The End Game

by Tod Goldberg

  There was a part of me that wanted to pull out my gun and shoot Alex Kyle between the eyes. It was a part of me that I didn’t particularly like, a part of me that I’d kept pretty well in check since getting back to Miami.

  “That’s me,” I said. “Big disgrace.”

  We stared at each other for a moment, and I could feel him making decisions, figuring out maybe his information was wrong. “Anyway,” he said, “whoever wants you alive has more power than the people who want you dead. And has better technology. Five times in the last year I thought we had you. Five times I had to claim a corpse.”

  “It took you five dead bodies to figure this out?”

  Alex shrugged again. “You’re still Michael Westen. I just figured you were hard to kill. I didn’t realize you had guardian angels.”

  I looked at Alex sitting there on my Charger. I thought about all the men he’d sent to kill me who had died. Thought about the reasons behind it-pure, unadulterated greed-and felt something surge inside of me.

  “Here I am,” I said. “Only person to stop you is Fiona. And you could take her out, I’m sure.”

  Alex gave a slight chuckle. “Last guy I sent? Former Army Ranger. Kills on every continent. Damn near had ESP. Whoever is watching you left a note, carved into his back like scrimshaw, letting me know that they were aware of the situation and monitoring it closely and that if anyone was going to kill you, it was going to be them. So you’ll pardon me for not taking you up on your kind offer.”

  “Then what are you doing here?” I said.

  Alex got off my car and stretched his back, cracked his neck, ran through each knuckle on both of his hands.

  “Professional courtesy,” he said. “Mr. Bonaventura decides he wants you dead, there’s nothing I can do about that. You came to him, I didn’t come to you, so the rules are different here. Strictly business, Michael, but not spy business. I want that known.”

  “Right,” I said. “You’ll light me the fuck up, as I recall. You’re just not going to be the one to pull the trigger, are you?”

  “I’m just a consultant. He kills you, it’s not like I end up any richer. And I don’t claim it. I don’t endorse it. But I will say that you don’t go in and threaten someone like Mr. Bonaventura and not expect recrimination. And while I don’t approve of what you’re doing to Mr. Dinino or Mr. Stefania, that’s your business.”

  I could hear some hesitation in Alex’s voice. Gone was the brazen Jarhead of this afternoon and gone, too, was the confident version I found sitting next to Fiona mere minutes previous.

  He was pleading for his life.

  “Did you endorse killing the guy in front of my house today?”

  “That wasn’t me,” he said.

  “No?”

  “If someone is dead near you, it’s them or it’s because of them. That’s what I’m telling you.”

  Them.

  “No,” Fiona said, “what you’re telling us is that you’re scared and don’t want to die. So I suggest you scurry back to your hole.”

  Alex Kyle looked around himself, figuring, I’m sure, that there was a gun trained on him somewhere. Maybe there was. Maybe there was one on all of us. “Not a lot of places to hide on the open sea between here and Nassau,” he said. “You want to make sure you live another day, I’d leave Maria and Liz Ottone alone. You want to press Nicholas Dinino? Fine. Have at him. Scumbag, in my opinion. But you drag Mr. Bonaventura into this, you drag everyone you’ve met into it. And that’s forever with him.”

  “I feel pretty protected,” I said. “Five for five, right?”

  “It won’t always be like that,” he said.

  “And if that’s the case,” I said, “you can bet that I’ll come looking for you first. And Alex? Ask those kids about the smile and the sunglasses, they’ll tell you some stories.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said. He checked his watch. “Boy, it’s late. And I think we’ve both got a long day tomorrow. I don’t suppose you want to give me back my guns?”

  “Good guess,” I said.

  A smirk ran across Alex Kyle’s face. “Tommy the Ice Pick. The funny thing? You check out. You got wise guys who swear to your veracity. Bonaventura actually believes someone called Tommy the Ice Pick has him cornered on a potential murder rap.” He shook his head once, very slowly, and started backing away from us. A black SUV pulled into the parking lot right on cue and idled next to him. “He killed his own father and brother and didn’t get caught, and you actually have him worried.” He patted the hood of the SUV. “All else fails, you got that going for you.”

