The End Game

11

Fiona Glenanne has a unique worldview: it’s her world and you would be wise not to get in the way. What this means in a practical sense is that she’s pretty good at getting what she wants.

Shoes.

Purses.

The contents of a bank vault.

In the process of acquiring said items, she has no problem punching you in the throat, setting fire to your home or giving you the impression that you are mere moments away from a level of physical pleasure you’ve only read about in the Kama Sutra.

All of which makes her the perfect person to extract information from those who might be unwilling under normal circumstances to give it up.

Male.

Female.

It doesn’t really matter.

So when she walked into the offices of the Star Class Association looking for Timothy Sherman and encountered an armed female security guard at the front desk, she wasn’t concerned in the least.

Women with guns were her comfort zone. Though, Fi couldn’t abide the fact that she looked to be one of those women who clearly took part in weight-lifting competitions. It was the shock of white blond hair, the rub on tan that made her glow orange (and smell a bit like wet cardboard) and the forearms that looked like a freeway interchange with all the raised intersecting veins. Fiona thought that you could be dangerous without sacrificing style and grace and sex appeal. Never mind the horror of a rub on tan, just generally.

“Can I help you?” the guard asked. Her voice was a little on the thick side, too.

“Yes,” Fi said. “I’m from Allied Car Rental and I’m afraid we have a very substantial problem. I need to see Mr. Sherman.”

“Okay,” she said. She looked down at the phone system, which struck Fiona as being a might too confusing for simple use. Didn’t anyone have an intercom anymore? She guessed that people with impressive looking phone exchanges at their front desks wanted to give off the impression that they fielded many, many calls. Odd, really. Power through the impression of vast communication and heavily veined women with guns at the front desk.

The office itself was fairly standard: a rounded off desk up front covered in trade magazines, including one, Fiona noted, that featured a photo of Gennaro Stefania on the cover. He was cute, but from what she’d learned, not much on the manly side of things. Oh, he could pilot a boat, but she doubted he could take a punch.

Men.

The shame of their sex was that so few lived up to billing.

Beyond the desk was a locked glass door-nothing special security-wise, Fiona saw, just a keyed lock. Nothing exciting happened in these offices, she imagined, and very little of value could possibly be inside apart from computers and phones and maybe a little petty cash. She could be in and out of the place in five minutes with everything of worth and no one would probably raise an eye, least of all the woman in front of her, who was now punching buttons almost at random.

Fi saw that a rather pained look was beginning to cast over the poor woman’s face. Maybe she was having some sort of anabolic issue.

“I’m not really the receptionist, so this phone is like Swahili,” the guard said. “I’m just here for extra security and the receptionist is at lunch.”

“Security?” Fi took a chance. “Because of that explosion the other day?”

The guard smiled and Fi saw that her teeth were insanely white. Nice teeth are important but this was absurd. It was like she had a mouth filled with piano keys. “Yes!” she said. “Omigod. Did you hear about that? It’s crazy, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Fi said. This security guard woman was really quite the woman of multitudes. She projected strength and body dysmorphic issues, but also seemed incredibly vapid. Very strange. “This whole boating industry can be very dangerous.”

The guard nodded her head, which was also a strange exercise, since she nodded and blinked excessively hard at the same time while keeping the smile burnished on her face. “This is my only day, but everyone at the agency was like, hey, you might get to break an arm, Gretchen! And so I thought, hey, when else do you get the chance to break an arm in a really nice building like this one? Mobsters and rappers and rich people. I could really meet someone neat, right?”

Fi didn’t really have a response to that. Chiefly because none of it made any sense to her. She had the impression that this was a woman used to people not listening to her closely and thus no one ever corrected her when she said absurd things. A shame, really. A little molding and Fi thought she could probably turn her into a fairly competent knee-breaker. But she’d need to get rid of that tan and that smile. It was all very off putting.

“Anywho,” the guard said. She poked around the phone some more. “I don’t know how to get Mr. Sherman on this thing. Do you know where his office is at?”

“Yes,” Fi said. She had a new opinion. Anyone who ended a sentence with the word “at” and managed to get the term “anywho” into a sentence was unmoldable at any cost. “If you’ll just open the door, of course.”

