Authors: Tod Goldberg
“Yes, well,” Yuri said, “let me say this—they are all either dead or FBI. Which are you?”
“I’m from Ireland,” Fiona said, “so I can’t be FBI. And here I sit, drinking tea, so I must be alive.”
“Before, you spoke with an American accent. Yes?”
“That was before.”
“And who were you then?”
“I don’t quite know,” Fiona said. “Being hit in the head has left a blank space. Do you hit all FBI agents in the back of the head?”
“If you’d been FBI,” he said, “you’d not be sitting here with me. Plus your car, that Hyundai? No FBI drives Japanese.”
“Maybe it’s my car from home. I really can’t remember now. Amnesia from being struck.”
“Hmm, yes, that can happen. But you do remember that whoever you were, you carried a Sig Sauer, yes?”
“I do remember that, yes.”
“And you carry no identification?”
“I like to keep it simple,” Fiona said. “Just a gun and a hairbrush. Maybe a touch of lipstick and some powder, but otherwise I’m a very simple girl, Yuri.” She didn’t just say his name. She purred it. Fiona found that men of all stripes responded to hearing their names purred. It opened up some atavistic response that turned them into fourteen-year-olds.
“I’m sorry,” Yuri said. “You must think I am an idiot. I find you, how do you say,
alluring
, but I don’t like my women bloody. And I don’t like them spying on me.” He paused. Fiona presumed he wanted to let that sink in, which it did, and then he said, “How is your tea?”
“Lovely,” Fiona said. Because it was.
“You have a choice now,” he said. “You tell me who you are and why you’re here and we finish our tea pleasantly or I bring Gina back in to remove your fingernails.”
“You think she’d be able to do that?” Thinking, Yeah, please send her in. I’d like another shot at her.
“She’d have someone hold you down, so, yes,” he said. “I’ve seen her do it before. She is very meticulous. Never moves too quickly.”
“And if I tell you who I am and you don’t like it, then what?”
“Then we just kill you,” he said. “No torture. You look like you have good, healthy organs. Fetch a good price on the market. Your hair, too.”
He reached across the table as if to touch her hair, but Fiona grabbed his wrist and bent it backward. Hard. Not hard enough to break it, but that was just a matter of degree. When he tried to grab at her other hand, she grabbed that one, too. “You don’t want to touch me,” she said. No purring. Just a simple declarative sentence.
“You think you can hurt me?”
“I can break your wrists to start with,” she said.
“Compound fractures tend to cause shock. If I sever an artery, well, that will be messy. But you wouldn’t really feel it.”
“You wouldn’t get out of the building alive,” he said.
“And neither would you,” she said. She applied a bit more pressure and Yuri began to sweat, feeling the pain.
“We are at an impasse,” he said, his voice strained now.
“Then let me explain my position,” Fiona said. She had to think fast, since the truth was that she had not expected to be in this position. Michael would understand. “Yesterday, you blew up a building we use as a front for our corporation, InterMacron. You are familiar with it?”
“There is no such thing,” he said. “It is a scam. Some dumb boy. I want my money and he will bring it to me.”
“Really?” she said. “Some dumb boy? Then what am I, a figment of your imagination?”
Yuri was in obvious pain, but Fiona noticed that his expression had changed slightly. Clearly, she was not some dumb boy. “I am listening,” he said.
“We use several people to ferret out serious investors.” Fiona thought for a moment about her situation and decided to go forward with what she figured were both knowns and unknowns, just to see how Yuri might respond. “The Graysons are one level. Our associate Big Lumpy is another,” she said. He knew well enough who the players were in Miami, certainly, and that hearing Big Lumpy’s name didn’t cause him to giggle at its stupidity was a sign itself. “What we are doing with the wind technology and bandwidth, it is not, strictly speaking, legal yet.”
Yuri’s expression changed again. Now he seemed actually invested. Well, invested and in terrible pain. “Go on,” he said.
“The technology, we have acquired it before the government,” she said. “They call it a national security threat. So if you invest in it, if you agree to sell it for us outside our borders, we must know it will not fall into hands that might have problems with the United States.”
“That is everyone,” Yuri said. “And what do you care? You are Irish?”
“I love America,” Fiona said. “Much better weather here.”
