‘Black Bag’, a short story by David McCloskey

All those years of black bag work for CIA and the final place I ever hit was also the nicest, even if I didn’t ever confirm the rumoured Vermeer. That job was a villa outside Rome, and it was really more of a palace. The analyst’s report had hinted at the Vermeer, but a man like that might have a half dozen safes littered around the house, not to mention vaults in a few freeports around the globe, so he had plenty of other places to stash his art. The safe we were after was in his office, so admittedly I only stole a few brief peeks at the living quarters. That was fine. We weren’t there for the art.

Forgive the cliché, but what I saw made me think of the old-school popes, the ones with girlfriends. The ceiling was covered in gold leaf; there were two marble statues of horses, each maybe 10 feet tall; there were piddling fountains with little cherubs doing their eternal piss; the air smelled like oranges and lavender and there were tracks of vineyard visible out the massive windows, rolling downslope into a valley. You could’ve fit a few basketball courts in that single vaulted room. No Vermeer, but there was art everywhere, and it was mostly Old Masters. I said that to Benson in the van after the job, and he just laughed, like how would I know. But Cath is an art freak so I knew.

Not a stretch to say that Benson and I went out in style. I mean, by that point we’d been breaking into filthy rich guys’ houses and offices for 18 years and I’d never seen one that looked like that palace in Rome. A lot of rich guys are cheap, plenty don’t have any class or taste, and I suppose some just don’t like to advertise what they got. Job before Rome was in Jeddah. Eighth-richest guy in Saudi, they said, and his cracked leather couches could have been yanked from a frat house. If we’d used the black light on them, well, you can imagine. But Rome? That was a first cabin place.

The safe itself, though, left something to be desired. It was a basic fire safe, a decent-sized one hidden in the floor. Benson and I cracked it in less than 10 minutes without breaking a sweat. Inside was the most valuable thing I ever got my hands on, but taking it was a mistake. The long reach of that haul brought us here to Miami. Forced us to come, more like it. Because, really, what choice did we have?

---

Rome was 18 months ago. I’d have been smiling in pictures then, if anyone had bothered to take one. I’d never intended to keep at it in retirement, but I’ve found it’s not easy to give up a craft that does the double duty of reminding you that you’re alive and also paying the bills, up to and including the alimony. So, this was me and Benson’s third job post-Agency.

But let’s be clear: this current place was not even in the same galaxy as Rome, or even Jeddah. It was a Miami McMansion in Coconut Grove. Property of one Hector Mendes. The job was the front door and then Hector’s safe. I shouldn’t even count the front door because it was too easy; pin and tumbler Schlage thing, an embarrassment. I bumped the lock and the front door gave with a sad little squeaky noise (I’ve always thought of it as a sigh of defeat) and we were in.

Benson says he can feel the evil in a place. We’ve been in a lot of bad guys’ houses together, Benson and I, and I’ll say I’ve never felt that way. What can I say about Benson? He’s got a flair for the dramatic. When we stepped inside, I didn’t feel anything. It was like I was still doing jobs for CIA.

After we’d gritted through the unpleasantness of what Benson had termed “Phase 2” and reached the top of the stairs, we took a quick breather in the glow of the electric star topping the Christmas tree down in the foyer. I looked around at the art hanging in the landing. I recognised most of it and wished I didn’t. Benson didn’t drink but he looked like a drunk Santa in his red costume. The beard was yellowing. Even though we’d bought the suits from Miami Feathers, the red wool flung off a sour scent that I associate with abused rental clothing. My Santa suit smelled about the same. Made me wonder if they’d been worn before, maybe last Christmas, and then returned and resold. We were wearing them for solid, seasonal reasons of cover. But, still, we felt ridiculous.

The light of the tree illuminated a dark spatter on Benson’s sleeve.

“Is that blood?” I asked, pointing. I didn’t think Phase 2 had been that rough. I sure didn’t remember blood.

Benson squinted, dabbed it with his finger, brought it up to the light.

