Tod Goldberg - The End Game

Nate with confidence was a scary thing. It presupposed a level of involvement in my affairs that usually promised bad things.

But maybe this time was different.

The idea of a game show involving geography and death did, admittedly, have some allure.

“Slade Switchblade came in handy tonight,” Nate said. “I called in all the favors I had-and that reminds me, next week, no rush, but a friend of mine is going to need some help with an ex-girlfriend who is stalking him. I waived your normal fee, but said you’d take care of whatever problems existed in an expedient and spyish fashion that would be totally badass to witness. He wants her car to blow up, but I said, ‘Hey, no promises.’ ”

“Nate,” I said. “Get to it.”

“Right, right.” He explained that a friend of his was picking up some “businessmen” at the airport and bringing them to a race party at South Beach and that in the past, he’d gotten the impression they were in the Mafia. “The real Mafia,” Nate clarified. “So I tell him, ‘Hey, this isn’t something to trifle with; let me and my big bro take care of it.’ ”

“Tell me you didn’t threaten these guys,” I said. The last thing I needed on my plate now was even more angry crime bosses, which reminded me I was still angry with Sam for getting me in their business again. Next job he offered I was going to demand that he first provide expert witness testimony that whatever bad guys we were about to engage had more petty concerns than perpetuating a myth of toughness and respect based on a bullshit code from the last century.

“I’m not stupid,” Nate said. “I just recorded them. But here’s the thing. One guy wasn’t even Italian. He was Iranian. Or Iraqi. One of those places where they don’t use the alphabet.”

When you’re xenophobic, not knowing the difference between Iranian, Iraqi or any other Middle Eastern point of origin makes you dangerous. When you’re a common person who can’t pinpoint the 50 states on a map, much less imagine explaining Puerto Rico’s role, it just makes you ignorant, but not uncommon. In Nate’s case, this was the latter. What was notable about Calabria was not that it was in Italy, but that it’s also home to traditionally the largest concentration of Mus lims in the country-in Italy, over one-third of the country is Muslim-and normally that only means good things.

In Calabria, however, the international crime trade and terrorism network often finds a nexus. It’s the home of the most brutal and notorious wing of the mafia now, their stock and trade being drugs, importing and exporting heroin and opium and cocaine, and, worse, human trafficking. Women. Young girls.

Their drug connections stretch all the way to Afghanistan, which makes their bedfellows people like the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Washing drug money through Al Qaeda isn’t just stupid, it’s potentially fatal. But in Calabria, where the government often looks the other way and the large Muslim community protects its own, it has proven to be lucrative.

That doesn’t mean local banks will take the money. But Myanmar? That’s a different story.

“What did they say?” I asked.

“They were speaking Italian and that other language,” Nate said.

“Farsi?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, “so I had to call in another favor to get the recording translated. Well, the Italian. I don’t know anyone who speaks that other stuff.”

“I do,” I said, meaning, I do.

“Anyway, again, no rush, but if you could look into a problem this cute waitress I know from Mario’s Bit of Italy is having with her landlord, we’d have access to a translator whenever we needed it.”

We. This was the peril involved. We.

“I speak Italian, too,” I said.

“You do?”

“I do,” I said. “But I’ll take care of her problem. Just tell me what these businessmen said.”

“The part in Italian was something about Dinino. They said basically that if everything went well, they’d do it again the following month, too. And then they started going back and forth between the languages and all my friend could get was something about money, something about caviar and something about coming back in town for the Super Bowl.”

“These guys,” I said. “You get a name for either of them?”

“Better,” Nate said. “They paid me with a credit card.”

That was better. And worse, shortly, for them.

Nate gave me the name: Domenic Strabo. He may as well have said John Gotti.

“Good work,” I said.

“And one more thing,” Nate said. “The big money was on the Pax Bellicosa to win, up until about two hours ago. Now even people who put huge coin on that are putting even more money on the Pax Bellicosa to lose.”

“They’re betting both ways?”

“That’s what my guy says.”

If you want to be sure that a game is fixed, watch the bets. A smart fixer will bet on both sides of the ticket so that if there’s any investigation, he can show he was just betting for the sake of betting, that he’d even out on either side.

It’s called proportional betting.

In blackjack, it’s what’s known as the d’Alembert method. Increase your bet after each loss, decrease it after each victory. Played out over a long period, and the odds are you’ll end up slightly ahead.

Played out on a single race, like the Hurricane Cup, and it’s mostly just to cover your ass.

Which meant Christopher Bonaventura put out the word, at least to the people he didn’t want to anger. Or was putting out his own money as insurance.

Either way, I’d done my job.

“Good work,” I said.

“That bit of information came steep,” Nate said. “My guy, he’s got a brother in prison. Trumped-up charge.”

“I’m not busting someone out of prison,” I said. “And neither is Slade Switchblade.”

“Right,” Nate said. “Is Fiona around?”

“Nate,” I said.

“Right,” Nate said. “I’ll talk to Fiona later. Whatever. We’ll work it out.”

“I appreciate all of this,” I said.

“Happy to help,” Nate said. And it sounded like he really meant it.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Tonight. Leave me a tape of the recording you made at my place and then get out of town. See if you can take everyone you talked to out of town, too.”

“Bro, I can handle myself.”

“Domenic Strabo isn’t just a foot soldier. You drove one of the heads of the Calabria mafia tonight and, probably, someone linked to Al Qaeda. If either are smart enough to piece together anything before they wind up in a cell, you’re likely to wake up from a dirt nap.”

“Oh,” Nate said.

“There’s a couple thousand dollars cut into my mattress. Take it and have a lovely vacation with all of your friends. You need more money, call me. But don’t come back until I tell you you’re safe.”

It wasn’t exactly that I was afraid the Mafia might come after Nate; more that I wasn’t sure what Alex Kyle might do if this all blew up and he remained standing.

Not that that was something I thought was in the cards for our new friend.

“Okay,” Nate said. “But remember to call me this time. Last time you sent me out of town you left me in Fort Lauderdale for weeks.”

“That was miscommunication,” I said.

“That was no communication,” Nate said.

“I’m working on that,” I said. “Now go.”

I hung up with Nate, filled Fi in on the salient points-except for the part about the prison break, which I knew she’d gladly take part in and would happily begin planning like she was Martha Stew-art with bomb-making skills-and called Sam. “Mikey,” he said, “glad you called. We need to talk.”

I could barely hear Sam over the sound of gushing wind. “Where are you?”