Tod Goldberg - The fix

It wasn't from the original photo in the magazine that first drew us into the office of Palm Life, but one that was taken as the guests were first arriving at the event. There were actually four photos taken of the couple, all a millisecond apart. In the first photo, Cricket and Dixon can be seen holding hands and looking straight ahead, but already Dixon's hand is rising up to cover his face, by the last photo he's fully concealed. There isn't a single shot of his entire face, but rather four shots of his face in varying degrees of cover.

"You can piece these together into a head shot?" I asked Fiona.

"Easy," she said. There was a more serious tone to her voice than I expected.

"Do you know him?"

"No," she said.

"He's not Special Forces," I said, though he had his game down, at least in terms of photos.

"No," she said, "he's not."

"I'd guess he wasn't even ROTC."

Fiona rearranged the photos on the table, put a hand over Cricket, then over Dixon's hair, then again across his midsection.

"Is there a reason he'd want to buy guns?" Fiona asked.

Before I could answer, my cell rang. It was Sam.

"Mikey," he said, his voice a barely audible whisper, "I'm in a bit of a… situation."

"Where are you?"

"Offices of Longstreet Security," he said. He gave me the address. It was near the airport, just a few miles away.

"Armed?"

"Them?"

"You."

"Not enough."

I checked my watch. "We'll be there in fifteen minutes."

"At the gate, if they ask, tell them you're with Chazz Finley," Sam said. "That's two Zs."

When you're Sam Axe, certain things come easy.

Women.

Free drinks.

Trouble.

Before he called me asking for help, Sam had spent the afternoon doing two things: One: getting Cricket O'Connor out of her house and into a safe temporary location, which, in this case, meant Veronica's place for a few hours, so he could… Two: learn as much as possible about Dixon Woods in hopes it would lead him to the man scamming Cricket.

He figured a trip down to Longstreet's offices would be as good a place as any to search for a man who, according to the government, didn't exist. Well, that's not entirely true: The FBI told Sam that Dixon existed from 1966 through 1984. Then existed in a number of different authorized government capacities. And then, upon discharge, some unauthorized capacities before latching on with Longstreet. But none of these roles had managed to require a valid passport, credit history or permanent address.

"Born in Portland, Oregon. Moved to Fort Lauderdale with his parents during high school. Entered the Army at age eighteen," one of Sam's sources told him, and then ran down the same information Sam already had. Strictly HR stuff. Sam's source was a guy named Kyle. Sam had never met Kyle in real life, thought that if he ever did meet him that he'd be about five foot one and ninety-seven pounds but would drive a Corvette. Sam had him pegged as a "nice-car-sorry-about-your-penis" type-a real compensator. That's why he'd always been such a great source for Sam over the years, even before the FBI made Sam my de facto watchdog, because Sam would regale Kyle with stories about hot missions and hot women and other hot lies, and Kyle would get all hopped up over them. He'd ask for minute details, which gave Sam the impression Kyle was using the stories for some other purpose in his after-work life. Whatever. None of it was true, but if the kid liked it, who was Sam to pass judgment? Kyle was a computer jockey who liked to give Sam information in exchange for stories, and Sam was happy to comply. He hadn't even needed to actually tell a true story yet.

"You got a photo of him there, Philly?" Sam always called him Philly, because Kyle once told Sam he was originally from Philadelphia, so Sam figured the kid might like a nickname, and there was no way to make Kyle sound cool.

"His file has been wiped. All I can get you is his first driver's license photo."

That was a start. Better than anything else, Sam supposed, but not better than whatever Longstreet probably had. Sam tossed out one other thought. "There any Interpol reports on him?"

Sam could hear Kyle breathing hard on the other end of the line. Freaky kid. Getting off on this stuff probably, but whatever. Doing fine American service. "No, but there's a police report out of Jupiter, Florida, from two years ago. Misdemeanor disturbing the peace and assault. Charges were dropped. That's the only official line that's not sealed."

Jupiter was a hundred miles up the coast, but a very long way from Afghanistan. Odds were, if Dixon Woods got in trouble in Jupiter for something, it was the same guy Cricket O'Connor was married to, or was somehow connected to her. Guy like Dixon Woods, if he got caught doing something really severe, odds were fair he had enough government chits that he could call in a few favors. Sam knew something about that, for sure, which made him think of something else.

"What about a marriage license? To a Cricket O'Connor?"

There was nothing. Sam thanked Kyle, gave him a brief story about taking down a terrorist cell in Montreal-a little-known group of French-Canadian separatists, Sam told him-and when even Sam realized how absurd this was all getting, hung up and headed to the offices of Longstreet.

Longstreet was hardly an anomaly in Miami. Since Iran-Contra, the war on drugs, the first Gulf War, and then up through the second war on drugs and the war on terror, private paramilitary firms have popped up all over the world, essentially offering the same service everywhere: military expertise on an a la carte basis. But since the destabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan, groups like Longstreet have also become multimillion-dollar corporations willing to drop trained personnel into a hot zone for an appropriate fee. Diamond mines, opium fields, small cities and anywhere private security was needed. In Iraq, the United States actually subcontracted out firms to do the dirty work the military couldn't, by rule of international law.

Miami was home to a half dozen such firms. The reasoning was both natural and mundane: Florida works like a vortex for the international criminal trade, which is one of the chief employers of these firms, but it is also an easy access point into and out of the country to the unstable countries of the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East, where most business is conducted. A flight from Miami to Dubai is just fifteen hours. An ambien away. Simple. Guyana, eight. Haiti, two.

And, in the realm of the mundane, there's no state income tax in Florida. Which means more money.

You want to find rich assholes with guns, find a state with no income tax, lax laws on personal firearms and easy access to one of the worst-secured ports in the country. That's Miami.

Plus, when people (or nations or warlords) want to hire you, appearances matter. A Miami address? That says sun, splash, Don Johnson and superfit hired killers.

What Sam found, however, was a warehouse in an industrial park adjacent to the airport district. Surrounding the warehouse was a barbed-wire fence and a front entrance that looked particularly fortified.

Gaining entrance to a secure facility is about understanding how security consultants and the people who've hired them to design their alarm systems think. The first issue is that they are most concerned about keeping you out. So they make the front door look imposing.

Sam saw a keypad.

An infrared camera.

Titanium bars over blast-safe glass.

A sign that warned unwanted visitors that an armed response was already on the way.

Average crooks see these things, the first thing they are going to do is decide it's not worth the effort. Average sales person cold-calling cold-calls someone else.