“Could be,” Benson said. He sniffed the spot on his finger and then put it in his mouth. Benson had looked a little worried, but then he gave me one of his satisfied grunts.

“Ketchup,” he said, “must’ve dangled my sleeve into the Whopper.”

We both looked down the hall. The cable installation guy we’d paid off had snapped pictures of the doors and locks and shot some video around the interior like we’d asked. We didn’t trust that installer far as we could throw him, but by this point there were so many loose ends there wasn’t much else to be done besides slip him a few thousand and hope for the best. If we didn’t get it tonight, things were going to get very rough, rougher than they’d been already, and rougher for people far less guilty than we were.

Benson was scanning around. Now he was looking like he might shit himself.

“What does it feel like to you?” I whispered.

“Nothing,” he said, “feels like nothing.”

Benson never said that. Which made me wonder if something was wrong. But then again Benson never looked like he was shitting himself, so he was probably just off. Night of firsts for Benson.

We’d drawn the floor plan using the videos from the cable installer. It was the fourth door on the left. One of Hector’s fish tanks guarded the end of the hall. Christmas lights were glowing through a crack in the door of the kid’s room on the right. I stopped outside.

“Come on,” Benson said in a military voice. But it barely registered.

I was a little mesmerised. Kids’ rooms do that to me when I’m on a job. I guess they’re a reminder that bad people can be good to kids. I’ve learned never to stop and look at the family pictures because if I do, I feel bad for cracking the kids’ mom’s or dad’s — usually dad’s — safe, for getting in and photographing documents or passwords or account numbers or taking out a laptop to image the hard drive, or, in one case, stealing rolls of cash to sow chaos inside a company smuggling high-end electronics into Iran, which got that particular dad killed by a business partner.

So, in this house here in Coconut Grove, I’ve got loads of solid professional reasons to look away from that room. Not the least of which is that it’s occupied, and that I’ve got a long and complicated history with the occupant and his mom.

When I turned from the door, Benson was looking right at me. Benson’s throat made that noise that ended conversations, even if one hadn’t even started yet.

---

We’d bought malware from an Israeli firm and we had Hector’s phone dead to rights. That meant we’d turned off the cameras through his security system’s app, and we’d also had a peek at his calendar and knew about the Christmas party tonight, at his fund’s office in one of the glitzy towers over in the financial district. We knew we had two hours, minimum. Maybe three if they closed the place down.

I could list off 10 other CIA jobs from my last year inside, and all of them would’ve been time crunches of some sort. In Vienna, for example, even though we were working with the Austrians — who, in my experience, out-German the Germans on matters of time management — it had been down to the final seconds. But this one, at least from the perspective of timing, was on the breezier side.

And still Benson’s forehead was shining like a cheese in the sun. I knew he was thinking about the broader context and all that. I couldn’t blame him but that didn’t make it smart. I wanted to tell him this, but instead I slipped a small bottle from the pocket of my Santa pants, twisted off the cap, and dumped it all in the fish tank as we passed. Benson just watched. I knew he was grinding on his teeth; knew that he wanted to tell me off, but he just looked down at the bottle and said, “Hell’s that?”

“Rotenone. Fish poison.”

“I would have thought the job itself would be enough of a middle finger at Hector.”

“This juices it.”

Benson’s throat noise again.

Now I wondered if Benson might be smiling. Impossible to tell through the beard. We’d gotten them on the bushier side in case Hector had another set of cameras on a system that we hadn’t been able to take offline.

A spiky dark red fish went belly-up on the surface, and I admit it: I smiled.

“That fish looked pricey,” Benson said.

We went into the large master bedroom. There were fish tanks on two walls and all manner of tropical plants and carpet that felt expensive even through my Santa boots. I’d used all my fish poison in the hallway tank and saw now that I’d jumped the gun — tanks in here were twice as large, and the fish looked more exotic. The bed was a four-poster, sized for the King of England with a canopy but, just like the pictures that I knew were in the kid’s room, I couldn’t look at it. The cable installer had said the safe was in the walk-in closet. Typical rich guy set-up.

