Tod Goldberg - The End Game

“I have a buddy who told me a story about that sort of thing,” Sam said. He was relaxed and sipping on a beer but still had a few stray bits of leaf and grass stuck in his hair from his adventure in suburban surveillance. He had another unopened beer waiting on the counter, I guess to keep the other one company. “He said that if you keep those babies in captivity long enough, they’ll just start feasting on human flesh.”

“I am concerned that you have a buddy who knows that,” I said.

“It’s a vast network, Mikey. I have friends who don’t even know they’re my friends yet.”

“Why do you think you have so many friends, Sam, and Michael has so few?” Fi said.

Sam shrugged. “I have a kinetic personality. People gravitate to me. You might say people like me.”

“And I’m an acquired taste?” I said. Fi and Sam shared a look. It used to be that they never stood on the same side of any argument. Now they were practically Siamese twins. I decided to change the subject, permanently if possible. “Who was the guy outside my mother’s house?”

“Weird thing,” Sam said. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper that looked vaguely like the tag you might find on the back of a pillow. “The car is a rental, paid for with a corporate Visa by the Star Class Association.”

“What’s that? Some new CIA shell?” I said.

“I thought the same thing,” Sam said. “But it checks out.” He flipped the paper over and examined it closely. “It’s one of the official sanctioning bodies for these yacht races Gennaro is in.”

“What were they doing watching me?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Maybe they have a security detail that was on you?”

“If they had a security detail,” I said, “I would have spotted it. And they wouldn’t have peeled out like that at the first sign of trouble.” I thought about it for a moment. “You get a name on the rental?”

Sam flipped the paper over again. I could now make out the existing text. In bold letters across the top it said, DO NOT REMOVE. “The license they had on file is for Timothy Sherman.”

“Any flags?”

“Only that it looks like he declined the extra insurance coverage he was offered and that he’s letting people not on the rental agreement drive the car, since he’s the license on ten different cars the group rented for the week. That’s a pretty serious offense in the car rental business.”

“Worse than ripping a warning tag from a mattress?” I said, pointing at the paper in Sam’s hand.

“Technically,” Sam said, “I got this off a duvet cover hanging on a line in Loretta’s backyard, but I believe that’s a state law. Lying on your rental agreement violates your own car insurance, so it’s probably worse in the long run.”

“We should execute him,” Fiona said.

“We don’t even know who he is,” I said.

“Next of kin will show up to claim the body, and all of your questions will be answered.” She picked up Sam’s unopened beer and examined it closely, as if she wanted to make sure it didn’t have cooties on it, and then opened it up and took a sip.

“That wasn’t a twist top,” Sam said.

“I have exceptionally strong wrists,” she said.

“Instead of killing Mr. Sherman, maybe you could pay him a visit for me, Fi? Let him know he’s violated his rental agreement? Tell him we need the proper names of who is operating the cars?”

Fi took another sip of beer and swallowed it with exaggerated brio. “Love to,” she said. “But I have plans.”

“Really?” I said.

“My friend who is visiting.”

“The plutonium salesman?”

“He’s not a salesman,” she said. “More like a broker. And anyway, he said he didn’t end up bringing it with him into the country. He said he’d rather just relax with a good friend and not be concerned about such trivial things.”

“Like world security?”

“Like commerce,” she said.

“Fi,” I said. “I need your help here, and let’s be honest, you haven’t heard from the guy, have you?”

“Even if I haven’t,” she said, “there is the potential that I might.” Fi took a long pull from her beer and then set it down. “Fine, but I demand handsome payment for this job.”

“That’s the other thing,” Sam said. He went into what might graciously be called my bedroom, but which is just a mattress on the floor about three feet from my kitchen, and retrieved his laptop. Earlier, when I got back to the loft with Fi, Sam was napping beside the laptop and snoring like he had a trademark on sleep apnea. He explained to me then that he just wasn’t physically constituted for early morning work and that I needed more lumbar support in my mattress.

“Let me guess,” I said. “Gennaro is broke.”

“Good guess,” Sam said. “But not entirely accurate.” Sam explained that he’d had his buddy Jimenez-the guy who got us involved in this in the first place-get some information about the Ottone family fortunes after he saw Dinino roll up and learned that while Gennaro certainly had money, much of it was tied to his wife. They had a prenuptial that paid him handsomely in the event of their divorce-a million dollars for every year of marriage-but Gennaro’s personal wealth was marginal in comparison and mostly generated from racing.

“Alone, he’s worth maybe two million dollars,” Sam said. “He owns the house he grew up in as a kid in California. That’s worth seven hundred fifty K. He’s got a few cars in his own name. A cabin in Tuscany. Keeps a small personal checking account. Everything else comes from the family. But he’s on the books as the half owner of his team, but it’s a paper ownership. He puts none of his own money in it, and when his team wins, which wasn’t very often before this year, he cuts his share of the purse to his teammates. The largest part of the purse goes to the team owner, which, of course, is all in the family pot.”

“Nice pot,” Fi said.

“Where’s the vast conspiracy, Sam?” I said.

“I was just getting to that,” Sam said. He turned his laptop around. “That’s Maria Ottone’s will.”

Fi scrolled through the pages. “It’s a hundred pages long,” she said. “I didn’t know you could read that many pages at one time, Sam.”

“I skimmed to the good parts,” he said, and then told us what those were. If Maria died, her daughter stood as the chief beneficiary of her estate and Gennaro would be subject to the terms of the prenuptial, plus costs to take care of their daughter through age eighteen, when her full inheritance would be available. And if the daughter were to die, too? The money stayed in the family.

“And what if Gennaro dies?” I said.

“Mr. Dinino ends up with full ownership of the team and is married to a woman without an heir or anyone who might reasonably make a claim to her fortune.”

“So,” I said, “everyone dies and Dinino stands to make money he doesn’t really need. Doesn’t add up.”

“That’s why you’re the spy,” Sam said.

“There must be a girl involved,” Fi said.

“Why?” I said.

“Because if there wasn’t,” she said, “no one would be acting this stupid.”

It is always slightly frightening when Fiona is the voice of reason.

“What do we know about Dinino?” I said.

“Not a lot outside the public image,” Sam said. “Married Maria’s mother five years ago. Dated supermodels prior to that. Family was in the cement business before selling out a few years before Dinino married Mrs. Ottone. One ex-wife, still living. No children. No scandals apart from a class-action lawsuit over poor cement composition in 1988.”

“No criminal involvement?”