The security guard got up from behind the desk and made her way to the door to unlock it, which gave Fi a chance to look at the phone system and see that Mr. Sherman was in office 129. It was right on the phone in huge bold letters. It also said he was not to be disturbed until after the race. A very important man, no doubt, in the same way many people think they are very important: that their particular world is more interesting and important than yours.

That didn’t jibe with Fi. Timothy Sherman, she thought, you’re going to be picking flowers.

The interior offices of the Star Class Association resembled something put together by Gilligan and the Skipper: Nautical paintings on the walls, bits of ancient oars and masts and such encased in glass frames and boxes scattered down the long hallways. A cubicle farm painted light blue and with funny signs at their various nexuses that had arrows pointed to Bermuda, Cape Cod, Hawaii, the Tropic of Cancer. The cubicles themselves were largely empty, which made sense since all of the action was happening down in the marina in preparation for the race, but the few people she did see were all young men who looked like they’d been born wearing navy blue diapers.

Timothy Sherman’s office was at the back of the floor and looked out over the cubicles in one direction and out towards the sea in the other. His door was open, presumably so the drones working away could periodically stand up and see out to the water and marvel at how lucky their boss was.

She already didn’t like Timothy Sherman, which was nice since she hoped she’d get the chance to hurt him.

Just a little.

Maybe a pinch.

A tight squeeze.

A pistol whip to the eyebrow. Something worth the trouble she went to putting on the silly conservative suit she had to wear in order to look like a young car rental executive, never mind the tacky DayRunner she was using to hold documents.

When she reached Sherman’s office door, she found him sitting with his back to the door, staring intently at his computer, which was filled with what looked to Fiona like weather reports and information on the tides. Very important stuff, no doubt.

“Timothy Sherman?” she said loudly, making him jump a bit in his seat. He turned and faced her and Fi saw that he was angry. He still had at least another few days before he could be disturbed, of course.

“Who are you?”

“Pitney Bowes from Allied Car Rental,” she said and extended her hand for Sherman to shake, which he did. He was one of those guys who shook women’s hands like he thought his strength might overpower them, so he intentionally went light, so Fi gave him all she had until he actually winced and pulled back. “Sir, we have a big problem.”

She reached into the DayRunner and slid out a copy of the police report Loretta had made earlier involving a certain Peeping Tom. Fi had done a little work on the report, adding the plate of the rental to it, and Sherman’s name, too.

Sherman read the report silently, apart from the growing sound of his labored breathing, and then set it down.

“This is a big misunderstanding,” he said.

“Mr. Sherman, you understand that it’s bad public relations when our cars are used in the commission of a sex crime, don’t you?”

“Of course,” he said. “But that wasn’t what was happening. I wasn’t even there. I’ve been right here all day.”

“So the car drove itself?”

“No, no,” he said. “I’m afraid the car was in use for official Cup business, but I certainly wasn’t the driver and I can assure you that the person driving the car was not engaged in any crime.”

It was really too bad Sherman wasn’t the ultimate criminal here, Fi thought, because there was just something about him that annoyed her. It was probably that he used the term “official Cup business” as if it meant something she should be impressed with.

“Mr. Sherman, there are no other drivers listed on your rental contract,” Fi said. “I’m going to have to contact your insurance agency and, I’m not afraid to say, you are civilly liable if poor Ms. Loretta, who I must say sounded terribly distraught, chooses to litigate.”

Ah, the word that makes men of a certain ilk quake: litigate.

“We don’t need to go in that direction, do we?” Sherman said. He was smiling now, confident, like he’d been in this position before. He reached into his desk and pulled out an envelope, flipped through the contents and then came out with a ticket. “I would love for you to be my special guest on our hospitality yacht to watch the first half of the Cup.”

“That’s very generous,” Fi said and returned Sherman’s smile, even gave an extra flourish with her eyes, licked her lips twice, let him really think that a ticket on a yacht was just the sort of thing a girl like her would really want. She kept that look of honest rapture and joy on her face as she said, “But I still need the driver’s name, or else I’m afraid the police will be showing up here in about an hour to arrest you, and so I can stop my assistant from calling your insurance carrier to let them know of the malfeasance your organization has been party to.”

Sherman swallowed hard. “His name is Robert Roberge.”

