The End Game

by Tod Goldberg

  Normally, Sam liked that kind of direct talk. Simple orders. Do this. Do that. Put it there. Nice thing about being a SEAL was that you pretty much always knew how your boss felt about you and what was expected of you; there was not a lot of emotional negotiation. But this was more like a personnel directive from human resources, both for today and tomorrow and probably the foreseeable future.

  “I don’t even need to talk to him,” Sam said. “I just need to know where he’s staying while he’s in town.”

  “Why would you think he’s in town?”

  The problem about digging a hole is that if you’re not careful, someone is liable to push you into it.

  “I saw that explosion yesterday and figured it had to do with him,” Sam said. It was worth a shot, he figured, since Gennaro had mentioned it the night previous. And if Gennaro knew, well, then the FBI knew. And if the FBI knew, then everyone with a security clearance above a janitor at the field office over on Northwest 2nd Avenue probably already had a peek at the incident report. It was a nice office, really, with strong, soundproof walls and a good location. There was a bar across the street called the Dorsal Fin where, for the price of a shot, and on a particularly slow news day, you could probably get a few mundane state secrets.

  Darleen stayed silent. When she finally did speak, all she said was, “And?”

  “And, well, I’m sort of working with a friend who has business interests affected by this terrible calamity,” Sam said. When Darleen didn’t reply immediately, he added, and kept adding and adding and adding, “And as you know, I’m concerned about the intercoastal byways and that was a significant environmental accident out there, which, when you take into consideration the migration patterns of the seagull, and the swallows of Capis trano which, as you know, are endangered, could be considered a problem. Internationally. As you know.”

  Sam was of the opinion that if you added the words “as you know” to anything, people tended to pretend as if they did know, if only to not seem comparatively ill informed. It was a skill he’d gleaned working with intelligence people. No one wants to seem like a moron, even if admitting they don’t know something would likely make them seem all the more reliable.

  “Sam,” she said, “he got away with killing his own father. You don’t just walk up and talk to him unless you have a good reason to have the mafia on your ass. These guys are true blood killers, not a bunch of Newark posers.”

  Newark.

  Sam was pretty sure that was a signal.

  Really, it didn’t matter. He’d recently had a brush with unwanted marriage, and then there was the fact that he was technically still married to an ex-hippie, but it was useless to dwell on the past. Well, maybe not useless, but not advisable, anyway. Faced with dealing with history or dealing with the moment, Sam always advocated the moment. It was controllable. Besides, what was nice about his current position in life was that he got to spend a long time at the old romantic buffet, but even still you never knew when your favorite place might get shut down with an E. coli break-out. Or, in the case of Veronica, whom he didn’t hate, certainly, just didn’t want to, uh, spend forever with, another marriage proposal. Though he sure missed his Cadillac.

  It was tough being a desirable man, Sam knew, but he wasn’t Burger King-some people just weren’t going to get it their way.

  “All I’m asking is if you know where he’s staying,” Sam said. “I’m not planning on some Elliot Ness takedown.”

  Darleen kind of snorted in response. It was a weird sound coming from a woman, but then he’d heard and seen a man whistle through his false teeth today without any sense of embarrassment in the least, which made Sam think that vanity was really an underrated thing. It wasn’t even eight thirty in the morning and he was already having moments of clarity, and without any liquid encouragement.

  Maybe he actually would start waking up and taking ocean swims.

  Sam thought he’d try one more parry before giving up the whole story just to get an address. Worst case scenario, he’d just tell Darleen the truth. She was FBI, after all. If she really wanted the truth, she could probably get it without Sam ever knowing. “Look, fact is, it’s not really for me. It’s for a sick friend. He thinks Bonaventura might be the only person who has a matching bone marrow profile. Not even a natural-born killer can turn down someone in need of a little bone marrow. If I can make the effort to find him, well, I think Mr. Bonaventura might make the effort to help my friend.”