This whole thing was a Hail Mary. We needed to keep our tongues in our mouths, our genitals attached, our eyes in their sockets, our brains boxed firmly in our skulls. There had been discussion that Benson and I might soon receive one or more of those treatments, to complement the cutting and pulling that had already been done. And there’d also been a sneakily snapped photo album shown to us for purposes of shock and intimidation: Benson’s 19-year-old daughter Deanna walking into her apartment near the University of Maryland, Cath grading papers at her desk, my son Patrick on his bike. A month ago, after the Italians had shown us all this, I’d sat with Benson in a bar drinking scotch and licking our wounds and all he’d said was, “I told you not to take the damn thing.”

“First thing I’ve actually stolen,” I said. “What are the odds.”

“You’ve stolen plenty,” Benson said.

“Not according to the Central Intelligence Agency,” I said.

“Where is it?” Benson asked.

“That’s the problem,” I had said. “It’s in Miami.”

---

The closet smelled a lot like the last vacation Cath and I took together, two years earlier, before Rome, on the trail of Van Gogh’s madness through Provence. They had to be pumping lavender or something flowery in here. Benson’s bag clunked the floor and he checked his watch. I put down my bag. Benson was doing that thing where he looked at a safe hungrily, imagining it open. He was sweating less. From his black duffel he pulled out the case with the Little Black Box.

The safe was custom-made with ballistic armour and an exterior finish that resembled snakeskin. In fact, it may have been genuine snakeskin stretched over the metal. “Welcome to Miami,” I muttered. The manufacturer’s website would have doubtless claimed that you could fire a .50 calibre rifle at the safe and it would only scratch the paint. Or in this case tear the snakeskin. As if people went around shooting damn safes open.

I thought the safe was a Stockinger, Benson speculated maybe a Traum. Good safes aren’t branded, plenty look similar on the outside, so we weren’t sure. But what was clear was that it was new: thing had a 700 series electronic lock on it.

I said some nasty stuff, and so did Benson.

The Little Black Box resets electronic locks, gives you a new combination you can use to open the safe without the need for gels or drilling. But a brand-spanking new 700 series lock? Forget about it. Benson put the LBB back in its case and the case in his bag. I fished out the gel spiking kit, laid it on the floor. Benson slid the drill out of his bag and fit it with one of the long, 7/64ths bits from the case. Benson had his own drill kit: a brandless number he’d made as a present to himself before retirement, the entire tool — save for access points on the handle and the chuck and torque control dial — wombed in a bucket of foam baffle to silence the motor. It was the Red October of drills. And yes, Benson did actually call it that: he’d scrawled the name in crimson marker down the handle.

While I filled a syringe with gel and fired up the Ionic box, Benson’s Red October slid down the spindle hole on the door and began boring into the lock case. Believe it or not, you can use trashy yellow hot dog mustard instead of gel, and we’ve done that once or twice with our backs against a wall (I keep a squeezy bottle of French’s in my kit, just in case). When given the choice, I take the gel over mustard. Benson’s the opposite, but that’s Benson for you. He’s dramatic and he’s also a contrarian.

When Benson and I properly drill a safe, I like to put a borescope into the larger holes so I can have a look around in there. I’ve always found that sight beautiful — lock circuitry, bolt work, relocking cables, glass plates. All of it’s faintly arousing, if I’m honest. Something previously hidden and private and secret is now visible. Now yours. But a 7/64ths hole is too small. You just can’t have a proper look around.

So instead I piped about 2ml of electrolytic gel into the lock and stood back. Benson plugged in the Ionic box and took a deep breath and the whorls of his Santa beard fluttered when he exhaled. Somewhere downstairs a hall clock chimed and Benson fumbled the box, looking pretty sheepish when he picked it up.

I thought then about the deep mess we were in. And also how I hadn’t had this much fun since Rome, and how if it was this great to dig yourself out of a hole why not dig some more? The art in the hallway and now the smell in the closet had put Cath on my brain, and I tried to focus on Benson instead. Not necessarily a cheerful subject. Just something different.