Not a name he wanted to give up. Interesting, Fi thought. Now that he was frightened, she had him precisely where she wanted him. Scared people think they can talk their way out of problems, think that by giving up the information you ask for that they’ll stay out of trouble, particularly someone like Sherman, who seemed like he had something to hide, or at least something he didn’t want to tell the kind woman from Allied Car Rental.

“Social security number?” Fiona said, thinking, what the hell, why not fish a bit. Besides, she needed to get him out of the office for a few moments so she could plant a wire in the room, since she figured the real interesting news would come after she left.

“Why do you need that?”

“Mr. Sherman, do you see this?” She waved the police report. “This is not a joke, sir. This is the police.”

“I’ll need to get his file,” he said. He was positively bashful as he walked out of his office, perhaps because he saw his entire career flashing before his eyes. Wait until he found out his race was fixed.

Fiona would have felt slightly sorry for him if he’d been gentleman enough to offer her two tickets for the yacht party; one ticket was just smarmy. And anyway, she didn’t have time to feel much of anything. She needed to get Sherman’s office rigged for sound.

It used to be that getting a surreptitious wire on someone took tremendous sleight of hand and incredible risk.

That was before cell phones.

Cell phones have two notable characteristics that make them excellent for use in clandestine operations in suburban settings: They are easily lost and entirely nonthreatening. So if you want to wire someone who wouldn’t normally be looking for such things, all you need are two cell phones, one to leave sitting open in the vicinity of the person you’re interested in and one pressed to your ear listening in.

A fully charged cell phone battery will last three days, which should be more than enough time to glean the information you desire.

Fiona opted for the fake tree sitting on top of the file cabinet just adjacent to Sherman’s desk. She noted the faux leaves were dusty, which meant it had probably been a good week, probably more, since the cleaning crew in the building had bothered to run a feather duster over the atrocity. Fiona thought that having a fake plant in Miami was a sin just as egregious as the fake tan out front. Some things just didn’t need to be replicated when the original was perfectly well and good.

A few moments later, Sherman returned holding Roberge’s file. It wasn’t terribly thick, though Fiona thought there was probably something of interest to be gleaned from having a look inside.

“His number is 534-24…” Sherman started.

“435, okay,” Fiona said. “What was next?”

“No,” Sherman said, “534.”

“534,” she said, writing while she spoke, “25, you said?”

“No,” Sherman said. He repeated it again and Fiona pretended to take it down, and then read it back to Sherman, all in the wrong order again, which seemed to frustrate poor Mr. Sherman.

When she couldn’t get the spelling of Roberge’s name down-nor his driver’s license, or his address, all information needed for the application, and so she could have one of Sam’s buddies run a background on him, provided she didn’t get everything she wanted just by asking Mr. Sherman-it appeared to Fi that Sherman was about to have a stroke.

Fiona could smell perspiration and not the healthy, clean kind, but the kind that is generated when your body goes into fight-or-flight mode. “Here,” he said, and tossed the file to Fiona. “It’s all right there on the front page. Just copy it yourself. Okay? Just copy it yourself!”

He sat back in his chair and laced his fingers on top of his head, gathered up his hair and tugged. Not a good day to be king.

Roberge’s employment file noted that he worked as security guard for the company. It also noted that he’d previously been convicted of a felony. On the line where it said, “If Yes, Please Explain” Roberge had scrawled, all in caps ASSAULT, EXTORTION, ETC. It shuddered Fiona to imagine what ETC. meant. If you put assault and extortion on an application, what aren’t you admitting? Drowning puppies?

She handed the file back to Sherman, who looked at it like it was contagious. “Job title?” Fiona said, even though she already knew. Didn’t want poor Mr. Sherman to know she’d been peeking, though it’s hardly covert activity when you do it right in front of someone; though it must have been hard for Mr. Sherman to pay attention to much of anything at that moment.

“Consultant,” Sherman said. “Security.”

Companies who hired ex-cons for security deserved all of the bad things that happened to them. Personally, Fiona thought she had a very strong work ethic and while she occasionally worked on the other side of the law, it wasn’t like she was breaking arms for drugs. Robbing a bank is a victimless crime, really. And selling guns, well, at least in America people had the right to bear arms. She was sure most people who purchased guns from her did so for perfectly reasonable purposes. And anyway, it wasn’t her commitment in question. If people needed guns, they’d get them from somewhere.

