Burn Notice // Robin Hood of South Beach // 1 of 1
Title: Robin Hood of South Beach
Rating: T
Words: ≈1,700
Summary: The three amigos enjoy some downtime, frosty beverages and mediocre journalism.
Episode tag for 2x13, Bad Breaks; originally written as a yuletide New Year's Resolution fic for halcyon_shift, whose happy place is character interaction. Beta'd by the ever-lovely and awesome eternal_sadist
*
Part of every spy's job is reading the local papers: you can learn a lot about the climate from something as small as what stories get picked up during a slow news week or the light in which local politicos are cast. While the media can be a valuable asset, they can just as quickly turn into a nuisance or a nightmare. A couple of reporters with the inclination and the time to do so can sour an op faster than you can say "stop the presses".
"Well," Sam says, sounding more amused than distraught; he's wearing his Chuck Finley face - the one that wouldn't look out of place laughing at a nuclear holocaust. "Looks like we finally did it."
He takes a drink and sets his bottle down with the heavy thunk of a mostly-full vessel, folds the paper into a more manageable shape with a rustle. A moment later he's reading aloud, a hundred cover ID's worth of theatrics injected into his delivery. " What do drug dealers, thugs, white-collar criminals - " a pause, " - human traffickers and bank robbers have in common? They're all disappearing from Miami like the Everglades from the edges of a housing development."
"That's a nice comparison," Michael says, takes a sip of his own beer.
He'd expected a level of public interest eventually. It's a given with how often cars, ships and buildings explode in their presence, to say nothing of - how many times have they drawn gunfire?
It should shock him that he's lost track, but that part isn't what leaves him edgy. He should remember and doesn't, should question how far off his game he's fallen and won't. That internal refusal sets off his mental alarms much more strongly than the bullets do, because the equation's the easy part.
Number of jobs multiplied by number of jobs they've been shot at - subtract the ones where they shoot at each other for the sake of the job, and somewhere along the line two plus two stops being four. It's not even five; between Carla and Victor, Bly and the bank number that wants him dead, Michael's pretty sure two and two could be swordfish and he wouldn't even blink.
"We do deal with the swampland of the human race," Sam says, thoughtfully. Chuck is gone, replaced by Sam-making-light (different from Sam-trying-to-not-die, from Sam-after-lady-of-the-week; they could be actors in another lifetime, complete with their own cult following), though Michael's pretty sure the voice will return for the rest of the article.
He grins at the observation - only half a smile but as open as Michael ever gets. "You know, when most people think of the Glades, they think about sawgrass prairies rather than swamps."
Sam gives a snort of laughter; then, "You're mincing words there, Mikey."
"That's because it's a faulty metaphor," Michael replies, just as the paper obscures Sam's face again. "I'm just saying - you say Everglades, I think sawgrass."
"South Florida has a new breed of hero stalking its back alleys," Sam reads at his hammiest. "See there, they called us heroes! You ought to be flattered."
"What you ought to do," Fiona says, leaning over Sam's left shoulder with a bloody Mary dangling between her fingertips, "is pay up."
Sam flinches right, starts going for a sidearm that isn't there; Michael stifles a laugh at his friend's expense - he can hardly blame Sam for his reaction. "Jeez!" Sam says, settling back into his seat. "Make some noise, will ya?" He picks his beer back up and makes a show of the drink he takes while Fi settles into the chair between them.
"There are three people sitting at this table," she says smugly, her voice in the staccato rhythm of a person utterly confident in victory, "And two of them owe me money".
She's twirling her celery between her index and middle fingers, and Michael hasn't seen a vegetable look so deadly since he was six. "Over a year to get going, between tourist and hurricane seasons, front page," Fi drawls, "so I'm right three for three."
"I wasn't part of the bet," Michael replies, pointing at her with the corner of his sandwich. He's thought it was a bad idea from the start, an invitation for their old friend Murphy to walk in and make their lives more complicated than they had to be. Enough already went badly without tempting everything that could to do so.
"I distinctly remember the words, 'I'd just as soon we never show up in the news' having been uttered," Fi says. "That counts."
She bites into the celery stick, and that right there is the reason why celery substitutes for breaking bone in sound effects studios. Or, really, any time you need someone to think it's their comrade making the sickening crunch rather than this week's market-fresh produce.
