"I can't be the only one," I said.
"The only one I care about," Fiona said.
10
Here's how a shakedown works: You scare someone so badly by threatening them that they actually believe paying you is better than going to the police, because they figure if you have the brass to threaten someone with impunity, you must have impunity. You scare someone to the point that everything they've ever learned goes out the window and they just rely on that fight-or-flight impulse, except that instead of running away, they cower. They submit. In Cricket's case, her shakedown came far easier. Eddie Champagne, who I was looking forward to taking a little bubbly out of, probably read about her first. Knew enough about her from the newspaper and magazine stories that he could pinch himself into her life and shake her without fear. There was no Dixon Woods to show up in the middle of the night and slap him around. The only impediment was going to be time and knowledge: Time for his past to find him, time for Cricket to wise up. So it didn't surprise me that he had disappeared when he did.
Or that Barry recognized him.
Or that as soon as he disappeared from Cricket's life, someone else showed up to collect.
Or that he thought he might need guns at some point.
I explained this very thought process to Cricket as we sat in her living room-her newly adorned living room-waiting for her bad guys to float up to her dock. I needed to make sure the men who came to collect were the same men as always. If they were, I'd know Eddie was none the wiser. I told her she didn't need to be afraid anymore, because whoever those men were, they had nothing on me. That she should be calm now. That I was in control. But it didn't stop her from looking panicked.
"I understand that all intellectually," she said, "but they scare me."
"Trust me," I said.
Twenty minutes later, a Power Quest zipped up to Cricket's dock. It was an expensive model, the 340 Vyper, and it looked new. I counted three men on the boat. The most marked characteristic I picked out about all three was that they tucked their shirts into their shorts and that they were wearing what looked like orthopedic sandals, the kind with the straps that wrap around the ankle and have extra padding to fight against aggressive cases of plantar fasciitis. They looked like the kind of guys who took lunch at that one strip club with the afternoon buffet. I put all three of them at no older than forty. I put their weights down as no less than 250, and that wasn't muscle weight or water retention. That was cheese-and-beef weight. In their free time, when they weren't shaking down women, I suspected they sat on that boat together and listened to the Jimmy Buf-fett box set and told one another lies.
What they weren't, categorically, was dangerous.
I asked Cricket if these were the same three guys who always collected from her. She said yes. Sam was waiting for her down the drive, but before I let her leave, I asked, "And what scares you about them?"
"They threatened to kill me," she said.
"If they killed you," I said, "they wouldn't get any more money out of you. If they killed Dixon, same deal."
Cricket thought about that. "I never considered that," she said.
"I know. That's why you can trust me. Okay?" I watched the men walk from the dock and across to the grasscrete pathway that circled around the numerous estates and led up from the personal marinas. Sam is waiting on the other side of your gate in your car. I'm going to take care of this. If you hear something that sounds like a gunshot while you're walking, don't be concerned."
"What does a gunshot sound like?"
"You'll know," I said.
The sun was already halfway down when Cricket scurried away. Outside, Biscayne Bay looked flat and glassy. I could make out a FOSS tanker coming into port. Overhead, planes were taxiing into and out of Miami International. Next door, in another multimil-lion dollar mansion, I suspected people were probably eating dinner. It would be a lobster bisque kind of night-just cool enough once the sun disappeared that you'd catch a chill. Dixon Woods, the real Dixon Woods, was making calls right now-I was sure of that-trying to figure out who Hank Fitch was. Brenda Holcomb was explaining just what the hell had happened in the offices of Longstreet Security. Natalya Choplyn was likely plotting how to kill me. My own government was working on that issue, too. My mother was smoking. My father was rotting in the ground, and though there was plenty of space in the cemetery, I had no desire to join him.
I checked my gun. Made sure the silencer was on just right.
I cracked my neck, because I'd slept funny the night previous.
I thought about Fiona and her hand on my chest.
I called Sam. "They're here," I said. "Cricket's on her way. Give me ten minutes. Text me when you're on your way back up."
This? This was going to be fun.
Because there's fight.
There's flight.
There's submission.
And then there's posture. You see this in the wild all the time. You watch the Discovery Channel long enough, you'll find out that every animal from the cocker spaniel to the black bear and all points above and below strike a pose. How you pose. How you stand. How you present yourself makes all the difference when you're about to get into a fight.
You assess the danger and you pose accordingly.
When I was Jay Gatz, my pose was all money and privilege and never taking no for an answer.
When I was the guy asking for directions to the airport, I was an idiot the security guard shouldn't have turned his back on.
Hank Fitch? His pose was simple. A guy you simply do not want to fuck with.
I watched the three men make their way around the house, watched as they smiled and slapped backs and got themselves mentally prepared to be bad asses and decided that I'd shoot the happiest-looking one of the bunch if I had the choice, but any of them would do. Through the peephole, I could see them adjusting their pants, making sure their shirts were tucked in just right.
It was like watching three high school buddies heading to the whorehouse for the first time, each getting the other up for their two minutes of glory.
The fattest of the three, a guy wearing a blue polo shirt with a penguin logo on it, pounded on the door and actually bellowed, "Open up!"
I swung open the door. "Yeah?" I said. I kept my gun hand behind the door.
The three guys looked at one another with varying degrees of surprise and annoyance. I'd dressed down for the occasion, so instead of wearing a suit, I had on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt that made me look sort of like a college professor on his day off, except that behind the door instead of holding a sheaf of student papers, I was holding a Russian 6P9, an eight-round silenced pistol. A gift from Fiona.
"Who are you?" Blue Shirt said. His buddies, Striped Shirt and Yellow Shirt, tried to look intimidating. It wasn't working. It's hard to look intimidating when you're wearing a rope belt, which all three of them were.
"Hank Fitch," I said. "Who are you?"
"We're here for Cricket," Striped Shirt said.
"Then you're in the right place," I said, all down-home goodness. "Come on in. She's in the living room." I opened the door wide and the three men walked into the entry hall, single file. Yellow Shirt actually gave me a polite nod, like maybe I was just the houseboy there to help out for the day, and he was just another guy at the end of his work day.
I could have shot each of them in the back of the head before a single one of them had a moment to react. Instead, as they walked by, I did a cursory once-over again, just to see if there were any bulges in odd places, apart from their guts. All three had cell phones clipped to their belts, while Striped Shirt had an ancient-looking revolver shoved down the front of his shorts. This would be fun.