“No,” I said. “No, I’m going to guess Nick Balsalmo is a drug dealer. Would that be an accurate description?”
“More like a courier. He doesn’t sell on the streets. I couldn’t trust a guy who sold drugs to kids or something.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Who could?”
The sarcasm was lost on Bruce.
“Right, right, my feeling exactly. But he works with bigger businesses, I guess you could say.”
“A middleman,” Sam offered.
“Exactly, exactly,” Bruce said. “A middleman.”
“So it might stand to reason that Mr. Balsalmo would be in the business of selling your stolen drugs to people who suddenly found themselves, say, low on product? Would that sound plausible?” I said.
“Uh, yes,” Bruce said. And there it was. Dawning.
“When did you speak with him last?”
“Three, four days ago. He called to thank me. Said he was having good luck moving the stuff, wanted to know if I wanted, you know, a cut. I said no, of course.”
“Of course,” Sam said.
“Of course,” I said. I gave him a big smile and then said, “You might want to give him a call. See if he’s still alive.”
The color left Bruce’s face then. He’d known this was serious before, certainly, but for some reason he hadn’t seen all of the consequences of his actions. I tossed him my cell phone and he dialed Nick’s number on speaker. After a few rings, an automated voice announced that the voice mail was full.
“What kind of drug dealer doesn’t check his messages?” I said.
“Maybe he’s out of town?” Bruce said.
“That’s why people have voice mail, Bruce, so they can get their calls anywhere. Especially drug dealers. Do you know where he lives?”
“He lives with a Cuban girl out in Little Havana. I went over there for dinner once. Nice place.” There was a matter-of-factness to Bruce that sometimes felt very odd: He was essentially a very simple guy. For a person who did twelve years, he didn’t seem to be all that jaded, or damaged, which meant that for some reason he hadn’t had a terrible experience in jail. Or not as terrible as others.
“What did you owe Nick for, exactly?”
Bruce got a pensive look on his face and started rubbing at his wrist again. When he finally spoke, it was just above a whisper. “He did my finger.”
“Could you speak up, Bruce?” Sam said. “I can’t quite hear you. Ten percent hearing loss in my right ear from the Falklands.”
Bruce didn’t know quite what to make of Sam, so for a moment he glared at him in a rather benign way, as if to say, You could say please. It didn’t last. “He did my finger, okay? Spent two months in the hole for it. When he got out, there was this meshugass with my mother’s illness, and so I couldn’t pay him what I owed him initially, but he was cool, really. The dinner and all that. Ever had Cuban pork chops? Authentic Cuban pork chops?”
“Once,” I said.
“Where?”
“In Santiago de Cuba,” I said.
“But I thought that…” He stopped for a minute, thought about where he was going, opted to change lanes. “Anyway, he was perfectly sweet about everything, but it was clear he wanted what was his.”
“Let me get this right,” Sam said. “Guy takes off your finger and you have to pay him? That’s inflation for you. Mikey, you hear that?”
“I hear that,” I said.
“It doesn’t make sense on the outside, I know,” Bruce said. “But it’s a different set of rules in prison.”
“How much did you owe him?” I asked.
“Fifty grand,” he said.
“How much do you think he could get for the drugs you gave him?”
“Enough that he felt comfortable offering me a cut,” Bruce said.
“Real gentleman,” Sam said.
The problem here was that even if Bruce wanted to give the Ghouls back their drugs-presuming Nick hadn’t already tried to sell them their own stuff-a good sum of it was already gone. And I didn’t feel comfortable giving anyone back a bunch of drugs-there’s no way into that situation that is safe and I didn’t particularly want to kill anyone that week. Or be killed, for that matter.
“Nick, he’s a good guy,” Bruce said. “He just has a bad job. But who doesn’t?”
Bruce made a convincing argument, but it might just have been his delivery. Having a sixty- five-year-old man give you a slice of prison wisdom does have a certain charm. He wanted to explain more, but before he could, Fiona came to the sliding glass window and cracked it open.
“Zadie would like something to eat,” she said to Bruce, who jumped from his seat like he’d been shocked and went directly into caregiver mode, rushing off to the other side of the great room and into the kitchen to fix his mother a sandwich.
Sam and I both watched him for a bit, how meticulous he was in putting together a plate for her, how he put the sandwich in one corner, a bit of Jell-O in another, how he washed by hand a few leaves of lettuce and then shook pepper onto them, followed by a dash of oil and vinegar. He then poured his mother an entire glass of ginger ale, no ice.
“We have to help him,” I said quietly.
Sam nodded once.
Bruce walked past us to the patio without saying a word.
“A complication,” Sam said, still watching Bruce. “Before I got here I ran the information on the house he hit. It was burned down last night.”
“Not a surprise,” I said.
“With the occupants inside of it,” Sam said.
“How many?”
“Two. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they found this Balsalmo in a ditch in the back if he’s as savvy as our friend Bruce is.”
Page ten of the Ghouls’ constitution said, “You dishonor the Ghouls. The price is determined by your dishonor.”
I guess they meant it.
Trying to figure out how to return stolen property is like trying to un-swallow: There’s no actual opposite action that will return the property (or the food you’ve eaten) in its original form. There will always be an elemental difference. Steal from someone and even if they get their stuff back in whole cloth, they’re still going to feel that sense of violation. Steal from a criminal organization and whether or not they feel violated, they’re going to want revenge.
In Bruce Grossman’s case, he didn’t actually want to return everything he’d stolen. He wanted to keep the money and give back the drugs and the paperwork and the box of patches that he’d also lifted and just call it even, which wasn’t going to work. There’s no even when three hundred thousand bucks is left out of the equation. And stealing a gang’s patches is maybe worst of all. It’s silly, but these grown men live and die for a stitch of cloth.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Sam said. We were back at my loft. I was eating blueberry yogurt. Fiona was doing this thing where she sits quietly flipping through a fashion magazine but is really listening to everything and waiting to make proclamations that will solve all the problems we’ve encountered. Sam was doing what Sam does: drinking my beer and asking questions. “If you’re a criminal mastermind, like Bruce thinks he is, why would you be so stupid?”
“He’s not a criminal mastermind,” I said, “so that solves that.”
“He’s closer to a criminal mastermind than either of you are,” Fiona said. She didn’t even bother to look up from her magazine.
“Because we’re not criminals,” I said.
“Have you ever tried to break into a safe-deposit box?” she asked.
