Tod Goldberg - The fix

It had taken him four minutes to do all of this, which Sam thought might be a personal record, but didn't feel like he had time to gloat. It was either get out or get trouble.

But that's the thing about Sam. Trouble finds him.

Just as he was about to walk out into the hallway, he heard Brenda Holcomb clomping back.

Plan A was that he could punch Brenda in the face and run out of the building. But he liked to avoid punching women in the face.

Plan B involved pistol-whipping Brenda and running out of the building. Again, he had a code about pistol-whipping women.

Plan C was a few drinks and maybe see where things went, though he really did like Veronica. And the Caddie. Why wreck a good thing?

Plan D was to just act like a dumb man.

He grabbed one of the Starbucks cups and dumped it across Brenda's desk and onto his pants. Sam popped his head out the door. "There you are," he said. Brenda had two bottles of Amstel in one hand- Sam could actually see the sweat coming off of them, like he was in some damned commercial and a bunch of sorority girls were about to pop out of a broom closet to get the party started-and a bag of tortilla chips in the other. Maybe, after all of this, after he retired, he'd look into a job at a place like Longstreet. Cold beers and chips in the company fridge had a certain appeal. "You think it would be okay if I used the ladies'? Seems I can't be trusted around a coffee cup."

"What kind of soldier are you?" Brenda said. He had to admit, this "soldier" stuff was pretty cute. He'd see about getting it worked into a fantasy or two down the line. Brenda got up close to Sam and examined his pants, took a gander inside her office, shook her head. Can't be the worse mess she's ever seen, Sam thought. "Better get some water on those before the coffee stains," she said. "Go ahead and use my bathroom, but don't tell anyone. They'll think I'm getting soft and think worse about you. Bad enough they've probably already seen you spilling the coffee on yourself."

Sam gave her one of his newfound winks and headed to the restroom, where, he realized, exactly what Brenda Holcomb had said, and realized, indeed, there was about to be a situation.

Most people don't want to get hit in the face. Who can blame them? Getting hit in the face hurts, but it's also expensive, especially if you don't have insurance. A severely broken nose? The kind you'd get if someone who knew how to hit you just right managed to hit you just right, thus collapsing your nasal cavity into your face but not actually killing you by shoving upward and into your brain? That's four to seven thousand dollars in plastic surgery just to get you looking human again. A blown-out orbital bone? That's another eight grand, plus there's always the chance you'll lose some sight. Broken jaw? That's a bad time: months drinking your meals out of a straw and then a bill for ten grand at the back end, along with maybe a few permanent metal plates in your face, just to keep things together.

If you're doing the hitting, you also don't want to hit someone in the face, unless you are certain you can find a soft spot, like the eyes or the bridge of the nose. Hit someone in the mouth, there's an excellent chance you'll end up with teeth lodged in your knuckles, which is hard to explain when you're at the hospital. Hit someone in the forehead, you're likely to pop the joint at the base of your pinkie, by far the weakest joint in your entire hand, or, if you're really unlucky and the person you're hitting is particularly hardheaded, crush all of your knuckles at one time.

You really want to incapacitate someone? You go for the throat. Or, barring that, you go for the ears. Mike Tyson was no dummy. Well, he was, but he knew how to spot vulnerability in an opponent and legalities never seemed to bother him.

I thought about this very issue as Fiona and I pulled up in the Charger at the front gate of Longstreet's offices. The security detail was standing in front of the gate with his back to us, talking on a walkie-talkie, so when he heard the car roll up, he turned and gave us an absent halt sign with his palm. Ahead of him I could see three beefy-looking fellows huddled around Sam's Caddie in the parking lot. All three were wearing workout gear-shorts, tank tops, New Balances-and I could see the sun gleaming off of their skin even from one hundred yards away.

Still, this didn't look good. If they were looking in the car, that meant they knew it didn't belong. And if they were outside in their workout gear, it was probably because someone had yanked them away from their free weights somewhere inside. I put the Charger in park and turned to Fiona. "Watch me," I said.

"Just run him over," Fiona said.

"If it looks like that's a viable option, go ahead." I jumped out of the car and started walking toward the guard. When Fiona slid behind the wheel, I said, " 'Scuse me. My lady and me, we can't find the airport. I see all these planes buzzing around, but for the life of me, can't find nothing."

The guard turned his head toward me. "What?"

I was about a yard away from him now. "The airport? Place with all the planes and people? I can't find it."

"Get back in your car," the guard said. "This is a secure facility." Not for much longer, I thought. He put his hand on the butt of his gun to prove his point nonetheless and probably because I was about a foot away from him now.

"No problem," I said. I raised my arms wide to show him I meant no harm and took a step backward.

When he turned his back to me again, he pulled out his radio and said, "I think he's under one of the…," but before he finished, I clapped him simultaneously on both ears.

You do this hard enough, two things happen:

• The person passes out.

• The person vomits and then passes out, because you've turned their semicircular canals into a centrifuge.

I hit him really hard.

The guard grunted and then vomit splashed out of his mouth in a rushed torrent. At the same moment his knees went completely slack. Though I had to jump back to get away from the puke, I did manage to grab the guy by the waist to give him a soft landing. Bad day to be a security guard, but I figured there was no need for him to wake up with a broken neck. Still, I didn't want him causing too much more trouble, so I yanked his cuffs off of him-a nice pair of heavy-duty hinged cuffs, the ones you'd use if you wanted someone to be as uncomfortable as possible while being detained-hooked him to his guard shack and took his. 357.

Fiona pulled the Charger up beside me and I slid into the passenger seat. I didn't really like the idea of Fiona driving my car. She didn't have a great respect for things like black-flecked paint on recently restored muscle cars from the 1970s.

"Sam just texted," she said. "He's hiding under one of the Hummers next to his Cadillac."

"What is he doing?" From our vantage point, we could see the Hummers but not Sam. I trusted that he was where he said he was.

"He apparently had to escape from the building but didn't want to leave his car behind," Fiona said. "He indicated there was an aggressively violent woman involved who he would prefer I not kill."

A woman who looked aggressively violent burst out the front door of the facility. She had a lightning bolt running the length of her neck. She also had a shotgun and two aggressively violent-looking men trailing behind her. There was a barbed-wire fence between them and us still, but not for long.

"I guess that would be her," I said. Sam popped out from under one of the Hummers and started running toward the gate. The men surrounding his Caddie hadn't noticed him yet, but I had a good feeling that would change momentarily when the woman with the shotgun rounded the bend, spotted us and spotted Sam running toward us. "Shit," I said. "Go."