Sam cuts in before that line of conversation can go any further. "Hey now, the thing with the heroin dealers got a full page spread in the Florida section. Going by that, I'm the real winner here - "
"I should have known you would try to weasel out of - "
"Let's hear the rest of the article, Sam," Michael says, too brightly. He kicks at Fi's ankles under the table; she kicks him back hard enough to hurt, which is probably hard enough to bruise. She's wearing a smirk as she does it, though, at least as amused as Sam is.
At the prompt, Sam reads through the article at length, pausing for commentary where it's appropriate (It didn't happen like that!; Where did they go, anyway?; I thought she was in witness protection.; Didn't you swear him to secrecy?). There must be ten jobs covered in the article - most of them people they've helped, one unavailable for comment out of Monroe Correctional, two people they'd met through Nate and another two through his mother.
Not entirely unsurprising. "The doc had a weird knowledge-base," the article quotes one man from the bank robbery - Michael thinks it's the one Bly took the fall for, but he can't be certain. The rest is a string of cover-IDs that no one should have been able to put together.
"We were able to reach a local high school football player," Sam reads, and Michael knows that set in Sam's shoulders - pride. "'I owe them Super Bowl tickets. Someday', he said, but wouldn't comment further."
"Thank you, Corey," Michael says, because he's done the best of all the interviewees. Barely seventeen and he already understands that when someone tells you staying quiet is important, they actually mean it's actually important. Michael can only guess at what the writer could have gotten from Sophie or Bill.
Sam lays the paper down in the center of the table. Upside-down, Michael reads the title as Robin Hood of South Beach Foils Bank Robbery. There's a photo toward the bottom of the page: the three of them in black and white (that's some indication in favor of a higher power that likes them - they're also caught at a distance and an odd angle, faces small and blurry and eyes obscured by three pairs of matching sunglasses). It bears the caption "Miami's Merry Men?"
"Merry Men," Fi says, rolling her eyes as she does. "And here I thought we were reading an equal-opportunity expose."
Michael allows himself a small smile at that, spreading the paper flat to see the by-line and the reporter's own picture. He blinks when he sees Javier Rios's inch-by-inch portrait. Michael knows him, assumed he was one of Carla's people out running her errands, a glorified pet-sitter, and not particularly good at his job. Assumed the appearance of incompetence was part of the other man's cover.
"That's the guy who was asking about my downstairs neighbor," Michael says; he's been renting that apartment too, just to keep it vacant, after the first couple of blessedly Sugar-free months. Rios had looked like he didn't quite believe Michael's assurance about not having neighbors - but he'd left, and not returned, just another blip on Michael's radar.
By Fi's small gasp and Sam's huh, they've seen Rios around, too.
"He called Veronica a couple of weeks back," Sam says, the wince in his voice if not on his face, "and she called me. Said some guy with a Cuban accent was poking around, asking about the Caddy. She was pretty upset."
"I would imagine so," Fi says, then takes an indulgent sip of her bloody Mary. Something passes between them, a look that says that was uncalled for/no it wasn't, over something Michael isn't privy to. A moment later, Fi turns her eyes on the street outside, then back in on their table, the motion so deliberately casual that she may well have won that wordless battle.
She sighs; then, "Rios was snooping outside my apartment, taking pictures - what? - two, three months ago?"
"He what?"
A lump moves through Michael's chest and into his stomach and sits there for an uncomfortably long while before fading. He knows Fi knows better than to ignore unknown people surveilling her. He also knows she's perfectly capable of taking care of her own surveillants herself. It still stings a little that she hasn't said anything about it.
Fi flashes a lightning grin, showing teeth. "Honestly, Michael," she says, "He tromped around like a sedated rhinoceros, unarmed, and took his pictures with an off the shelf Canon. Dear Javier might as well have sent me a card saying, 'Hello there, don't mind me, I'm an amateur!'"
He's about to reply when his phone rings. Michael checks the caller-ID and answers anyway. "Hi, Mom," he says, "Mm-hm. Yes, Mom, I'm looking at it right now. No, you don't have to do that - Mom, please don't frame it ... "
Sometimes people of interest find you through a complex web of espionage, counter-espionage and betrayal. And sometimes they don't have to, because you're right there on the front page of the Miami Herald.
