“I’ve got a sick friend in Montana I could visit,” he said.
“Try one of the Dakotas,” I said.
“I hear South Dakota is nice this time of year.”
“Don’t limit yourself,” I said. “Try them both.”
“Mike, you’re scaring me here.”
“Praise the Lord,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Barry was silent again. In the background I could hear an organ being played. Maybe he was already in heaven.
“When you say there was more of Balsalmo on the outside than the inside,” Barry said, “you meant that literally, right?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
More organ music.
“I don’t vacation enough,” Barry said.
“No time like the present.”
“You’ll call me if, you know, there’s something I need to know?”
“I will.”
“And maybe now would be a good time to use an alias?”
“Now would be that time, yes.”
Silence again. I’ve never thought of Barry as a particularly pensive guy.
“You need money or something?” he asked. He sounded hopeful again. If there’s one thing Barry knows, it’s money.
“I’m fine, Barry. Down the line, I’m sure we’ll tip the scales again.”
“I appreciate that, Mike,” Barry said.
“Future reference,” I said, “I’d like to avoid going to war with a biker gang.”
“Praise the Lord,” Barry said.
“Praise the Lord,” I said and hung up.
7
There is no such thing as a safe house. Any fixed location is, by definition, a waiting target. Hide long enough and no matter how safe you feel, you will eventually begin to create a traceable root system. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a log cabin in Lincoln, Montana, or a spider hole outside of Tikrit, stay in one place long enough and the people looking for you will find you.
If you really want to ensure that no one can find you, you have to keep moving. Adhere to three simple rules and maybe you’ll live long enough to outlast whoever is chasing you: 1. Never spend more than twenty-four hours in the same place. 2. Pay cash for everything. 3. Sleep during the day, travel during the night.
Even still, this plan requires financial resources and unwavering determination. There is nothing more exhausting or emotionally isolating than constantly running for your life. So if you choose to embark on this kind of life, expect that your interpersonal relationships will suffer.
Despite all that, if you have to stay safe for just one or two days and you have ample protection-say, if a burned spy is watching over you-it’s important to fortify your position and not merely assume that by being out of sight you are somehow safer than if you were parading down A1-A with a target painted on your chest.
Which is why I was outside my mother’s house laying tactical wire across the backyard, Sam was placing protective wire through my mother’s rosebushes and Fiona was working on the roof. Inside, my mother had just served Bruce and Zadie her patented “light dinner”-pot roast, garlic mashed potatoes and a pasta salad whose main secondary ingredient was mayonnaise-though she kept coming outside to smoke and complain.
“Michael, you know I don’t like meeting strangers,” my mother said. She’d just stepped out onto the back porch and was watching me with unique disinterest. Having me fortify her home had become a frequent activity of late.
“They’re nice people, Ma,” I said.
“Zadie told me confidentially that her son was just in prison, Michael!”
“Everyone lives somewhere,” I said.
“He is very cute, though,” she said. I decided to try to unhear that by simply not reacting to it. “And, Michael, not being able to smoke inside my own home is making me very nervous.”
“Ma,” I said, “Zadie is dying of cancer. You recognize that smoking causes cancer, right?”
“Allegedly,” she said.
It was the early evening, which meant the sidewalks around my mother’s house had already been rolled up for the night. The only signs of life on the street apart from the three of us fortifying our positions were the odd appearances and sounds of Reagan-era Lincoln Continentals and Chryslers slipping into garages throughout the neighborhood.
Early-bird specials live on in Miami.
I was trying to maintain a level of calm and appreciation for my mother, seeing as she was doing me a tactical favor, and in light of the houseguests, so I opted not to counter the “alleged” claim.
“I’m just feeling very jumpy, Michael. I don’t like worrying about the guests and worrying about who might attack the house and, on top of it all, worrying about when I can have another cigarette.”
“That’s the nice thing about smoking,” I said. “Do it long enough and you won’t have to worry about it anymore. You’ll just be dead.”
“Michael, you don’t need to give me your speech. I see those public service announcements.”
I stepped away from my mother and strung wire about a foot off of the ground from the side of the garage to the bougainvillea climbing up the fence that separated Mom’s house from the neighbor’s. Technically, the backyard was a friendly zone, meaning that if you happened to be sitting in the kitchen and saw someone trying to climb the back fence and break into the house through the backyard, the advantage was yours. The only actual exit to open safety was through the house or back over the fence. With the wire only twenty feet from the house, anyone coming that close would fall and likely slice themselves up in the process, which would be painful, but only until they were shot by the sniper watching them from inside.
Or my brother, Nate, with a shotgun. He was in town, visiting from Las Vegas for the week, and was coming over that night to help out. All I’d had to tell him was that his job was protecting a bank robber from a vicious biker gang and he signed on immediately.
When I finished stringing the wire, I walked back to where my mother stood. She was already on her second cigarette.
“Have you seen Zadie, Ma? Is that how you want to end up?”
“Michael, I need tar. It’s actually very helpful for my fibromyalgia.”
“You don’t have fibromyalgia,” I said.
“How do you know? People don’t just hurt. Something must be wrong with me.”
“Where do you hurt, Ma?”
She waved her hand over an area roughly the equivalent of her entire torso. “It’s worse in the morning,” she said.
“Maybe you should buy a new mattress,” I said.
“There’s nothing wrong with the one I have,” she said. “I’ve slept on it since the week you were born.”
Luckily, before I could respond, Sam came through the gate into the yard. He stepped over the wire lines adroitly. If you know what to look for, it’s easy not to get tripped up.
“Mikey, you want razors on the wire in the bushes?” Sam said.
I actually heard my mother gasp.
“Yes,” I said. It’s an instinctual thing. My mother disapproves, I immediately approve.
“Michael, what about the gardeners?” my mother said.
“When do they come?” Sam asked.
“Well, I don’t know, Sam,” she said.
“Do you have gardeners, Ma?”
“There’s a neighbor boy,” she said. “He reminds me so much of you and Nate when you were his age.”
“He’s forced labor, too?” I said. My mother stuck her cigarette back into her mouth and fixed her jaw in the way she does when she wants to convey anger, hurt, disappointment and incredulity.
“So that’s a yes, Mikey?”
“That’s a yes,” I said. “Anyone gets close enough to the house that they’re in the bushes, they’re in the wrong place.”
Sam nodded. But then, because he’s Sam, and maybe a better person than me as it relates to my mother, he said, “Are you all right with that, Madeline?”
“Whatever James Bond says,” she said and then tossed her cigarette down, ground it out with the tip of her shoe and stormed back inside. She slammed the door and everything. I stood there for a moment staring at the door. The sound of it slamming in my face was oddly reminiscent of a period of my life I like to call “childhood.”