Benson was dialled in, focused, the Ionic box increasing the charge — current was running from the box into the keypad and down into the gel-covered circuitry in the lock case. Hector owning this safe was plain awful, no other way to say it. Ninety-nine per cent of the safes in the world were simple fire safes at least as old as my Patrick, who’s seven. And here Hector had a model that probably ran him close to a hundred grand. Hedge fund money. Some guys worked for a living and others grifted.

Nothing was happening. I was trying the handle and it was jangling and rattling and jingling the bolts in that frustrating moment before release, except nothing was releasing, the tension wasn’t building, it had flatlined on a path to nowhere. Motor trying to fire in there with the charge but no yank, no satisfying thud or pleasurable thunk. The safe was blueballing us. I tried the handle a few times. Benson brought down the charge, then dialled it up. I yanked. Again. Again.

Then it came: Thud, thud, thud, thunk. A scrim of pleasure crept across Benson’s face. I probably had the same look, but I’d never opened a safe in front of a mirror and couldn’t be sure. I’d known Benson 18 years and I’d never really seen him happy per se. First wedding, Deanna’s birth, second wedding, when he bought his ’86 Land Cruiser — guy didn’t really smile, sure as hell never said he was happy. But when he was opening the door of a safe, Benson was at one with the universe.

The fun part of safecracking is the thing opening. Neither of us typically care what’s inside. When we were still at CIA, we couldn’t keep anything, anyway. The crack pipe was solving the puzzle that let you swing open the door. But this time was different. We desperately needed something to be in here.

The configuration inside was guns on the left, couple jewellery drawers on the right, a few rows of watch winders to keep all his expensive timepieces properly synchronised. Like I said, typical rich guy set-up.

“Looks like a damn pirate musket,” Benson said, jostling one of the long guns.

It took about 10 seconds to find what we were after.

The watch didn’t have a brand name or logo and it looked its age, which was what had caught my eye when I’d first seen it in that safe back outside Rome. The watch was now in Hector’s safe, but it didn’t belong to Hector — not on paper, and certainly not in any cosmic sense. I suppose it was Hector’s in the eyes of Cath, and I’m normally inclined to see her point of view, exhibits in that case being the divorce and custody arrangement and even when she threatened to turn in me and Benson. But on this topic, well, I just can’t empathise.

As I had once tried to tell Cath, in my own way, the watch’s rightful owner was a Roman named Matteo Chiesa. He had a fortune in eyewear and banks and insurance and had (I learned all of this later, unfortunately) been given the watch by his father, who had been given the watch by his own father. It went on like that until you got to a Breguet commission paid for by the pope in 1841. Anyway, that’s what Gianluigi told me when he took the knife to me.

And I must admit that when I first saw the watch in Chiesa’s safe, my thoughts, same as the deranged Roman’s, were paternal in nature. Rome, of course, had been an official CIA job but against all regulations I’d lifted that watch for Patrick, in the hopes we might pass it on down through the generations. Not how it shook out. Point was, I’d goofed and now we had Chiesa’s animals to deal with. Benson had been furious but, just like he didn’t get happy, he also didn’t really get angry, even if I could tell he was furious in his own way. But then we’d gotten to work on this job just like it was any other operation, except now we were retired and there were Camorra maniacs after us.

Normally we’d have put back the keypad and rearranged everything so the owner might not notice anything was gone for a long time. Or we’d maybe take a few more things from the safe, tear up the place, so it looked like a run-of-the-mill burglary. Didn’t matter now. I put the watch in a special felt case and entombed it in bubble wrap and put all of that in a black bag that I slid into my duffel, with the spiking kit and the extra borescopes and a few tools and hammers we’d brought in case we needed to wreck the cabinets around the safe for easier access.

We walked out of the bedroom and Benson very purposefully needled on to my left side because he could feel my energy, I suppose, could sense what I was thinking. Down the hall, I stopped and faced the door of the kid’s room and Benson was blocking my way.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t.”