  Alex Kyle got into the SUV then and pulled away, even offered a brusque wave out the window as he passed us.

  “He was nice,” Fi said. “And he donated some very nice guns to our rebel cause.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “But I don’t think we’ll need them.”

  “Don’t be such a disgrace,” Fiona said. “We could have been killing people and improving your standing among your peers all the while. We should take up that opportunity now that we have it.”

  “Next time,” I said. We got in the Charger and headed back toward Fiona’s.

  My cell rang. It was Nate. I answered in one ring. Never too late to set a good example.

  “You owe me big, bro,” Nate said.

  “What do you have?”

  “You ever hear of a country called Calabria?”

  “It’s not a country,” I said. “It’s a province. In Italy. On the Ionian Sea.” I remembered I was talking to Nate and added, “It’s the part that looks like the toe of the boot.”

  “Awesome,” Nate said. “We ever get on a game show together, you’ll handle world geography questions and I’ll be the guy saving lives.”

  Nate with confidence was a scary thing. It presupposed a level of involvement in my affairs that usually promised bad things.

  But maybe this time was different.

  The idea of a game show involving geography and death did, admittedly, have some allure.

  “Slade Switchblade came in handy tonight,” Nate said. “I called in all the favors I had-and that reminds me, next week, no rush, but a friend of mine is going to need some help with an ex-girlfriend who is stalking him. I waived your normal fee, but said you’d take care of whatever problems existed in an expedient and spyish fashion that would be totally badass to witness. He wants her car to blow up, but I said, ‘Hey, no promises.’ ”

  “Nate,” I said. “Get to it.”

  “Right, right.” He explained that a friend of his was picking up some “businessmen” at the airport and bringing them to a race party at South Beach and that in the past, he’d gotten the impression they were in the Mafia. “The real Mafia,” Nate clarified. “So I tell him, ‘Hey, this isn’t something to trifle with; let me and my big bro take care of it.’ ”

  “Tell me you didn’t threaten these guys,” I said. The last thing I needed on my plate now was even more angry crime bosses, which reminded me I was still angry with Sam for getting me in their business again. Next job he offered I was going to demand that he first provide expert witness testimony that whatever bad guys we were about to engage had more petty concerns than perpetuating a myth of toughness and respect based on a bullshit code from the last century.

  “I’m not stupid,” Nate said. “I just recorded them. But here’s the thing. One guy wasn’t even Italian. He was Iranian. Or Iraqi. One of those places where they don’t use the alphabet.”

  When you’re xenophobic, not knowing the difference between Iranian, Iraqi or any other Middle Eastern point of origin makes you dangerous. When you’re a common person who can’t pinpoint the 50 states on a map, much less imagine explaining Puerto Rico’s role, it just makes you ignorant, but not uncommon. In Nate’s case, this was the latter. What was notable about Calabria was not that it was in Italy, but that it’s also home to traditionally the largest concentration of Mus lims in the country-in Italy, over one-third of the country is Muslim-and normall
y that only means good things.

  In Calabria, however, the international crime trade and terrorism network often finds a nexus. It’s the home of the most brutal and notorious wing of the mafia now, their stock and trade being drugs, importing and exporting heroin and opium and cocaine, and, worse, human trafficking. Women. Young girls.

  Their drug connections stretch all the way to Afghanistan, which makes their bedfellows people like the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Washing drug money through Al Qaeda isn’t just stupid, it’s potentially fatal. But in Calabria, where the government often looks the other way and the large Muslim community protects its own, it has proven to be lucrative.

  That doesn’t mean local banks will take the money. But Myanmar? That’s a different story.

  “What did they say?” I asked.