“And purpose of Mr. Roberge’s presence at the location?” Again, Sherman looked nervous, maybe on the verge of tears. “Sir, it’s required for the insurance. If we do this the right way, your insurance won’t be contacted, the police won’t press charges and everyone sleeps like little babies.”

“He was investigating a possible security breach,” Sherman said. “Look, Ms. Bowes? I can’t have this getting in the newspaper, okay? This is really sensitive. The slightest sense of impropriety and this whole race could go down the tubes. Did you see that yacht that blew up? Those are the kinds of people who want to breach security, ma’am. Mr. Roberge was sent to check out a possible negative, uh, person of interest. That’s all I can say.”

A negative person of interest. That’s all he had to say.

“All right,” Fiona said. She figured her ruse could only last so long and that if she kept hammering Sherman, he might not last much more, either. “All I need is Mr. Roberge’s signature on this form and I think we can avoid prosecution.”

“He’s not here,” Sherman said.

Of course he wasn’t. Fi suspected he was lurking about the city somewhere, however. And it would be good to know where that was. “Well, if you can fax the form back to our office by five this evening, I think that should be fine.”

“Yes, yes, fine,” he said. He stood up and Fiona decided to give the man his dignity and allow him to dictate when the meeting was over. Besides, she was eager to get to her car to hear his next conversation.

She walked back through the cubicle maze and into the foyer, where unfortunately the receptionist was back on duty and the security guard woman was now standing and looking threatening by the door, though when Fiona got near she gave her a nice smile. “Everything go well?” she asked Fi.

“Crisis averted,” she said. The guard looked saddened by this. “But I’m sure something bad will happen later.”

Unfortunately for the security guard, it turned out the bad thing wasn’t going to happen on her watch. This was made clear to Fi as she slipped her cell phone from her purse and listened in on Timothy Sherman’s conversation. He was screaming obscenities at someone, telling them they’d nearly destroyed the entire boating organization with their stupidity and that if he didn’t get a signature from him there was a good chance someone from “Catch A Predator” would be waiting for him at his shitty apartment when he got off work. He then told the man-presumably Roberge-to stay right where he was, that he was bringing the form to him.

Fi got into her car and waited for Sherman to appear, which he did a few moments later. He jumped into a matching Lexus-this one had the official seal of the race stuck to the side door, like he was a real estate agent-and pulled out of the lot.

Fi didn’t think she needed to be particularly savvy in her tail, since it was clear Sherman wasn’t looking to be followed, particularly since he was talking into a cell phone the entire time he drove and nearly sideswiped a bus and then quite nearly rammed a Miata being driven by a woman who literally had blue hair.

While paying attention to surroundings was not Sherman’s strong suit, it was Fiona’s, and when it became clear after twenty minutes of driving that she was following Sherman back to a rather familiar destination-a loft above a nightclub in a not so nice part of town-she began to realize things we’re not going to be as simple as planned. So when Sherman made his final turn down the street where the loft is, Fi just kept going, especially since she could hear an ambulance siren in the distance and saw that people were mingling on the sidewalk and looking about with their hands over their mouths. Never a good sign.

Fi parked her car around the other side of the block and walked to the mouth of the street, where another group of people were already assembling.

There was a fire engine, a Lexus and quite a bit of mess on the street. And Timothy Sherman walking towards the scene in what looked to be a rather significant state of agitation. “What happened?” Fi said to a teenage boy wearing a backwards Marlins cap.

“Man got shot,” he said. He pointed to the Lexus. “Half his head is over there on the ground.” He was so nonchalant it almost startled Fi. She looked at where the kid was pointing and sure enough, a good portion of Roberge’s head was on the pavement, along with glass and blood and brain matter. Bad day to be Rob Roberge, Fi thought. After spending some time observing the scene, she decided it would be prudent to give me a call and fill me in.

“Still not seeing the funny,” I said when she was through.

“Neither was Mr. Sherman’s proxy,” she said.

“He look to be involved?” I said.

“He seems to be cooperating with the police, mostly by sobbing and shaking.”

“Who would have wanted us away from Gennaro?” I said, but even as I said it, I knew the answer. The only way someone would know about me as it related to Gennaro prior to my meeting with Bonaventura this morning would be if they were privy to our conversation at the Setai the night previous. Which meant Dinino. But it didn’t explain why this poor sap was dead on my street.