My eyes must have done the talking because he didn’t say anything else, just hung his head and stood aside. And I went past him, and creaked open the door. I was good about not glancing at the pictures. I took off my Santa hat in case Patrick woke up because it would’ve freaked him out. He was asleep in his bed. Same one he’d had since he was three. Drawings of fish above the headboard, some were old and I recognised them. Most were new. I stood there for a few moments, to the tune of the white noise from his sound machine, and all I could think was that I’d messed it all up and maybe salvaged some of it, too.

I suppose I should have said something over him, or kissed him, or left him a Christmas present, or at least tugged the blankets up to cover him, but I’d not thought of the gift until just now, plus it was a balmy December night in Miami, and Hector wasn’t running the AC so aggressively, so Patrick was already sweaty in those PJs. They had footies, for god’s sake.

Also I could feel Benson getting real antsy. I unclasped the Casio F-91W on my wrist. It was the type of watch I should have given Patrick to begin with — plastic strap, basic LCD screen, battery that’ll last seven years. Popular all over the world because the damn thing just works and keeps on working, and that’s more than you can say about most things in this life, including the people. I put it in Patrick’s sock drawer. Cath and Hector wouldn’t do their own laundry so I figured Patrick would find it first. I hoped he’d have the good sense to keep quiet about it.

As I turned to leave the room I saw another fish picture and felt sick about what I’d done to the hallway tank, even if it was Hector’s. I shut the door.

We went downstairs and checked on the babysitter. Poor girl. After we’d broken into the house, during Phase 2, we’d had to tie her up with duct tape and zip ties and use a gag, and we’d put her on the floor of a spare bedroom downstairs and shut off the lights. Benson now flicked them on. She made a startled noise and looked up at us in pure terror. The Santa suits didn’t help matters.

“You OK?” Benson asked her.

“Aaaaaaaghhhhhhaagaghhh,” said the babysitter, trying to inch away. “Aaaaaagggghhhhh.”

“You’re not going to pass out or anything?” I said. “You can breathe fine?”

“Aaaaaghggaaahhhaaaaaaagghhh,” she said, breathing just fine.

“Good,” Benson said, and clicked off the light. He shut the door to the bedroom. We could hear her trying to scream through the gag, but I’d done a good job with it and once the door was closed it wasn’t more than a faint moan. I’d felt guilty about the fish and now I felt similar about the poor babysitter. We hadn’t hurt her but still, this was the sort of incident that would demand exotic therapies, the type not covered by insurance, and she was going to be afraid to be alone, and maybe of the dark, and of men, for a long time. A misguided — “corrupt,” Cath would have said — safe-cracker lifts a watch from a sociopathic Roman, and a teenage babysitter in suburban Miami needs to sleep with the lights on for the next five years. Try and tell me life makes any sense.

In the foyer I finally saw it, couldn’t miss it this time around: a big picture of Cath and Hector and Patrick and Hector’s two daughters from his first marriage. They weren’t even engaged yet and they were already taking full-on family pictures. They had some confidence in where it was going, then. Backdrop was white sandy beach and judging by the length of Cath’s hair they’d probably taken the picture not long after she’d walked out and taken Patrick down to Miami to be with Hector.

The absolute worst part was that in the picture Hector was wearing the Roman’s watch. If that watch belonged to anyone besides Matteo Chiesa, it belonged to Patrick. And, in any case, it was not the sort of watch you put at risk of sand and water. Instantly I felt a lot less guilty about poisoning Hector’s fish.

---

Then we were outside, loading our bags into the box truck we’d bought and had done up with the Salvation Army logo. Hector’s neighbourhood was the type where residents monitored vehicles and we’d required one that wouldn’t tempt a looky-loo to call the cops. Mission accomplished. We shed the Santa suits. Benson drove. We even passed another Salvation Army truck on the way. Benson gave them a friendly honk and they honked right back.

