'There statements?'
'Yeah. Woods says Champagne ripped his mother off, but Woods' mother says it's not true. They were in love. She gave him the money. Regardless, someone got Champagne to pull it back off the books.'
'Does Champagne have a sheet?'
'Fraud. Bad checks. Theft. A gun charge.'
'There you go. What else?'
'Cricket's call came in,' Sam said. 'The bad guys are coming tonight.'
'Perfect,' I said. 'What about the picture of Dixon? Cricket recognize him?'
'No. I got my guy to pull Champagne's mug. No surprises there. It's her husband. Or not her husband.'
'How'd she take that?'
'Your mom just kept pouring her drinks,' Sam said.
'That's always been one of her best solutions. Something's wrong, throw a little alcohol on it. Apart from that, how are they getting along?'
'Like old friends.'
'Really?'
'No,' Sam said.
'No,' I said. 'I didn't figure that would be much of a match. Try to keep everyone placated. If you have to, lock my mother in the garage. Just throw in a carton of cigarettes and tune the TV to E! and crank up the sound. She'll be perfectly content.'
'There's something else,' Sam said. 'I got a call this morning from D.C.'
'Yeah.'
'Whoever Natalya's source is has people listening,' he said. 'And talking.'
'And?'
'That's all they said.'
'Any line on who this is?'
'Someone who doesn't want you coming off the blacklist,' Sam said.
'Did you tell them it's crap? I mean, Sam, you were there for these things.'
'Michael, if I tell them I was there, I'm just as culpable if people really start listening. It's my pension. It's my career. All of it.'
'You think I don't know that?' I said.
'I know you do,' Sam said.
'Listen,' I said. 'I think we can take care of all of our problems. Meet me at Cricket's. Bring Fiona, too.'
I hung up with Sam and went back inside. Barry was working on his new bowl. It was frankly staffing to bother me in a real visceral way, so I didn't sit back down. 'Let me ask you something,' I said. 'If I wanted to get a legit loan on a property, but get someone to appraise it higher than it was worth, set up dummy mortgage accounts, fake a credit history, how quickly could you set something up without drawing any attention to yourself?'
'If you're good, that's not a concern.'
'Consider it implied,' I said.
'For you?'
'For anyone.'
'Trusted business associates, I could get it done in one business day. Two at the most. Normal friendly percentages, of course. How quickly the bank would fund the loan would be up to the bank.'
'Forget the actual loan. Just the approval.'
'Same deal. But you need the money, I could probably route that in under a week.'
'What about someone who bought you a delicious breakfast and who hates to see the criminal profession disgraced?'
Barry considered this. 'Three hours on the dummy stuff and approval. Twenty-four on the loan. Maybe less.'
'I'll be in touch,' I said.
'I know you will,' Barry said. 'As always, remember who helped you.'
'Impossible to forget,' I said.
Used to be, I helped myself. Used to be, I only called in support when I was really cornered, when there were tanks on the horizon and SCUDs in the air. Now here I was, in a cereal restaurant, talking to a guy with funny facial hair.
What was it they used to say? A new world order.
Twenty minutes later, while I stood in the chemical supplies aisle at Lowe's, my cell phone rang again. Perfect timing.
'Hank Fitch,' I said.
'Who the fuck are you?' the voice on the other line said. I was expecting a woman. I was expecting Bolts, specifically, but this was a man.
'Hank Fitch,' I said again. No reason to give my entire resume.
It was a good ten seconds before the man on the other end of the line responded. 'Do you know who the fuck this is?'
'Fascinating question,' I said. 1 was looking for a cleaning product that had the appropriate amount of sodium bisulfate in it for a little project I was going to take on later that afternoon.
Another ten seconds went by. 'You some sort of joker?'
I hadn't had a conversation like this since high school. I had a pretty good feeling I knew who I was talking to, so I hung up. Judging by the ten-second delay, my guess was that Dixon Woods was calling from Afghanistan, using a satellite phone or bouncing through a computer. Either way, if he really wanted to talk, he'd call back.
Sure enough, two minutes later my phone rang again. 'Hank Fitch,' I said.
Ten seconds later: 'Motherfucker…'
I hung up again. Instead of the cleaning product I was looking for, I found a five-pound cake of sodium bisulfate, put it in my cart and headed for the electrical department when my phone rang again.
'Hank Fitch,' I said.
Ten seconds later: 'Do not hang up on me.'
'Is this a prank call? I'm a very busy man with no time to listen to obscenity.'
'You put my name out. Here I am.'
'I put out a lot of names,' I said. 'Hank Fitch is in the business of putting out names.' I didn't even really know what that meant, but I liked the sound of it.
'Dixon Woods,' he said.
'Oh,' I said. 'Yes. The international man of mystery. You put me on the news last night. Something I try to avoid, but then you're not easy to get in contact with. I even drove by your mother's house in Jupiter, but you weren't playing in the front yard.'
'Bullshit,' he said.
'No bullshit,' I said.
'She's dead,' he said.
I knew I should have had Sam check her out physically. 'You should tell your friend Eddie Champagne that,' I said. It didn't really matter, after all. For what I was thinking, she could be dead or alive or stuffed and mounted.
'You think I'm stupid?'
Yes. 'No, of course not.'
'I know what your guy took from my folder. I know what he knows.'
He wasn't stupid. 'Here's the deal, Dix,' I said. 'I'm a businessman. I have certain needs. Needs I sense a person in your unique position could assist me with.'
'And what's that position?'
I pushed my cart outside into the garden section. Picked up some new flowers for the front of Cricket's
