anymore. You’ll just be dead.”
“Michael, you don’t need to give me your speech. I see those public service announcements.”
I stepped away from my mother and strung wire about a foot off of the ground from the side of the garage to the bougainvillea climbing up the fence that separated Mom’s house from the neighbor’s. Technically, the backyard was a friendly zone, meaning that if you happened to be sitting in the kitchen and saw someone trying to climb the back fence and break into the house through the backyard, the advantage was yours. The only actual exit to open safety was through the house or back over the fence. With the wire only twenty feet from the house, anyone coming that close would fall and likely slice themselves up in the process, which would be painful, but only until they were shot by the sniper watching them from inside.
Or my brother, Nate, with a shotgun. He was in town, visiting from Las Vegas for the week, and was coming over that night to help out. All I’d had to tell him was that his job was protecting a bank robber from a vicious biker gang and he signed on immediately.
When I finished stringing the wire, I walked back to where my mother stood. She was already on her second cigarette.
“Have you seen Zadie, Ma? Is that how you want to end up?”
“Michael, I need tar. It’s actually very helpful for my fibromyalgia.”
“You don’t have fibromyalgia,” I said.
“How do you know? People don’t just hurt. Something must be wrong with me.”
“Where do you hurt, Ma?”
She waved her hand over an area roughly the equivalent of her entire torso. “It’s worse in the morning,” she said.
“Maybe you should buy a new mattress,” I said.
“There’s nothing wrong with the one I have,” she said. “I’ve slept on it since the week you were born.”
Luckily, before I could respond, Sam came through the gate into the yard. He stepped over the wire lines adroitly. If you know what to look for, it’s easy not to get tripped up.
“Mikey, you want razors on the wire in the bushes?” Sam said.
I actually heard my mother gasp.
“Yes,” I said. It’s an instinctual thing. My mother disapproves, I immediately approve.
“Michael, what about the gardeners?” my mother said.
“When do they come?” Sam asked.
“Well, I don’t know, Sam,” she said.
“Do you have gardeners, Ma?”
“There’s a neighbor boy,” she said. “He reminds me so much of you and Nate when you were his age.”
“He’s forced labor, too?” I said. My mother stuck her cigarette back into her mouth and fixed her jaw in the way she does when she wants to convey anger, hurt, disappointment and incredulity.
“So that’s a yes, Mikey?”
“That’s a yes,” I said. “Anyone gets close enough to the house that they’re in the bushes, they’re in the wrong place.”
Sam nodded. But then, because he’s Sam, and maybe a better person than me as it relates to my mother, he said, “Are you all right with that, Madeline?”
“Whatever James Bond says,” she said and then tossed her cigarette down, ground it out with the tip of her shoe and stormed back inside. She slammed the door and everything. I stood there for a moment staring at the door. The sound of it slamming in my face was oddly reminiscent of a period of my life I like to call “childhood.”
“Awkward,” Sam said.
“You have now seen my entire youth in a split second,” I said. “Any news on the bikes?”
Sam checked his watch. “Yeah, I have to meet a guy in about an hour. Did some Donnie Brasco work with the Ghouls back in the nineties, owes me a favor or two, so he’s hooking me up with a couple choppers. What’s Fiona gonna ride?”
I looked up at the roof. Fiona was busy stretching a wire around all of the vents and across the chimney. I’d need to remind myself of this when Christmas rolled around, lest I chop off a foot putting Santa and Rudolph up.
“Yes,” I said. “About that. I spent some time reading their constitution. Women are, technically, property, according to the Ghouls. We bring her with us, I’m going to need to convince her that for this job, she’ll need to pretend like I’m her master.”
“Sounds difficult,” Sam said.
“Yes. But I think I can put a life-or-death spin on it and Fi will react well.”
Sam just nodded. And nodded. And nodded some more. “I’d work through that whole scenario in your head a few more times before you bring it up to Fi.”
“I will. But, uh, she’ll be riding on the back of my bike. No sidecars, right?”
“Mikey, it’s a chance of a lifetime we’re missing here.”
“We roll up on the Ghouls, we have to do it right. Way I’ve read it, there’s only one way of attacking this problem.”
“Lots of pyrotechnics?”
“You need to spend less time with Fiona,” I said.
“I’ve warmed up to some of her views on conflict resolution,” he said.
“She’d have us burn down the Everglades to root out an alligator.”
“That’s what we did to Saddam,” Sam said.
“And look how that turned out, Sam,” I said. “In the meantime, find out from your friend where the Ghouls congregate. Not just their public clubhouse, but maybe where they make their meth, hold their area meetings and design their next Boy Scout badge. If my plan works, we’ll need both.”
“Got it,” Sam said.
The back door opened then and Bruce’s mother, Zadie, stepped out before I could continue with the plan. She hadn’t said much since I’d picked her up a few hours ago, but then she didn’t look like she had the energy to do much complaining about anything. She was completely bald and kept her head covered with a turban. Her skin had a translucent quality to it.
“How are we doing, Zadie?” I said.
“I’m not deaf,” she said.
“Of course you aren’t,” I said.
“Then why are you shouting at me?”
“Am I shouting?” I turned to Sam and then back to her. Both were just staring at me. Apparently I was being loud. “Sorry,” I said. “Habit. Tough to get through to my mother, you see.”
“Your mother is trying to kill me,” she said.
“The smoke?” I said.
“The dinner.”
“Just take a jog,” Sam said. “Work all those complex fats right out of you.”
Zadie was wearing a sweat suit, but didn’t look much like the jogging type.
“I came out here to ask you a question,” she said to me.
“Ask away.”
“Did Bruce do something stupid again?”
“No,” I said.
“You know I’m eighty- eight,” she said. “I can handle the truth.”
I looked at Sam, but he was attempting to appear transfixed by a leaf. “It’s a complex issue,” I said. “He had good intentions.”
“My son, always with the good intentions.” She shook her head a few times. “His father, my husband, may he rest in peace, was the same way.”
“Your husband robbed banks, too?” I asked. When you’re dealing with someone who has been alive for eighty-eight years, it’s wise to just come clean. Skirting around the corners of things is for the young and the restless.
