“Uh, Ma,” I said, “let’s think about this.”
“Oh, Michael,” she said, which was her code for: Shut up. She took a look at Bruce’s hand, noted the approximate spot where his pinkie stopped-he had only a nub above the knuckle-and then sliced right through the finger of a dead pimp.
She calmly turned off the electric knife, unplugged it from the wall and set it in the sink while all of us stood by.
“Michael, you’ll wash the knife?” she said.
“Sure,” I said eventually.
“And maybe spray some Lysol on the countertop?”
“Will do,” I said. “Anything else?”
She thought for a moment. “Nate, when you go out to take Zadie to her appointment, will you stop by the grocery store and pick up a gallon of milk and one of those nice rotisserie chickens?”
Nate waited for me to say something, as if I could provide any kind of insight into this person who apparently had abducted our mother. I was just hoping she didn’t get wise and turn the electric knife on me. “Sure,” I said. “Nate can do that. Can’t you, Nate?”
“Sure, Ma,” Nate said. “Whatever you need.”
Ma and Bruce went back into the living room. Their show was over, so they switched to Food TV and settled in for thirty minutes of heart-pounding excitement via a show about a guy who only eats absurd quantities of weird food.
“So,” Sam said.
“We’re not going to speak of this,” I said.
“What just happened?” Nate said.
“Fi?” I said.
She looked at the hand there on the counter for a few seconds and then said, “Doesn’t it look too fresh?”
“We’ll put it in some dirt,” I said. “So it looks like we just dug it back up.”
“Best-case scenario,” Sam said, “you just tell them we cut even more off while torturing Bruce for information. The Ghouls will appreciate that.”
“Okay,” I said. “Fi, you’re going to stay here and watch over Bruce and Maria and make sure my mother doesn’t cut anything else, okay?”
“Lovely,” she said. “Say hello to my friends at Purgatory.”
“I’m not going to do that,” I said. “But stay near the phone. We end up in a situation that needs your special attention to detail and explosives, I’ll call you.”
“Goody,” she said. “Am I excused now, professor? Because I must learn how to eat a giant pizza and it appears there’s a show all about that on the television at this very moment.”
“Dismissed,” I said.
I watched her walk back into the living room. She plopped herself into a chair and immediately fell into the program on the television. For a woman who weighed ninety-five pounds on a day when she wasn’t armed, she sure did like those cooking programs.
She’d have her hands full with Bruce and Maria, but I didn’t think for a moment that she’d be unable to take care of it. Especially since there was no sense in dragging a dead man out in public, lest he do something stupid, so keeping Bruce at the house was of the utmost importance. And since I knew he’d happily stay wherever Fiona was, I was confident that at least that avenue would be clear.
This was particularly important, since if the Ghouls knew where Bruce’s mother’s house was, they might have known who his mother was as well. With Nate taking Zadie to the doctor by himself, there was less of a chance that something beyond my control might happen. The Ghouls would be unlikely to make a move on an old woman since even bikers had a modicum of ethics.
Sam and I were going to handle the Ghouls and that meant Nate would handle Zadie.
“Nate,” I said, “you need to get Zadie into and out of that radiation appointment unscathed. Don’t let her talk to anyone. Don’t let her mention her son. We have no idea who might be on the Ghouls’ payroll by now, so you take her in, you watch her, and you take her right back out. You feel like anyone is on your tail, head for the police station. Just like last time. Okay?”
“How about if I notice anyone,” Nate said, “I’ll just bring them here and Ma can handle them. I mean, Michael, we need to talk about what just happened. Right? We avoid it, isn’t it like all that crap we avoided as kids that now has you all screwed up? Isn’t that right?”
“No, that’s not right,” I said. “We just pretend it didn’t happen.”
“If I end up with post-traumatic stress,” Nate said, “it’s on you.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll make sure I have a trauma nurse waiting for you here when you get back.”
“You don’t find what just happened odd, Sam?” Nate said.
“Nate, my boy, I have seen things that would make you question your own sanity. Papua New Guinea, fall of 1988, I saw a band of pygmies fell an elephant with spears and then climb into the elephant through its mouth and then out its backside,” Sam said.
“What?” Nate said. “What?”
“That’s my point,” Sam said. “I didn’t sleep for three days after that. So your mother? Just a quirk. She’ll probably think she dreamt it herself. People under stress, Nate, they do crazy things. I ever tell you about the time I saw a toddler lift a car off of his father? Side of the road. Kid knee- high to a grasshopper just picked a car right up. Damnedest thing. Right, Mike?”
“Uh, right,” I said. “Nate, look, just do this job for me. Keep her safe. You can do that. I know you can.”
Nate huffed and puffed a bit, but it was clear to me he was just happy to be part of the group. Even if it’s hard to depend on him to always do the right thing, it’s easy to depend on him emotionally. He is, after all, my brother and if there’s one thing I know about Nate, it’s that he wants to perform well. It’s not his fault that he doesn’t always have the natural ability.
Well, he might have the natural ability, actually. It’s not his fault he’s cultivated it toward stupidity on occasion. Not everyone is cut out to be a spy.
Besides, people tended to like him. Like Zadie, who put her arm through Nate’s and let him guide her outside to his car, which left me and Sam alone in the kitchen.
“Superman,” I said.
“No, no,” Sam said. “I’m just a regular guy like you, Mike.”
“No, that story. About the kid. That’s from the first Superman movie.”
“You saw that?”
“Everyone saw it,” I said.
“Not Nate, apparently,” Sam said. “Anyway, what do you think? We get out of this alive?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t read my tea leaves this morning.” I pointed down at the hand. “Maybe we get a palm reader over here and find out what his palm says and go from there.”
“Good idea,” Sam said. “Maybe get a Ouija board, too?”
I laughed. It felt pretty good. “This won’t be the hardest thing we’ve ever done,” I said. “All we need to do is walk into a hornet’s nest and not get stung.”
“It’ll be like that time in the Sudan,” Sam said. “Remember that?”
“Which time?”
“1993?”
“Were we there then?”
“Oh,” Sam said, “I can’t remember anymore. But what I remember is that we ended up as the last two people alive and we fought our way out using nothing but our good looks and sharp wit. And then we had mojitos afterward. Ring any bells?”
“That was in Venezuela,” I said. “2002.”
Sam closed his eyes. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I do remember. Lotta water under our bridge, Mikey.”
I pulled out a drawer and found a big Ziploc freezer bag and slid the hand into it. “Well,” I said, “then let’s go make some waves.”
