“Interesting guy,” Nate said.
“That’s not the word I’d use,” I said.
“Last night? After you guys went to sleep, we sat up telling war stories. You know he robbed something like a hundred banks?”
“That’s what he says,” I said.
“Never once used a gun. Never even hurt anyone.”
“That’s what he told you?”
“He even had a nickname. You wanna hear it?”
“The Idiot?” I said.
“The Gray Grifter,” Nate said.
“Fiona said he was called the Safe-Deposit Bandit,” I said.
“That’s not much of a nickname,” Nate said.
“No,” I said. “And he wasn’t gray when he was robbing all of those banks.”
“No?”
“No,” I said. “A hundred banks. Really?”
“He said he didn’t have an exact number. Anything more than three or four is nails.”
“Right,” I said. “Nails.”
“Way he explained it,” Nate said, “he ended up only keeping the stuff he needed. Gave back most of it. Only stole from people he thought could really afford it. That seems okay to me in the long run.”
It was time to give Nate an object lesson. “Where’d you get this car?”
“It’s a rental,” he said. I didn’t believe him. But that was an issue for another day.
“So if I saw you on the street,” I said, “it would appear you’d have enough money to weather the loss of whatever you might keep in your safe-deposit box, right?”
“Well…”
“Precisely,” I said.
“He said he’d show me some tricks.”
“And Dad and Mom once vowed to love each other through sickness and health,” I said. “Not everything is as it seems.”
Nate sucked on his bottom lip for a second. I always had to remind myself not to be so hard on Nate, but the problem was that he was like a dog who never learned to stop peeing on the rug. You loved the dog, but, man, you got sick of cleaning up after it made a mess.
“Listen,” I said, “things are heating up. I need you to get Bruce and Zadie back to Ma’s, but I want you to go a different route than the one you took here.”
“How many routes are there?”
“Do you remember when we were kids?”
Nate smiled. Of course he remembered. He was still a kid. Perpetually sixteen or so. “Yeah, I remember that.”
“Remember that time I stole that Corvair from the neighbors?”
“The white one?”
“Uh… no. The black one,” I said.
“Right, right,” he said. “That was a classic.”
“Remember how we drove it around the neighborhood, but never crossed the same streets? So that we made a big, growing box around the house?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s what I did. That’s what I want you to do, but do it the opposite way. Go wide and then narrow down to the house. Anyone following you is going to become obscenely obvious.”
“And what do I do if someone is following me?”
“You know where the county jail is?” I said. Nate gave me a grave look. “Don’t go in. Just park in front of it and then call me.”
“That’s just like stealing a Corvair,” he said. He got into the Lincoln and I watched him pull out into traffic. He’d be fine, I knew that. It didn’t hurt to give him some advice now and then. Particularly since I was going to spend the rest of the evening risking my life, it seemed like a fair trade-off.
When I got back to the Charger, Fiona was filing the serial number off of the. 380 she’d taken from Clete.
“Thanks for the backup,” I said.
“I watched the whole thing,” she said. “That woman in the Cadillac was a true menace.”
“Zadie looked awful,” I said.
“She just had radiation,” Fiona said. “She’s not supposed to look good.”
“What’s worse, the cancer or the cure?”
“You should tell your mother to stop smoking,” Fiona said.
“I have.”
“Then you’ve done your job,” she said. There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
“This isn’t about me,” I said.
“Michael,” she said, “you can always try harder for the people you love. Look at Bruce. He went to prison for his mother. And he had his finger removed, too. And he robbed a biker gang. All for his mother. That’s devotion.”
It was something. I wasn’t sure it was devotion.
“He told Nate that he’s robbed hundreds of banks,” I said.
“Maybe he has.”
“Doesn’t that make him worse than me?”
Fiona put the. 380 into her purse but didn’t say another word.
She didn’t have to, I suppose. Any woman filing the serial number off of a. 380 has her own set of rules.
“We need to go to a hardware store,” I said. “You up for an arts-and-crafts project?”
“I love it when you sweet-talk me,” she said.
12
When you ambush somebody, it’s not merely about surprise and suppression. You can only surprise someone once in a given situation. You can only suppress someone for as long as they feel you hold the upper hand in terms of power. With deficient manpower and against a worthy opponent-which is typically the scenario that would necessitate an ambush-that isn’t a very long period of time.
A proper ambush surprises, suppresses and then creates institutional control.
Provided the goal of the ambush isn’t to kill every single person, the result of a successful operation is to strike fear into the enemy, to make them think you know their every move and already have a counter in place. This creates fear and suspicion in the rank and file, which leads to paranoia in the leadership.
In an organization like the Ghouls, where by definition the membership is made up of felons, a successful ambush will act like a magic pill. Suddenly everyone is looking over their shoulder. And the big boss man in the gold Lincoln? He’s looking for a scapegoat just to quiet the troops.
I already knew that was his specialty.
The man in the gold Lincoln burned down the stash house and killed the men who ran it. He also killed Nick Balsalmo (or likely ordered the job), probably just for having the Ghouls’ drugs and for not being forthcoming with the information on Bruce Grossman.
Or, well, allegedly he’d done those things. Anyway, I couldn’t help but assume that life was not looking particularly rosy for Clete, Skinny and the Hobbit now, either. At the moment it wasn’t my largest concern, as Sam, Fiona and I were busy prepping the Grossman house for the eventual arrival of the Ghouls. We were in the process of moving most of the Grossmans’ furniture out into the backyard when Sam asked me an important question.
“Tell me something, Mikey,” Sam said. “What creates that old-lady smell?”
“Palmitoleic acid,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“A fatty acid found in your skin,” I said. “Old people make more of it. Their skin sloughs off and suddenly everything smells like a wet book.”
“In this context, what’s old?”
“Over forty-five.”
We set the sofa down outside, next to where Fiona was working on her arts and crafts. She had several small sheets of plywood that she’d cut into the shape of cat’s heads. Beneath the head of the cat, the plywood descended into a spike. The plywood was painted black and glass beads, inlaid into tinfoil, were placed along the face to form reflective eyes. She’d made ten of these cat heads. The plan was to plant them throughout the house-in the living room, the entry hall, and since the kitchen was inexplicably carpeted, the kitchen, too. In the dark, they would reflect any ambient light and give the impression that the house was filled with wild, or, preferably, feral, animals.
If you want to scare someone, anyone, make them think they are surrounded by animals. The mammalian brain does not like this. The mammalian brain will ask you to flee. The mammalian brain doesn’t care if you’re a biker or a priest or Britney Spears.
I picked one up and caught the fading sun with the eyes. “Nice work,” I said.
“I know,” Fiona said.
Sam sniffed his arm. “I’m good, right?”
“I think alcohol and suntan lotion probably help neutralize the odor,” I said. “Or I’m just used to the way you smell. So I guess you really can’t be sure, Sam.”