The Giveaway by Tod Goldberg Read Free Book Online

comfortable. You can understand that, can’t you?”
    I could and I told him so. “How much money have you spent?” I asked.
    “About twenty thousand,” he said. “Paid some bills, paid for a nurse for a couple days, bought my mom an air purifier. Probably too late on that one. I haven’t opened the mail today, so who knows how much the next bill will be.”
    “How much does your mom have left? From the finger incident?”
    “Not much,” he said. “That was twelve years ago. And she’s been sick off and on for ten years. Maybe five grand.”
    “What all did you drop off at the FBI offices?”
    Again, a look of shock crossed Bruce’s face, but he tried to play it off, or maybe he just realized I really did know things. “A couple role sheets,” he said. “Thought if the FBI arrested the crew, they’d be off of me.”
    “Good idea,” Sam said, “but you can’t just arrest someone for being an asshole anymore. You actually need to catch them breaking the law. Or breaking their leg while breaking the law. That counts, too.”
    Bruce shrugged, like: What can you do? You can’t do nothing.
    “What makes you think they’re on to you?” I asked.
    “These people have connections everywhere,” Bruce said. “They might even have guys in the FBI for all I know.”
    I was about to say I found that unlikely, but then I thought better of it. If anything is true, it’s that every organization has retention and, conversely, leak problems. One person says one thing to the wrong person, and in some cases, an entire spy operation in Moscow could be wiped out. Or a thief in Miami living with his mother could be fingered for a job.
    Better to deal with known possibility than wishful thinking.
    “Have you told anyone about the job?”
    “Just Barry,” he said. “He’s the one told me they were making inquiries, which got me thinking, you know, don’t be a schmuck, get rid of whatever you can and ask for help. Was that wrong?”
    “Barry you can trust,” I said, already feeling relieved. If he’d told only Barry, we could close the circle, solve the problem, get everyone back to living in peace and harmony and . . .
    “And I might have mentioned it to Nick Balsalmo.”
    He said the name like it should mean something. It didn’t. At least not to me. I looked at Sam, whose expression was likewise blank. We all stared at each other for a while, until it became clear none of us was going to offer more information, so Sam finally said, “Of the Miami Balsalmos?”
    “We know each other from Glades,” Bruce said carefully, as if he already knew that it was the wrong thing to say.
    “You might have told someone you did time with that you robbed the Ghouls?” I said. There is no might in these situations, just like I told Barry the previous day. People either do or don’t do things. I had a feeling I knew the answer.
    “Technically,” Bruce said, “I didn’t know it was the Ghouls when I told him.”
    “Well, that’s a relief,” Sam said. “Or else you might have told him the total truth.”
    Bruce took off his watch and started rubbing at his wrist. You spend enough time around people used to being in handcuffs and you’ll begin to notice a similar compunction when they realize they’ve put themselves in a position to be back in cuffs . . . and soon. “I owed him a favor and knew he could get rid of the drugs I grabbed,” he said. “Just having them in my mother’s home was a shanda. Nick is trustworthy. He always had my back.”
    If you’re sent to prison, it’s important to understand that the people you’re doing time with are not, by definition, trustworthy. One of the first rules of incarceration is simple: Don’t owe anybody anything. As soon as someone has you, they have you forever. This means inside and outside. You might not know it when it’s happening, but eventually the scales will tip.
    “Was Nick Balsalmo part of a prison ministry program?” I asked.
    “Uh, no,” he