The Giveaway (26 page)

“Yeah,” I said, “listen. There’s still no sign of Bruce.”

“He’s a cagey one, Michael. He’s probably fine.”

“Keep an eye out,” I said and hung up.

I checked my watch. We didn’t have much time before the police would begin canvassing the neighborhood for information, which meant a bunch of people with a cache of guns and dubious backstories was not going to be good news for anyone.

“Listen up,” I said. “In about ten minutes a cop is going to come to the door. Ma, I need you to collect all of the guns and put them in the laundry room. Inside the dryer and the washing machine will be fine. Put the shotgun in a closet. Maria, for the next hour, you and Nate are a couple and you’ve come over for lunch to meet Nate’s mother. Okay?”

Maria nodded once. Nate seemed happier about this than was reasonable for the circumstances.

“Zadie, you’re . . .” I paused. “Zadie, you just be yourself.”

“What about me, Mike?” Sam asked.

“You’re Sam Axe, friend to the helpless and downtrodden,” I said.

“Got it.”

I sat down next to Sam on the sofa and took a sip of his beer.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I have no idea anymore,” I said.

 

It took two hours, but the police eventually came by my mother’s house.

“Everyone okay here?” the cop asked. He was looking at his notebook and didn’t even bother to make eye contact with me.

“Fine, fine,” I said. “Just ruined a nice afternoon for us is all.”

“Seems like there was an explosion here a few months ago?”

“Yes,” I said. By my count, there’d probably been five or six in the last two years. “Faulty wiring. You know how these old houses are.”

“There a good reason there’s razor wire in the bushes out front?”

“My mother’s house has been egged repeatedly by neighbor kids,” I said.

The cop finally looked up at me now with something close to sympathy in his eyes. “Kids can make you crazy.”

“Indeed,” I said.

The cop asked a couple of questions: Had we seen anything prior to the shoot-out? Did we know of any gang members who lived on the street? Had any of us seen a white van in the area?—and after we lied sufficiently, he asked if I had any questions before he left.

“Any idea why they chose here to fight?” I asked.

He turned his palms over. “Who knows, right? Stupid people do stupid things.”

The cop was right, of course, but that didn’t explain where Bruce Grossman was.

After the police allowed us to leave, Sam and I took Maria back to her house but told her now was the time to see what life in Ohio looked like, but to stay in contact as we still didn’t know if we’d need her. The scene outside my mother’s house was grisly, enough so that it seemed likely all the players involved would have much larger concerns than the fact that one guy ripped them off for money, and information, and pride.

Still, I wasn’t convinced Bruce was alive. Fiona may have been correct about his cageyness, but I was more concerned with finding something concrete, so Sam and I drove back to Zadie’s house to see if there was any sign of him. The house looked from the outside precisely the way we’d left it—which is to say, the glass front door was broken and inside the house, tire tracks and cat heads were everywhere.

“I’m gonna guess Zadie will want this cleaned up before she moves back in,” Sam said.

“That sounds like a good way for Nate to apologize,” I said.

We moved room to room, guns out, just in case someone else was there who maybe wasn’t so friendly. When we stepped into Bruce’s bedroom, it was empty except for a single envelope on the floor with my name on the front.

“You think it’s Dolphins season tickets?” Sam said.

I opened it up and Sam and I read the letter inside:

Bruce

I folded the letter in half and in half again and then ripped it into tiny pieces.

“Barry told him the truth,” I said.

“Mike,” Sam said, “they’re friends. What did you expect?”

“This was a chance for Bruce to go completely straight,” I said.

“Just like you?” Sam said. “You maybe thinking about taking a job as a security guard at a bank now? Wasn’t that someone’s bright idea once?”

We walked outside and stood for a moment on the front porch and just looked at the empty street. It was late and the air had turned cool. There were only a few more nights like this left before summer would make even the latest hour feel like noon.

A gold Lincoln pulled down the street then and stopped right in front of the house. The back window rolled down and Lyle Connors stared out at us. He blinked once and then stepped out of his car and walked toward us.

“Hello, Lyle,” I said.

“Jasper,” he said. “If that’s your name.”

“It isn’t,” I said.

Lyle ran his tongue over his lips, but he couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “Fed?”

“If I were a fed,” I said, “you’d be in prison. But it’s early yet, so you never know.”

“I could have you killed,” he said.

“No, you couldn’t,” I said.

“Well, regardless, my offer to you stands. I like how you work.”

“You’re a criminal, Lyle,” I said. “And by tomorrow at this time, I can promise you that your world will be crashing down around you.”

“I’m Teflon, like Gotti.”

“Gotti’s dead,” Sam said, which caused Lyle to take a step back from us. “And just like you, he was surrounded by guys who snitched him out.”

“Who are you?” Lyle said to me. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t even sad, though he should have been, since news reports said at least twenty-five men were dead between the two gangs. He actually sounded genuinely curious. Maybe he just wanted to know who was going to be behind his eventual perp walk.

“My name is Michael Westen,” I said. “I’m a spy.”

BURN NOTICE: THE FIX

by TOD GOLDBERG

First in the series based on the critically acclaimed USA Network television show!

 

 

Covert spy Michael Westen has found himself in
forced seclusion in Miami—and a little paranoid.
Watched by the FBI, cut off from intelligence
contacts, and with his assets frozen, Westen is on ice
with a warning: stay there or get “disappeared.”

 

And don’t miss
Burn Notice: The End Game

 

 

 

Available wherever books are sold or at
penguin.com

OM0020