"Do you have a job, Stan? Something that allows you the opportunity to leave work early on a Thursday to shake down socialites?"
"We sell real estate," he said.
"See, that's interesting," I said. "Because you know what I do?" Stan shook his head. He was starting to look a little clammy. "I invest. Take a look around, Stan. What do you see?"
Stan looked around. "Furniture," he said.
"What kind of furniture, Stan?"
"Nice stuff," he said.
"That's right. What else? Look outside. Go ahead. Stand up. What do you see?"
Stan got up, looked outside the window, saw the new flowers. The decorative stones. The Malibu lights, which weren't armed yet, because a guy needs to keep his surprises to a minimum sometimes. The trimmed lawn. I even had the fountain going. "You've taken care of the garden again," he said. "Made it look nice."
"Right again," I said. "You see, Stan, while you were busy shaking Cricket down for your boss-and we'll get to that in one second, Stan, because I can see you're starting to get nervous that maybe I didn't believe your friend's assertion that he didn't know Dixon-I was looking at the big picture from a boss' perspective. Saw a real business opportunity here. You three are just bagmen. But I like Dixon's moxie here, pimping his own wife. That's a class operation. So you know what I did? I bought the house."
I pointed the gun at Stan when I said this, let him know I really meant what I said. I didn't of course. At least not exactly.
"Look," Stan said, "don't shoot me."
"I'm not going to shoot you, Stan," I said. "Whatever gave you that impression?"
"You shot Burl," he said, pointing to the man on the ground. I didn't bother to correct his error. If he thought I shot his friend, all the better.
"Why don't you just tell him all of our names!" Burl said. "Give him your social security number while you're at it, Stan! Jesus. I'm having trouble breathing."
"If you were really having trouble breathing," I said, "you wouldn't be able to talk." I looked over at the fellow under the mirror, the one who would need some real dental care if he hoped to chew anything ever again. The upshot is that I might have fixed any deviated septum issues he might have had. "What's his name, Stan?"
"Danny," he said.
"Okay," I said. "Stan, Burl, Danny, here's the deaclass="underline" I know you're working for Dixon. I don't hold that against you. But Dixon and I have a business interest overseas that he's reneged on recently. It took me a very long time to find him, so I was fortunate when I finally met Ms. O'Connor and learned of her problems. She's graciously allowed me to move into her home, which I've happily done. The real problem, the one you three are paying the price for here, is that your employer Dixon owes me a substantial amount of money, gentlemen. So I want you to get him a message. Are you listening?"
Stan, Burl and even Danny, all regarded me with expectant looks.
"I'm not concerned about the opium anymore. The price of doing business." All three men darted looks at one another. If I had an idea about Eddie Champagne, it was that even the people working for him, in this case three real estate agents, were probably suspicious of his background, but not all that willing to be too suspicious if money kept flowing to them. Now that one of them had been shot, opium farms in Afghanistan probably seemed like a real possibility. I figured if I tossed in the price of doing business as a mysterious rejoinder, well, they'd figure getting shot was the price, too.
At any rate, I had their attention.
"What I can't forgive," I continued, "is the mess he left me with in California. That ended up costing me a great deal of money and resulted in the Mexican Mafia putting a hit order on me, which you can imagine didn't please me." Now I was just riffing, adding on, letting Stan, Burl and Danny know they were in deep with someone they didn't even know, someone who might end up rolling a hit onto them.
Guys like Hank Fitch can deal with a La Erne.
Stan, Burl and Danny? They watched documentaries on Dateline about that sort of thing and felt claustrophobic with fear, as if watching the program might mark them as snitches and result in a shank in their granite-lined showers while their wives pressed their morning espresso.
Eddie Champagne? If he knew Dixon Woods had a problem with the Mexican Mafia, Eddie would ditch his name and his holdings and any money he thought anyone might associate with it and get out of town quickly. (Out of the country if he could, but I had Sam working on that.)
"But this new real estate business Dixon is in I find very compelling," I said. "I can't imagine it's on the level. Is it, Stan?"
"Mr. Fitch…," he started.
"Hank," I said. "We're friends. Call me Hank."
"Whatever you had with Mr. Woods before today, we weren't aware of that," Stan said.
"There it goes," Burl said. "We're fucking dead. Do you get that, Stan? We're fucking dead. Danny, we're fucking dead."
"You," I said to Burl, "quiet." I pointed the gun at him when I spoke, which was a mistake, because he immediately pissed himself. There was now piss and blood on the floor. Fortunately, the furniture looked pretty good. I was keeping the exchange of fluids pretty well contained to the fireplace region.
"Continue," I said to Stan.
"I want to help you close this deal," he said, like we were sitting in the front seat of his BMW talking about a house in a subdivision. "All I know, all my associates know, is the business end. Dixon tells us where the money is, we get it, we make it happen. All this drug stuff? That's not us."
"Of course it isn't," I said. I smiled, just to let Stan know I understood, let him know that this was all just a big misunderstanding. "You just come around and fleece defenseless women-is that right, Stan? Pretend to be a tough guy? Make a woman lose her house to a guy like me? Make her a fucking shell of a human? That what you do?"
Stan looked nervously at his two friends. "Well, it's…"
"It's what I say it is," I said.
"Yes, sir," Stan said.
"What about you, Burl?" I said.
"I can't feel my foot," Burl said.
"That's because you've been shot in the leg, and no blood is making it to your foot right now," I said. I was about to ask Danny, the guy in the striped shirt, if he agreed, too, but he still didn't look like he could be engaged in conversation.
"You were saying, Stan?"
"The problem, as I see it," Stan said, "is that in order for me to help you with your plans, it would be helpful if we could cut Dixon out of it. No need to have him involved, respectfully, if you're interested in getting into this market."
I had to hand it to Stan. He was a good real estate agent.
"Go ahead," I said.
"We have relationships in place already," Stan said. He rattled off the names of several high-profile banks where he had contacts and where he said he ran millions of dollars in silly loans daily. What he outlined was a nice criminal enterprise of faulty loans that no one would know about unless, well, unless the banks started paying attention, which I had a feeling was about to happen. Soon enough, if you watched the news, you knew everyone working in real estate would get caught, even the legit companies. "We could bring you into the fold. Get you started locally. Avoid all this crap with Dixon. This island? It's gold, Mr. Fitch." He explained that over the last year they'd become very adept at getting loans on properties all over Miami for far more than the property was worth, that they'd paid the right people using Dixon's connections and reputation and that it was now a flawless clockwork operation.
"We could use a person with your… flair… Mr. Fitch, to really take this to the next level."