Rating: T
Words: ≈1,700
Summary: The three amigos enjoy some downtime, frosty beverages and mediocre journalism.
Episode tag for 2x13, Bad Breaks; originally written as a yuletide New Year's Resolution fic for halcyon_shift, whose happy place is character interaction. Beta'd by the ever-lovely and awesome eternal_sadist
*
Part of every spy's job is reading the local papers: you can learn a lot about the climate from something as small as what stories get picked up during a slow news week or the light in which local politicos are cast. While the media can be a valuable asset, they can just as quickly turn into a nuisance or a nightmare. A couple of reporters with the inclination and the time to do so can sour an op faster than you can say "stop the presses".
"Well," Sam says, sounding more amused than distraught; he's wearing his Chuck Finley face - the one that wouldn't look out of place laughing at a nuclear holocaust. "Looks like we finally did it."
He takes a drink and sets his bottle down with the heavy thunk of a mostly-full vessel, folds the paper into a more manageable shape with a rustle. A moment later he's reading aloud, a hundred cover ID's worth of theatrics injected into his delivery. " What do drug dealers, thugs, white-collar criminals - " a pause, " - human traffickers and bank robbers have in common? They're all disappearing from Miami like the Everglades from the edges of a housing development."
"That's a nice comparison," Michael says, takes a sip of his own beer.
He'd expected a level of public interest eventually. It's a given with how often cars, ships and buildings explode in their presence, to say nothing of - how many times have they drawn gunfire?
It should shock him that he's lost track, but that part isn't what leaves him edgy. He should remember and doesn't, should question how far off his game he's fallen and won't. That internal refusal sets off his mental alarms much more strongly than the bullets do, because the equation's the easy part.
Number of jobs multiplied by number of jobs they've been shot at - subtract the ones where they shoot at each other for the sake of the job, and somewhere along the line two plus two stops being four. It's not even five; between Carla and Victor, Bly and the bank number that wants him dead, Michael's pretty sure two and two could be swordfish and he wouldn't even blink.
"We do deal with the swampland of the human race," Sam says, thoughtfully. Chuck is gone, replaced by Sam-making-light (different from Sam-trying-to-not-die, from Sam-after-lady-of-the-week; they could be actors in another lifetime, complete with their own cult following), though Michael's pretty sure the voice will return for the rest of the article.
He grins at the observation - only half a smile but as open as Michael ever gets. "You know, when most people think of the Glades, they think about sawgrass prairies rather than swamps."
Sam gives a snort of laughter; then, "You're mincing words there, Mikey."
"That's because it's a faulty metaphor," Michael replies, just as the paper obscures Sam's face again. "I'm just saying - you say Everglades, I think sawgrass."
"South Florida has a new breed of hero stalking its back alleys," Sam reads at his hammiest. "See there, they called us heroes! You ought to be flattered."
"What you ought to do," Fiona says, leaning over Sam's left shoulder with a bloody Mary dangling between her fingertips, "is pay up."
Sam flinches right, starts going for a sidearm that isn't there; Michael stifles a laugh at his friend's expense - he can hardly blame Sam for his reaction. "Jeez!" Sam says, settling back into his seat. "Make some noise, will ya?" He picks his beer back up and makes a show of the drink he takes while Fi settles into the chair between them.
"There are three people sitting at this table," she says smugly, her voice in the staccato rhythm of a person utterly confident in victory, "And two of them owe me money".
She's twirling her celery between her index and middle fingers, and Michael hasn't seen a vegetable look so deadly since he was six. "Over a year to get going, between tourist and hurricane seasons, front page," Fi drawls, "so I'm right three for three."
"I wasn't part of the bet," Michael replies, pointing at her with the corner of his sandwich. He's thought it was a bad idea from the start, an invitation for their old friend Murphy to walk in and make their lives more complicated than they had to be. Enough already went badly without tempting everything that could to do so.
"I distinctly remember the words, 'I'd just as soon we never show up in the news' having been uttered," Fi says. "That counts."
She bites into the celery stick, and that right there is the reason why celery substitutes for breaking bone in sound effects studios. Or, really, any time you need someone to think it's their comrade making the sickening crunch rather than this week's market-fresh produce.
