned something unintelligible. Pain. So many people handled it poorly.
“If we still have a deal,” Fiona said, “moan three times with your eyes open.”
Yuri moaned three times and managed to keep his eyes open the whole time.
“No need to shake on it, then,” Fiona said.
8
Every spy knows that tactical success one day may mean tactical failure the next. Assuming your enemy hasn’t learned as much from his losses as you have from your victories would be a fatal mistake.
Likewise, brawn may beat brains once, but eventually an intellectually superior enemy will prevail, which is why we needed to be both strong and smart when dealing with Big Lumpy and Yuri Drubich if we wanted to keep Henry Grayson alive, wherever he might be. And then there was the issue of keeping Sugar alive, too, a proposition I hadn’t counted on.
The first key was to find Henry, which is why that afternoon, after Fiona told me of her wrist-breakingear-clubbing high tea, I had her pick up Brent so that he could meet Sam and me at his father’s house. We needed some idea, some path, to where Henry might be hiding. I had a good idea that he was nearby, maybe even tracking his son, as I simply could not believe, even with the two million dollars in life insurance money, that he would let Brent do battle with his demons. Never mind that Henry hadn’t bothered to pay Brent’s tuition.
The Grayson family home was in Miami Shores Village, an outcropping of suburbia bordered by Biscayne Boulevard and I-95 that nevertheless managed to look like small-town America. Less than fifteen thousand people called Miami Shores home and it seemed as though there was a church, a park and a café for each of them. The village was only twenty minutes from both downtown Miami and Fort Lauderdale, but seemed much closer to Pleasantville.
The house itself was a one-story ranch-style home on Ninety-ninth Street. Judging by the concrete-block stucco design, it had been built in the late 1940s or early 1950s, which was when Miami Shores was first developed. It was repainted recently, so in the sunlight it gleamed a brilliant white. That and the new slate on the roof indicated to me that Henry Grayson had kept the house in good order up to some recent point. The overgrown grass and shrubs told another story.
We parked across the street and walked to the house. Fiona and Brent waited for us on the front porch and I could already tell, just from Fiona’s posture, that she was not in the best mood. Maybe having her pick up the kid was a mistake after her experience with Yuri Drubich.
“Nice neighborhood,” Sam said. “Except for that high-pitched squealing sound. Do you hear that?”
“They call those birds,” I said.
“Annoying,” he said. “And it smells funny out here, too.”
“That’s called fresh air,” I said. “That sweet scent is what’s known as flowers.”
“For my money, Mikey, I prefer air with a bit more bite to it.”
I looked down the block and noticed that two rather conspicuous-looking SUVs were now parked on either side of the street. Since no harried parents came tumbling out of them, followed by sugar-filled children, I had the sense that maybe they weren’t locals. Well, that and the tinted front windows, which don’t have much of a
functional purpose for people not in the violence or protection business.
“Looks like we have company,” I said.
“Not exactly trying to hide,” Sam said. “Maybe more of Big Lumpy’s people?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Let’s see.” I stopped in the middle of the street and waved at both cars.
“Michael,” Fiona called from the porch, “what are you doing?”
“There are some bad guys parked down the street,” I said. “I’m letting them know that I see them and wish them well.”
Fiona stomped across the front lawn and into the street, saw where I was looking and then mumbled something under her breath and began rummaging in her purse. She mumbled something again, this time with a bit more vehemence, so I said, “What was that?”
Fiona looked up and her expression was . . . well, she seemed a touch on the angry side. Her face was a handsome shade of red. “I said, ‘We should just shoot them.’ Maybe you’ve heard me say that before?”
“We’re in the middle of a residential street, Fiona.”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed, Michael, but I have an open wound on my head.”
“I noticed.”
“And I turned my ankle—did you see that?”
I looked down. She was wearing, as usual, a nice pair of heels. “It does look a bit swollen.”
“While you and Sam were having beers with an evil scientist, I was in a fight for my life. So you’ll excuse me for not having much patience,” she said.
“Fi,” Sam said, “maybe you should just wait in the house. Let the physically fit handle this.”
“Where are you going to be, then, Sam?” Fi said and she headed off down the street.
“Uh, Fi,” I said.
“I’m in no mood for this,” Fiona shouted. She reached into her purse and pulled out a gun, not her Sig, I noticed, and then remembered what she’d told me. Nice that she already had a replacement. I didn’t anticipate her pulling another gun from her purse, too. She had both of her arms outstretched as she walked, which made for a rather striking image.
“You want me to run after her?” Sam asked.
“No,” I said. “She might kill you.”
“Is everything all right?” Brent asked. He’d moved to the middle of his lawn but couldn’t see the action.
“It sure is,” I said. “Just stay where you are.”
Fiona stood directly in between both SUVs, but was far enough away that I couldn’t hear her voice. By the way she waved her guns, however, I had the impression that she was stating her points emphatically. After another thirty seconds of this, both SUVs pulled away at a normal rate of speed. Even used their blinkers at the corner.
Fiona stuffed both of her guns back into her purse and walked back toward the house.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Some gentlemen who believe Henry Grayson owes them money,” she said.
“Bookies?”
“Loan sharks,” she said.
Not good. “What did you tell them?” I said.
“To get in line.”
“How much is he on the hook for?” Sam asked.
“They didn’t say,” Fiona said, “but enough that the kind gentlemen apparently have spotters somewhere on the street to let them know when someone shows up unannounced.”
“Great,” I said.
“But I convinced them to leave the house alone,” she said.
“Permanently?” Sam asked.
