I did. And “it” was not good. And accounted for the smell, too, I’d guess. I took a step toward Ray and leaned in a bit. “Look, this Balsalmo guy was bad news, right? Did a little time. Dealt some crank. I understand. I saw his record. I get that. I got kids, too, right? But, Machito, I’m just doing my job. Maybe you open the door and just see if he’s hiding in there? If he is, I have a conversation with him and then I go.”
Ray shifted his weight from foot to foot, as if he were literally weighing his options, but didn’t say anything. Having a conversation with Ray required one to fill in a lot of blanks.
“His girl been around at all? Maria? Because maybe I could talk to her. She was always the reasonable one.”
The mention of Maria’s name got Ray animated. “She moved out last week. Let him keep the place. Put him on the lease and everything. Stupid, eh? Italian guy living in Little Havana. You knew he didn’t have a clue.”
A little boy came running down the hall, screaming at full throat. Not like he was hurt. Like he was a little boy. But when he saw Ray, he came to a full and silent stop.
“Sorry, Mr. Ray,” the boy said, before hustling inside one of the open doors.
Ray started walking toward the door and shuffling keys. “Nick, he’s a nice guy. Respectful to me. ‘Sir’ this and ‘sir’ that, but he’s not the kind of element I want in my building. So maybe we just have a talk with him together. You up for that?”
“Ray, I’m one hundred percent up for that,” I said. “Nice people got bad debts and got bad jobs. But I got kids, like I said, so I know what you’re saying.”
Ray put his key in the door and started knocking at the same time, saying, “It’s Ray,” as loud as he could. “It’s Ray. I got Jackie Roach with me. It’s Ray,” he said one more time and then opened the door. He turned to me before he stepped in. “You smell that?”
“Maybe a dead rat?” I said, which was probably true, just not in the same context.
“That ain’t a rat,” he said.
Nick Balsalmo’s apartment looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. Spatter patterns on the ceiling, the walls, the floor. Pools of blood in the living room. From the angles and velocity, it appeared he’d been bludgeoned as the final coda, but the pools indicated he’d also just bled a lot, like, say, if his fingers had been cut off. Ray walked through the apartment briskly, opening doors while I stood in the entry hall surveying the scene. I hadn’t touched anything yet and wasn’t about to. I just needed to hear Ray say what I already knew: Somewhere, Nick Balsalmo’s body was rotting away under some chemical.
“Oh, Jesus,” Ray shrieked. “Oh, Jesus,” he said again. “He’s in here!” It sounded like Ray was in the bathroom, though it was hard to tell as I was already back down the hall and heading for the exit. Nick Balsalmo was dead. What I didn’t need was to be standing there when the police came, trying to explain who I was.
After I got to my car and zipped back into late-afternoon Miami gridlock, I called Barry. I had to try five different numbers, but I finally found him.
“Where are you?” I said when he answered.
“In a comfortable spiritual place,” he said, his voice just above a whisper.
“Listen to me,” I said. “You’re in danger. Tell me where you are and I’ll pick you up.”
“I’m in a church, Mike,” he said.
“What are you doing in a church?”
“I’m meeting a business associate.”
“In a church?”
“Do you know how hard it is to get a legal bug into a church? It’s sanctuary space. Plus, my business associate works here.”
“You’re washing money for a church?”
“Tough times, Mike. Even the Lord has to eat.”
Negotiating cramped Miami traffic and the cramped logic of Barry at the same time wasn’t something I was prepared for. “Do you know Nick Balsalmo?”
“I know his work.”
“He’s dead,” I said.
“He’s in a better place, then,” Barry said. “Praise the Lord.”
“Your friend Bruce gave him the drugs he got from the Ghouls’ stash house.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He had to pay him off for a prison favor and the Ghouls’ drugs worked out well for that,” I said. “I have a feeling the Ghouls found that upsetting.”
“There were plenty of people who’d like to kill Nick Balsalmo. He sold drugs for a living. It’s a very unstable work environment. Praise the Lord.”
