Tod Goldberg - The End Game

The only legit reason you’d fix a sporting event would be for monetary gain-not even Raiders fans would kidnap a woman and 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.”

“Fine,” I said. “But if he gets dramatic on me again, I’m leaving.” Sam and I walked outside and stood on either side of Gennaro, in case he decided to jump, or in case I decided to throw him off. He turned and looked at us both with what could only be described as dispassion, as if we were somehow ruining his moment.

“Gene, why don’t you tell Mikey about your mitigating circumstances?”

Mitigating circumstances never sounded like good news. Invariably, it was the sort of thing that meant I was going to get shot at.

“You have to understand that there is a tremendous amount of pressure related to being the son of Victor Stefania,” Gennaro said.

“I can appreciate that,” I said.

“It might not be the case here in America, but he was part of the world culture. People feel like he was part of them, not just a person they saw racing on television. I saw my father die, but so did fifty million other people. Do you know what that’s like?”

“No.” I didn’t bother to tell him that I was one of those fifty million.

“And there’s another level when you’ve married into the Ottone family. It’s not like you marry a girl you met in a bar or went to college with. It’s… international. It’s… generational. There are family problems that date to before the American Revolution.”

I didn’t like where this was headed. But I let Gennaro continue on, because sometimes I like to think that people will flip the page and I won’t be reading the book I thought I was reading. Usually, they flip the page and it turns out that things are topsy-turvy and I’m in the middle of a pop-up book filled with dragons and moats and hobbits. I was hoping this would be something like a Victorian romance.

“Being on a team owned by the family isn’t like being on a team where you’re just the employee. You probably don’t have context for this, but I’m the only man in the family who has amounted to anything.”

“I have some context for that,” I said.

“And I’m not even really family. Not in some of their eyes. I’m Maria’s husband and I’m Liz’s father, but I’m not an Ottone. And I’m not a hundred percent Italian. My mother was from California, just a mutt like everyone else out there. With Maria, it doesn’t matter. We are bedrock. And it’s not just because of Liz. And it’s not all that gossip shit you read. Maria truly is the love of my life. But it’s her family. Her mother. Her stepfather, really.”

In the dossier, it said Maria’s stepfather was Nicholas Dinino. He married Maria’s mother five years ago after the death of her husband, the family’s patriarch and the holder of the royal lineage, or at least the Ottone lineage. Dinino owned the yacht team, which made him Gennaro’s father-in-law and de facto boss, too. Not an easy arrangement.

“I get it. You’re living in a Crock-Pot.” At some point, I thought, I needed to see my mother…

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

“Tell me something, Gennaro, were you on drugs?”

“No, no, never.”

“Then what was going on with you and Christopher Bonaventura?”

“I’ve known him since I was twelve. We went to boarding school together in Connecticut. His father and my father used to go to Studio 54 together. It was like that, you know? We have a lot of similar issues related to our extended families. He was just someone I could turn to. That’s all.”

I didn’t believe Gennaro. Not exactly. I trusted that they were friends, but somehow this situation with his wife was tied to his friendship. Or at least his refusal to go to the authorities was. I felt Gennaro dancing around the issue, and if there’s one thing I find more disturbing than a man crying in front of me, it’s a man dancing in front of me. Makes me nervous. Makes me feel like I’ll be asked to do some sort of boot-scoot boogie, and that wasn’t happening.

“Tell me you’re not already throwing races, Gennaro.”

“I’m not,” he said. Before I could even exhale with relief, he said, “But I think they’re being fixed behind me. The Pax Bellicosa should not be winning as we are. Not with me as the helmsman.”

“You think?” I looked at Sam. He was puffing on his Cuban and attempting to look absolutely engrossed by the moon.

“Look,” Gennaro said, “this hasn’t been the best year for me, for my family, so I called in a favor a few months ago. One favor. That was it. Just to get me pointed in the right direction. Take me out of the cooker.”

“Let me guess. You put in a call to Christopher Bonaventura.”

“One race. That was it. Just asked him to help me get in position to place. I didn’t even have to win.”

“Was this before or after he was warned away from you?”

“After.”

“Stay right here,” I said to Gennaro, and gave him a big, big smile, the kind I normally reserve for angry mullahs preparing to torture me, and pulled Sam away from the terrace and back inside. “Your friend Jimenez. He fail to mention this to you?”

“This is all news to me.”

“You recognize that this isn’t an easy job, correct?”

“I’m beginning to sense that it might be more intricate than first was apparent. New intel. All that. But what can you do? I don’t see anyone flying around Miami with a cape on these days.”

I pointed at Sam. I didn’t have words to speak. So I just kept pointing until I felt calm enough to go back outside and speak to Gennaro. “So I understand,” I said when I got back to the terrace. “The mafia has fixed races so that you win, is that correct?”

“No.” He was starting to look green. That’s what happens to a guy when he realizes he’s spent all day digging the grave his wife and child could be buried in.