Tod Goldberg - The Giveaway

“I bet.”

“Her boyfriend Nick is dead.”

“I told you he was a bad guy.”

“He was cut up in pieces inside an apartment rented in your wife’s name,” Sam said. “Then he was dumped in acid. Was he that bad? Is anyone that bad?”

The man stopped petting the dog, considered the sentence Sam said, patted the dog once and then stood up. Finally, Sam thought, a reaction.

“You’re not with those bikers?”

“No,” Sam said.

“And you’re not DMV, right?”

“Right.”

This answer actually seemed to ease him more than the negative answer on the biker issue. Everyone hates the DMV. No wonder Rod was how he was. “I’m Jose,” he said. “And I drive that Ranchero all the time. Just hate to get it registered, you know? Piece of crap. Let it sit.”

“Right,” Sam said.

“Now, then, who are you?” Jose asked.

There was the rub. Sam couldn’t quite tell him the truth and couldn’t quite lie, not if he wanted his help in getting Maria safe. “I’m just someone who wants to help her stay alive.” Sam scratched out his cell phone number on the back of the envelope and reached it over the fence toward Jose. He finally moved away from the dog and took the envelope. “I don’t care if she’s illegal. I don’t care about anything but keeping her safe.”

“She’ll call you tonight,” Jose said and then he and the dog went inside, closing the door quietly behind them.

Before you attack a fixed enemy position, you always want to do a proper amount of reconnaissance. This is true if you intend to attack with firepower or if you intend to attack with psychological warfare. Either option requires a precise understanding of the lay of the land.

The first order of business is to obtain as much information about the physical area as possible. This is usually done by having several different people watching the same area from different vantage points, who then obtain salient intelligence and report back. In an ideal situation, all of that intel would be gathered and then you’d grid out the area from all angles and plan your attack.

You’d then break into seven teams: the assault team, which does the assaulting; the security team, which handles securing the area from reinforcements; the support team, which assists the assault team indirectly; the breach team, which cuts through obstacles; the demolition team, which blows stuff up; and the search team, which is sent to ferret out any remaining hostiles.

To do this effectively, a team of about fifty men would be best. A dozen claymore mines would help, some tank support wouldn’t offend anyone and an extraction team with a gassed-up Black Hawk would make it a nice, polite party

If you have less than fifty men, no claymores, no tanks and only a DVD of Black Hawk Down, you’re going to need to make adjustments. When you’re a spy, you’re often asked to do the work of fifty men simply by being better at everything.

Being better doesn’t really matter when a dozen violent bikers are beating you to death with lead pipes because you’ve cornered yourself due to poor planning, which is why Fiona and I were down the street from the Ghouls’ clubhouse just west of the airport watching who was coming and who was going, and attempting to figure out what the odds were that we could bust in and start making outlandish demands. I was keeping watch with binoculars and a camera with a telephoto lens. Fiona was keeping watch by reading InStyle magazine and periodically taking cell phone calls

“Why are the police able to pester Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan every ten minutes but can’t arrest these men at their own clubhouse?” Fiona asked.

“Because they aren’t doing anything wrong,” I said. It was true: Their clubhouse was technically a bar and they were technically patrons, which is perfectly legal. And since you could refuse service to anyone as a shop owner, they didn’t have a problem with not serving a person who might wander in off the street. Though the monster sitting in front of the door absently twirling a baseball bat probably dissuaded most casual onlookers. In the last hour, we’d watched about a dozen men who looked essentially just like Baseball Bat roll up on their bikes and enter the bar. Usually these guys had a few women with them-you could tell who they were since they wore jackets that said PROPERTY OF THE GHOULS on the back, because the Ghouls aren’t exactly known for their grand subtlety-but not today. It had been been a bad week for the company and it looked like they were doing some official business. Trying to place a legal bug into what is ostensibly a public place is a significant legal issue, which made the Ghouls’ use of a de facto clubhouse right out in the open a pretty savvy bit of criminality.

“This article says Britney is an excellent mother,” Fi said.

“I don’t think anyone thinks these guys are excellent mothers,” I said. “It’s going to be a challenge getting to the front door without hurting someone.”

That got Fi’s attention, so I handed her the binoculars. “That’s a cute bat he has,” she said. “Looks like he also has a cute gun under his gut.”

“I saw that, too.”

“If you’re that fat,” Fi said, “isn’t it hard to ride a motorcycle?”

“Maybe he just stands around looking tough,” I said. That was part of the Ghouls’ game: Scare the crap out of you just by looking frightening. Baseball Bat fit that description. He was over six feet tall, had long, shaggy hair that reached past his shoulders, a handlebar mustache, a classy tattoo on his throat of a gun barrel pointed into his chin, which was sort of imposing until you considered that it probably just meant he was suicidal or incredibly stupid. Probably both. He also ran at least three bills. Maybe three-fifty.

“How long would it take for you to take him down?” I asked.

“I could do it right now,” she said. “I’d just walk by with a bag of donuts and some crystal meth and he’d follow me like a dog.”

“I mean if push came to shove and Sam and I were fighting the other ten guys.”

Fiona focused the binoculars. “I could have him down in ten seconds. One punch to the throat. Maybe a kick to the knee first. He must be in terrible knee pain holding up all that weight.” She handed me the binoculars and went back to reading her magazine.

“That’s my girl,” I said.

“And if neither of those moves worked, I’d just shoot him.”

A gold Lincoln Continental pulled up in front of the clubhouse-which was actually a bar called Purgatory, which made it about as inconspicuous as the Baseball Bat out front-and three men got out, two from the front seat, one from the back. The man from the backseat was huge, too, but wore a suit, nice shoes, a big watch, like he was a pit boss in Las Vegas. The two other men wore jeans and boots, had long hair, handlebar mustaches and lots of neck ink.

“What do we have here?” I said.

Fi looked up from her magazine but didn’t bother taking the binoculars. “Do Lincolns come stock in gold?”

“Not usually,” I said. I set down the binoculars and picked up the camera and took a couple of pictures through the zoom lens.

Baseball Bat greeted the man in the suit with a fist pump, the other two men the same way, and let them into the clubhouse and then quickly closed the door. He took several steps down the street and looked around, though not very well. He didn’t bother to notice me and Fi in the Charger less than a block away. But then, maybe the people he was worried about weren’t the kind to sit in a car a block away with binoculars.

Baseball Bat moseyed back to his post, which took him some time and effort. Fi was right: Kicking him in the knee would probably take him out of commission for the foreseeable future.