Tod Goldberg - The End Game

I eventually found him sitting on a lawn chair under a tree, a plate of food on his lap, a cooler beside him.

Barry was the kind of guy who could get you what you needed, like dummy home loans, millions of dollar in fake wire transfers, new identities, small helicopters, and the occasional piece of advice about the inner workings of the bad people he associated with.

A jack-of-all-criminal-trades, really.

I sat down on the grass next to him, and for a few minutes we watched the trapeze. Four different students were doing a series of tricks that involved midair flips timed perfectly to a classical music arrangement. There was always someone in the air and someone launching into the air.

The precision, timing and dedication looked flawless, but it meant hours of preparation and failure had been embarked on long before this date.

“What I wonder,” Barry said after a while, “is what a professional trapeze artist does on his day off. Sit in a cubicle?”

“Probably the same thing anyone does,” I said.

“What do you do?”

“I plot,” I said. “And wait.”

“See, that’s the thing,” Barry said. “You need to find something more relaxing. I tried collecting wine for a little while. You know, like as a hobby? Started going to tastings and these things where they put out ten different kinds of cheeses and then the wine you’re supposed to drink with each cheese. Turned out to be very stressful. Too many decisions to make.”

“What do you do now?”

“I started getting into chakra cleansing,” he said. “Girl I was dating was a big advocate, but that didn’t do the trick, either. She was very spiritual about it, always telling me to surrender to the release, but I just couldn’t get into that. I feel like my chakra is pretty healthy.”

“That’s what you’re known for,” I said. “That and bad checks.”

“This was supposed to be my day off,” Barry said. “And here I am, sitting next to Mr. Marked for Death.”

“Think how I feel,” I said.

Barry hadn’t actually looked at me yet. Or if he had, I couldn’t tell since he was still wearing his sunglasses. Maybe he was waiting for a break in the action.

“Have to say,” he said, “I was little surprised to hear from you. Today of all days.”

“Yeah?”

“Word is you got a bullet to the dome this afternoon, actually.”

“That was someone else,” I said.

“What happened to your forehead?”

“Christopher Bonaventura punched it,” I said.

“You wake up in the morning and this stuff just happens, or is there an order to it?”

“Depends what morning it is,” I said.

“Maybe you just live in a bad neighborhood.”

“No,” I said, “the guy who was shot in front of my place was probably taken out by a sniper, so they could have been in another neighborhood completely. I suppose they could have been in a high-rise a half a mile away.” I pointed at the towering buildings across the street from the park. “Like one of those.”

“Comforting,” Barry said.

“Any other words being thrown out about me?”

“Only that since you got back into town, the number of professional killers enjoying the sun and beaches has increased tenfold. I’m thinking of starting a side business selling maps to your place.”

“Yeah,” I said, “about that. You got anything on an ex-Marine named Alex Kyle doing business out here?”

“Big guy?”

“Big enough.”

“Rolls with ten guys who look just like him?”

“Yeah,” I said.

Barry pulled off his sunglasses and rubbed them on his shirt. Held them up. Looked through them. Put ’em right back on. “Lot of fake passports in town this week,” Barry said, like I hadn’t asked him about Alex Kyle. “Lots of people asking for private protection. Big money getting tossed around. Heard there was a guy trying to move yellow cake who was staying at a condo, taking meetings on his deck, like it was nothing. Another guy supposedly was trying to move weapons-grade plutonium. FBI picked him up eating sushi next to Bono.”

One of the trapeze artists failed to catch his partner, and the partner-a young Asian woman who looked to weigh less than a hundred pounds-sailed into the netting below, eliciting a collective moan from the crowd. She popped back up quickly, but looked dazed and somewhat unbalanced.

“You think that hurts?” Barry said.

“Any time you fall from the sky onto the ground,” I said, “it hurts.”

“You ever jump out of a plane?”

“A few times,” I said.

“That seems relaxing,” he said.

“Not if the people on the ground are shooting at you,” I said.

“Can’t control that,” Barry said. He reached into his cooler and pulled out a bottle of beer and handed it to me, took another one out for himself. He looked at me then and clanked his bottle into mine in a toast. “To life, then,” he said, and then drank from his bottle slowly, like he was thinking about something particularly vexing.

“Something on your mind, Barry?”

“This Alex Kyle,” Barry said, “he’s not a nice person.”

I thought about it. “No. Probably not.”

“Wasn’t really a question,” Barry said. “Just an observation.” He broke off a piece of fried plantain from his plate and chewed on it carefully. “Anyway,” he said, “now that you’re alive again, I’m just saying you should look into ways to spend your free time that are less hazardous to your health. You never hear about anyone getting gunned down while building model planes in their garage.”

He had a point, though if I took to building model planes in my garage, I might be inclined to gun myself down.

“I need a favor,” I said.

“Last favor I did for you? The IRS audited my nana the next day. That’s not right.”

“Nana good with keeping receipts?”

“She’s been dead for fifteen years,” Barry said.

“Tell me you’re not cashing your grandmother’s social security checks,” I said.

“You watch the news? It’s important to tighten up where you can. Besides, it helps to have an extra social security number or two for a rainy day, like if some ex-spy puts your business in peril and you need to relocate and start all over.”

“You help me here,” I said, “I’ll owe you.”

“You already owe me,” he said.

I looked around. “Dinner with Fiona,” I said. I paused. Waited for a sign. Like a shank to the neck. When none came, I continued with “My treat.”

“She’s not a nice person, either,” Barry said.

“No,” I said, “she’s not.”

“That’s kind of hot, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

Barry chewed on another bit of plantain. “This one of those ‘or people will die’ things?”

“Yeah,” I said. I showed him the paperwork on the credit transfer to Myanmar. “You ever do any business with this bank?”

Barry visibly recoiled in his chair, enough so that he had to grab his plate before it tipped off his lap. “Myanmar is off-limits,” he said.

“How can an entire country be off-limits?” I said.

“I don’t know,” he said, “maybe I’m just averse to having the government disappear me. Or being called a terrorist and shipped to some torture chamber on a boat. Or having everyone I know murdered in the night by people like yourself. No offense.”

“None taken,” I said.

“Or your friend Mr. Kyle.”

“Have you talked to him, Barry?”

“He paid me a visit.”

“What was he looking for?”

“You,” he said.

“What did you tell him?”

“The truth,” Barry said. “That the last time we did business my nana got audited. Told him I was out of the Michael Westen business until Nana’s IRS problems disappeared.”