The whole time I had the pope’s watch with me in the front passenger seat. I took it out of the box and looked at it a few times and wondered where it had been, what it had seen. Then I put it back in the box and shoved the box inside my Santa hat. The hat rode in my lap.

Benson and I ate at a Cuban place in Little Havana. His first wife had been Cuban and she’d cooked a lot for him before she’d gotten wise to the fact that there was actually far less — not more — to Benson than met the eye. Benson liked solving problems, and when he got confused about why she was mad, or sad, or acting out, he saw only the mechanical logic of a safe, of a lock. Do X and Y will happen. In his case, X was that his workshop sprawled across the entire house, safes were on counters, in the hallway, filling up closets, and Y ended up being an enraged Cuban slamming the door on her way out of his life for good. Same story with Cath when she learned Benson and me were hobby horsing in retirement. Didn’t help that we’d fudged up and stolen from a guy in bed with the Camorra.

The restaurant’s walls were covered with idyllic black-and-white pictures of the island before Castro wrapped his Red hands around the place. Strands of Christmas lights drooped over the tables. The scents of charred pigskin and garlic and oranges pounded our nostrils. When we were seated, our faces masked behind menus, Benson said in a tone of profound regret that it smelled like his ex-in-laws’ house during the Nochebuena preparations, and that the family menfolk had once trucked out to Hialeah to select the unlucky pig. His father-in-law had been a macho character, plus there’d been gobs of whiskey. That year they’d slaughtered the poor thing themselves. 

I wasn’t really in the mood for Cuban food, my nerves had devoured my hunger, but Benson said he was famished, and so I had let him pick the spot because it was all my fault. We ate quickly, and in silence, and I paid the check and left a hundred-dollar tip. We got in the van and made for the Allapattah address the Italians had given us. While we drove, Benson talked wistfully about a safe we’d cracked at a Russian’s estate outside Paris three years earlier, when we were both still inside CIA. It was a joint op with the French, and Benson recalled that we’d had to find and pin five relockers on that safe, a real doozy of a number and all seemingly randomly placed. And the clock had been ticking in real time as the French teams surveilled the Russian driving back home from the city.

I watched Miami roll by, its night aglow and warm as bathwater on the skin, while Benson went through every excruciating detail of how we’d drilled it. When he got to the end, the bolts surrendering with a shuddering thunk of pleasure, door moaning open, Benson said he imagined that was how God felt after he created the world. I knew how crazy that sounded. And I also knew what he meant. He said he only brought it up because he wanted to crack a safe like that again, and he was worried Hector’s stupid snakeskin one might be his last, and that made him sad.

I was smiling at my window, amused by what Benson had left out of his story. Because when we’d finally got that Russian’s safe open, in addition to the computers and account numbers and passwords in the leather-bound business book, inside were two human skulls and a leathery necklace made of ears. Benson didn’t care about that stuff, or maybe he hadn’t remembered. But he did recall the absurd number of relockers, the location of each hole we’d drilled (including the two exploratory ones), and the frustrating business when a drill bit busted off, fusing to the hard plate. I wondered if Benson had even peeked in that safe after we opened it.

After he’d finished his story, Benson looked over and saw me staring down at the Santa hat holding the watch. He frowned. “Did you ever end up just asking Cath for it back? Explain things.”

“Explaining,” I said, “turned out to be trickier than stealing.”

Benson didn’t even grunt, that’s how much he understood what I meant. He turned left, off the road, past an empty guard house and through an opened gate, its top whipstitched by razor wire.

“They’ll keep their word,” Benson said. It was almost a question. Not quite, but veering there because to my mind the smart money was still on this evening tipping sideways. Plus, we’d had that conversation a dozen times already, our nerves were cracked, and I couldn’t bear to have it again. He guided the truck to a concrete pile that in daytime was a Chiesa distribution facility. Our headlamps painted a Mercedes sedan and a white Sprinter van. I’d never thought of Italians as punctual, but apparently Gianluigi and his crop were Austrian on such matters. I wondered what was in that van.