  “They were speaking Italian and that other language,” Nate said.

  “Farsi?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said, “so I had to call in another favor to get the recording translated. Well, the Italian. I don’t know anyone who speaks that other stuff.”

  “I do,” I said, meaning, I do.

  “Anyway, again, no rush, but if you could look into a problem this cute waitress I know from Mario’s Bit of Italy is having with her landlord, we’d have access to a translator whenever we needed it.”

  We. This was the peril involved. We.

  “I speak Italian, too,” I said.

  “You do?”

  “I do,” I said. “But I’ll take care of her problem. Just tell me what these businessmen said.”

  “The part in Italian was something about Dinino. They said basically that if everything went well, they’d do it again the following month, too. And then they started going back and forth between the languages and all my friend could get was something about money, something about caviar and something about coming back in town for the Super Bowl.”

  “These guys,” I said. “You get a name for either of them?”

  “Better,” Nate said. “They paid me with a credit card.”

  That was better. And worse, shortly, for them.

  Nate gave me the name: Domenic Strabo. He may as well have said John Gotti.

  “Good work,” I said.

  “And one more thing,” Nate said. “The big money was on the Pax Bellicosa to win, up until about two hours ago. Now even people who put huge coin on that are putting even more money on the Pax Bellicosa to lose.”

  “They’re betting both ways?”

  “That’s what my guy says.”

  If you want to be sure that a game is fixed, watch the bets. A smart fixer will bet on both sides of the ticket so that if there’s any investigation, he can show he was just betting for the sake of betting, that he’d even out on either side.

  It’s called proportional betting.

  In blackjack, it’s what’s known as the d’Alembert method. Increase your bet after each loss, decrease it after each victory. Played out over a long period, and the odds are you’ll end up slightly ahead.

  Played out on a single race, like the Hurricane Cup, and it’s mostly just to cover your ass.

  Which meant Christopher Bonaventura put out the word, at least to the people he didn’t want to anger. Or was putting out his own money as insurance.

  Either way, I’d done my job.

  “Good work,” I said.

  “That bit of information came steep,” Nate said. “My guy, he’s got a brother in prison. Trumped-up charge.”

  “I’m not busting someone out of prison,” I said. “And neither is Slade Switchblade.”

  “Right,” Nate said. “Is Fiona around?”

  “Nate,” I said.

  “Right,” Nate said. “I’ll talk to Fiona later. Whatever. We’ll work it out.”

  “I appreciate all of this,” I said.

  “Happy to help,” Nate said. And it sounded like he really meant it.

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “Tonight. Leave me a tape of the recording you made at my place and then get out of town. See if you can take everyone you talked to out of town, too.”

  “Bro, I can handle myself.”

  “Domenic Strabo isn’t just a foot soldier. You drove one of the heads of the Calabria mafia tonight and, probably, someone linked to Al Qaeda. If either are smart enough to piece together anything before they wind up in a cell, you’re likely to wake up from a dirt nap.”

  “Oh,” Nate said.

  “There’s a couple thousand dollars cut into my mattress. Take it and have a lovely vacation with all of your friends. You need more money, call me. But don’t come back until I tell you you’re safe.”

  It wasn’t exactly that I was afraid the Mafia might come after Nate; more that I wasn’t sure what Alex Kyle might do if this all blew up and he remained standing.

  Not that that was something I thought was in the cards for our new friend.

  “Okay,” Nate said. “But remember to call me this time. Last time you sent me out of town you left me in Fort Lauderdale for weeks.”

  “That was miscommunication,” I said.

  “That was no communication,” Nate said.

  “I’m working on that,” I said. “Now go.”

  I hung up with Nate, filled Fi in on the salient points-except for the part about the prison break, which I knew she’d gladly take part in and would happily begin planning like she was Martha Stew-art with bomb-making skills-and called Sam. “Mikey,” he said, “glad you called. We need to talk.”

