Tod Goldberg - The fix

A bully can always find a victim.

"I hate to be a cliche," she said.

"You're not," I said. "You're a foregone conclusion. That's worse, I'm sorry to say. But you don't need me to tell you that."

"That's why I need your help," Cricket said. "I needed someone to tell me that, obviously, and I need someone to help me find Dixon before I lose everything."

Need. Everyone thinks they need something. What Cricket O'Connor was really talking about was want: She wanted me to solve her problems, to fix what she'd wrecked with her own needs.

"I'm sorry your husband was a scumbag. I'm sorry your son is dead. I'm even sorry you married someone you met on the Internet. But you need to call the police. Let them handle this."

"I can't do that," she said.

"Sure you can," I said. "Dial nine-one-one. They'll ask you if this is an emergency. Say yes. Go from there."

"Sam said you'd be able to help find Dixon," she said.

"Really?" I said to Sam.

"Mikey," he said, "there're some mitigating circumstances that don't exactly scream for proper law enforcement involvement."

"Is this where the sort-of drug dealers come in, or did I miss that part?"

"That would indeed be this part, yes," Sam said.

Cricket explained that the last time she saw Dixon he informed her that he needed a substantial amount of money to pay off a debt to opium dealers he was "engaged with in Afghanistan," where, he told her, he was working under contract with a private security firm, overseeing "certain American interests" in the opium trade. As soon as he got back from the job, he'd be reimbursed and she'd be reimbursed.

"And there'd be a little something on the back end for you, too, right?"

"Yes," Cricket said.

"How much?"

"I don't know. A couple hundred thousand. Maybe less."

"For a rich person," I said, "you sure are greedy."

Cricket began to well up, and I decided that, no matter what was going on with this woman, I was having a hard time feeling any sympathy for her. You feel like you can run with wolves, every now and then you have to expect to get bitten.

"What do you take me for, Mr. Westen?" she asked, her voice just a whisper.

"The truth?"

"It would be refreshing these days."

I told her. And then I told her if there was nothing else, we'd be on our way.

"Wait here for just a moment," she said. She left the living room and made her way upstairs. I could hear her moving from room to room, opening and closing drawers.

Sam stood up, stretched and then went over to the mantel and picked up one of the photos of Devin, the Marine. "Remember when you enlisted?"

"Best day of my life," I said. "Of the seventy-five hundred subsequently, this one is near the bottom."

"She's a complicated woman," Sam said.

"She's a socialite with a champagne problem," I said. Sam handed me the photo of Cricket's son. When I was a kid, I always thought of Marines as men, but those old John Wayne movies lied. Back before the war, you enlisted and the oldest guy you were likely to run into in your battalion would be twenty-five. Devin O'Connor didn't look old enough to change the oil in a car, much less drive a Bradley. When you're twenty, you think it will all last forever. And how long was forever these days? A month, the girl at the Oro told me.

I handed Sam the photo back just as Cricket was coming back down the stairs. In her hands was a stack of cards, letters, photos.

"Cricket," I said, "I understand: You give away a lot of money to big corporate diseases and you sleep with celebrities who give even more money and that you're very, very important and…"

Before I could continue, Cricket dropped the bundle on the coffee table and I saw that these were different kinds of photos. Men-boys-with missing arms, legs, feet, eyes were smiling up in photos. Entire families. I sifted through the letters. Some were those annoying Christmas rundowns on fancy printed paper, others were handwritten in crayon. Some were Hallmark cards that inside simply said thank you a hundred times. Pictures of babies. "What is this?" I asked.

"The day Devin was killed," she said, "he was on a mission in Tikrit. He and fifteen other boys were going house to house looking for weapons. Suffice to say, they found some. Seven of those boys died, the rest suffered horrible, horrible injuries. I've been using whatever resources I have to take care of those families. Most of them have nothing, you know, just what the government gives them. So I've paid for what I can. Pyschiatric care. Car payments. Mortgages. Whatever they have asked for, I have been happy to help with. And you know what the funny thing is, Mr. Westen?"

I couldn't think of anything funny.

"They hardly ever ask. So I ask them. Every night. I send out a hundred e-mails, probably, to these poor boys and their families, and I ask what they need. And they need so much, but they so rarely feel like they should. That's what I was using that money for, Mr. Westen. That's what I have stopped doing these last few weeks. That is what I must do. Do you understand?"

"I do," I said. I did. I really did. Cricket O'Connor smelled like a victim and that was a shame.

"I may be stupid, but I'm not evil. I'm trying to do good things. I'm trying to give someone the same opportunities my son had. I'm trying to help people. I thought this money was legitimate. I thought Dixon was legitimate."

"Okay," I said. "Okay. I get it. Now, when did the drug dealers start threatening to kill you?"

"Why would you think that?"

"Experience. Intuition. The very fact that Sam has me sitting here with you in the first place when I could be at home doing sit-ups."

Cricket looked over at Sam, who just shrugged. He looked smart in his sport coat, which probably made her think he was the brains in the operation and I was the muscle, or at least she figured Sam understood her better since he was sleeping with Veronica. "Just after Dixon left for Afghanistan again," she said. First, she told us, it was just a series of phone calls asking for Dixon and when she told the callers that Dixon was gone, wouldn't be back for months, that if they had a problem they should contact Long-street, the security firm he was employed by. This was met by laughter, which she found disconcerting. By the last phone call, her responses were met with simple threats upon Dixon's person. It was a few days later that she noticed the same boat circling past her property over and over again. And then, finally, the knock on her front door.

At three a.m.

When she opened the door, there were three men standing there with guns.

"Dixon told me that there might be trouble one day," she said. "But I didn't expect this."

"Really," I said. "Pretty prescient on his part." There was nothing about Dixon Woods, at least in Cricket's description, that made me think he was anything like a Special Forces guy. Guys like Dixon Woods, if he thought his wife was in danger, would have guys like me, or guys like Sam, waiting for the trouble and in a place to defuse it.

"He said that in his line of work, sometimes people got angry. That for my own safety, it might be important for us to assume new identities, things like that."

"And that wasn't a red flag, Cricket?" Sam said. His voice was plenty calm because he was trying to sound sensitive, I suspect, but I also think he couldn't believe what he was hearing now, either.

"I thought it was exciting. I thought it would be an adventure. I haven't been a happy person and this offered me a release. Neither of you are women. You don't know what it feels like to be with a person who is dangerous. It's exhilarating."

The funny thing was, I did know what she was talking about. Fiona and I had once had the very same conversation. At least Fiona knows how to handle herself. "Who did you think you were going to be," I said, "Nick and Nora Charles?"