Tod Goldberg - The End Game

You’d need to pay off a blood-spatter expert.

A biologist.

A chemical engineer.

The evidence chain used to go between one or two people. Now it’s more like a hundred.

Mafia bosses don’t get away with murder anymore because they’re criminal masterminds or are able to act above the law by virtue of their payoffs; they get away because they understand the science of investigation and how to kill someone in a clean environment. Or if they don’t, they hire people who do.

As we pulled up the expansive drive, I noticed that in addition to the men there were also the armor-plated cars Sam mentioned, the bikes and, to my surprise and delight, running around the vast acreage to the east of the house, about twenty children with balloons. I also made out a clown, a small elephant with a child on its back being guided around the circumference of the property and tables covered in presents, food and pyramids of glasses. There were a few older women sitting in lawn chairs and other younger women milling about with the children and lingering near the tables of food. Under a white tent there were a dozen tables being set up, and a series of cooking stations were being arranged along the back of the room. There were pink and white streamers everywhere, including one huge one strung across the front of the tent that said HAPPY 5TH BIRTHDAY, TINA!

“We grew up in the wrong part of town,” Nate said.

“I’m not so sure,” I said.

“Did I even have a fifth birthday?”

I told him I thought we went to Red Vest Pizza, a place our father liked to go to on account of the dollar beers. “There wasn’t a pachyderm in sight, if you’re curious,” I said. “Who is Tina?” I asked Gennaro.

“Christopher’s daughter.”

This new information-the party-required a distinct change in thought.

“Gennaro,” I said, “if at some point during this meeting it looks like there’s going to be a fight, just know that I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. Okay?”

“What?” Gennaro said, now in full panic.

“When was the last time you were in a fight?”

“Never,” he said.

“Not once?”

“I told you, Christopher protected me when we were kids, and these days I have people like you.”

People like me. Great.

“If it looks like a situation where you might find yourself in a compromised position, I’ll hit you first. If I have to hit you, just know you probably won’t remember it.” This didn’t ease Gennaro’s panic. “But it probably won’t come to that, really. So just be calm.”

I actually wanted Gennaro slightly uneasy, as if he were really being yanked about by someone like Tommy the Ice Pick.

Christopher Bonaventura was in the Mafia. Tommy the Ice Pick was in the mob.

The difference is that a person like Tommy the Ice Pick would actually kill you with his own hands. Christopher Bonaventura was more about outsourcing.

“And, Nate, don’t do anything, okay? I don’t want you getting hurt, either. These guys aren’t thugs, they’re actual professionals. Something happens to me that I can’t control, you’re not going to control it, either.”

“Then why am I here?”

“In case I need you to do something. And in that case, make it happen.”

That got Nate smiling. There’s a part of Nate’s reptilian brain that responds well to conversations that essentially state the obvious but in ways you might hear in old Clint Eastwood movies.

Nate parked the limo next to one of the black Suburbans, and by the time we stepped out Jarhead and the other two men were already waiting for us. Their guns were out of sight, but I figured Jarhead for the kind of guy who would prefer to stick his KA-BAR into your kidneys.

“Mr. Bonaventura is inside,” Jarhead said, as we walked toward the front of the mansion. Nate and Gennaro were just in front of me, the two other guards at their flanks. “He can give you ten minutes. Minute eleven and you’re back in your car. There is no negotiation.”

“If we get out in five,” I said, “you think I could get a slice of cake to go?”

“We get inside,” Jarhead said, “and you act like a gentleman and give me whatever you have on your leg, whatever you have on your back and anything else you think I might want. Minute eleven, you get it all back.”

“Yeah, and what’s in it for me?” I said.

Jarhead smiled. It wasn’t menacing. It wasn’t mocking. It wasn’t even an inadvertent twitching of the facial muscles. It looked like Jarhead was actually happy about something. “Your meeting goes off without a hitch,” he said, “Mr. Stefania and your silent friend get out alive, and I don’t tell Mr. Bonaventura that I know you.”

Jarhead stepped in front of me before I could answer him and opened the front door of the house into a foyer inlaid with marble. Inside, a steady stream of people moved back and forth with huge platters of food held head high. A small gold dog scurried about and barked.

One thing for certain, no one was getting shot today. Not Gennaro. Not Nate. Not me. But that didn’t make any of this good news. If Jarhead knew me, he knew a lot more, too. That he wasn’t acting on this knowledge told me that I was staring at someone who knew my file, someone who knew the truth, someone who knew that I was Michael Westen, and that Michael Westen was not someone he really wanted to engage in front of school children, women and one very large land mammal.

It meant that no matter who I pretended to be, whatever ruse I perpetrated, I had to offer some nugget of truth that would keep the situation in my favor, so that Jarhead would understand that this game belonged to me, even if I wasn’t entirely clear what we were playing.

Or whom.

The careful art of subversion involves turning people against their own leaders. During a long campaign, this entails intricate-and intimate-psychological warfare mixed with a fair amount of propaganda. This means everything from arming opposition leaders to facilitating the escape of political prisoners to simply attending to the core needs of the people you wish to convert.

You give them money and prescription drugs.

You pave their roads.

You give children candy and toys.

And then you tell the people that their government is corrupt and controlled by a puppet master in the west, the east, the north, the south.

And if none of that works? You capture them, torture them, tell them they have two choices: Join your militia or die.

Most people will opt to live.

Sometimes, this all works our perfectly… And most everyone dies, regardless.

Guatemala.

Cuba.

Iraq.

Iraq again.

That knowledge gave me pause.

Telling someone that you know they are lying-and lying to their leader-and yet refusing to act is one of the basest forms of subversion. You do it to build trust while creating a false sense of reciprocal empathy between a rank-and-file soldier just doing his job and the person they are charged with guarding.

But if Jarhead knew who I was, that meant he was aware of one of the most profound truths concerning intelligence: You can’t bullshit a bullshitter.

So as Jarhead directed us through the house, I broke him down from the available information, which was only what I could see, what Sam had told me, and what I had to assume.

He was:

A Marine. Probably Force Recon, which meant he’d spent the last several years in combat situations requiring far more mental acuity than walking uninvited guests to a sitting room.

A trained killer. The difference between a trained killer and a psychopath is usually distance. A trained killer shoots at objects at the end of a scope and can marginalize them into “kills” without considering that human element. The targets are impediments to freedom, or the crossing of a bridge or the clearing of a hot zone. Force Recon Marines, however, tend to recruit men not morally opposed to close fighting-whites-of-their-eyes moments-if the need arises. But there’s not a lot of close fighting when you have Apaches and Black Hawks on your team, too.