  I could barely hear Sam over the sound of gushing wind. “Where are you?”

  “Just coming in off the Pax,” he said. “Listen, change of plans.”

  “You don’t know the plan,” I said.

  “I know my plan,” he said. “One of Gennaro’s guys is in the hospital.”

  “What happened?”

  “I had to break his arm.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And he’s probably going to have a bit of a speech impediment thing for a while,” Sam said. “Nothing major. You ever bite the tip of your tongue off?”

  “No.”

  “Heals right back. Like a lizard’s tail. Anyway, we’re heading back in now from another run. Looks like I’m on the team tomorrow. For safety reasons.”

  “Okay,” I said. His voice sounded slightly thick, like he was battling the flu. “You all right?”

  “These Swan boats? They’re not much for smoothness. Not exactly like being out on the QE Two.”

  “Dramamine didn’t help?”

  “Turns out Dramamine and beer aren’t the best combination before going out for a spin with Gennaro and his crew.” He gave a wet cough and then continued. “You were right about the bugs. I swept the place and found ten of them. And not cheap ones, either. Dinino had that place covered. He knew Gennaro would turn to someone. I left them where they were, told Gennaro to just stay cool, keep doing what he was doing, that we were in control of the situation.”

  “We are,” I said.

  “We are?”

  I filled him in. “What did you hear from Jimenez?”

  “A lot of bitching.”

  “Anything else?”

  “What Nate says jibes. Jimenez says rumor is Dinino is in big. Gambling debts from betting on his own team,” Sam said.

  “Gennaro was winning,” I said.

  “That’s the thing,” Sam said. “Jimenez thinks he’s been betting on them to lose.”

  “And the pictures?”

  “They want their money. These guys will bring the pain one way or the other. And that’s what they traffic in, you know. Sweet guys.”

  “Well,” I said, “they’re gonna get their money.” I explained to Sam what Barry was going to do tomorrow. And now that I had Strabo’s credit card, I knew there’d be at least one high limit charge going through.

  “That’s the sort of thing that ends up on the news,” Sam said.

  “All the better,” I said. I looked at my watch. It was already late. “What happened on the
water?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, “about that. Anyone asks, my name is Viv Finley.”

  “Chuck isn’t available?”

  Sam cleared his throat. “That’s what we need to talk about.”

  13

  In order to become a Navy SEAL, you typically need to spend thirty months training under the most intense physical and mental stress imaginable. You’re not just learning how to parachute out of planes, dive into rough seas holding an M-14 sniper rifle, swim into live combat, blow up boats and fight hand-to-hand, you’re learning how to do all of that at one time. There’s a reason only the best of the best qualify to be SEALs.

  Sam Axe was a SEAL.

  But that was about a decade and a thousand beers ago.

  Now, he’s a former SEAL, which means he’s got all the know-how, all of the training and will, but his fast-twitch muscles are now more like medium-fast-twitch muscles.

  Still, sitting aboard the Pax Bellicosa as it banked into the open seas reminded Sam of his old training days. The best part of being a SEAL was the whole teamwork aspect, knowing someone always had your back. It was also fun to go into enemy countries to attack militant forces, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun if the rest of the team was a bunch of assholes. No, Sam thought, the spray of the ocean splashing into his face, it was always better if everyone was invested.

  Which is why when Sam got on the boat with Gennaro’s team, he could tell immediately that one of the six crew members, in addition to Gennaro, wasn’t quite with the program.

  “Who is this?” he asked Gennaro. He had a thick Irish accent. Gennaro was the only actual Italian on board. His team was cobbled from around the country. The best money could buy… a point Sam thought was probably true in both good and bad ways.

  “A friend,” Gennaro said. “He’s providing some security.” Gennaro explained that the family was concerned about kidnappings and such, which was a sly bit of truth from Gennaro. The kid was learning.

  “Chuck Finley,” Sam said and extended his hand to the man, who actually recoiled a step before shaking hands.