And, as usual, apart from the thousands and thousands of dollars in my frozen bank accounts, I didn't have much money, a fact that seemed to make Sam happier than I would have liked.
'Then this job we have is coming at just the right time,' Sam said.
The Miami I grew up in isn't the one I returned to. I knew this before, but on this day, as Sam drove us through the neighborhoods surrounding my place and then east on the Dolphin Expressway toward the MacArthur Causeway, where we'd pick up a private ferry to take us to Fisher Island, where Sam's said damsel (one Cricket O'Connor) lived, I couldn't help but notice how little I recognized this as home. A normal kid, maybe he sees all the tourist points of Miami before he turns twelve, goes to the Orange Bowl, maybe takes in the Art Deco tour, sees the Blue Angels at the Air and Sea Show, watches the Winterfest Boat Parade.
By twelve, I was sure my father wasn't just a bully but a bastard, that my mother was her own particular kind of horror show and that my brother, Nate, would always complicate things.
By twelve, I'd already stolen a dozen cars.
By twelve, I was already figuring out how to get the hell out.
Miami has always been a city of rogues and ruffians-that much is certain-but in the twenty years since I left town for good, only to return for a day or two at a time, though not long enough to actually be there when my father finally died, leaving my mother to her paranoia and Nate to, well, Nate, it's become this odd mix of glitz and sham, so that even the humble neighborhood I grew up in is a mark for those who want to speed into town and speed back out with cash in their pockets.
Real estate, once a bargain, has turned into the irresistible boom, impervious to the real world, since the people with six million dollars to spend on a waterfront home aren't carrying subprime loans and surely don't live in the real world. Crockett and Tubbs couldn't stop the drugs and neither has anyone else, the cocaine trade becoming a cash crop far more lucrative than sugar and just as easily attained, so in came even more drugs, like heroin, and cheaper drugs, like meth, all of which then fed and grew until Miami became not just the party capital of the country but also the center for identity theft, murder and narcoterrorism.
Ah, home.
With all of those things comes another kind of evil, or at least one of the more egregious sins: envy. You can't be too rich in Miami; you always have to have something more than your neighbor, always have to live somewhere even more extravagant, so that your wealth isn't merely the end result of your hard work-it's the hole card that provides the flush of other people's envy.
'You know what I wonder?' Sam asked. We were on the private ferry-which is pejorative to ferries, since this was more like a cruise liner that happened to carry expensive cars, along with the few clunkers belonging to the help, or just the help themselves, most too poor to own cars-halfway between the causeway and Fisher Island at this point, but had opted to get out of Sam's car to take on the view of the private isle.
'I can't even pretend to know.'
'You see all of these minimum-wage people? They spend all day on this little slab of paradise, and they'll never, at the rate they're going, ever have enough money to even own a blade of grass on the island.'
'Yeah?'
'So why do they even bother? Why even wake up in the morning when you know that you're always going to be crawling out of the same rut, until you're too old for that rut, and then you'll be forced to get into an even worse rut?'
'Everyone needs a job,' I said. 'Look at us.'
'Naw,' he said, 'what we did was make it so everyone could feel safe in their crappy lives, and for what, really? Float out here from Cuba for a better life and end up working for some rich despot just the same.'
'That's capitalism at work,' I said.
Sam stared out over the water and squinted, as if he were trying to see something that wasn't there. 'Listen,' he said, 'this thing with Natalya Choplyn, that's not something to trifle with.'
'I know, Sam.'
'Mikey, she might have impressed you with her husband and family but she's still calling shots around the world,' he said. 'She saw your mother. If Fiona hadn't been on top of her game, she'd be dead and probably two or three dozen other people would be too. The kind of juice she must have to get the no-call names, to get actual agents out on this, that means whoever told her you dimed her is big. Let's just pull the plug here, let the CIA know she's here and go on with our lives. You don't have to let this concern you.'
Sam was probably right. But I'd been threatened.
'You don't think the CIA knows where she is? They've probably been tracking her on Echelon for fifteen years,' I said. 'And you don't think she'd be a step ahead of us? Waiting for that? If her source is so good, it probably is CIA.' But there was something more, something that niggled at my mind, an inkling that whoever was trying to get her out by using me was involved with my burn notice and that, if I solved this, I might have one more piece of the puzzle fixed. And then there was the likelihood that somewhere there were pictures of us palling around Dubai and I'd be tried as a traitor and hanged, all of which I mentioned to Sam, as well, and which didn't sound like a great way to spend an afternoon.
Sam digested all of that. 'Then let me help you, at least.'
'Are we having a little bit of a moment here?'
'Little bit, yeah.'
I patted him on the back. 'You're hired,' I said. An announcement rang over the PA system that we'd be docking on Fisher Island in five minutes, that we should be mindful of the island's strict twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit and that the temperature on the island was a perfect eighty-two degrees. 'Maybe, if things work out, we can get ourselves a blade of grass out here to retire on.'
Prior to 1905, Fisher Island didn't exist. But when the dredging project to create a shipping lane into Miami left a couple hundred acres of green island adrift in Biscayne Bay, the island was born. What was once just mangroves became a millionaire's retreat, the property shifting hands between some of the nation's wealthiest people, eventually ending up in the hands of the Vanderbilts, before turning into what it is now: the most exclusive address in Miami.
As Sam drove towards Cricket O'Connor's house, we passed the private resort that was once the Van-derbilt estate and is now a playground for those for whom price is no problem, replete with towering coconut trees, a distinctly Gatsby-ish expanse of tennis courts and a rippling golf course peopled by men wearing sweaters tied over their shoulders, as if a squall were just around the corner. A ten-story condo complex hugged the coastline and offered astonishing views starting at two million dollars. Along the narrow avenues were elaborate guard gates and surprisingly tasteful manors, usually with a design mirroring the old Vanderbilt estate-Spanish influences abounded with a neo-Art Deco flair tossed in for flavor.
From the moment we drove off the ferry, I counted seven Bentleys, fifteen Mercedes, two dozen face-lifts, double that many boob jobs (usually on women more accustomed to being called Bubby than Baby) and enough tummy tucks and lip implants to make one wonder how anyone functions with the fat cells they were born with.
The air was warm.
The streets perfectly clean.
The views were impeccable.
It was, frankly, making me a little paranoid.
But then I had the strangest memory.
'I've actually been here before,' I said.
'You're thinking of Grenada,' Sam said. 'The night before the invasion, right? It was just like this. Helluva time. Female med students have special needs in times of war, if you know what I'm saying.'
'I was in eighth grade when we invaded Grenada,' I said.
'A shame,' Sam said. 'We could have used you. You know, I still have a tiny piece of shrapnel in my left big toe from that. Cold days, it's like someone's sticking a fork into my foot.'
It was probably very near the time Sam was storming the beach that I was last on Fisher Island, though it didn't look quite like it did on this day, at least not in my memory. My father and mother were fighting, throwing dishes and frozen food at each other, so Nate and I sneaked out of the house and just rode the buses around Miami. Nate had stolen a bunch of transfer passes, so we ended up going clear across the city and found ourselves at the very marina Sam and I had just departed from. We sneaked onto the ferry-a very different ferry, as I recall,
