by Tod Goldberg
The dossier said Gennaro lived in America through college, moved to Italy after the death of his mother from cancer and married into the Ottone clan a decade ago amid persistent rumors that it was some kind of reparation for his father’s service, but, at least looking at the photos of him with Maria and their young daughter, things seemed bucolic, rumor and gossip aside. He’d inherited his father’s love of speed, but he preferred his work on the water-a lot less chance for fire-balls, that afternoon’s activities notwithstanding-and was now the helmsman for Ottone’s yacht racing team, the Pax Bellicosa, which was in Miami to take part in the Hurricane Cup.
Yacht racing is one of those sports that the average American doesn’t care about because the average American is landlocked. Even still, the idea of taking part in a regatta probably conjures images of men in navy blue sport coats calling each other old chap and sport and chum while skirting around buoys in the pleasant waters of the Atlantic, which certainly isn’t as compelling as anabolic freaks slamming into each other for a hundred yards of contested territory, ten yards at a time.
The truth was that there was a lot of “old chap” this and “sport” that and “chum” tossed around New England, but on the world stage, yacht racing was big business and big entertainment, which meant, as with all things big, that there was a criminal element. I didn’t think that yacht blowing up beneath the causeway this afternoon was a faulty wiring issue, certainly. There were also million-dollar parties, secondary events like fashion shows and car expos and haute cuisine displays. And gambling, though not of the legal variety. These teams, like Gennaro’s, were owned by people who threw money around like confetti. Where there’s money, there’s desire for more, and desire makes people blind. Blind people stumble into stupid things, like stickups, heists and good old-fashioned extortion, all in the name of sport.
Nevertheless, Gennaro seemed normal enough, which probably meant he was completely corrupt.
I flipped to page six.
“Oh, this is surprising,” I said.
“I’m not convinced it’s going to be a problem,” Sam said, but he might as well have said that he didn’t think he’d ever want to drink another beer. Some lies are well-meaning. Others are just lies.
There was a picture of Gennaro with Christopher Bonaventura, head of one of the largest international crime families. Allegedly. It was taken from a distance of several hundred yards and captured the two of them walking along a rocky jetty. The photo was likely snapped from a dinghy somewhere in the Adriatic. “What is this, Sam?”
“They’re old friends,” Sam said. “There was a question of impropriety that arose from the friendship. My friend smoothed it out.”
“What kind of impropriety?”
“There was some thought Gennaro had debts he wasn’t informing his family about.”
“Gambling?”
“Drugs. Bonaventura moves a lot of H. Seeing the two of them together raised suspicions. Especially since they weren’t exactly meeting in front of Starbucks.”
“Who was tailing him?”
“Don’t know. Probably Bonaventura’s own guys.”
“And your friend smoothed it out how?”
Sam shifted in his seat. It was his one tell. Sometimes he just can’t sit with things. “He convinced Mr. Bonaventura that he was no longer friends with Gennaro.”
“You couldn’t have told me this when we were still at the Carlito?”
“Gennaro doesn’t believe his situation is related to this. Frankly, Mikey, I’m inclined to believe the kid.”
I flipped back through the dossier. “He’s almost forty.”
“He’s very innocent,” Sam said. “You’ll want to protect him when you see him.”
“I’ll probably want to shake him until he passes out.”
Up ahead, the Setai shimmered in the fading sun. The hotel was a strange and entirely appropriate nexus between the past and the present, as if Art Deco had gone on a long, hot date with Asian design aesthetics. Look one way, you were in Miami in 1933. Look the other, and it was Hong Kong fifteen minutes ago. Half of the hotel was the old Dempsey-Vanderbilt, which first entertained the rich and notorious eighty years ago; the other half was a forty-story tower that was a second home to any celebrity with a single name.
“You going to tell me who your friend is?” I asked. It wasn’t important on a personal level, just that Sam’s patented avoidance of the subject made me curious and also indicated to me that our new friend Gennaro probably had issues beyond the dossier.
“A guy named Jimenez. That’s all I can say.”
“CIA?”
“For a time.”
“NSA?”
“Just an old friend, Mikey. He assures me Gennaro is fine and totally on the level. And rich, Mikey. Big money here. The kind where you won’t have to work for months afterward and can just focus on figuring out your burn notice.”
“Just the vacation I’ve been hoping for,” I said.
We pulled up to the hotel and were met by a valet dressed in an all-brown Nehru outfit. He took Sam’s keys without muttering a single word or looking directly at either one of us before speeding off. Indifference was the new politeness.
“Not exactly the Motel 6 here,” Sam said.
“You get what you pay for,” I said.
“But do they leave the lights on for you?”
“I’m going to guess that they do,” I said.
“My money, all you really need in a hotel is a bed, a bar and a pool.”
“Well,” I said, “good thing it’s not your money.”
