Tod Goldberg - The fix

"I understand that all intellectually," she said, "but they scare me."

"Trust me," I said.

Twenty minutes later, a Power Quest zipped up to Cricket's dock. It was an expensive model, the 340 Vyper, and it looked new. I counted three men on the boat. The most marked characteristic I picked out about all three was that they tucked their shirts into their shorts and that they were wearing what looked like orthopedic sandals, the kind with the straps that wrap around the ankle and have extra padding to fight against aggressive cases of plantar fasciitis. They looked like the kind of guys who took lunch at that one strip club with the afternoon buffet. I put all three of them at no older than forty. I put their weights down as no less than 250, and that wasn't muscle weight or water retention. That was cheese-and-beef weight. In their free time, when they weren't shaking down women, I suspected they sat on that boat together and listened to the Jimmy Buf-fett box set and told one another lies.

What they weren't, categorically, was dangerous.

I asked Cricket if these were the same three guys who always collected from her. She said yes. Sam was waiting for her down the drive, but before I let her leave, I asked, "And what scares you about them?"

"They threatened to kill me," she said.

"If they killed you," I said, "they wouldn't get any more money out of you. If they killed Dixon, same deal."

Cricket thought about that. "I never considered that," she said.

"I know. That's why you can trust me. Okay?" I watched the men walk from the dock and across to the grasscrete pathway that circled around the numerous estates and led up from the personal marinas. Sam is waiting on the other side of your gate in your car. I'm going to take care of this. If you hear something that sounds like a gunshot while you're walking, don't be concerned."

"What does a gunshot sound like?"

"You'll know," I said.

The sun was already halfway down when Cricket scurried away. Outside, Biscayne Bay looked flat and glassy. I could make out a FOSS tanker coming into port. Overhead, planes were taxiing into and out of Miami International. Next door, in another multimil-lion dollar mansion, I suspected people were probably eating dinner. It would be a lobster bisque kind of night-just cool enough once the sun disappeared that you'd catch a chill. Dixon Woods, the real Dixon Woods, was making calls right now-I was sure of that-trying to figure out who Hank Fitch was. Brenda Holcomb was explaining just what the hell had happened in the offices of Longstreet Security. Natalya Choplyn was likely plotting how to kill me. My own government was working on that issue, too. My mother was smoking. My father was rotting in the ground, and though there was plenty of space in the cemetery, I had no desire to join him.

I checked my gun. Made sure the silencer was on just right.

I cracked my neck, because I'd slept funny the night previous.

I thought about Fiona and her hand on my chest.

I called Sam. "They're here," I said. "Cricket's on her way. Give me ten minutes. Text me when you're on your way back up."

This? This was going to be fun.

Because there's fight.

There's flight.

There's submission.

And then there's posture. You see this in the wild all the time. You watch the Discovery Channel long enough, you'll find out that every animal from the cocker spaniel to the black bear and all points above and below strike a pose. How you pose. How you stand. How you present yourself makes all the difference when you're about to get into a fight.

You assess the danger and you pose accordingly.

When I was Jay Gatz, my pose was all money and privilege and never taking no for an answer.

When I was the guy asking for directions to the airport, I was an idiot the security guard shouldn't have turned his back on.

Hank Fitch? His pose was simple. A guy you simply do not want to fuck with.

I watched the three men make their way around the house, watched as they smiled and slapped backs and got themselves mentally prepared to be bad asses and decided that I'd shoot the happiest-looking one of the bunch if I had the choice, but any of them would do. Through the peephole, I could see them adjusting their pants, making sure their shirts were tucked in just right.

It was like watching three high school buddies heading to the whorehouse for the first time, each getting the other up for their two minutes of glory.

The fattest of the three, a guy wearing a blue polo shirt with a penguin logo on it, pounded on the door and actually bellowed, "Open up!"

I swung open the door. "Yeah?" I said. I kept my gun hand behind the door.

The three guys looked at one another with varying degrees of surprise and annoyance. I'd dressed down for the occasion, so instead of wearing a suit, I had on a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt that made me look sort of like a college professor on his day off, except that behind the door instead of holding a sheaf of student papers, I was holding a Russian 6P9, an eight-round silenced pistol. A gift from Fiona.

"Who are you?" Blue Shirt said. His buddies, Striped Shirt and Yellow Shirt, tried to look intimidating. It wasn't working. It's hard to look intimidating when you're wearing a rope belt, which all three of them were.

"Hank Fitch," I said. "Who are you?"

"We're here for Cricket," Striped Shirt said.

"Then you're in the right place," I said, all down-home goodness. "Come on in. She's in the living room." I opened the door wide and the three men walked into the entry hall, single file. Yellow Shirt actually gave me a polite nod, like maybe I was just the houseboy there to help out for the day, and he was just another guy at the end of his work day.

I could have shot each of them in the back of the head before a single one of them had a moment to react. Instead, as they walked by, I did a cursory once-over again, just to see if there were any bulges in odd places, apart from their guts. All three had cell phones clipped to their belts, while Striped Shirt had an ancient-looking revolver shoved down the front of his shorts. This would be fun.

Blue Shirt and Striped Shirt had wedding rings. Yellow Shirt had a wedding ring and one of those bulky class rings. I had a feeling it wasn't from the Citadel.

All three were wearing Rolexes.

I followed them into the living room, where all three were standing around looking lost. Everything in the room was different, right down to the window shades and pictures. I had my hands behind my back in a courtly pose that I figured would make the fact that I had a gun in my hand less apparent, not that these three had much in terms of cognitive resonance.

"What's going on here?" Blue Shirt said. "Where's Cricket?"

"New rules," I said.

"Yeah?" Blue Shirt said.

"Yeah," I said, and to prove it, I pulled out my gun. In most cases, pulling out a gun is enough to stop someone from acting stupid. They recognize that you have a gun and they decide they'll cut through their bullshit mechanisms and act rationally-which is to say, they'll cower in fear. Unfortunately, Striped Shirt thought the appearance of my gun was an invitation for him to draw his Civil War relic and attempt to shoot me.

The first problem he encountered was that he'd never shot anyone before. The second problem is that in the space of time it took him to realize he didn't know what the hell he was doing, I grabbed his gun hand and then pistol-whipped him, which is like getting hit in the face with a slab of very accurate metal. I broke his nose and took out at least five teeth, maybe more if he swallowed a couple, but five was what was left on the ground.

This didn't stop Yellow Shirt from trying to come at me from behind, which would have been a problem if Striped Shirt didn't squeeze off a round at the same moment (I doubted it was intentional, but involuntary things happen when you're writhing in pain), hitting his partner in the leg. It was all over in about five seconds and I didn't even need to personally shoot anyone.