“Where is my money? Where did that go?”
“The boy’s father,” she said, searching now, opting for truth over more fantasy. “He’s a gambler. He ran off with the money. So the boy and his father, they are under our, you could say,
watch
now.”
“And Big Lumpy?”
“He helps with our investments,” Fiona said.
“Your organization,” Yuri said, “what is your role?”
“I break wrists,” Fiona said, “and solve problems. Hitting people with teakettles is amateur.”
Yuri liked that answer. Fiona actually felt his arms relax a bit. It was smart for him to do that, since she was certain the circulation to his hands was pretty well staunched by now and being tense only exacerbated the situation.
“We have parties who have already expressed a financial interest in your company’s product,” Yuri said. “Your boy has caused me much stress with his lies. And I now am facing outside pressure to provide a product.”
Michael had correctly assumed Yuri’s problem. That was too bad. Fiona was hoping it was a new twist that she could impress him with. “My partners will need to know who you are selling to,” Fiona said. “Russians, we don’t mind. Your government is probably working on this, too. But we are capitalists like you, Yuri, and we believe in a free market, within reason.”
“A friend of mine from Dubai has made an inquiry,” he said.
“Does he live there or is he hiding there?”
“I don’t ask,” he said. Fiona applied some pressure. “He lives normally in Chad. Much wind there.”
Chad. The most corrupt country on the planet. At least Yuri was well connected.
“I will need to speak to my partners,” Fiona said. “But the cost will be far more than what you’ve paid. That was you being conned. You will need to add several zeros to your checks.”
“We make deal,” he said, seemingly unaffected by the change in cost. “We make another deal.”
Fiona had known this was coming. “You want the boy or the man?”
“Both,” Yuri said. “I answer to people, too.”
“Fair enough,” Fiona said. She let go of his right wrist—it seemed prudent since that hand was turning an odd shade of purple—but kept a firm grasp on his left. “I’m happy to go now, so please call to your friend Gina and let her know I’ll be leaving.”
Yuri called out in Russian and the door was unlocked and opened by Gina. He said something to her in Russian that might have meant “she’s free to go” or it might have meant “feed her to the dogs,” so Fiona said, “In English, so I know that I don’t have to kill anyone.”
“I told her to get your purse and let you go,” Yuri said. “You don’t mind, I’ll hold your gun for now. You have others, yes?”
“Yes,” Fiona said, though she did like the Sig. But she understood. An armed person might act inappropriately after being hit in the head with a teakettle and threatened with torture.
Gina left and came back a few seconds later with Fiona’s purse and set it on the table. “I hope you don’t mind,” Gina said, “but I borrowed your lipstick. I liked the shade and didn’t think you’d be needing it.” Gina smacked her lips together. “My apologies.”
“No problem,” Fiona said. “I’ll see myself out.” She bolted up from her seat and cleanly snapped Yuri’s left wrist before Gina could even react. Not a compound fracture, but he’d need a cast. She dropped his arm, grabbed both teakettles and smacked Gina on either side of her head, aiming for the ears but content to make contact anywhere. If she hit her ears, Gina would be dizzy for a month.
Judging by the way Gina fell into a heap on the floor, and judging from the blood seeping from her ears, Fiona was pretty confident she’d found her target.
Yuri was curled on the ground and moaning in Russian. His hand was pointed in the wrong direction, which seemed to cause him some consternation, so Fiona picked up the bag of ice she’d been using and dropped it beside him on the floor.
“The ice will help the swelling,” Fiona said. “But you should really get yourself to the hospital. And drink more milk, too. Your bones are very brittle. I’ll see myself out, but expect to get a call from us tomorrow concerning our agreement.”
Yuri groaned something unintelligible. Pain. So many people handled it poorly.
“If we still have a deal,” Fiona said, “moan three times with your eyes open.”
Yuri moaned three times and managed to keep his eyes open the whole time.
“No need to shake on it, then,” Fiona said.
8
Every spy knows that tactical success one day may mean tactical failure the next. Assuming your enemy hasn’t learned as much from his losses as you have from your victories would be a fatal mistake.
