by Tod Goldberg
Jarhead stepped in front of me before I could answer him and opened the front door of the house into a foyer inlaid with marble. Inside, a steady stream of people moved back and forth with huge platters of food held head high. A small gold dog scurried about and barked.
One thing for certain, no one was getting shot today. Not Gennaro. Not Nate. Not me. But that didn’t make any of this good news. If Jarhead knew me, he knew a lot more, too. That he wasn’t acting on this knowledge told me that I was staring at someone who knew my file, someone who knew the truth, someone who knew that I was Michael Westen, and that Michael Westen was not someone he really wanted to engage in front of school children, women and one very large land mammal.
It meant that no matter who I pretended to be, whatever ruse I perpetrated, I had to offer some nugget of truth that would keep the situation in my favor, so that Jarhead would understand that this game belonged to me, even if I wasn’t entirely clear what we were playing.
Or whom.
9
The careful art of subversion involves turning people against their own leaders. During a long campaign, this entails intricate-and intimate-psychological warfare mixed with a fair amount of propaganda. This means everything from arming opposition leaders to facilitating the escape of political prisoners to simply attending to the core needs of the people you wish to convert.
You give them money and prescription drugs.
You pave their roads.
You give children candy and toys.
And then you tell the people that their government is corrupt and controlled by a puppet master in the west, the east, the north, the south.
And if none of that works? You capture them, torture them, tell them they have two choices: Join your militia or die.
Most people will opt to live.
Sometimes, this all works our perfectly… And most everyone dies, regardless.
Guatemala.
Cuba.
Iraq.
Iraq again.
That knowledge gave me pause.
Telling someone that you know they are lying-and lying to their leader-and yet refusing to act is one of the basest forms of subversion. You do it to build trust while creating a false sense of reciprocal empathy between a rank-and-file soldier just doing his job and the person they are charged with guarding.
But if Jarhead knew who I was, that meant he was aware of one of the most profound truths concerning intelligence: You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.
So as Jarhead directed us through the house, I broke him down from the available information, which was only what I could see, what Sam had told me, and what I had to assume.
He was:
A Marine. Probably Force Recon, which meant he’d spent the last several years in combat situations requiring far more mental acuity than walking uninvited guests to a sitting room.
A trained killer. The difference between a trained killer and a psychopath is usually distance. A trained killer shoots at objects at the end of a scope and can marginalize them into “kills” without considering that human element. The targets are impediments to freedom, or the crossing of a bridge or the clearing of a hot zone. Force Recon Marines, however, tend to recruit men not morally opposed to close fighting-whites-of-their-eyes moments-if the need arises. But there’s not a lot of close fighting when you have Apaches and Black Hawks on your team, too.
Psychopaths prefer to cut you into bite-sized pieces using their nail clippers.
An American. This was important, particularly since he was an American working for an Italian crime boss. You commit a crime in America involving a gun and, provided you are apprehended and convicted, you’re looking at between five and twenty years of prison time, but the truth is that if you have a decent lawyer and a relatively clean record and are a war hero, you’re probably on the street in six months.
Commit a crime with a gun in the service of a foreign national involved in criminal enterprise on American soil, and you’re looking at federal time. Do it as an American soldier and there’s a good chance they’ll try you for treason.
All of this worked in our theoretical favor.
There was also a pretty good chance that Jarhead had already played out these issues in his own mind, too, and didn’t care.
Nihilism is always a wild card.
Jarhead stopped before the open doors of a sitting room that overlooked the water. The walls were covered in bookshelves and surrounded two couches that faced each other in the center of the room. A mahogany coffee table was placed between the couches, and as we entered the room a woman was placing a tray of ice water and lemonade onto it, along with several glasses and a plate of cookies.
Nate started to move toward the food-it might have just been reflex on his part-but I grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
It’s important to appear courteous and hospitable when dealing with your enemies. It’s more important to make sure they eat first, not just out of custom, but to ensure the food isn’t poisoned.
When the woman left, Jarhead finally spoke again. “Please give me all of your weapons,” he said. Usually in a situation like this, I’d be concerned that Nate might do something stupid, like start shooting, but I’d made my calculations and felt somewhat secure that Jarhead was working on the level-or at least a level that allowed him to be threatening, but not outright murderous-so I immediately began disarming and handing everything over to one of Jarhead’s men, which caused Nate to do the same thing.
Jarhead hadn’t said another word directly to me, but I was certain now that when he said he knew me, he wasn’t speaking philosophically. Now I was trying to figure out how.
My first impression upon seeing him was that he’d been in Kabul. The truth, however, is that he could have been anywhere. We could have huddled against a berm together for five minutes in Iraq. We could have been in a classroom in Virginia. We could have sat next to each other on an Apache hovering over Malawi.
What was obvious, no matter the situation, was that he didn’t know Tommy the Ice Pick and wasn’t all that concerned by my deception. At least not to the point that he actually acted on his knowledge, which in and of itself was cause for concern.
