Free The Reformed by Tod Goldberg

Rather, Sam demanded he be hosed down because he was covered in dog hair and smelled of ethanol and peppers. Sam just wanted the hair off of him, but once Fi caught a whiff of him, she thought it best to give him a thorough cleaning outdoors versus inside her home.
    Wash-down complete, I tossed Sam a towel, and Fi came out with a cup of coffee and an entire baguette.
    “You have a nice evening?” I asked him once he was sufficiently dried and was happily chomping on the bread.
    “Let me tell you something, Mikey: There’s nothing right about a drink you can make in your toilet, even if you’re not making it in a toilet anymore.”
    “Good to know,” I said.
    Sam riffled through his pockets and came out with his recorder. “I wired myself,” he said, and handed me the device. It was a digital device, which meant it could hold up to twelve hours of conversation. I checked the remaining time—there were only a few hours left.
    “I thought you said K-Dog was your friend?”
    “Mikey, I don’t remember my own name right now. I taped the conversation as a precaution. It was a good thing, wouldn’t you say?”
    I hit PLAY on the recorder and spent about three minutes listening to Sam and K-Dog talking about how great it would be if they were a team on The Amazing Race . “You remember that?” I said.
    “Mikey, you ever seen that show? We could win a million dollars.”
    “Looks like you already have a partner,” I said. “You have an idea at what point you and K-Dog talked about Junior?”
    “It was early,” Sam said. “And then it was late. I’m sorry, Mikey. I just didn’t want him to be offended, so I kept drinking with him.”
    “When in Attica,” I said.
    We went inside, and while Fiona tended to Sam—which is to say, while Fiona made Sam eat Tums and bread and forced him to drink a gallon of Gatorade—I tried making my way through Sam’s tape of himself. It turns out there’s nothing less entertaining than listening to drunks, particularly drunks who think they are being insightful. Eventually, I caught the thread of the conversation about Junior and even managed to make out the address Sam slurred into the recorder.
    “How’s he doing?” I asked Fiona.
    “I’d say he’s about fifty-fifty,” she said.
    “Of what?”
    “Alcohol and animal fats. There’s nothing human about him yet. Might not be for another ten hours or so.”
    “Is he safe to leave?”
    “Only if you don’t mind him choking to death on his own vomit.”
    “There’s a field trip I’d like to take tonight,” I said. I handed her the address I scrawled down from Sam’s slurred words. “This is where Junior Gonzalez has paperwork dropped off. I’d like to take a look at what he’s planning.”
    “Shall we just drop Sam off back at that strip club? Pay a nice girl named Star twenty dollars to babysit him?”
    “A good idea. But, no.” I picked up my cell phone and made a call. “Ma,” I said when my mother answered (on the first half ring), “I need a favor.”
     
    The address K-Dog gave Sam wasn’t in the projects where the Latin Emperors have operated for years with impunity, or even in Miami proper, but in a new development of family-style houses in Homestead, about forty minutes south of downtown Miami and only a few miles north of the southern Everglades, and a few miles west of the air force base. And only a few miles away from the women’s prison my new friend the scarred receptionist spent her idle time in before getting a job with Eduardo.
    “Are you sure we’re in the right place?” I asked Fiona. We were parked on the side of a road that headed into a planned community called Cheyenne Lakes. The blacktop we’d been driving on previously had turned into cobblestone pavers, and there was a not-very-discreet up-lit sign that proclaimed THE KIND OF LIFE YOU DESERVE IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER perched on a low berm of green grass that rolled ... right around the corner.
    “These are the directions