Sam cuts in before that line of conversation can go any further. "Hey now, the thing with the heroin dealers got a full page spread in the Florida section. Going by that, I'm the real winner here - "
"I should have known you would try to weasel out of - "
"Let's hear the rest of the article, Sam," Michael says, too brightly. He kicks at Fi's ankles under the table; she kicks him back hard enough to hurt, which is probably hard enough to bruise. She's wearing a smirk as she does it, though, at least as amused as Sam is.
At the prompt, Sam reads through the article at length, pausing for commentary where it's appropriate (It didn't happen like that!; Where did they go, anyway?; I thought she was in witness protection.; Didn't you swear him to secrecy?). There must be ten jobs covered in the article - most of them people they've helped, one unavailable for comment out of Monroe Correctional, two people they'd met through Nate and another two through his mother.
Not entirely unsurprising. "The doc had a weird knowledge-base," the article quotes one man from the bank robbery - Michael thinks it's the one Bly took the fall for, but he can't be certain. The rest is a string of cover-IDs that no one should have been able to put together.
"We were able to reach a local high school football player," Sam reads, and Michael knows that set in Sam's shoulders - pride. "'I owe them Super Bowl tickets. Someday', he said, but wouldn't comment further."
"Thank you, Corey," Michael says, because he's done the best of all the interviewees. Barely seventeen and he already understands that when someone tells you staying quiet is important, they actually mean it's actually important. Michael can only guess at what the writer could have gotten from Sophie or Bill.
Sam lays the paper down in the center of the table. Upside-down, Michael reads the title as Robin Hood of South Beach Foils Bank Robbery. There's a photo toward the bottom of the page: the three of them in black and white (that's some indication in favor of a higher power that likes them - they're also caught at a distance and an odd angle, faces small and blurry and eyes obscured by three pairs of matching sunglasses). It bears the caption "Miami's Merry Men?"
"Merry Men," Fi says, rolling her eyes as she does. "And here I thought we were reading an equal-opportunity expose."
Michael allows himself a small smile at that, spreading the paper flat to see the by-line and the reporter's own picture. He blinks when he sees Javier Rios's inch-by-inch portrait. Michael knows him, assumed he was one of Carla's people out running her errands, a glorified pet-sitter, and not particularly good at his job. Assumed the appearance of incompetence was part of the other man's cover.
"That's the guy who was asking about my downstairs neighbor," Michael says; he's been renting that apartment too, just to keep it vacant, after the first couple of blessedly Sugar-free months. Rios had looked like he didn't quite believe Michael's assurance about not having neighbors - but he'd left, and not returned, just another blip on Michael's radar.
By Fi's small gasp and Sam's huh, they've seen Rios around, too.
"He called Veronica a couple of weeks back," Sam says, the wince in his voice if not on his face, "and she called me. Said some guy with a Cuban accent was poking around, asking about the Caddy. She was pretty upset."
"I would imagine so," Fi says, then takes an indulgent sip of her bloody Mary. Something passes between them, a look that says that was uncalled for/no it wasn't, over something Michael isn't privy to. A moment later, Fi turns her eyes on the street outside, then back in on their table, the motion so deliberately casual that she may well have won that wordless battle.
She sighs; then, "Rios was snooping outside my apartment, taking pictures - what? - two, three months ago?"
"He what?"
A lump moves through Michael's chest and into his stomach and sits there for an uncomfortably long while before fading. He knows Fi knows better than to ignore unknown people surveilling her. He also knows she's perfectly capable of taking care of her own surveillants herself. It still stings a little that she hasn't said anything about it.
Fi flashes a lightning grin, showing teeth. "Honestly, Michael," she says, "He tromped around like a sedated rhinoceros, unarmed, and took his pictures with an off the shelf Canon. Dear Javier might as well have sent me a card saying, 'Hello there, don't mind me, I'm an amateur!'"
He's about to reply when his phone rings. Michael checks the caller-ID and answers anyway. "Hi, Mom," he says, "Mm-hm. Yes, Mom, I'm looking at it right now. No, you don't have to do that - Mom, please don't frame it ... "
Sometimes people of interest find you through a complex web of espionage, counter-espionage and betrayal. And sometimes they don't have to, because you're right there on the front page of the Miami Herald.