There’s subversion and then there’s third-rail treachery. Jarhead was standing close enough to the latter to be putting off sparks, playing both sides without any visible recompense.
Which meant he had his own agenda, provided I didn’t try to choke Christopher Bonaventura to death.
“You ever do any time?” I said to Jarhead once all of the guns were collected. “Because you look like a guy I knew back in the day.”
“Worked in the post office for a little while,” Jarhead said flatly.
This was good.
We were now officially speaking in code.
When you’re a spy or an operative like Jarhead, working in the post office means you’ve been disseminating propaganda and doing incursions into foreign countries.
In the early days of Vietnam, this meant sending CIA operatives into the country as journalists and aid workers who could alter the news, ferment change via small-group discussions in hamlets and villages and salt any open wounds helpful to American concerns.
And occasionally executing people.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, it was more of the same, but a higher reliance on executing people and then altering the news, leafleting hamlets and then, if need be, engaging in blackmail, extortion and general malfeasance, all under the guise of democratic nation building.
Freedom has certain responsibilities, and very few of them are pretty if you happen to be standing on foreign soil and prefer a more totalitarian ruling technique.
“I don’t get a lot of mail,” I said. “I’m sort of an off-the-grid kinda guy, know what I’m saying? You ever live in the East?”
“Worked out there,” he said. “Went to school up North.”
Translation: was stationed in the Middle East, or at least dropped in a few times in the dead of night and took
out Baath party members in advance of a Humvee line. Trained in North Africa, which meant we had similar skill sets.
Not a great development.
“You get to any clubs? Maybe I seen you at one?”
“Didn’t go out much after I stopped working at the post office,” he said. “Just wanted to stay home. And now I get to make my own hours. But who knows? Something interesting happens in the mail industry, maybe I’ll get back into it. I just love to work.”
Translation?
Covert Ops.
Decommissioned.
Freelance.
Loves to answer the phone at three a.m., put on black body armor and kill people.
Further translation:
No problem killing my entire family, if that’s what his orders were.
“Great,” I said. “Good you like your job.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds, each of us taking account.
There weren’t a lot of soft spots on Jarhead. My best chance with him would be to go for his eyes, try to get knuckle deep in one and see if he submitted, which was unlikely. Jarhead didn’t look like the kind of guy who submitted to anything.
Likewise, Jarhead was trying to calculate my soft spot. He looked me up and down slightly and then, almost imperceptibly, cut his gaze to Nate.
“Working with family is more rewarding,” he said. “I learned that from Mr. Bonaventura.”
He was good. And he knew it.
Happy with his progress in sussing out the threat level in the room, Jarhead told one of his men to get the boss, and a few moments later Christopher Bonaventura stepped into the room with a studied nonchalance.
In photos, Bonaventura looks dapper and collected, like he’s always about to sip a martini and smoke a cigar before engaging in a lively game of chance somewhere in Monaco, just prior to jumping on a Learjet bound for the Caymans.
Or ordering the murder of his father, because the truth is that he is a thug. Nothing more. Nothing less.
But on this day, he was a thug holding a birthday party for the five-year-old daughter, which meant he wasn’t looking terribly dapper. He had on a plain white T-shirt, tan shorts that showed off his pale knees, and I noticed that he hadn’t bothered to put on any shoes. There were bits of grass and dirt between his toes, and he smelled vaguely like cotton candy, which made sense since there were tiny pink gobs of it on his chin.
Bonaventura looked around the room, shrugged once, sat down on one of the couches, poured himself a glass of lemonade, drank it, wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand, and then turned to me and said, “Who the fuck are you?” His accent was prominent, but he’d been educated in America and spent enough time here to have a library stocked with books in English. It seemed like he was a big Harry Potter fan, but maybe that was for his kid.
“Tommy Feraci,” I said. I extended a hand towards him but he didn’t move. “From Las Vegas originally, but now I’m cohabitating in these here parts.” I pointed at Nate. “That’s my man Slade.” I pointed at Gennaro. “That’s your mark.”
“You know this guy, Gennaro?” Gennaro said he did. Bonaventura took another sip of his lemonade, swallowed, seemed to contemplate the information he had and then said, “You have some sort of business proposal for me, is that right?”
“Not so much a proposal,” I said. “I don’t propose. This is more like an infomercial. I’m gonna tell you what’s what and then you tell me how much you’re buying.”
Christopher Bonaventura burst out laughing. He laughed until it became uncomfortable for the rest of us standing and watching him, so I sat down across from him, poured myself a glass of lemonade, too, and waited for him to calm down, which he did directly.
“I like you,” Bonaventura said. “You come to my home, during my daughter’s birthday, you bring my old friend Gennaro with you like a captive and then you tell me how it’s going to be. You don’t need my permission Tommy. Go about your business with Gennaro with my blessing. That’s how much I like you. None of my business.”
“I think that’s where we aren’t seeing things correctly. My business with Gennaro directly relates to your business with Gennaro.”
“I’m not in business with Gennaro,” he said. “Are we, Gennaro?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Gennaro said.