“Barry,” I said, “there was more of him on the outside than on the inside. I’m going to guess that whatever someone wanted to get from Nick, they got. Maybe that included your name, maybe it didn’t, but I’m going to guess known associates of Bruce Grossman might be wise to keep a low profile.”
“Praise the Lord.”
“Really?”
“I’m just trying to fit in over here,” Barry said, his voice low again. “I sit in a pew talking on a cell phone in here, people might find that disrespectful.”
“But laundering their money is right with God?”
“No sin in getting ahead.”
I thought that was actually wrong, canonically, but opted not to press Barry on the issue. “I’m picking Bruce and his mom up and taking them somewhere safe. I’m happy to extend you the same courtesy. Consider it a returned favor for this great job you found for me.”
“Fortress inside of a moon crater?”
“My mother’s house,” I said.
“That’s sweet,” Barry said, “but I’ve got a safe house. It’s called a boat. On the Atlantic. Do you know how hard it is to drive a motorcycle over water?”
“What’s also nice is that no one can hear you screaming on the Atlantic, either.”
Barry didn’t respond for a while, so I just sat there and listened to him breathe. It was sounding a bit more labored than usual. He’s not a skinny guy, but he’s also not one of those wheezing fat guys, either. I definitely noticed a quickening of his intake, however.
“I’ve got a sick friend in Montana I could visit,” he said.
“Try one of the Dakotas,” I said.
“I hear South Dakota is nice this time of year.”
“Don’t limit yourself,” I said. “Try them both.”
“Mike, you’re scaring me here.”
“Praise the Lord,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”
Barry was silent again. In the background I could hear an organ being played. Maybe he was already in heaven.
“When you say there was more of Balsalmo on the outside than the inside,” Barry said, “you meant that literally, right?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
More organ music.
“I don’t vacation enough,” Barry said.
“No time like the present.”
“You’ll call me if, you know, there’s something I need to know?”
“I will.”
“And maybe now would be a good time to use an alias?”
“Now would be that time, yes.”
Silence again. I’ve never thought of Barry as a particularly pensive guy.
“You need money or something?” he asked. He sounded hopeful again. If there’s one thing Barry knows, it’s money.
“I’m fine, Barry. Down the line, I’m sure we’ll tip the scales again.”
“I appreciate that, Mike,” Barry said.
“Future reference,” I said, “I’d like to avoid going to war with a biker gang.”
“Praise the Lord,” Barry said.
“Praise the Lord,” I said and hung up.
7
There is no such thing as a safe house. Any fixed location is, by definition, a waiting target. Hide long enough and no matter how safe you feel, you will eventually begin to create a traceable root system. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a log cabin in Lincoln, Montana, or a spider hole outside of Tikrit, stay in one place long enough and the people looking for you will find you.
If you really want to ensure that no one can find you, you have to keep moving. Adhere to three simple rules and maybe you’ll live long enough to outlast whoever is chasing you:
1. Never spend more than twenty-four hours in the same place.
2. Pay cash for everything.
3. Sleep during the day, travel during the night.
Even still, this plan requires financial resources and unwavering determination. There is nothing more exhausting or emotionally isolating than constantly running for your life. So if you choose to embark on this kind of life, expect that your interpersonal relationships will suffer.
Despite all that, if you have to stay safe for just one or two days and you have ample protection—say, if a burned spy is watching over you—it’s important to fortify your position and not merely assume that by being out of sight you are somehow safer than if you were parading down A1-A with a target painted on your chest.
Which is why I was outside my mother’s house laying tactical wire across the backyard, Sam was placing protective wire through my mother’s rosebushes and Fiona was working on the roof. Inside, my mother had just served Bruce and Zadie her patented “light dinner”—pot roast, garlic mashed potatoes and a pasta salad whose main secondary ingredient was mayonnaise—though she kept coming outside to smoke and complain.
“Michael, you know I don’t like meeting strangers,” my mother said. She’d just stepped out onto the back porch and was watching me with unique disinterest. Having me fortify her home had become a frequent activity of late.