Either the watch winders in Hector’s safe were busted or the pope’s watch needed a tune-up because that thing said it was four-seventeen. Dashboard clock said eleven-thirty. Any minute Hector and Cath were going to find the poor babysitter. Benson stopped the truck and we looked at each other and there was nothing left to say. We got out. I held the Santa hat with the watch skyward, in surrender. Three Italians opened car doors. One was Gianluigi.

Gianluigi sent two guys across the lot to pat us down. I handed one of them the Santa hat with the pope watch and they brought us in front of Gianluigi. There was a man in the car I hadn’t seen, an open case beside him that was filled with lenses and scopes. You picture some owlish accountant vetting timepieces or jewels like in the movies, but this Italian wore a starchy white shirt that was clearly under duress, stretched over thick shoulders and muscular arms, and he had a colourful tattoo creeping up his neck, peeking over the collar.

We stood dumbly while the muscly guy looked over the pope watch, pausing occasionally to compare what he was seeing to a set of pictures on his phone. When he was satisfied, he nodded to Gianluigi and gently set the watch inside a foam indent in a shiny briefcase. He clacked it shut.

“Buon Natale,” said Gianluigi. He tossed my emptied Santa hat back to me.

“Awful lot of trouble to go through for a watch,” Benson said. He couldn’t help himself.

“You shouldn’t have stolen it,” said Gianluigi.

“What about our offer?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

Gianluigi’s brow wrinkled. “You stole from Matteo Chiesa. You think he would hire you?”

“One thing,” I said. “We stole one thing.”

“One thing? You stole his heirloom watch. Not sure what it’s like at CIA, but in the real world one thing is all it takes.”

“And then we stole it back for him,” I said.

“What’s Chiesa going to do with the watch?” Benson asked.

Gianluigi shrugged. “He’ll probably put it back in the safe.”

“All this for something that will go back in a safe,” Benson said.

“All this for something that will go to his son,” Gianluigi said, not unkindly.

The doors at the back of the Sprinter van flung open. A few men jumped out and began unloading a big plastic drum. I couldn’t tell if they had more in the back but there was certainly plenty of room. None of the Italians seemed on edge. That made me edgier.

“We’re CIA officers,” Benson said.

“Former CIA officers,” Gianluigi corrected, “who stole a watch from Matteo Chiesa.”

“Chiesa should buy a better safe,” Benson said.

Gianluigi was smiling pleasantly. He’d been smiling like that when he worked me over with his knife.

“We’re square,” I said, trying my best not to make it sound like a question, though, despite Gianluigi’s earlier promises, it most certainly was.

“How many safes have you two cracked, you think?” Gianluigi asked.

“We’re square?” I gave up. Made it a damn question.

“Thousands,” Benson said, very quickly.

“And you thought there wouldn’t be any trouble?” Gianluigi said, and laughed. “You steal that much, at some point someone nasty is going to want something back.”

He had a point there. Hollow thuds came from behind the Sprinter van and I saw the guys futzing with the top of the plastic drum. I looked around. The building was concrete, three stories high, no windows. Further down was a dumpster and an old parking lot overrun by knee-high weeds. The skies were clear and I could see Gianluigi and his Italians and Benson under the moonlight.

It was a very nice winter night in Miami — silky tropical weather and an incandescent moon and Christmas lights twinkling on palm trees, their reflection shimmering in pools and waterways and aquariums all over town. I hoped Patrick was still asleep, that he hadn’t startled awake to the babysitter screaming when Cath or Hector took out the gag.

If you’d asked me then how I felt, I couldn’t have really told you. Some otherworldly mix of terror and relief that has surely got no name. Benson looked confused more than anything. He’d shucked the Santa beard when we’d left Hector and Cath’s house, but there were a few wisps of the thing in the Velcro of his stubble, and I could see them fluttering in the dreamy light of the moon.

Gianluigi said we could pick the order. It was all my fault anyhow, and Benson mostly agreed, though he did say again, quite generously, that he held Chiesa ultimately responsible for the siren song of a cheap fire safe. Gianluigi shot him first.

© David McCloskey