Inside, the Setai was oddly quiet. I’d grown so accustomed to every hotel in South Beach being an excuse for a nightclub to have a roof that I’d forgotten elegance still existed. The lobby began as a narrow expanse that widened out across the back of the hotel, so that you got the sense you were looking into the hotel through a Panavision camera, your eyes taking in each new design detail as you moved across the brushed travertine floor. Throughout the space were vases of white roses atop nested tables beside matte bronze sofas that looked comfortable enough to sleep on, but which not a soul was sitting on. The muted glow of candles created fanciful shadows on the walls, which were also an understated bronze highlighted by long black draping and grand pieces of oval-shaped marble.
At the far end of the lobby was a single stomach-high reception desk made of brushed steel and inlaid squares of marble and wood. A man and a woman stood behind the counter. Both wore those odd Nehru outfits, and as we neared them en route to the elevators their faces turned downcast.
“You know what I miss?” Sam said.
“I dunno, Sam. The Cold War?”
“Used to be you walked into a hotel, it didn’t feel like you were somehow annoying the employees. This place, it’s pretty, but it’s not Howard Johnson’s.”
The last time the two of us spent a substantial amount of time in a high-rise hotel in the service of the superrich, Sam ended up taking out most of the fifth floor of the Hotel Oro. I had the sense that doing the same here would not be met with indifference. The Hotel Oro was owned by Russians of dubious intent. The Setai was owned by the GHM chain, the difference being the hotel chain would be more likely to chase you to the ends of the planet with a passel of lawyers. I’ll take Russians of dubious intent any day over lawyers. So, I made it a point to give the dour humans behind the reservations desk a nice smile as we passed.
Nothing. Not even a wave.
We took the elevators up to the fortieth floor, where they opened to the penthouse level. I expected to be greeted by some tough guys in suits, because that’s normally what you find at the entrance to a penthouse suite, but the hallway was empty save for the marble floor and the impressionist paintings on the wall alongside archival photos of the hotel in its Prohibition past.
“How much you suppose a room up here costs?” Sam said.
“Twenty grand,” I said.
“You think that includes breakfast?”
“I’m going to say no,” I said.
“Howard Johnson’s, you get a buffet breakfast and a room for a C-note.”
“It’s a cruel world.” I knocked on the door. I thought maybe when it opened I’d finally get to see my tough guys in suits, but instead Gennaro Stefania himself opened the door. He wore tan shorts, a polo shirt with the Ottone logo on the breast and no shoes. He was tanned and healthy-looking from a distance, but up close you could see that his eyes were red and puffy. I didn’t think it was from lack of sleep.
“You must be Michael Westen,” he said.
“We all must be someone,” I said. We shook hands, but there wasn’t much there. It was like shaking a straw man. You could tell he was a fine-tuned athlete, but there was a lot being sapped out of him.
“Come in,” he said, and stepped out of the way for Sam and me to pass. “Let me give you the tour, for what it’s worth.”
We stepped into the penthouse and Gennaro took us through room by room, and only then did I realize what being part of the Ottone family meant: there were two living rooms in the penthouse, a separate music room that featured a Steinway piano, and at least 10,000 square feet, which was needed since there were four bedrooms, four baths replete with Jacuzzis, even quarters for a butler. There was also a full bar with flat screen televisions and a stocked cigar humidor.
“You mind?” Sam said to Gennaro. Surprisingly, he was pointing to the humidor and not the five bottles of Macallan 30 year or the two dozen Samuel Adams Utopia blend beers.
“Help yourself,” Gennaro said. “It’s all paid for.”
That’s the wrong thing to say to Sam, who took one Cuban to smoke and grabbed a few more for a rainy day. Another couple for the sunny days, too.
“Just like Howard Johnsons,” I said.
The penthouse was surrounded by a wrap-around terrace that featured an eternity pool and another hot tub, as if the four inside weren’t enough.
But the curious thing was that Gennaro was all alone.
“Nice place,” I said.
“It’s too much,” Gennaro said. “It’s all too much.”
“You could rent the bathrooms out by the hour,” Sam said. He was trying to be funny, maybe make Gennaro crack at least the smallest smile, but I could tell he was in no mood.
“Why don’t we sit down,” I said and Gennaro just nodded, but didn’t really move. It was as if he was in a trance and needed someone to give him even the most rudimentary cues so he’d know what to do with himself. So I said, “Why don’t we sit down on one of the nine sofas?”
Gennaro nodded again and made his way toward an L-shaped taupe sofa that was positioned so that it faced out toward the sea. He dropped into the corner of the L, like he was being punished, and just stared out the window. I pulled a chair up and sat across from him and motioned for Sam to join me, which meant he had to pull himself away from the Utopias, which he’d just discovered.
“So,” I said, once Sam was beside me, “tell me your problem.”
Gennaro reached into his pocket, pulled out an iPhone and handed it to me. “Two days ago,” Gennaro said, “I received that message in my e-mail.”
The e-mail contained a link to a Web site, which when opened began running a surveillance video of Maria Ottone and her young daughter, Liz. For about twenty seconds, it just watched them sleeping in what looked to be a stateroom on a boat. It then cut to a shot of them eating lunch, another of them sunning themselves on the deck, their daughter playing with a Barbie, and again it cut to a shot of Maria showering, the focus getting closer and closer on Maria’s face until you could see the small freckles along her jawline, the fine skin on her cheekbones, the flick of her tongue when a long piece of her hair found the corner of her mouth. It then began running other clips, just a few seconds of the mundane, enough to let whom-ever was watching know that they were observing Maria and Liz at every single moment.
