innovative spying technology. People, at the end of the day, want to be protected and want their families to be protected. Bruce, on the other hand, had already done the most he could to try to keep his mother safe, had sacrificed time-years, really-a finger, and was willing to commit a crime against a gang of men who’d just as soon kill themselves as let him walk the earth knowing he’d gotten over on them.
It wasn’t guts, exactly.
It wasn’t heroism.
It was probably a lot like love.
We do things for our parents because even if we have issues with them, there’s a genetic responsibility. There’s a reason I fixed up the Charger and there’s a reason I’ve fixed my mother’s disposal ten times in the last eighteen months.
“If a tsunami rolls into Miami,” I said, “or a hurricane or a plague of locusts or every motorcycle gang in the country, know that all of them will need to go through me to get to your mother. And then Fiona, too.”
“Really?”
“Really,” I said.
“Okay, then,” he said. He gave the phone back to Fiona.
“All taken care of,” I said.
“Wonderful,” Fiona said and then, in the background, I heard Bruce shout, “Let’s do some crime, little lady!”
19
If you really want to violate someone, to make them feel afraid and lost and vulnerable, steal something from them that appears to have zero street value. Stealing a computer or a television or a car is an understandable crime-there’s a tangible reward along the line. But if you steal someone’s shoes, or their photo album, or a single candlestick, the person you steal it from is going to have complex emotions of loss coupled with the sense that their lives are somehow being perpetually invaded.
Which is why Fiona stole all of the Banshees’ C-4 from beneath the SUV.
And the steering wheel from the SUV.
And the Obama sticker.
And destroyed the hydroponic system in the kitchen and set off a fire extinguisher in the upstairs bedrooms, which is where packages of marijuana were being packed and readied for shipment.
So while Bruce carted away enough marijuana to start his own summer reggae tour-which he and Fiona then promptly dumped into a canal-Fiona carted away the security the Banshees had.
Not only had they been robbed.
Not only was their man of the house missing.
Not only had their means of continued production been destroyed.
On top of all of that, they also had been made to look weak and foolish.
And the Ghouls had done it.
Or, well, that’s what they clearly understood the situation to be, which we overheard since Fiona left a bug in the house, too, which was helpful. After taking Bruce back to my mother’s, the three of us-Sam, Fi and I-listened to the recording from the bug while eating a healthy snack of multiflavored yogurts in my loft.
The Banshees sounded, not too surprisingly, a little on the salty side of things.
“I don’t know if what that guy called the Ghouls is anatomically possible,” Sam said.
“You should learn how to stretch your back muscles,” Fi said.
“I stretch them plenty,” Sam said. “Carrying Michael around takes a lot of strength, Fiona, don’t kid yourself.”
I took a bite of my yogurt and tried to concentrate on the men, not on the warring factions of Sam and Fiona. Fi and Bruce had done an excellent job destroying the house and what they stole-including the C-4-indicated a desire not just to rip off the Banshees but to humiliate them, to show them that not only were they weak, but they were vulnerable. And instead of leaving a loose patch-one that maybe had been inadvertently torn from clothing while destroying the house, Fiona took it one step further: she burned the word “Ghouls” into the nice manicured lawn in the backyard.
Give Fiona thirty minutes and she’ll give you wholesale destruction of real property.
The Banshees were mad. They wanted revenge.
Things were finally-finally-falling into place.
“What he just said, about the lead pipe? That’s not possible unless you’re in zero gravity,” Sam said and then his cell phone rang. We’d been waiting all day to hear back from the feds, see if they’d take Bruce and his mother in.
“That them?” I asked.
“Looks like it,” he said and answered it. He mumbled a few words, nodded his head, suggested that the person on the other end of the phone line might, in fact, want to try out a zero-gravity chamber sometime in the near future, and bring a lead pipe with them, and then clicked his phone off.
“No dice,” he said.
“Yeah, I got that.”
“I tried making his file look better, even tied him into a bank job in Manila in the early nineties, but it seems like it would have been impossible for him to be there.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do say,” Sam said. “Apparently he was in court that day. In Michigan. As a juror.”
“If he wasn’t smart enough to get out of jury duty,” Fiona said, “why on earth would your government want to help him?”
“Well, that and the recession. My guy tells me that Witness Protection spending got cut in half, so they’re only taking people who really need protecting. You know, like those Bear Stearns people. Looks like it’s on Barry to set him up.”
This wasn’t the best result. But we could make it work. What I knew was that in order to get Bruce to go along quietly, to not rob any more places, to actually go on his own accord to North Dakota, we’d need to convince him he was going under protection.
Fortunately, he had a bit of money and Barry could get him more, plus a North Dakota-good identity. He would need to stay there at least until all the Ghouls in Miami were somewhere else. Even still, we’d give them back their treasured paper and fabric. All of this for paper and fabric.
In the meantime, we had to make sure that the Ghouls and the Banshees met somewhere in the middle of this action, so that they might just cancel each other out. Or, better yet, find themselves locked up for several years-enough time to get Zadie set up in permanent care and Bruce in a place where he couldn’t hurt himself.
So while Sam and Fiona continued listening to the bug, I called Barry and told him what he needed to know.
“Complicated,” Barry said.
“Busy week, Barry,” I said.
“Mike, Valley City is a very calming place,” he said. “Maybe you and Fiona should rent a cabin here and rekindle the passion when this is all through.”
“What would we do with Sam?”
“They have a place here called Shake’s Bar and Grill. They have hot peanuts and cold beers. He’d make do.”
“I’ll have my assistant get on that,” I said. “Where are you with the plan?”
“A lovely Craftsman came available today,” he said. “Only cost me five thousand to get the tenants out, another five thousand to get them to Hawaii.”
“Real money?”
“Mike, it’s North Dakota.”
“Right. Okay, it looks like Bruce and his mother are on the way. I’ll let you know for sure soon. There any