“They’re nice people, Ma,” I said.
“Zadie told me confidentially that her son was just in prison, Michael!”
“Everyone lives somewhere,” I said.
“He is very cute, though,” she said. I decided to try to unhear that by simply not reacting to it. “And, Michael, not being able to smoke inside my own home is making me very nervous.”
“Ma,” I said, “Zadie is dying of cancer. You recognize that smoking causes cancer, right?”
“Allegedly,” she said.
It was the early evening, which meant the sidewalks around my mother’s house had already been rolled up for the night. The only signs of life on the street apart from the three of us fortifying our positions were the odd appearances and sounds of Reagan-era Lincoln Continentals and Chryslers slipping into garages throughout the neighborhood.
Early-bird specials live on in Miami.
I was trying to maintain a level of calm and appreciation for my mother, seeing as she was doing me a tactical favor, and in light of the houseguests, so I opted not to counter the “alleged” claim.
“I’m just feeling very jumpy, Michael. I don’t like worrying about the guests and worrying about who might attack the house and, on top of it all, worrying about when I can have another cigarette.”
“That’s the nice thing about smoking,” I said. “Do it long enough and you won’t have to worry about it anymore. You’ll just be dead.”
“Michael, you don’t need to give me your speech. I see those public service announcements.”
I stepped away from my mother and strung wire about a foot off of the ground from the side of the garage to the bougainvillea climbing up the fence that separated Mom’s house from the neighbor’s. Technically, the backyard was a friendly zone, meaning that if you happened to be sitting in the kitchen and saw someone trying to climb the back fence and break into the house through the backyard, the advantage was yours. The only actual exit to open safety was through the house or back over the fence. With the wire only twenty feet from the house, anyone coming that close would fall and likely slice themselves up in the process, which would be painful, but only until they were shot by the sniper watching them from inside.
Or my brother, Nate, with a shotgun. He was in town, visiting from Las Vegas for the week, and was coming over that night to help out. All I’d had to tell him was that his job was protecting a bank robber from a vicious biker gang and he signed on immediately.
When I finished stringing the wire, I walked back to where my mother stood. She was already on her second cigarette.
“Have you seen Zadie, Ma? Is that how you want to end up?”
“Michael, I need tar. It’s actually very helpful for my fibromyalgia.”
“You don’t have fibromyalgia,” I said.
“How do you know? People don’t just hurt. Something must be wrong with me.”
“Where do you hurt, Ma?”
She waved her hand over an area roughly the equivalent of her entire torso. “It’s worse in the morning,” she said.
“Maybe you should buy a new mattress,” I said.
“There’s nothing wrong with the one I have,” she said. “I’ve slept on it since the week you were born.”
Luckily, before I could respond, Sam came through the gate into the yard. He stepped over the wire lines adroitly. If you know what to look for, it’s easy not to get tripped up.
“Mikey, you want razors on the wire in the bushes?” Sam said.
I actually heard my mother gasp.
“Yes,” I said. It’s an instinctual thing. My mother disapproves, I immediately approve.
“Michael, what about the gardeners?” my mother said.
“When do they come?” Sam asked.
“Well, I don’t know, Sam,” she said.
“Do you
have
gardeners, Ma?”
“There’s a neighbor boy,” she said. “He reminds me so much of you and Nate when you were his age.”
“He’s forced labor, too?” I said. My mother stuck her cigarette back into her mouth and fixed her jaw in the way she does when she wants to convey anger, hurt, disappointment and incredulity.
“So that’s a yes, Mikey?”
“That’s a yes,” I said. “Anyone gets close enough to the house that they’re in the bushes, they’re in the wrong place.”
Sam nodded. But then, because he’s Sam, and maybe a better person than me as it relates to my mother, he said, “Are you all right with that, Madeline?”
“Whatever James Bond says,” she said and then tossed her cigarette down, ground it out with the tip of her shoe and stormed back inside. She slammed the door and everything. I stood there for a moment staring at the door. The sound of it slamming in my face was oddly reminiscent of a period of my life I like to call “childhood.”