'Ringing,' Fiona said.
'Tell me what you see, Nate.'
'Okay,' Nate said. His voice turned official, which made me sort of want to climb through the phone and shake the life out of him, but you take what you can get in these situations. 'Perp is fishing in his pocket for something. Perp is pulling out a cellular phone device. Perp is looking at cellular phone device. Perp is hurling cellular phone device into the ocean.'
Hello, Eddie.
'I'll be there,' I said. 'Don't do anything stupid.'
'Why would I start?' he said.
Shit.
In a situation where it seems like the best course of action is to call the police and let them protect and serve, you should call the police. Seems is a nebulous emotion one should ignore. You should deal with certainty. You should know that if there is a man who has swindled a woman out of millions of dollars, a man who has swindled many others out of much more, you should be certain that that person needs to go to prison.
Unless, of course, you need to use that person as a pawn.
The facts were simple: We had Cricket's money back, but if I wanted to get out of my situation with Natalya, I needed Eddie Champagne. And I needed him alive or at least in reasonably decent shape. I needed him to have a paper trail.
I should have mentioned the reasonably decent-shape aspect to Nate. Because, after an hour of driving across Miami, waiting for the ferry and then finally making the slow crawl across the island back to Cricket's home, all without any word from Nate, I began to have concerns.
So when we walked into Cricket's house and found Nate and Eddie sitting at the kitchen table having a drink of Old Grand Dad, I must admit I was surprised.
That Eddie was bleeding from his head and had a package of frozen peas ACE bandaged around his neck, not so much.
'This is the guy I was telling you about,' Nate said to Eddie when I walked into the kitchen. 'We've been getting to know each other. I gotta say, Eddie has lived the life. He wrestled a polar bear once. Right, Eddie?'
'God's witness,' Eddie said. He tried to raise his hands to give the Boy Scout salute, but I saw that Nate was smart enough to plastic flex cuff Eddie to his chair. Which explained the straw Eddie was using to drink with.
'Nate,' I said. 'A word?' I dragged Nate into the backyard and let Fi and Sam watch the drunken and beaten Eddie.
It was the afternoon and by all accounts another beautiful day in Miami, high in the eighties, a light breeze, blue sky, and my brother holding a bloody and beaten Eddie Champagne hostage in the kitchen of, in a way, his own home.
'You care to explain?' I said.
'I did as you said,' Nate said, 'except I amended the plan.'
'Yeah, I see that.'
Nate said that when he got off the phone with me, he started thinking about how awful he felt for Cricket, and for all the other people he was sure Eddie had rooked, and just couldn't control his emotions any longer. So he walked downstairs, unlocked the front door and, when Eddie came though a few minutes later, hit him in the back of the head with his gun.
'But then he started gushing blood,' Nate said, 'just prodigious amounts, and it was all matted with hair, and I thought, Oh, no, I don't want a stiff on my hands. So I tried to dress his wound the best I could.'
First perp. Now stiff. I didn't know if I'd be able to handle Nate in his new crime-fighting mode for much longer. 'Frozen peas?' I said.
'The freezer was all out of ice,' he said. 'And then he came to and was really complaining about the pain, crying, moaning, the whole experience, so I figured, you know, a swab of old Old Grand Dad on the wound would dull the sensations and keep out infection, like in those Westerns Dad used to watch.'
'That was TV,' I said. 'You ever hear of Bactine?'
'Yeah,' Nate said, 'that thought came to mind after the whiskey really got poor Eddie jumping, so I figured, give the guy a couple sips, see if that made a difference.'
'Poor Eddie?'
'The guy has had some tough breaks,' Nate said.
'I'm sure,' I said.
'Anyway,' Nate said, 'we got to talking. Comparing notes. He's really done well for himself in this real estate game.'
'He's a crook, Nate,' I said.
'If you can look past that,' he said.
'I can't,' I said. 'Neither should you. He tried to bleed Cricket dry. God knows how many people just like her didn't get out. The guy is a predator, Nate. Do you get that?'
'Okay,' Nate said. 'Okay. Breathe, man. You're all bunched up looking now. Your eyes are all buggy. Big mean spy guy going loco.'
I unclenched my jaw. I loosened up my forehead. I took a moment to stare at the sea. I thought I caught a whiff of someone grilling chicken.
Nothing worked.
'Nate,' I said, 'did he tell you what he was doing here?'
'He said he was worried about his wife,' Nate said.
'I'm sure,' I said.
'Yeah, I didn't believe that, either,' Nate said. 'So I asked him again after we'd had a couple. But that's the story he's sticking to. Said he figured if some crazy psycho was willing to kill her in the name of someone he was just pretending to be, that he owed it to her to set the record straight.'
'A real come-to-Jesus moment,' I said. 'You did good, Nate. I appreciate it.' I meant it, even if Nate's methods were a wee bit on the unorthodox side.
'Yeah?' Nate said.
'Yeah.'
'Just keeping my pimp hand strong,' Nate said. I started to walk back inside, since I had an idea how I'd use this situation with Eddie to the fullest, but Nate stopped me. 'Do you remember coming out here when we were kids?' I told him I did. 'What was it, some kind of field trip or something?'
'Yeah,' I said. 'Something like that.'
'I remember you and me just running around that big-ass resort,' he said. 'And then I sort of remember us hanging out with a security guard. Weird. I haven't thought about that in years.'
'It was a good time,' I said. I didn't have the heart to tell him what I remembered, the circumstances, the repercussions.
'Was it?' he asked. He turned his head, as if trying to get his memories to line up.
'Sure, Nate,' I said. 'Sure. Not like when we went to that potato chip factory and Justin Pluck stabbed you.'
'You know I ran into Justin Pluck a few years ago,' Nate said. 'Married, a couple rug rats, working at Costco.'
'Was he still missing most of his hair?'
Nate laughed. 'I didn't get too close. I didn't want whatever he had rubbing off on me.'
'What did he have?'
'Normalcy,' Nate said.
That was something he-we-would never have.
After sending Nate home, I went inside, brewed a carafe of coffee, sat down with Fiona and Sam in front of Eddie Champagne and started pouring him cups of black coffee.
'Drink,' I said to Eddie.
'That's a myth,' he said. 'Coffee doesn't sober you up. Best thing for me would be a nice, long nap. Clinically proven.'
'I'm sure it is,' I said. I nodded at Sam, who reached over and squeezed Eddie's nose closed for about ten
