Tod Goldberg: The Reformed

“You know that pension I was worried about?”

“Sam.”

“I just saw it roll off a press and get cut into exact replicas of twenty-dollar bills. And that was just on a practice run.”

“Where’s Barry?”

“He’s holding forth with the gangsters,” Sam said. “You know, in another life, he might have made a pretty good professor. The kids really respond to him.”

“Don’t let him leave with anything in his pockets tonight,” I said.

“Mikey, I’m not going to frisk him.”

“Sam, I will have Fiona frisk both of you,” I said.

“Fine, Mikey, fine. Just know that I have seen temptation and I have walked away from it a better man. Or I will. I will. Yes, I will.”

“Where’s Father Eduardo?”

“He finished up the bake sale at three, and I brought him back to your mother’s. He’s far away from here.”

“No one followed you?”

“There was a car that picked us up leaving here,” Sam said. “And then another that picked us up at the corner. So I had Father Eduardo call the mayor and see if he could pop into the mayor’s quarters for a quick talk about something pressing. But the mayor wasn’t in.”

“So what did you do?”

“Drove over there, anyway, and sat around for twenty minutes while Father Eduardo chatted up the security detail and mentioned that it looked like some gangsters were loitering around out front. So the security detail went out and arrested them. Turns out they were bad guys. I gotta tell you, Mikey, it’s hard to be a covert operative and a hard-core gangster at the same time. Tough to be inconspicuous while you’re thumping your bass.”

“Occupational hazard,” I said.

“I got the truck in my sights here,” Sam said.

“Let it back into the loading dock and then get rid of the driver. Don’t open the container until the driver is gone. Got it?”

“On it,” Sam said, and hung up.

Outside, a young woman pushed a baby in a stroller. A man sat on the porch of his apartment and read the newspaper. Two boys rode by on matching low-rider bicycles.

“What’s the point of that?” Fiona said.

“The bikes?”

“Yes, the bikes.”

“Look cool, I guess,” I said.

“Father Eduardo needs to start talking to these kids from the moment of conception.”

In the backseat of the Charger was the residue from fifty cakes of portosyt. We’d stopped off at Lowe’s on the way over and purchased enough of the chemical to either stave off an entire football field of wild grass or render unconscious, with the help of fentanyl, an entire generation of gangsters. It was now stacked innocuously inside a garbage can just beside the loading dock where Sam was.

“You sure we have the right combination of chemicals?” I asked.

“If not,” Fiona said, “what’s the worst that could happen?”

“Fiona, I’d prefer not to deal with those kinds of scenarios. It’s the grounds of a church.”

“Oh, Michael, always so pious,” she said. “We’ll need at least five hundred fentanyl patches’ worth of gel to dissolve with the portosyt.”

“We should be fine,” I said.

In an optimum situation, we’d pump the gas into the ventilation system of the printing-press room, but the entire facility was enjoined by the same system, which meant that we’d need to dissolve the chemicals in the same space as the gangsters in order to control it.

Our plan was extraordinarily high-tech: We’d combine the two chemicals, along with the appropriate amount of distilled water, in this case two jugs, which we’d already poured inside the garbage can, and place it in the facility while they worked. It would take about five minutes for the chemicals to become a strong enough gas to knock them out. The sustained propagation of the gas, combined with the oxygen in the room, would keep them under like an anesthetic for the duration of the dissolve time. Which in this case would be about three hours.

Or enough time to alert the proper authorities to a bunch of gangsters who’d broken into the plant and started making counterfeit money.

Provided nothing went wrong, which seemed to be the case until Junior Gonzalez and Killa pulled up in front of us in the parking lot, hood to hood. Except that Junior and Killa were in a lowered Honda Accord and we were in the Charger.

“Act natural,” I said through my smile to Fiona. “And by that I mean don’t shoot them until it seems like the last resort.”

“Always with the rules,” she said.

I got out of the car and walked to the driver’s-side window and peered in. “Something I can do for you, Junior?”

“Just wondering what you were doing sitting here on point,” Junior said.

“Wanted to make sure the truck arrived,” I said. “How’s your knee, Killa?” Killa kept staring forward. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of black wraparound sunglasses.

“Where’s the boy?” Junior asked.

“Safe,” I said. “You’ll get him tomorrow. As we previously determined.”

“You see, that’s funny,” Junior said, “because Leticia doesn’t know anything about that.”

Shit.

“Why would she?” I said.

“You separate a mother from her child, maybe you think you’d let her know,” Junior said. “You think I’m stupid? You think I can’t get to her? You think her home-girls will keep her secrets? You’ve never had her or him, have you?”

“Junior,” I said, “you really want to play this game? You’re an old man working in a young man’s game now.” I looked over my shoulder at Fiona. Her focus was unwavering. I didn’t know how to tell her with simple body language that she needed to let Sam know that he needed to rush the chemicals right this very instant.

“And something else,” Junior said. “Julia Pistell? She’s on a cruise right now. Yeah. Summer at Sea, her mother called it. You wanna know how I found out? I picked up the phone and called her. Four-one-one. Still works.”

Shit again. I looked back at Fiona, and this time she had her head down for just a brief second. When I looked back into Junior’s car, Killa had a nine pointed at my chest.

“Why don’t you get in the backseat,” Junior said. “And you and I can have the conversation we should have had a week ago.”

“And if I say no?”

“I got five guys in the printing press with your two friends,” he said. “They don’t hear from me, your friends are going headfirst into the pulper.”

I looked back at Fiona again, but this time more deliberately.

“Don’t worry,” Killa said, speaking for the first time, “we’ll come back for her later.”

I had a couple choices. I could run and get shot in the back. I could reach into the car, attempt to break Junior’s neck and disarm Killa, but there was a high likelihood that Killa would get off a shot in the process, since the angles of attack were difficult because the Honda was at about hip level for me.

Or I could trust that Fiona would do the right thing.

“Fine,” I said, “let’s have that talk.”

I reached for the door handle at the same moment the Charger slammed headfirst into the Honda Accord, the airbags exploding immediately into Junior and Killa’s faces. Fiona, from the passenger’s seat, floored the Charger into the Accord, shoving it across the street like a toy, spinning it around back to front as it careened toward the grassy area in front of Honrado. Fiona kept ramming the Accord, finally spinning it into a tree, where she then pinned it with the front of the Charger.

If you’re going to be a menace to society, it’s wise to think of the car you drive. A lowered Honda Accord, stripped for racing speed, as it appeared this one was, weighs about 2,600 pounds. A 1974 Dodge Charger weighs about 3,800 pounds. It’s a significant difference if you happen to be sitting in a Honda Accord when it’s hit by a Dodge Charger.