  That should do it, Sam thought. Find some middle ground. Appeal to her emotional center. Remind her of just how cuddly old Sam Axe was. Though the more he thought about it, he was starting to think that maybe the woman there that night in Newark was actually named Carlene.

  “He has a compound that he uses on Key Biscayne,” she said, though her voice sounded kind of robotic, like she was giving a report, but then gave Sam the address. “I wouldn’t stop by with a scalpel and try to get that marrow out of him; you’re likely to end up gator bait.”

  “Noted,” Sam said.

  “And Sam? Whoever is employing you? Tell his to pay his debt and get out of the country and then see about getting into the space program. Bonaventura is not the kind of person who chalks things up to being part of the game. It’s all personal to him.”

  “Noted,” Sam said. He wasn’t sure why he kept saying noted, but he sort of thought it made him sound more official. “Anything else, Darleen?”

  Sam could hear a light tapping sound, as if maybe Darleen was clicking her teeth together, getting pensive, thoughtful, conjuring that night in Newark herself. Sam Time is hard to forget. He imagined her sitting in her office and really trying to get a fix on her memories, maybe even pondering a meet up at the Dorsal Fin for a few drinks and then, well, why plan it?

  He heard that tapping sound again and realized that was actually the sound of her typing in the background. “Yes,” she said, “come to think of it, one other thing. As you know, having your friend Mr. Westen involved with Bonaventura would be bad for his profile. So I’d say it would be smart to be discreet.”

  Sam was always surprised by how much other people knew about his business. “Discreet it is,” he said, and then made a mental note not to let Fiona set fire to anything valuable.

  Most criminals like to keep a low profile. If you’re a bank robber, the odds are you don’t carry around a card that says BANKS KNOCKED OVER 24-7! If you’re a serial killer, you probably don’t run an ad on the back page of the Miami New Times offering severed heads for sale. Even if you’re a hit man-a job predicated on people knowing about your services-it’s fair to assume you’re not standing on A1-A with a sandwich board offering your wares.

  All of which made the house Christopher Bonaventura was staying in that much more suspect. It wasn’t just the phalanx of black-on-black Mercedes-Benzes and Suburbans, with bulletproof body armor, encircling the drive that made it so suspect, though that certainly wasn’t helping matters; it was also the men standing behind the front gate of the house on Harbor Drive holding modified M1911A1. 45s like they were rolling with a Marine Force Recon unit.

  Thing of it was, Sam thought, they sort of looked like Marines, too. Close-cropped hair. Square jaws. Arms as thick as thighs. Used to be mafia foot soldiers were on the chunky side. It wasn’t like they were big on hand-to-hand combat. They shot you or hit you in the head with a rock or clubbed you to death with a bat and then buried you in a cornfield. Physical work, sure, but quick work. Nothing where you’d need big muscle endurance. But these guys looked like they were hitting the free weights pretty regularly. Maybe taking a syringe or two, also, since Sam thought he could make out the entire arterial path of the guy closest to the gate and he wasn’t even out of the car yet.

  Despite Darleen’s admonition to avoid it, Sam figured he’d drive by the house where Bonaventura was staying for the week, anyway, just to get the lay of the land, see what was what, and any other cliche he could think of. The truth was that he just wanted to see the damn
place, since a house on Harbor Drive in Key Biscayne meant bucks he frankly didn’t think even the mob could afford.

  At least not publicly.

  So now he was parked across the street from a house three stories tall with a visible tennis court on the roof, the mere idea of which made Sam wonder just how dedicated you have to be to a sport to put it on the roof of your house. Apart from the Benzes and Suburbans, it was about all he could really see from the street, since the front gate was thick black steel and the line of men behind it didn’t exactly allow for great sight lines, at least not from across the street. So Sam got out of his car and started walking toward the house. What was the worst that could happen? Sam thought it was unlikely that they’d open fire on him right away, plus it would be hard to explain the blood spatter all over the nice McMansion across the way. Gunfire on the nicest street in Key Biscayne was likely to cause a stir, so while these guys were strapped like they were expecting the Chinese Red Army to come stomping down the street, it was probably more about intimidation than action.