Likewise, brawn may beat brains once, but eventually an intellectually superior enemy will prevail, which is why we needed to be both strong and smart when dealing with Big Lumpy and Yuri Drubich if we wanted to keep Henry Grayson alive, wherever he might be. And then there was the issue of keeping Sugar alive, too, a proposition I hadn’t counted on.
The first key was to find Henry, which is why that afternoon, after Fiona told me of her wrist-breakingear-clubbing high tea, I had her pick up Brent so that he could meet Sam and me at his father’s house. We needed some idea, some path, to where Henry might be hiding. I had a good idea that he was nearby, maybe even tracking his son, as I simply could not believe, even with the two million dollars in life insurance money, that he would let Brent do battle with his demons. Never mind that Henry hadn’t bothered to pay Brent’s tuition.
The Grayson family home was in Miami Shores Village, an outcropping of suburbia bordered by Biscayne Boulevard and I-95 that nevertheless managed to look like small-town America. Less than fifteen thousand people called Miami Shores home and it seemed as though there was a church, a park and a café for each of them. The village was only twenty minutes from both downtown Miami and Fort Lauderdale, but seemed much closer to Pleasantville.
The house itself was a one-story ranch-style home on Ninety-ninth Street. Judging by the concrete-block stucco design, it had been built in the late 1940s or early 1950s, which was when Miami Shores was first developed. It was repainted recently, so in the sunlight it gleamed a brilliant white. That and the new slate on the roof indicated to me that Henry Grayson had kept the house in good order up to some recent point. The overgrown grass and shrubs told another story.
We parked across the street and walked to the house. Fiona and Brent waited for us on the front porch and I could already tell, just from Fiona’s posture, that she was not in the best mood. Maybe having her pick up the kid was a mistake after her experience with Yuri Drubich.
“Nice neighborhood,” Sam said. “Except for that high-pitched squealing sound. Do you hear that?”
“They call those birds,” I said.
“Annoying,” he said. “And it smells funny out here, too.”
“That’s called fresh air,” I said. “That sweet scent is what’s known as flowers.”
“For my money, Mikey, I prefer air with a bit more bite to it.”
I looked down the block and noticed that two rather conspicuous-looking SUVs were now parked on either side of the street. Since no harried parents came tumbling out of them, followed by sugar-filled children, I had the sense that maybe they weren’t locals. Well, that and the tinted front windows, which don’t have much of a functional purpose for people not in the violence or protection business.
“Looks like we have company,” I said.
“Not exactly trying to hide,” Sam said. “Maybe more of Big Lumpy’s people?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Let’s see.” I stopped in the middle of the street and waved at both cars.
“Michael,” Fiona called from the porch, “what are you doing?”
“There are some bad guys parked down the street,” I said. “I’m letting them know that I see them and wish them well.”
Fiona stomped across the front lawn and into the street, saw where I was looking and then mumbled something under her breath and began rummaging in her purse. She mumbled something again, this time with a bit more vehemence, so I said, “What was that?”
Fiona looked up and her expression was . . . well, she seemed a touch on the angry side. Her face was a handsome shade of red. “I said, ‘We should just shoot them.’ Maybe you’ve heard me say that before?”
“We’re in the middle of a residential street, Fiona.”
“Maybe you haven’t noticed, Michael, but I have an open wound on my head.”
“I noticed.”
“And I turned my ankle—did you see that?”
I looked down. She was wearing, as usual, a nice pair of heels. “It does look a bit swollen.”
“While you and Sam were having beers with an evil scientist, I was in a fight for my life. So you’ll excuse me for not having much patience,” she said.
“Fi,” Sam said, “maybe you should just wait in the house. Let the physically fit handle this.”
“Where are you going to be, then, Sam?” Fi said and she headed off down the street.
“Uh, Fi,” I said.
“I’m in no mood for this,” Fiona shouted. She reached into her purse and pulled out a gun, not her Sig, I noticed, and then remembered what she’d told me. Nice that she already had a replacement. I didn’t anticipate her pulling another gun from her purse, too. She had both of her arms outstretched as she walked, which made for a rather striking image.
“You want me to run after her?” Sam asked.
“No,” I said. “She might kill you.”
“Is everything all right?” Brent asked. He’d moved to the middle of his lawn but couldn’t see the action.