“I told them I worked for Yuri Drubich,” she said,
“and that if they valued their lives and the lives of their children they’d consider the debt a loss on this year’s earnings. Now, can we get on this? I have a lateevening appointment at a day spa to get rid of the ugly gash I have in my head. I’d like not to miss it.”
Fi brushed past us then, grabbed the house keys from Brent’s hands as he stood patiently on the porch and calmly let herself into the house.
“She seem a little agitated?” Sam asked.
If you want to get to know someone, look at their bookshelves. If they have row after row of self-help books, you can assume with absolute clarity that they are insane, since clearly if self-help worked, they wouldn’t need dozens of books on the topic. If they have books primarily suggested by Glenn Beck, you can be fairly certain that if they’re not home it’s because they’re busy looking for the black helicopters or checking on the birth records of every elected government official and thus won’t be back to bother you anytime soon. If they don’t have bookshelves, that’s a sign, too. Never trust someone who doesn’t read.
In Henry Grayson’s case, the bookshelves in his home office were filled with two kinds of books: ones on betting strategy—this included a fascinating work called Killing the Book, which, the cover blurb said, was written by “an ex–Mafia bookie” who “knew where the numbers and bodies were buried”—and then books on how to disappear.
The first books were easy enough to understand—he was a compulsive gambler who must have always been looking to end the losses. The second books, of course, spoke to his current predicament and they weren’t the kinds of books one generally found on the shelves at Barnes & Noble: Hiding from the Government: A Guide to Living Off the Grid; Faking Your Death for Profit; The Minutemen Survival Handbook and about fifty others of a similar ilk. None of these books were actual bound books; rather, they were bulky photocopied messes held together with paper clips or velo binding or gold brads.
Henry Grayson had spent a good deal of time scouring the dark corners of the Internet for source materials, which I admired—at least he wanted to get educated before he flew off—but the majority of books like these were written by crazy people for crazier people. The keys to disappearing were (1) don’t leave evidence sitting around and (2) stop creating new evidence—two things Henry Grayson had notably not done.
His office was decorated in modern-day-man-cavemeets-aging-geek: built-in bookshelves, two flat-screen plasma televisions (which went well with the plasmas in the living room, kitchen, master bedroom, guest room and the one in the garage, which seemed an odd place to keep an expensive television), a small desk decorated with old Star Wars action figures (including at least half a dozen different Boba Fetts), framed comic books and photos of Henry’s deceased wife and of Brent.
It was also surprisingly clean compared to the rest of the house, which was bachelor-dirty: old sports magazines on every available surface, dust bunnies under all of the furniture (which Brent assured me were there long before his father disappeared) and DVDs scattered throughout.
The desk itself, with its carefully laid-out calendar in the center, the action figures along the rim, and the phone placed at a perfect diagonal to everything else, made me think of a catalog. There was a stack of papers inside a wicker mail organizer that by themselves weren’t noteworthy—a flyer for a notary conference next January in Palm Desert, California, the receipt for a small donation to hurricane relief in Haiti and a Post-it reminding him to pay Brent’s tuition and housing bills—but together they painted an odd picture. Why keep those things?
There was something off about the office but I couldn’t exactly place what it was. The books might have given me an initial clue as to who he was, but the rest of the office told me something different. A Star Wars–obsessed notary who kept only one room in his entire home clean? And who needs two plasma TVs in one small room?
I went back to the bookcase and examined his reading again, my eyes landing on a book called Building Bunkers, Safe Houses and Underground Domestic Dwellings by a writer calling himself “John Q. Keep Me Out of the Public.” Cute. I pulled it out and flipped through the pages once, stopping to ponder the entirely inaccurate information about planting trip wires before I headed to the living room.
Fiona and Brent sat on the sofa going through stacks of old bills and bank statements. Sam was in the kitchen tinkering with a desktop computer that looked to be at least fifteen years old, which made it the perfect age for Sam
’s computer skills.
“Would you like some light reading?” I said to Fiona. I handed her the book but she just set it on the coffee table. She’d calmed down some. Or at least enough to patiently go through stacks of unopened mail Brent had found in his father’s bedroom, in the trash can and overflowing out of the mailbox.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m engrossed in the correspondence from the homeowners’ association.” She showed me a stack of yellow papers, all of which bore the telltale sign of an angry group of residents: a propensity to overuse capital letters.
“What seems to be the problem?”
“Uncut grass,” she said. “One letter says that every blade of grass over three inches in height is subject to a fine. Really, Michael, who chooses to live among these people? Why not just move into a gulag?”
“Anything we can use?” I asked Fiona.
“He let his beer-of-the-month-club membership slide,” she said quietly and then tilted her head in Brent’s direction. He was looking at an invoice with more attention than I’d been aware he could muster.
“It was a gift from my mother,” Brent said. He handed me the invoice. His membership had lapsed three months ago. “He always made sure it was paid. Always. Each month, it came with a greeting card from my mother, or not my mother, but my mother’s name. It was a gift. He didn’t even drink that much.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m sure if he pays his bill, they’ll start it back up.”
“That’s not the point, Michael,” Fiona said. I knew she was right, but I was just hoping to reel things in, if possible. I’d forgotten, again, that I was essentially dealing with a child.
I handed the invoice back to Brent. “It’s silly, really,” Brent said. “It’s not like they got along when she was alive.”
“It’s hard to tell with parents,” I said. “I thought my mom and dad hated each other, and, maybe after a while, they did. But what I think of as the worst years of my life, my mother tends to remember differently. Maybe it’s the same with your father, Brent.”