  “Pardon me, boys,” Sam said, “but I’ve lost my dog. Little cocker spaniel? White and sort of off-red. Party colored, they call ’em, but I just call him Chuck. You guys see anything matching that description?” The guys looked back and forth at each other with confusion, as if Sam were speaking gibberish, so he just kept walking toward the gate and talking. “Pink tongue, tends to poke out the side of his mouth when he’s running? Just a nub of a tail? This sound familiar? Barks at every leaf and bug he sees? Anybody?” He kept phrasing everything like a question, thinking that eventually one of the guys holding the. 45s would think to respond, if only to stop the cavalcade of queries.

  He stopped talking when he got close enough to the gate that he could peer in rather easily, since now all of the guys were grouped together and muttering to each other in low voices Sam couldn’t quite make out. He wasn’t even really sure what he was looking for, but had a general feeling that because of the way things normally went down, he’d probably need to scale the wall and cause a ruckus at some point, so he might as well start looking for ways in now, before he was dodging bullets.

  There was a sign in the middle of the gate that warned people away with threats of armed response units and fatal levels of electricity. If a dog really did get loose in this neighborhood and decided to raise his leg on Bonaventura’s gate, he’d be electrocuted, which made Sam think that the wisdom behind HOAs was truly lost on the rich. Nevertheless, the guards didn’t seem too concerned about the electricity, if their relative proximity to that gate was any judge.

  Most people tend to shy away from electrified fencing, but the ten men assembled behind this one didn’t seem to be too tense, which meant it was likely turned off. Maybe ten guys with guns and lethal electricity was considered overkill even for mob guys.

  Sam counted up the cars. Five Suburbans, five Benzes, a few other dark black cars that didn’t look quite so fortified, as well as three MV Agusta F4 CC motorcycles, a bike that runs around $130,000 out the door, and goes out that door at nearly two hundred mph. The aggregate value of the parked transportation was fairly mind-boggling. Really, being the good guys just didn’t pay as well.

  “No dog here,” one of the guys said, but it was impossible to tell which one, since they all looked exactly the same: same hair, same facial features, same guns, probably the same flash grenades strapped to their chests, too. Whoever spoke did so in perfect, unaccented English. He might have been Italian, but he wasn’t from Italy and didn’t exactly fit the profile of someone who’d been cracking heads since getting “made.”

  “You sure? He’s a gassy fella, so even if you didn’t see him, you might smell him. Know what I mean?” Sam said. He was looking at one guy, the one he figured spoke to him a moment previous, but the answer came from a different person.

  “You heard me,” he said. “Now go. You’re in the wrong neighborhood.”

  Testy.

  “No, no, I live just down the block,” Sam said. “Mind if I leave you my phone number? In case you see the dog, you could call me? My daughter and I, we, well, don’t know what to do with ourselves. That dog has really helped my daughter with her, uh, spina bifida.”

  Sam wasn’t sure what spinal bifida was, but figured it sounded just bad enough that not even these guys could turn away from it; testy de meanor or otherwise.

  “Fine,” the man said. “Give me your number.” He pulled out a Talla-Tech RPDA-57, the official PDA of the Marines, a rugged green device that did everything from make calls to calibrate mortar coordinates. Not exactly the kind of thing you purchase at Office Depot. And not exactly the kind of thing mafia foot soldiers kept in their back pockets. If these men were employed by Christopher Bonaventura, it meant the game was a whole hell of a lot more complicated.

  Sam gave the man his cell number and when the man asked him for his name, Sam said, “Chuck Finley.”

  For some reason, this got the men to exchange awkward glances with each other. Finally, Sam thought, old Chuck’s getting a rep with the criminal element…

  “You said your dog’s name was Chuck,” the lone speaking man said.

  Crap. Testy and paid attention. A Marine for sure.

