“Awkward,” Sam said.
“You have now seen my entire youth in a split second,” I said. “Any news on the bikes?”
Sam checked his watch. “Yeah, I have to meet a guy in about an hour. Did some Donnie Brasco work with the Ghouls back in the nineties, owes me a favor or two, so he’s hooking me up with a couple choppers. What’s Fiona gonna ride?”
I looked up at the roof. Fiona was busy stretching a wire around all of the vents and across the chimney. I’d need to remind myself of this when Christmas rolled around, lest I chop off a foot putting Santa and Rudolph up.
“Yes,” I said. “About that. I spent some time reading their constitution. Women are, technically, property, according to the Ghouls. We bring her with us, I’m going to need to convince her that for this job, she’ll need to pretend like I’m her master.”
“Sounds difficult,” Sam said.
“Yes. But I think I can put a life-or-death spin on it and Fi will react well.”
Sam just nodded. And nodded. And nodded some more. “I’d work through that whole scenario in your head a few more times before you bring it up to Fi.”
“I will. But, uh, she’ll be riding on the back of my bike. No sidecars, right?”
“Mikey, it’s a chance of a lifetime we’re missing here.”
“We roll up on the Ghouls, we have to do it right. Way I’ve read it, there’s only one way of attacking this problem.”
“Lots of pyrotechnics?”
“You need to spend less time with Fiona,” I said.
“I’ve warmed up to some of her views on conflict resolution,” he said.
“She’d have us burn down the Everglades to root out an alligator.”
“That’s what we did to Saddam,” Sam said.
“And look how that turned out, Sam,” I said. “In the meantime, find out from your friend where the Ghouls congregate. Not just their public clubhouse, but maybe where they make their meth, hold their area meetings and design their next Boy Scout badge. If my plan works, we’ll need both.”
“Got it,” Sam said.
The back door opened then and Bruce’s mother, Zadie, stepped out before I could continue with the plan. She hadn’t said much since I’d picked her up a few hours ago, but then she didn’t look like she had the energy to do much complaining about anything. She was completely bald and kept her head covered with a turban. Her skin had a translucent quality to it.
“How are we doing, Zadie?” I said.
“I’m not deaf,” she said.
“Of course you aren’t,” I said.
“Then why are you shouting at me?”
“Am I shouting?” I turned to Sam and then back to her. Both were just staring at me. Apparently I was being loud. “Sorry,” I said. “Habit. Tough to get through to my mother, you see.”
“Your mother is trying to kill me,” she said.
“The smoke?” I said.
“The dinner.”
“Just take a jog,” Sam said. “Work all those complex fats right out of you.”
Zadie was wearing a sweat suit, but didn’t look much like the jogging type.
“I came out here to ask you a question,” she said to me.
“Ask away.”
“Did Bruce do something stupid again?”
“No,” I said.
“You know I’m eighty- eight,” she said. “I can handle the truth.”
I looked at Sam, but he was attempting to appear transfixed by a leaf. “It’s a complex issue,” I said. “He had good intentions.”
“My son, always with the good intentions.” She shook her head a few times. “His father, my husband, may he rest in peace, was the same way.”
“Your husband robbed banks, too?” I asked. When you’re dealing with someone who has been alive for eighty-eight years, it’s wise to just come clean. Skirting around the corners of things is for the young and the restless.
“Buses,” she said.
“Buses?” Sam said. Now he was engaged.
“Buses?” I said.
“Those muni buses, back before everyone had a pass, carried a lot of cash on them.”
“A lot of coins,” Sam said.
“Coins are money, too.”
“What about you, Zadie?” I said. “Ever turn over a liquor store?”
“My husband and my son,” she said, a derisive tone rising in her voice. “No sense between them. Me, I understood a hard day’s work.” She explained that after her husband died in 1965 from a heart attack, she worked first as a teller at a bank, moved all the way up to assistant manager, but had to quit when her son was accused of walking out with some property.
“Property?” I said. “So that would be money?”
“Someone said he took a roll of quarters,” she said.
“Never proved. Who’s to say he didn’t have ten dollars in quarters in his pocket to start with?”
“Who is to say?” Sam agreed. “She’s got a point there, Mikey.”
Mothers want to think the best of their sons. This isn’t spycraft. It’s just common sense. No one who’s had another human living inside of them for nine months hopes to believe that human is a detestable waste of carbon.
Not Zadie.
Not my mother.
Not Fiona’s or Sam’s or anyone’s.
“Your son did what any good child would do, Mrs. Grossman,” I said. “He just tried to take care of his mother. He ran into a little problem in the process of it all, but it’s going to work out. In the meantime, you’ll stay here for a few days, my mother will order takeout, we’ll drive you to your doctor’s appointments and everyone will sleep easier when it’s over.”
“And that’s why you’re running razor wire around this house?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
She reached up and squeezed my cheek. “You’re a smart boychik,” she said. And then she squeezed a little harder. “Don’t get me killed. I’m already dying, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
She released me, patted me once on the chest, took a deep breath of the evening air and then smiled. “I do love Miami,” she said. “I’ll always appreciate Brucey bringing me here to retire.” She patted me again. “You be good to your mother when she retires,” she said.
“She’s never worked,” I said. “So retiring is more of a state of mind with her.”
“She raised you,” she said, “and I don’t see you out robbing banks. Someone did something right.” She went back inside then, apparently content that she’d learned what she needed to know and taught me something, too.
“Spunky lady,” Sam said.
I rubbed at my cheeks. “Her fingers were like talons,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to find out she did some Bonnie and Clyde business back in the day,” Sam said. “Maybe she was Bonnie. We don’t know.”
“Cops killed Bonnie and Clyde,” I said. “We do know.”
“A lot of that was covered up,” Sam said. “Top secret stuff, Mikey-one day I’ll explain it all to you.”
There’s a line I try not to cross with Sam. Breaking into his delusions was top on the list. So I just moved forward and asked, “How much time does Zadie have left?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I got what medical reports I could get. They never have the expiration date on them. But not long, Mikey, not long.”
“Then we need to make sure she’s comfortable,” I said.
“And what’s the plan to make that happen?”
“I think we need to kill Bruce,” I said.
“Novel,” he said.
“Actually, first, we use him as bait,” I said, “then we kill him.”
“And then what, raise him from the dead?”
“Yes,” I said.
Sam contemplated my answer. “I don’t see how this could fail.”
I explained to Sam the framework of the plan. We’d first drive out to one of the Ghouls’ clubhouses-the wonderful aspect of dealing with biker gangs is that they actually have clubhouses, which is quaint unless you stumble in looking for a bathroom and end up with a pool cue upside your head-hand them a stack of the documents Bruce took, maybe even some of the vaunted patches, and tell them we have the guy responsible and we’re ready to deal. Tell them we caught him breaking into our “business” and that we tortured him and made him talk. And when he talked, he fingered the Banshees, another national gang with a big presence in the lucrative Florida drug trade. They also had a boutique business in prostitution and loan sharking, which made them an all-around great group of guys.