Tod Goldberg - The End Game

“Nothing confirmed,” Sam said. “But being in the cement business in Italy is a little bit like being in the trash business in Las Vegas. Even if you’re not dirty, there’s a good chance you’re paying off someone to keep yourself clean.”

“Might make sense for him to have some contacts like Bonaventura, then,” I said. “Any reason to think he might be having money problems?”

“Apart from the wholesale crash of the world’s financial markets last year?”

“Apart from that, yes.”

“Seems solid.”

“Trust me,” Fi said. “At the end of this all, there will be a crying woman to blame.”

“When was the last time you cried?” Sam asked.

Fiona thought for a moment. “It had to do with a pony. Do the math yourself.”

“What did you get from the names of the people staying at the hotel?” I asked. “Anyone who might reasonably be going after Gennaro or the Ottones?”

Sam clicked open a new file on his computer. “Well, first thing, there’s an insane amount of shrimp consumed by the guests of the Setai.”

“If the crustaceans attack, we’ll know why,” I said. “What else?”

“No obvious red flags,” he said, “except for the movies Carson Daly rented.”

Sam went down the list of names and noted that in addition to half a dozen celebrities in for the week, there were also a good thirty private security personnel staying, too, including the body-guards that normally travel with Nicholas Dinino.

“Why didn’t we see any of them last night?” I said.

“Maybe they were hiding,” Fi said. She dusted off Sam’s second beer and was now poking around my cabinets for food. Something about this sort of talk always seemed to make Fiona hungry, which was funny since violence tended to make her aroused in an entirely different way. Figuring out Fiona’s wiring would require a forensic neu ropsychologist who also knew how to fight.

“I would have seen them,” I said.

“You didn’t see the man this morning,” she said. She found a box of saltines and was now back in the fridge. “Do you keep any kind of spreads, Michael? Butter? Jam? Nutella?”

“No.”

“What do you put on these crackers?”

“Nothing,” I said. “They were here when I moved in.” Fiona tossed the box in the trash and opted for my last serving of blueberry yogurt. “And I would have seen the man on my mother’s street if I hadn’t been busy chipping through the arctic circle of my mother’s freezer to remove Tater Tots that expired twenty years ago.”

Fi swallowed a spoonful of yogurt and made a dismayed face. “You need to diversify your palate,” she said, and handed me my own yogurt. “That man today, if he was any real trouble, would have done something when you were inside. The element of surprise is gone, so now they-whoever they are-must know you’re looking for them.”

“Or they don’t think anything at all,” I said.

Most people that get hired to intimidate other people aren’t exactly deep thinkers. If they were, they’d find another line of work. People who are hired to watch other people and get spotted immediately are even worse off-if you’re not proficient at sitting and staring, it likely means you have no training. Spies learn to watch not from a hiding place, but from a place where others aren’t likely to actually be looking. Sitting in a hundred-thousand-dollar car across the street from someone’s house isn’t exactly Langley training.

“When did Dinino check in?” I asked.

“Same day as Gennaro,” Sam said.

“Any idea where he was when we were in the hotel?”

“No,” Sam said. “But I have a buddy who might be able to find out.” Sam opened up another window on his computer and typed Nicholas Dinino’s name into Google’s Blog Search engine, and five seconds later we were looking at the society blog for Palm Life magazine, a local rag that covered the glamorous life in Miami, which typically meant they took a lot of photos of wealthy people trying to look casual. It didn’t really work, since it’s hard to look casual with an entire diamond mine on your body.

It’s nearly impossible to move about the world undetected if you’re the least bit famous. Anyone with a cell phone is seconds away from telling anyone who is interested-or completely uninterested, for that matter-your precise location. In this case, the Palm Life blog was one of just ten blogs that had photos of Dinino from the previous evening. It helped that he posed with a lot of actors, musicians, models and the professionally famous.

On Palm Life’s page, Dinino was squished between a rap music impresario, his girl-group girlfriend and the host of one of those shows on cable where chefs try to win prizes for being really great chefs. Just off in the back of the frame were two guys who looked rather odd contextually, since they were wearing black suits that clearly covered guns while everyone else was wearing all white. Shoes, shirts, pants, hats, gloves.

“Labor Day can’t come soon enough,” Fiona said.

“Says here it’s an annual party they have,” Sam said.

“Just because it happens every year doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,” Fiona said. “The locusts used to come every year, too.”

Regardless of attire, Dinino didn’t look in the least bit concerned, though the security in the back did indicate that he was aware enough to bring his own muscle, if indeed they were his.

“These guys look familiar?” I said to Sam, hoping maybe he’d seen them this morning.

“I dunno, Mikey. The guys guarding Bonaventura’s place looked like they’d done a lot of Green Side-type work,” Sam said. “These men look like bodybuilders.” Green Side operations typically involve locating the enemy, watching the enemy and then figuring out how to kill them without getting noticed. Green Side ops could hide in your yogurt and you wouldn’t know it until you were chewing on their heads.

It helps that Green Side ops are often covered in camouflage while crawling through a bog during the middle of the night.

I’ve always preferred a suit. But jeans are nice. A T-shirt is very functional.

When you wear jeans and a T-shirt, there’s less chance of finishing a job and finding leeches attached to your thighs, because when you’re in the real world, where there aren’t a lot of bogs or a pressing need to crawl, jeans and T-shirts train you to be inconspicuous. If you look like a spy, people are going to notice you.

Sam spotted Bonaventura’s men immediately because they were a visible deterrent with trademark training and weaponry.

Spies don’t wear tuxedos every day. They don’t order the same drinks in every city-shaken, stirred or otherwise-and don’t leave a trail of bodies in their wake.

You’re a spy because you’re good at doing the things no one wants to see, and doing it in such a way that no one notices.

Men like those watching Dinino, and the one at my mother’s house that morning, aren’t smart enough to blend in or avoid the cameras. Which means they aren’t professionals, just people who’ve been hired.

“We’re grasping at straws here,” I said. “Gennaro’s wife and daughter are trapped somewhere in the Atlantic and we need to figure out why. Sam, we need to find out which room at the hotel, other than Gennaro’s, is viewing that Web site.”

“Got it, Mikey.”

“And, Fi, I need you to find out who was driving one of Timothy Sherman’s rentals today.”

Fi exhaled dramatically. “I hope I don’t end up accidentally beating the information out of Mr. Sherman,” she said.

“Try your best,” I said.

“And where are you going to be?” Fiona asked.

When you want to avoid being ambushed, either by forces or information, the best thing to do is engage first. You might not know the level of resistance you’re apt to find, but you’ll have the advantage of nuance since you already know the logic of the enemy: They aren’t bold enough to strike you head-on, so they think they have to surprise you from the side, cloaked in cover.