"Are we having a little bit of a moment here?"
"Little bit, yeah."
I patted him on the back. "You're hired," I said. An announcement rang over the PA system that we'd be docking on Fisher Island in five minutes, that we should be mindful of the island's strict twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit and that the temperature on the island was a perfect eighty-two degrees. "Maybe, if things work out, we can get ourselves a blade of grass out here to retire on."
Prior to 1905, Fisher Island didn't exist. But when the dredging project to create a shipping lane into Miami left a couple hundred acres of green island adrift in Biscayne Bay, the island was born. What was once just mangroves became a millionaire's retreat, the property shifting hands between some of the nation's wealthiest people, eventually ending up in the hands of the Vanderbilts, before turning into what it is now: the most exclusive address in Miami.
As Sam drove towards Cricket O'Connor's house, we passed the private resort that was once the Van-derbilt estate and is now a playground for those for whom price is no problem, replete with towering coconut trees, a distinctly Gatsby-ish expanse of tennis courts and a rippling golf course peopled by men wearing sweaters tied over their shoulders, as if a squall were just around the corner. A ten-story condo complex hugged the coastline and offered astonishing views starting at two million dollars. Along the narrow avenues were elaborate guard gates and surprisingly tasteful manors, usually with a design mirroring the old Vanderbilt estate-Spanish influences abounded with a neo-Art Deco flair tossed in for flavor.
From the moment we drove off the ferry, I counted seven Bentleys, fifteen Mercedes, two dozen face-lifts, double that many boob jobs (usually on women more accustomed to being called Bubby than Baby) and enough tummy tucks and lip implants to make one wonder how anyone functions with the fat cells they were born with.
The air was warm.
The streets perfectly clean.
The views were impeccable.
It was, frankly, making me a little paranoid.
But then I had the strangest memory.
"I've actually been here before," I said.
"You're thinking of Grenada," Sam said. "The night before the invasion, right? It was just like this. Helluva time. Female med students have special needs in times of war, if you know what I'm saying."
"I was in eighth grade when we invaded Grenada," I said.
"A shame," Sam said. "We could have used you. You know, I still have a tiny piece of shrapnel in my left big toe from that. Cold days, it's like someone's sticking a fork into my foot."
It was probably very near the time Sam was storming the beach that I was last on Fisher Island, though it didn't look quite like it did on this day, at least not in my memory. My father and mother were fighting, throwing dishes and frozen food at each other, so Nate and I sneaked out of the house and just rode the buses around Miami. Nate had stolen a bunch of transfer passes, so we ended up going clear across the city and found ourselves at the very marina Sam and I had just departed from. We sneaked onto the ferry-a very different ferry, as I recall, since the island was not yet the address it is now-and made it all the way to the island before a security guard noticed us trying to walk off the ferry by ourselves. We were taken to the resort and sat in the guard shack there for three hours while we waited for one of our parents to pick us back up after security finally managed to finagle our phone number out of Nate. We both prayed it would be our mother who'd show up, but it was dad who rolled up in our old Ford Fairmont station wagon. We could see him through the window, his face scraggly with a week's worth of beard, a Marlboro dangling between his lips, his eyes covered by those narrow black Ray-Ban sunglasses he used to wear, even though it was near dusk by then. He didn't bother to turn the car off and come inside the shack; he just leaned on the horn.
"That your pop?" the guard asked. When neither of us answered, he sighed deeply and opened the door. I don't remember if the guard seemed pained by the experience, embarrassed or just happy we were leaving, though I'd like to think it was pain I heard in the sigh. "Well, get on, then," he said and we did. I expected Dad would snap at us or take a swipe at our heads, but he just drove home in stony silence the entire way, chain-smoking and listening to talk radio, which was even more upsetting. It was predictable that he'd blow. This new quiet was something larger and somehow more aggressive, so that when we got home and found our bedrooms trashed, the posters torn off our walls, our beds turned upside down, Star Wars action figures and GI Joes tossed about, it all made sense and made me happy we'd sneaked out to this odd piece of paradise, if only to save ourselves from something that was apparently far worse.
"Here we are," Sam said. We'd pulled up in front of a two-story cream-colored compound. As we made our way onto the property, I put down the windows in the Cadillac and inhaled deeply to erase the old memories and to get acclimated to the new situation. The house was surrounded by a dozen swaying palms and row after row of three-foot-tall rosebushes that sprinkled the light breeze coming in off Biscayne with a sweet, florid fragrance, but I noted that they were in desperate need of trimming. I turned and looked behind me and saw that the box hedges lining the front of the drive were more like dodecahedron hedges. There was an acre-wide expanse of lawn along the eastern side of the house; it was also overgrown. Clouds of aphids could be seen here and there, as well, moving about in the humid afternoon.
In front of the house was a circular drive around a tasteful marble fountain, the water blooming out from the center and falling down like strands of hair. The house itself was a testament to natural light, with huge picture windows dominating the face of the home and wrapping around the length of the residence, the ocean visible even from the front yard.
Clarity on my creeping nontopiary suspicions came when I stepped out of the car and noticed a sign plastered to the garage door of the home, its corners reinforced with duct tape, announcing a public auction of the property and its contents in ten days' time.
"You didn't mention this," I said, pointing to the sign.
"Are you looking to move?" Sam said.
"It speaks to a certain amount of emotional and economic instability," I said.
"I said she was difficult," Sam said.
Before I could respond, the front door opened and a woman in her early fifties stepped out onto the front porch. Cricket O'Connor was tall, maybe five foot eight, and had shoulder-length blond hair, which she nervously tucked behind both of her ears when she saw us standing on her drive. I hoped she hadn't heard our conversation, but it was quickly apparent she had.
"I've tried to take the notice down," Cricket said. There was an absent, resigned quality to her voice, which belied her confident demeanor. She was dressed in a yellow St. John knit sweater set that revealed a tan expanse of neck and a thin gold necklace bedazzled with diamonds. A matching bracelet was wrapped around her left wrist. She wore a single diamond ring on her wedding finger and what looked liked a charm bracelet that dangled a single item on her right wrist. "But it's apparently against the law. Someone drives by every couple days to make sure it's still there, and if it's down, they put another up. It's not as invasive as the people who come to take photos, so I've learned to live with smaller inconveniences, even if it speaks to a larger instability."
"That's all anyone can be expected to do," I said. I walked over and extended my hand. "I'm Michael Westen. You have a lovely home."
Cricket forced a smile, shook my hand gingerly and then toyed with her single charm, which I saw was actually a military dog tag, before responding. "Well, for now at least. Please come in."
The difference between trained liars and your garden-variety fibbers is that specific training allows for certain insights into the human condition not normally acquired while playing shell games on the pier or trying to con your waitress out of more change. At the (grateful) expense of the American tax payer, you're taught to look for signals of weakness so that whatever your particular cover might be or whatever your particular lie is eventually targeted to mete out can have its most effective power.