  “It is his name,” Sam said. “It is. I love that mongrel so much I gave him my own name. It’s easier for my daughter to remember, too. As you know, with spina bifida, the memory is often the first casualty, and with her mother gone, well, that dog is almost like another father to her.”

  All the men nodded in unison and with matching solemnity. It was like watching the Rockettes doing that kicking thing, and just as creepy. These guys might not be active service Marines, Sam thought, but they sure were regimented. And judging by their guns, PDAs and fresh haircuts, well funded. He just didn’t have any idea what they were doing guarding Christopher Bonaventura’s vacation house.

  Or at least he didn’t until Nicholas Dinino, Gennaro’s stepfather-in-law, pulled up behind the men in a convertible Bentley Continental, waved innocuously as they opened the twin sides of the gate and then nearly ran Sam down as he sped away from the house.

  7

  When a spy decides to turn coat and start giving information to the enemy, it’s rarely for the reasons you might expect. Most spies, if they choose to cross the aisle, do so of their own accord and not because they’re being blackmailed. Cold War movies and spy thrillers always suggested that American agents were pushed into corners by grainy photos of illicit affairs, but the fact is that it’s hard to trap a good spy in a blackmail scheme. If spies are worth turning, if they are at the level where they can provide truly useful information, pictures of them having sex with anyone or anything at any time and in any place will have no bearing on the situation.

  Most spies that flip do it for one core reason: Money. Aldrich Ames ended up on the Russian payroll after he decided to divorce his wife and marry a Colombian woman with decidedly more expensive taste. So in order to pay off his debts, cover his alimony and lavish his new bride, he needed a quick capital infusion. First it was fifty thousand dollars for the names of several Soviets spying for the U.S.; then it was nearly $1.7 million for even more information once he realized that if you’re going to go all in, you might as well go all in.

  And if it’s not money, it’s ego… with some money thrown in to sweeten the deal. Robert Hanssen needed money to pay for his children’s expensive education, but most of all he wanted to feel valued for the work he’d done and wanted to get back at those who hadn’t let him rise to the top echelons of the FBI. He wanted to feel valued. And what better way to feel valued then to have someone else tell you you’re important, even if that someone is your blood enemy? An open checkbook is usually capable of changing long-held beliefs, even existential ones about love of country and patriotism and such, but it’s hard to buy emotional relevance. That comes from a far stranger and more difficult place to locate.

  When you cross your family, it’s usually for similar reasons. Money, ego a
nd twisted emotion make people do stupid things.

  If you’re essentially decent, maybe you end up hurting your mother’s feelings on Mother’s Day.

  If you’re essentially awful, maybe you orchestrate a kidnapping plot. If you’re essentially awful and stupid, and not merely an opportunist, you orchestrate the plot in broad daylight and without concern for getting caught. It helps if you don’t actually love the people you’re screwing.

  After hearing about Sam’s morning of activity-and after spending time with my own mother-I was of the opinion that Gennaro Stefania was being manipulated for reasons far beyond simple yacht races and that he wasn’t going to be able to make it all right by cleaning out the freezer.

  Still, the perception of impropriety didn’t make it true. It was perfectly reasonable to assume that Nicholas Dinino was going to Christopher Bonaventura’s for reasons other than the planning and execution of nefarious deeds. They were both exceptionally rich men with common interests, which I explained to Sam and Fi as we stood in my kitchen a few hours after assuring Loretta, my mother and the entirety of their neighborhood that they didn’t need to contact the governor’s office to see if FEMA might pay for the emotional stress of Sam’s prowling.

  At some point, I had to see about getting my mother moved into a gated community somewhere in the Yucatan.

  “Just because you saw Dinino going into Bonaventura’s doesn’t mean he’s involved,” I said. “We are dealing with some eccentric people here, Sam, who work in a lot of the same circles.”

  “He has a point,” Fi said to Sam. “Look at the three of us. You might assume if you saw all of us together that we were planning some elaborate plot that would involve any number of crimes and misdemeanors, that would probably end up violating several people’s civil rights, might even involve what I think they call domestic terrorism-right, Michael?”