Tod Goldberg - The End Game

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.

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 and 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?”

“The difference is we’re the good guys,” I said. Fi raised her eyebrows. “Sam and I are, at any rate.”

“You can put a killer whale in a tank at a zoo,” Fi said, “can even train it to do adorable tricks and squirt water at people, but it’s still a killer whale that would eat your face.”