“Where is your wife?” I said. The images were still flitting past. There was no sound on the video. Just the images in silence, which somehow made them all the more disturbing.
“She’s on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic,” he said.
“Whose boat?”
“Her boat. Our boat. One of the family’s boats. She’s on her way from Italy to here. She hates to fly.”
“When was the last time you spoke to her?”
“Thirty minutes ago.”
“And she’s fine?”
“Of course,” he said. “I’ve done everything they’ve asked.” His eyes were getting red again.
Crying women make me uncomfortable. Crying children make me feel self-conscious. Crying men make me want to shower with my clothes on.
“How did they contact you?”
“Two, three minutes after I logged onto the Web site, the phone began ringing. I didn’t pick it up right away, because I didn’t know what I was looking at. I mean, that’s my wife. That’s my daughter. I couldn’t put it together.”
“I understand,” I said.
“So it could have been five, ten minutes later that I finally picked up. I don’t know how many times they called.”
“Was it a man or a woman on the phone?”
“I couldn’t tell,” he said. “The voice sounded strange. Like that guy in the wheelchair.”
“Ironside?” Sam said.
“The scientist. The smart guy.”
“Stephen Hawking?” I said.
“Like that. Like it was coming through a computer.”
It used to be that only the most sophisticated governments had access to spy technology, but today anyone with a decent laptop and access to an Office Max can employ entry-level spy craft. The entire Cuban Missile Crisis could have been averted today using Google. Any twelve-year-old can download voice-changing software for free on the Internet. The difference now is not the technology, but about how savvy you are in using it.
“Hold that thought,” I said to Gennaro. I turned to Sam. “You trace this Web site?”
“It’s a pro job,” Sam said. “Registered through a company in Qatar to Neil Diamond.”
“He’ll be easy to find.”
“His Web site says he’s doing ten sold-out nights in Las Vegas. I could be there in five hours, grab him during ‘Sweet Caroline.’ ”
“He might be a patsy. What else?”
“They used open-source software on the design, so there’s no technology fingerprint on it. It’s a secure site, so only following the embedded link here will get you to it. The video is on a continuous loop. Gene here says they’ve been adding new stuff to it every day.”
“Any way to hack into the code and see who else is viewing it? Get an IP number or a country code? Anything?”
“I already poked around, but the encryption is first-rate,” Sam said. “We’re working with experts here.”
“You have someone you could show it to?” I asked. Sam always has someone he can show things to. He collects people and favors like lint.
“I’ll talk to a buddy of mine.”
I turned back to Gennaro. “Okay,” I said. “How much do they want?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“They said if I didn’t lose the Hurricane Cup, they’d kill Maria and Liz.”
4
Provided you’re not a serial killer, sociopath or pederast, if you’re in the business of kidnapping people, it’s usually for one of three reasons:
You want money.
You have political, religious and/or world-domination plans.
You are out for revenge.
In Mexico, kidnappings are up 30 percent since the drug dealers have had a loss of revenue recently because of a saturated market, so they’ve started to diversify into other business opportunities. The advantage of kidnapping someone is that there’s very little competition. You want someone, you just take them.
The only legit reason you’d fix a sporting event would be for monetary gain-not even Raiders fans would kidnap a woman a
nd a child to ensure victory, so it didn’t stand to reason that the millionaires who wagered on the yacht races would be willing to be criminally fervent.
You kidnap a member of the Ottone family, you want something, even if you say you want nothing.
“Tell me exactly what they said,” I said to Gennaro.
“They told me that they had my wife and daughter, that they were on the boat with them, watching them, and that if I followed the rules, nothing would happen. If I pulled out of the race, or won it, they’d kill them both. All I had to do was lose the Hurricane Cup and no one would be the wiser.”
“So then you should lose the Hurricane Cup,” I said. “And you should put your expatriate tax dollars to work and call the FBI.”
“It’s not that simple,” Gennaro said. He got up from the sofa abruptly, opened the sliding glass door and stepped out to the terrace, where he stood with his back to Sam and me while he looked out over the ocean. His hair was whipped by swirling winds-on the fortieth floor, you can’t really expect it all to be perfect, can you? — and I could also see that his polo shirt was rippling against his skin. It just didn’t look all that pleasant out there. So I didn’t get up.
“You gonna go out there, Mikey?”
“He’s the second person to get up from me in the middle of a conversation today.”
“Sounds like your mother had good reason,” Sam said.
“Really?”
“You know what they say in the SEALs,” Sam said. “A cup of sugar is easier to swallow than a cup of anthrax.”
“I don’t recall hearing that.”
“Maybe it was a cup of dimethylmercury. Anyway, sentiment here is the rule of the day.”
“I shouldn’t have to interrogate our own clients, Sam.”
“Rich people aren’t like you and me, Mikey. They like to be served. Makes them remember what it was like having serfs.”