“You leave that up to your wife now, too?” Bonaventura said. “First she tells you who you can be friends with, and now she tells you what to think? Your father would be ashamed of you.”
Gennaro flinched but didn’t say anything.
“Here’s the dilly-o,” I said, ignoring whatever was going on between the two of them. And by ignoring, I mean that I was paying absolute attention, but that Tommy the Ice Pick had a single-minded determination to get on with the conversation. “I can’t have you working the open seas like you’re Gaspar. This is my water, so you won’t be fixing races on it unless I say so.”
“Gennaro, why would you tell him I’m doing that?”
Gennaro looked at me and then back at Bonaventura. If he followed the script, we’d be fine. “He has my wife and child,” Gennaro said. “He told me if I don’t lose the race he’ll kill them and then me.”
Perfect.
“Here’s how it is,” I said. I motioned to Nate, who was holding up a bookcase with his back while trying to look menacing. “My guy Slade over there takes a lot of action on these races, and everyone he talked to this week said the Pax Bellicosa was the way to go. Lots of cheese going that direction. So I made a couple calls. Talked to some guys on the other boats-and by talk, I think you know what I’m saying, right, Chrissy? — and it all came back to you.”
“If this were true,” he said, “why would it be any concern of yours? Where did you say you’re from?”
“Las Vegas originally. Spent a couple years in Angola-the one in Louisiana-and finished up down here at Glades, and my friends have been nice enough to let me set up my own shop here. Guess I just got used to the clean Florida life,” I said. “See, no disrespect, but this race isn’t being held in Corfu, so you want to get into this in Miami, you go through my shop. And then there’s the issue that my shop has certain worldwide interests involving Mr. Stefania here, and they don’t involve him winning any more races.”
Bonaventura stood up and walked over to the window. He was still sipping on his lemonade. Perfectly casual. Not a single ounce of stress in his bones. “You seem like a reasonable person, Tommy.”
“That’s what people say,” I said.
“And I think I’m a reasonable person. Wouldn’t you say that, Gennaro? That people consider me reasonable above all else?”
“I don’t know,” Gennaro said.
“Sure you do,” Bonaventura said. “Wasn’t I reasonable when you came to me for help? Wasn’t I reasonable in not telling your family of your own insecurities? Wasn’t I reasonable when we were kids, Gennaro? Didn’t I handle all of your problems then in a reasonable way?”
I didn’t like where this was going.
“Hey, everybody thinks everybody is a peach, right?” I said.
“Right,” Bonaventura said. “So let’s do a little algebra, Tommy. Is the water in… what did you say, Corfu?… is that the same water that flows through this bay?”
“Hey,” I said, “I ain’t some kinda waterologist here. You want someone to explain to you how water works, go get yourself a dolphin. You want to know how money works, we can talk.” I was walking a very thin line between cocky and the victim of an assassination, though I thought it was unlikely Jarhead would do anything to me. If he knew who I was, he knew what I was capable of, and I was capable of taking down this entire room in less than a minute, though when I looked over at Jarhead again I did some quick math and decided it would probably take an extra forty seconds or so to deal with him. Thing was, right when I looked over at Jarhead he looked right at me, as if maybe he was doing the same math. “No disrespect,” I continued, “but this isn’t bocce ball we’re talking about
here.”
Bonaventura laughed again. “You pretend that you’re dumb, Tommy,” he said. He walked back across the room and stood directly in front of me, so that I had to look up at him from my spot on the sofa. I could see the smoothness of his skin up close, could smell his cologne, could see the glint of diamonds off his watch.
Could break both of his legs in fifteen seconds.
Maybe less.
“But I know you’re smart,” he said, and then pointed a finger at me, but not in a threatening way. Just pointing out the obvious. “So I’m going to explain to you one time the universal truth of this business you think you’re in. All the water that I see is mine. I don’t care where in the world I am-if I want it, it’s mine. If I choose to have sway over a race in Miami, or in Italy, or in the fucking toilet you sit on each morning, I do it. There is no why. I do it. So you tell your people to leave his family alone, or you, your people, everyone your people know, have a problem. Do we understand?”
“I don’t know who we are,” I said. I spread my legs out so Bonaventura was actually in the V between my feet, effectively trapping him where he stood. “But I know I understand one thing, and you told me another.”
“Your smugness is not becoming and it will not last,” Bonaventura said. He looked down and saw my legs. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a birthday party to get back to.”
If you were a lunatic, this would be the moment when you would kick Christopher Bonaventura in the knees, and then while he was down you’d probably kick him in the head, too. You’d stand on top of him and you’d say something you first heard on television or in a music video or uttered by an action hero… And then Jarhead would shoot you in the back of your skull.
Tommy the Ice Pick was a lunatic.
Michael Westen didn’t want to get shot in the back of the head.
But neither of us was letting him go yet.
“Out of curiosity,” I said, “where do you get an elephant? My kid, she’s always asking for a puppy or a gerbil, and I figure one day, who knows, I might pick one up. But you can’t just go into PetSmart and find yourself an elephant, am I right?”
