'That would be worse.' We hadn't heard from Eddie through Fiona's profile yet, but I had a feeling today would be the day. Call it intuition. Call it knowing that Eddie Champagne was about to have a cash-flow problem. Call it by any name you want, but what's great about bullies, even weak ones, is mat they are predictable, and, if you know what vou're doing, you can plan for things they don't even know they're about to think.
I turned off the hose and Fi and I toweled off using a few of Cricket's guest towels, which must have had an insanely high thread count, since even Fi sort of paused and rubbed it along her cheek.
'You could be in a situation like Cricket's,' X said.
'Oh, that wouldn't be so bad,' she said. 'I could get used to this house. These towels. A Bentley or two. I might even take up badminton.'
'A couple weeks in a place like this, you'd be robbing banks again.'
'You don't know, Michael. I might really enjoy hitting the shuttlecock.' I laughed. It felt pretty good. Of course, I'd have to give up meaningful moments like this with you.'
'I don't know, Fi. You're right about that,' I said, 'though I might be inclined to look you up online eventually, see if you were interested in former spies looking for a good home.'
'It wouldn't be a good home,' Fiona said. She was close to me now, as close as we'd been making the tear gas. 'You'd be gone before I would be.'
'Maybe.'
'And there'd always be someone like Natalya for you to worry about.'
'Who said I was worried?'
Fiona patted my chest and then left her hand there, her fingers pressing and releasing. 'You're human, Michael, even if you swear you're not.'
'Fi,' I said.
'I know. I know. I saw the movie, too.'
'Which one was that?'
'Bad man. Bad woman. Bad things happen and then the woman inevitably is left to pine away for her dark man. And then he comes back, someone smirks and it's a happy ending. Always so stupid. You'd think one day someone would call for a little authenticity. All the endings I've been part of have been unhappy, if you want the truth, if it involves bad men and bad women.'
Fiona was smiling now, aware of her moment, probably thinking, Yeah, now I've got Michael ponder ing how mundane we've made these things. They even make movies about it…
'What is that, The Maltese Falcon?'
Smile still there, but a little angry now. These games we play, they're fun. They are. But at base, she's a woman, I'm a man and we're always about one reflex away from platonic going erotic. 'The point is, Michael, I already know the why. It doesn't change things, because here we are.'
'Don't tell me it was a Bond film. Those things make me crazy.' Above us, a plane was making its descent into Miami, the airport only a few miles away from Fisher Island, but another world away in every other sense. The buzzing of the engine caught Fiona's attention, too, and for a moment we both just watched the plane as it banked slightly to the east to start its circle down. When it was gone from overhead, I looked down at Fiona. She was beautiful. Is beautiful. And yet. And yet. 'You ever wonder, Fi, about what else is out there for you.'
'I've told you before, Michael, I know what's out mere. It's not compelling.'
'This is? Whatever we have here?'
'It's better.'
'Maybe you'll die because it was better. That ever occur to you?'
'You wouldn't let that happen, now, would you, Michael?'
I wanted to kiss her. I really did.
'No, I suppose I wouldn't. Aren't you lucky. Did I tell you Natalya called you my pit bull?'
'Failed to mention that.'
'I thought you'd like that,' I said.
I had a really good sense Fiona wanted to kiss me, too. It was the way she was pressing herself into me, theway I was intimately aware of the word pelvis.
'She call me any other names?'
'Not that I recall,' I said.
Things were moving at a pace I wasn't entirely comfortable with, but which were nonetheless acquiring their own velocity. I put a hand on Fiona's clavicle and gently pushed her backward. 'You need to get out of here,' I said. I checked my watch. It was four thirty. I wanted Fiona back at my mother's, just in a case any more Communists showed up. Sam and Nate needed to leave me and Cricket alone, at least for a little while.
'Of course I do,' she said, that smile back again. She finally stepped away from me, though I could still feel her fingers on my chest, other parts of her on other parts of me. 'That's what makes it compelling, Michael. You're the only man who can push a woman away even when you know it would be a good time.'
'I can't be the only one,' I said.
'The only one I care about,' Fiona said.
10
Here's how a shakedown works: You scare someone so badly by threatening them that they actually believe paying you is better than going to the police, because they figure if you have the brass to threaten someone with impunity, you must have impunity. You scare someone to the point that everything they've ever learned goes out the window and they just rely on that fight-or-flight impulse, except that instead of running away, they cower. They submit. In Cricket's case, her shakedown came far easier. Eddie Champagne, who I was looking forward to taking a little bubbly out of, probably read about her first. Knew enough about her from the newspaper and magazine stories that he could pinch himself into her life and shake her without fear. There was no Dixon Woods to show up in the middle of the night and slap him around. The only impediment was going to be time and knowledge: Time for his past to find him, time for Cricket to wise up. So it didn't surprise me that he had disappeared when he did.
Or that Barry recognized him.
Or that as soon as he disappeared from Cricket's life, someone else showed up to collect.
Or that he thought he might need guns at some point.
I explained this very thought process to Cricket as we sat in her living room-her newly adorned living room- waiting for her bad guys to float up to her dock. I needed to make sure the men who came to collect were the same men as always. If they were, I'd know Eddie was none the wiser. I told her she didn't need to be afraid anymore, because whoever those men were, they had nothing on me. That she should be calm now. That I was in control. But it didn't stop her from looking panicked.
'I understand that all intellectually,' she said, 'but they scare me.'
'Trust me,' I said.
Twenty minutes later, a Power Quest zipped up to Cricket's dock. It was an expensive model, the 340 Vyper, and it looked new. I counted three men on the boat. The most marked characteristic I picked out about all three was that they tucked their shirts into their shorts and that they were wearing what looked like orthopedic sandals, the kind with the straps that wrap around the ankle and have extra padding to fight against aggressive cases of plantar fasciitis. They looked like the kind of guys who took lunch at that one strip club with the afternoon buffet. I put all three of them at no older than forty. I put their weights down as no less than 250, and that wasn't muscle weight or water retention. That was cheese-and-beef weight. In their free time, when they weren't shaking down women, I suspected they sat on that boat together and listened to the Jimmy Buf-fett box set and told one another lies.
What they weren't, categorically, was dangerous.
I asked Cricket if these were the same three guys who always collected from her. She said yes. Sam was waiting for her down the drive, but before I let her leave, I asked, 'And what scares you about them?'
'They threatened to kill me,' she said.
'If they killed you,' I said, 'they wouldn't get any more money out of you. If they killed Dixon, same deal.'
