Tod Goldberg - The fix

"Whose?"

"Could be Russian," I said. There was a photo of me with Philip Cowan, the man I thought had pulled my original ticket, moments before he was shot. "Could be ours. Could be the Chinese, for all I know." There was a photo of me in Little Haiti, meeting with a drug dealer. Another with a member of a notorious Colombian crime syndicate. "Jesus. They've got me with every known drug dealer in Miami. The close-ups, those could be FBI, but this overhead work? With this clarity? It's not like someone was flying a kite with a camera on it. Jesus."

Fiona was silent. Never a good sign. I continued looking through the pictures. There were shots of Nate at the dog track. Nate at the jai alai stadium. Shots of Nate unloading what looked to be an entire rack of men's suits from the back of a semi. Shots of Nate doing just about everything I imagined Nate did in his free time when he wasn't helping old ladies do their taxes and going door to door selling encyclopedias for the blind.

Nate.

My little brother.

The bane of my existence at his worse.

My brother, finally, finally, when at his best. It's been the process of teaching him that being at his best is the choice to make. We have the same parents, so I understand how difficult that decision must be.

"What does this all mean?" Fiona asked, though I suspected she already knew.

"That I'm not just burned," I said. "If they want to build a case that I'm running drugs, or at least facilitating such, as they like to say, there's a good amount of evidence. Enough that the Russians are using it to pressure Natalya, maybe make her kill me, or make it impossible for her not to kill me. If I'm Natalya and I get this intel, you know what I think?"

"That you lied to her yesterday," Fiona said. "That you've got plenty of reasons to shuffle anything off on her if it means saving your own ass."

"Exactly," I said.

"Now can I kill her?"

"No."

"She'd never see it coming," Fiona said, but already we both knew that wasn't true. If someone had satellite images of me, there was an above-average chance that she could get a muffled recording of this very conversation if someone, somewhere, thought it pertinent for her to have.

What I didn't understand yet was what any of this had to do with Nate, why they'd even bother mentioning him after I got this message.

I went back and looked at the photos of Nate. The differences between Nate and me are easily boiled down: He has always been obvious. Took chances when he didn't need to. Played the tough guy when he really wasn't one and got beat down for his troubles. And now? Now that I was home? Was it my job to keep him safe? To keep him from his own screw-ups? I couldn't be blamed if he acted according to his nature, which was to act before thinking.

Which, I supposed, they knew as well. Whoever they were. The odds were good that Nate would just open his mail, provided the return address wasn't from a collection agency, and that a few seconds later he'd be missing his hands, or his face, or both.

At the bottom of the stack of photos was a Post-it with a phone number on it.

An 800 number.

"That's nice," Fiona said.

I punched the numbers into my phone. "Yes," I said. "Thoughtful. I keep my brother alive, but they pay for the phone call."

The phone rang three times before it was answered. "Hotel Oro, how may I direct your call?" the operator asked.

"I'd like to speak to the Russian Mafia," I said.

"Pardon me?"

"KGB, please," I said. "Or ex-KGB. Whoever is available."

"I'm sorry, sir, but-"

"Ms. Copeland, please," I said. "If you're unsure who that is, just ask if anyone there has a scar on the back of their neck from a knife fight. It didn't keloid, but you should be able to see it if no one cops."

"One moment please, Mr. Westen," the operator said, because it's impossible to get good help anywhere these days, and then Muzak filled my ear.

"I've been put on hold," I said to Fiona.

"A true lack of disrespect," Fiona said.

My mother walked back inside, saw us sitting at the table and sat down next to Fiona. "Were you just going to let me stand outside all night?"

She shook out another cigarette and lit it off the end of the one in her mouth.

"Yes," I said.

She started fingering through the photos, picked up one of Nate and stared at it. "What's he doing with all of those suits?"

"Ma, I'm on the phone and this doesn't involve you," I said. I tried to gather up the photos, but my mother kept snatching them from me.

"What does Nate need a suit for?"

"He doesn't," I said. As soon as I'd grab a picture, my mother would snap it from me. "It's been Photo-shopped. It never happened."

"Who are these men with the boat? And why do you look so grainy?"

"Fiona, a little help here?"

Fiona put her arm over my mother's shoulder. "Those men in the boat were Jamaican gangsters," she said.

"Oh," my mother said. It wasn't terribly new information to her, but I'd prefer keeping my business life and my personal life and my mother life as separate as possible, for days just like these. You get burned, you make do with certain new realities, like your mother knowing your business. Intimately.

"The photos are grainy because they were taken from outer space," Fiona said.

"By who?"

"Most likely aliens," Fiona said.

Sometimes, Fiona isn't much of a help.

Just when I was about to start explaining what I could-and what was needed-the Muzak stopped. I got up from the table and made my way outside, figuring whatever happened in this conversation, the less Mom knew, the less I'd need to explain later.

"Did you get my package?" Natalya asked.

"You didn't need to involve my mother and brother in this."

"I didn't," she said. "You're right."

"You've made it personal, Natalya."

"I wanted you to understand that if you sic your little pit bull on me, it wouldn't stop," she said. "You've been a busy boy, Michael. I almost believed you yesterday. Almost bought into your Poor me, I've lost my job talk. The pictures tell a compelling story, Michael."

"That's what it is: a story."

"I am expected to believe that you were meeting with those people out of goodwill? This might surprise you, Michael, but I know you. I know what you're capable of. I know what you've done. I know what you do. Goodwill isn't who you are."

"I've had to make a living these last few months," I said. "Not everyone can park themselves in a hotel. You kill enough, maybe you start to think differently of people, the ones who need something. Anyway, I don't require your approval. Or anyone's."

"My sources paint a different picture. You're in the drug trade now. That's fine with me, Michael. It doesn't suit your temperament, but I suppose you need to find your thrills where you can. It can't always be about espionage and sex with the wrong people."

I was standing beside the garage, where I'd spent half of my childhood working with my dad on one failed project after another, including the Charger, listening to a woman I'd once slept with, who'd tried to kill me, who I should have killed the several times I had the chance, telling me who I was, what I was about, telling me that what I was… wasn't.

"Natalya," I said, "I've lost patience."

"I can see that," she said.

"I'm sure you can." It was dark out, but the sky was clear. Since I grew up in your average poorly lit neighborhood, and since no one had bothered to complain to the city about how, after dusk, the streets fell into perfect blackness, interrupted only by the flickering of the same flickering streetlights that have flickered for nearly thirty years, I was able to see a full array of stars. I tried to spot any that seemed to be moving. Or blinking. Or snapping photos. "Your sources have quite an array of satellites," I said.