"Forget the actual loan. Just the approval."
"Same deal. But you need the money, I could probably route that in under a week."
"What about someone who bought you a delicious breakfast and who hates to see the criminal profession disgraced?"
Barry considered this. "Three hours on the dummy stuff and approval. Twenty-four on the loan. Maybe less."
"I'll be in touch," I said.
"I know you will," Barry said. "As always, remember who helped you."
"Impossible to forget," I said.
Used to be, I helped myself. Used to be, I only called in support when I was really cornered, when there were tanks on the horizon and SCUDs in the air. Now here I was, in a cereal restaurant, talking to a guy with funny facial hair.
What was it they used to say? A new world order.
Twenty minutes later, while I stood in the chemical supplies aisle at Lowe's, my cell phone rang again. Perfect timing.
"Hank Fitch," I said.
"Who the fuck are you?" the voice on the other line said. I was expecting a woman. I was expecting Bolts, specifically, but this was a man.
"Hank Fitch," I said again. No reason to give my entire resume.
It was a good ten seconds before the man on the other end of the line responded. "Do you know who the fuck this is?"
"Fascinating question," I said. 1 was looking for a cleaning product that had the appropriate amount of sodium bisulfate in it for a little project I was going to take on later that afternoon.
Another ten seconds went by. "You some sort of joker?"
I hadn't had a conversation like this since high school. I had a pretty good feeling I knew who I was talking to, so I hung up. Judging by the ten-second delay, my guess was that Dixon Woods was calling from Afghanistan, using a satellite phone or bouncing through a computer. Either way, if he really wanted to talk, he'd call back.
Sure enough, two minutes later my phone rang again. "Hank Fitch," I said.
Ten seconds later: "Motherfucker…"
I hung up again. Instead of the cleaning product I was looking for, I found a five-pound cake of sodium bisulfate, put it in my cart and headed for the electrical department when my phone rang again.
"Hank Fitch," I said.
Ten seconds later: "Do not hang up on me."
"Is this a prank call? I'm a very busy man with no time to listen to obscenity."
"You put my name out. Here I am."
"I put out a lot of names," I said. "Hank Fitch is in the business of putting out names." I didn't even really know what that meant, but I liked the sound of it.
"Dixon Woods," he said.
"Oh," I said. "Yes. The international man of mystery. You put me on the news last night. Something I try to avoid, but then you're not easy to get in contact with. I even drove by your mother's house in Jupiter, but you weren't playing in the front yard."
"Bullshit," he said.
"No bullshit," I said.
"She's dead," he said.
I knew I should have had Sam check her out physically. "You should tell your friend Eddie Champagne that," I said. It didn't really matter, after all. For what I was thinking, she could be dead or alive or stuffed and mounted.
"You think I'm stupid?"
Yes. "No, of course not."
"I know what your guy took from my folder. I know what he knows."
He wasn't stupid. "Here's the deal, Dix," I said. "I'm a businessman. I have certain needs. Needs I sense a person in your unique position could assist me with."
"And what's that position?"
I pushed my cart outside into the garden section. Picked up some new flowers for the front of Cricket's house, a couple pallets of daisies, considered some perennials, something to amp up curb appeal.
"I have a lot of money I want to spend on farm machinery," I said, "and I understand you are in the farming business overseas. Just looking to make a deal."
"Your sense is wrong," Dixon said, but there wasn't much conviction in his voice. The version of Dixon Woods that Eddie Champagne had floated out was too specific not to be based in some kind of truth, too believable to people who can actually do some checking if they have the resources.
"I've got three million dollars I'd like to spend," I said. "I will either spend it with you, or I will spend it with someone else. It's little matter to me. But I figured a person like you, Dixon, with your background, would be able to handle this discreetly. As a token, I will take care of Eddie Champagne permanently for you. You might know that he's been putting your name out there, too. And not always in a flattering fashion. Nevertheless, he told me what I needed to know about you and, drama aside, I was compelled."
Instead of the normal ten-second delay, there was a pause of a full minute, during which time I pulled my cart back inside, took a look at some decorative stone work Lowe's had on display, moved toward the window-treatment aisle.
"I appreciate that," Dixon finally said.
"I'm meeting this week with an old friend from way back east who is spending some time in Miami this month. I'd love for you two to meet, see if we can't find a mutually advantageous business arrangement. Stop worrying about inferior products from Colombia and the like," I said, just to see if Dixon would bite, to see if those little tacks on the map of South Beach meant what I thought they meant.
"I can be on a plane in the morning," Dixon said. "In Miami by tomorrow night."
I picked up a box of solar-powered Malibu lights and tossed them in my cart. A nice touch.
"Call me when you get in," I said.
"Don't worry," Dixon said. "You'll know when I'm in Miami." And then, this time, he hung up.
9
Best-case scenario: You have a plan of attack and everything happens just as it is supposed to. Let's say, for instance, you're waiting for men to arrive with whatever it is you need.
A hostage.
Guns.
Money.
Or maybe it's just a message: The definitive new set of rules that dictate that no one shall make bombs defused by using either a red or blue wire but instead everyone will use the much more easily found black wire and that popular myths of bomb defusion shall reflect said change.
That would be a good message. Helpful to the world. Kids would grow up safer. The terrorists and bad guys and evildoers would lose.
The problem is, most messages, if they're delivered to you personally, end up being bad news. So you learn to prepare for the bad news first. You plan and you counterplan. You devise. You configure. You craft.
You alter.
You mine.
Your best-case scenario ends up being that you've prepared the perfect trap and you end up not needing to use it at all. James Bond, he never had a plan. He had gadgets some research-and-development team would have needed decades to perfect. Jason Bourne? A robot in human skin. Every spy you've ever seen on TV or in a movie has the benefit of special effects-when it gets down to business, all you really have is your plan and your ability to throw it out the window and react to circumstance, deal with consequence, keep fighting.
Or, as I first learned: You either follow tradecraft or you create it.
I didn't fully understand that credo then, but now, when all I can depend on is what I can find myself, it's never made more sense.
Which is why Fiona was in Cricket's garage making tear gas.
Which is why Sam was planting solar-paneled Malibu lights under the windows of Cricket's window… and then running fuses from them to tiny explosive squibs under the dirt. Tomorrow, if things went according to plan, those Malibu lights would deliver Fiona's tear gas.
Which is why Cricket O'Connor was standing on her circular staircase watching as Nate and I dragged in new furniture.