"That wasn't too difficult for you," Natalya said.
"This has been a great year," I said. "There any job openings here at the hotel? Maybe something working security, where I could just mumble and threaten people?"
"A friendly contact operates the hotel chain," she said. "You always liked Albania, didn't you, Michael?"
"What do you need from me, Natalya?"
Natalya took a sip of her tea. "Proof. Barring that, the missing cut."
"That's not going to happen," I said.
"I have my orders then." She set her tea down and got up, smoothed lint from her skirt and smiled at me in a way I found rather disconcerting. Nothing seemed all that happy. "It was lovely to see you, Michael. The years have certainly been your friend. It's a shame, really, to stay looking so good when the world has grown so ugly. It makes you stand out." She patted me on the knee as she walked past and for a moment I thought that Fiona was probably right from the get-go: Blowing up the hotel would have been easier.
3
The next day, Sam picked me up at eight thirty in the morning. He was clean shaven, his pants looked pressed and his shirt was absent any sort of floral or fruit arrangements. I looked into the backseat and noticed an actual blazer, still in the dry cleaner's bag. When I slid into his Cadillac, he handed me a plastic grocery bag.
"What's this?" I asked.
"I took the liberty of picking you up breakfast," he said, "just to show you how much I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to assist me in this venture."
In the bag were two dozen containers of yogurt. Some were even flavors I liked.
"Coming on a little thick this morning," I said.
"You think?"
"Is there already a complication in your damsel-in-distress scenario?"
"I went by last night and met the damsel," he said. "Cricket O'Connor is her name. She's… challenging."
"Excellent," I said. "That's exactly what I'm looking for. More challenging women with problems." I told Sam about my meeting the previous day at the Hotel Oro, about the rather precarious situation it revealed and how it presented a few fresh issues for me to deal with, not the least of which was trying to figure out who would provide false information to the Russians in my name, and why. Sam would have the contacts to get to some of the truth, but in times like these, a little financial grease would probably be needed.
And, as usual, apart from the thousands and thousands of dollars in my frozen bank accounts, I didn't have much money, a fact that seemed to make Sam happier than I would have liked.
"Then this job we have is coming at just the right time," Sam said.
The Miami I grew up in isn't the one I returned to. I knew this before, but on this day, as Sam drove us through the neighborhoods surrounding my place and then east on the Dolphin Expressway toward the MacArthur Causeway, where we'd pick up a private ferry to take us to Fisher Island, where Sam's said damsel (one Cricket O'Connor) lived, I couldn't help but notice how little I recognized this as home. A normal kid, maybe he sees all the tourist points of Miami before he turns twelve, goes to the Orange Bowl, maybe takes in the Art Deco tour, sees the Blue Angels at the Air and Sea Show, watches the Winterfest Boat Parade.
By twelve, I was sure my father wasn't just a bully but a bastard, that my mother was her own particular kind of horror show and that my brother, Nate, would always complicate things.
By twelve, I'd already stolen a dozen cars.
By twelve, I was already figuring out how to get the hell out.
Miami has always been a city of rogues and ruffians-that much is certain-but in the twenty years since I left town for good, only to return for a day or two at a time, though not long enough to actually be there when my father finally died, leaving my mother to her paranoia and Nate to, well, Nate, it's become this odd mix of glitz and sham, so that even the humble neighborhood I grew up in is a mark for those who want to speed into town and speed back out with cash in their pockets.
Real estate, once a bargain, has turned into the irresistible boom, impervious to the real world, since the people with six million dollars to spend on a waterfront home aren't carrying subprime loans and surely don't live in the real world. Crockett and Tubbs couldn't stop the drugs and neither has anyone else, the cocaine trade becoming a cash crop far more lucrative than sugar and just as easily attained, so in came even more drugs, like heroin, and cheaper drugs, like meth, all of which then fed and grew until Miami became not just the party capital of the country but also the center for identity theft, murder and narcoterrorism.
Ah, home.
With all of those things comes another kind of evil, or at least one of the more egregious sins: envy. You can't be too rich in Miami; you always have to have something more than your neighbor, always have to live somewhere even more extravagant, so that your wealth isn't merely the end result of your hard work-it's the hole card that provides the flush of other people's envy.
"You know what I wonder?" Sam asked. We were on the private ferry-which is pejorative to ferries, since this was more like a cruise liner that happened to carry expensive cars, along with the few clunkers belonging to the help, or just the help themselves, most too poor to own cars-halfway between the causeway and Fisher Island at this point, but had opted to get out of Sam's car to take on the view of the private isle.
"I can't even pretend to know."
"You see all of these minimum-wage people? They spend all day on this little slab of paradise, and they'll never, at the rate they're going, ever have enough money to even own a blade of grass on the island."
"Yeah?"
"So why do they even bother? Why even wake up in the morning when you know that you're always going to be crawling out of the same rut, until you're too old for that rut, and then you'll be forced to get into an even worse rut?"
"Everyone needs a job," I said. "Look at us."
"Naw," he said, "what we did was make it so everyone could feel safe in their crappy lives, and for what, really? Float out here from Cuba for a better life and end up working for some rich despot just the same."
"That's capitalism at work," I said.
Sam stared out over the water and squinted, as if he were trying to see something that wasn't there. "Listen," he said, "this thing with Natalya Choplyn, that's not something to trifle with."
"I know, Sam."
"Mikey, she might have impressed you with her husband and family but she's still calling shots around the world," he said. "She saw your mother. If Fiona hadn't been on top of her game, she'd be dead and probably two or three dozen other people would be too. The kind of juice she must have to get the no-call names, to get actual agents out on this, that means whoever told her you dimed her is big. Let's just pull the plug here, let the CIA know she's here and go on with our lives. You don't have to let this concern you."
Sam was probably right. But I'd been threatened.
"You don't think the CIA knows where she is? They've probably been tracking her on Echelon for fifteen years," I said. "And you don't think she'd be a step ahead of us? Waiting for that? If her source is so good, it probably is CIA." But there was something more, something that niggled at my mind, an inkling that whoever was trying to get her out by using me was involved with my burn notice and that, if I solved this, I might have one more piece of the puzzle fixed. And then there was the likelihood that somewhere there were pictures of us palling around Dubai and I'd be tried as a traitor and hanged, all of which I mentioned to Sam, as well, and which didn't sound like a great way to spend an afternoon.
Sam digested all of that. "Then let me help you, at least."