Tod Goldberg - Burn Notice: The Fix

"Violence, babes, and a cool guy spy... slick and
funny and a lotta fun." -New YorkPost

"Smart, charmingly irreverent... pleasantly warped."

-Detroit Free Press

"Snazzy." -EntertainmentWeekly

"Terrifically entertaining... neat and crisp as citrus
soda." -SeattlePost-Intelligencer

"Breezy cloak-and-dagger ingenuity. [A] nicely pitched
action-comedy hero: handsome, smart, neurotic,
tough, funny, sensitive... Michael Westen is Jim
Rockford and MacGyver filtered through Carl Hias
sen. Entertaining, in other words." -LA Weekly

I

When you're a spy, certain things come easy. You never have topay your parking tickets. The IRS leaves you pretty much aloneprovided you don't try to deduct TEC-9s from your 1040EZ. It's okayif you have sex with someone you don't actually like. In fact it'soften encouraged, and if on the off chance you fall in love withthe wrong person and have to kill them, or they try to kill you,your boss rarely asks for you to fill out a purchase order for abody bag or extra bullets.

But not even being a spy gets you out of having lunch with yourmother.

It was a Tuesday, and because she lied and told me I was takingher to the orthopedist, I was sitting poolside at the Hotel Orohaving lunch with my mother, Madeline. The Hotel Oro is one ofthose hotels on South Beach that no one actually stays at,but everyone seems to visit. It has an Olympic-sized infinity pool,which seems odd when you consider the ocean is only five yardsaway, but then the ocean doesn't have full bar service and cocktailgirls dressed in gold bikinis serving you finger foods. At night,DJs spin Eurotrash for Paris Hilton and the entire hotel throbsonto the street, like it's an actual living creature that feeds oncelebrities. My mother kept lifting her sunglasses up to stare atthe people being seated at the tables around us.

"You expecting someone?" I asked.

"Fiona said she might join us," my mother said.

Fiona was my girlfriend for a while. Then she was not mygirlfriend for a while. Then it was just confusing, and alittle violent, in a good way, and now she's more like a businesspartner, but might be my girlfriend again sometime soon. It'scomplicated. "I don't like you calling her," I said.

"She told me the cutest thing yesterday," shesaid.

The problem with having your business partner being your formerand maybe future girlfriend is that it's hard to make any essentialmandates about behavior. You risk pissing off someone who mayor may not call your mother either way. It's only slightly worsewhen the same person happens to be a former IRA gunrunner who stillhas something of an opaque moral center and who doesn't understandpersonal boundaries.

"Do tell," I said.

"Just girl stuff, Michael."

Girl stuff. Ten years of interrogating hostile enemytargets, you'd think I'd be able to break through that code, butgive me twenty Enigma machines and fifty men sitting in a lockedroom at Quantico, and there'd be no way of figuring out what thehell girl stuff means.

I'd have been more upset with this whole line of conversationhad I not been distracted, which is actually how I generallylike to feel during conversations with my mother. That way I don'tget too emotionally involved, or, in a pinch, can pleadignorance if important dates or activities arementioned.

Across the pool, three white guys in Cuban shirts, tan chinosand ankle holsters were trying their best to look natural, whichwould have been easier if they weren't all wearing the same shirt,which is what happens when you try to look natural by letting someintern buy your resort wear. That they weren't trying to looknatural while monitoring me was of some concern.

"We should do this more often, Michael," my mothersaid.

"What's this, exactly?"

"Family time. You know it wouldn't kill you to take me out tolunch every week. I read where the president calls his mother everyday. She even vacations with him sometimes."

The three white guys in Cubans were a little on the chunky sideand their skin was almost translucent, which meant theyweren't normally field agents. Field agents tend to have a few fasttwitch muscles and maybe a decent farmer's tan from sitting withtheir arms out car windows, waiting for something to happen,or snapping photos, or shooting at moving targets. Doughy is no wayto go through life. Everything works less effectively when you'vegot plaque in your arteries, but doughy also says: Happy.Content. Secure.

Miami-Dad's finest: The Strategic InvestigationsBureau.

SIB agents are paper hounds and numbers guys. Loophole chasers.Get them outside and maybe they know how to handle a gun, but youtake them out of their comfort zone, you put a knife to theirthroat or you show them a little of their own blood, and they turninto hand puppets.

"That's great," I said. "Next time I see the president,I'll let him know you're free."

"I'm serious, Michael," she said. "Since you've been back, youhaven't taken me to a single movie. Would it kill you take me tosee a movie?"

It might. But at the moment, I was more concerned by the SIBagents. If they were anchoring the back door, that meant someonewas in the front and that there was probably a gun or two aimed inthis direction from one of the adjoining buildings. Mostlikely, the ATF was near, too.

"Ma," I said, "how did you hear about thisplace?"

"Fiona said we should meet here."

"When?"

"This morning. Why, Michael?"

"Did you call her?"

"Michael, I know you want your privacy, but it's not wrong for amother to call her son's girlfriend. Do you know when I was datingyour father that your grandmother used to call me everymorning?"

If you're a tourist, one of the best things about coming toSouth Beach is the ease with which you can pool hop from one hotelto the next. Why, you could rappel down from the Hotel Victor'srooftop pool directly into the Hotel Oro's if you happened to havethat skill set, which, judging by the two slightly moreathletic-looking agents poised to do just that very thing acrossthe way, they're now teaching younger and more agile governmentrecruits. Though I suspected the ones at the Victor wereactually ATF.

"I didn't know that," I said. I stood up as casually aspossible, so as not to arouse any suspicion in the SIB ox ATFagents. Mistakes get made when you haven't been out of the officefor a few years and now have a license to shoot someone; it'sdoubly bad if you've been gorging on fatty foods in the interim andare now a little nervous, are thinking, Yeah, maybe if I put abullet into someone, like a former IRA gunrunner wanted by analphabet soup of organizations alive or dead. Thinking, MaybeI'll get a bump. Thinking, Maybe I'll get a corner office. "Whydon't we talk about it in the car?"

"But our food hasn't even arrived," Mom said.

I clenched my teeth into a polite smile, just in case I was on acamera somewhere. "We need to go," I said. "Now."

"What about Fiona?"

"Fiona won't be showing up," I said.

* * *

For the last ten years, I've lived wherever the governmenthas told me to live. There were also times when I didn't liveanywhere at all. Times when a helicopter would drop me in front ofa target, I'd do my job, and the helicopter would pick me back upfive minutes, or five hours, or five days later, dependingupon the circumstances of the job and whatever collateraldamage might have ensued.