“I think you’ve been set up, Michael,” she said. “I think you’ve been given a nice round of diversions.”

“Seems that way,” I said.

“Who do I get to shoot?”

“I’ll let you know,” I said. “Stay close and I’ll call you when I know what the plan is.”

“Yay,” she said without much enthusiasm.

I hung up with Fi and looked back outside. Gennaro was still making adjustments on his boat. He was due to launch shortly.

“You need to stay here and watch Gennaro while he’s on land and on the water. He’s not safe.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s a good chance someone might shoot him.”

“What’s going on?”

“Timothy Sherman’s driver from yesterday is dead,” I said. “And I have a pretty good feeling that Dinino bugged Gennaro’s room at the Setai. We’re in the middle of something here, Sam, and it’s not just about this job.”

“Got it, Mikey.” He dusted off the rest of his beer and stood up. “Sea looks nice and calm.”

“That’s the bay. The sea is a little farther out.”

Sam seemed to consider this. “You think they sell Dramamine in this joint somewhere?”

“Maybe try the gift shop,” I said. “Maybe see if they have more appropriate clothes, too. When you get back, get your friend Jimenez on the phone and have him find out who planted this girl, who might have the juice to pull something like this on Dinino. I need a name.”

“Mikey, it’s nine hours ahead of us in Italy right now. It’s the middle of the night.”

“Your friend Jimenez got us into this,” I said. “He can have a sleepless night.”

Sam agreed, if begrudgingly. “Where you gonna be?”

“I need to have a conversation with Alex Kyle,” I said.

“You’re not going back to Bonaventura’s, are you?”

“No,” I said. “I’m pretty sure Alex Kyle will find me.”

“This boat you want,” Sam said, “can Virgil be on it?”

I liked Virgil.

Really.

It was just that Virgil meant my mother, and my mother meant problems.

“If he has to be,” I said.

“The man is a valuable asset,” Sam said.

“Make it happen,” I said, “however it happens.”

When Sam left, I called Nate and told him that I needed another favor.

“You need me or Slade Switchblade?”

“Slade Switchblade?”

“If you’re Tommy the Ice Pick,” he said, “I’m Slade Switchblade.”

“When was the last time you actually saw a switchblade, Nate?”

“When was the last time you actually saw an ice pick, Michael?” Nate said. I paused. The truth was that the last time I saw an ice pick, I was shoving it into a man’s chest in Siberia, so, best as I could recall, about the fall of 1999. But my hesitation was enough of an opening for Nate. “And anyway, it’s about reputation, right? Isn’t that what you said? So maybe Slade used a switchblade back in the day, and now, now he uses a howitzer, but no one knows. People are more scared of a switchblade than a howitzer, right? More personal, right? So that’s why he’s Slade Switchblade not Slade Howitzer.”

“Right,” I said. While I liked that Nate had actually thought through his own personal narrative, I wasn’t comfortable with it actually making sense. “Look, I don’t need Slade. But if I do, you give him whatever nickname you want.”

“Slade Six-Gun was another one I came up with,” he said.

“Great,” I said. “If Wyatt Earp comes through town, I’ll let him know you’re ready to mount up. In the meantime, I need you to talk to your friends in the betting industries. Find out who is putting money against the Pax Bellicosa in the Miami-to-Nassua. Not five hundred or even a thousand dollars, but numbers with lots of zeros.”

“Someone rich rolling,” he said.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Someone rich rolling. Anyone owes you any favors, I need you to call them in.” Nate was silent. I thought I heard him writing something down. “You still there?”

“Just getting this all on paper so I don’t forget anything.”

I’ve never, ever, seen Nate take a note, or make note, mentally, of anything. “Okay,” I said. “You run into a problem, let me know.”

“I got nintey-nine problems,” Nate said, “but this ain’t one of ’em.” When I didn’t respond, he said, “It’s a song, Michael. One day, when you’re free, we should sit down and I’ll catch you up on the parts of the twenty-first century you’ve missed out on.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

After I hung up with Nate, I watched Gennaro from the window of the Aground until I finally saw Sam striding through the marina. He had on a striped shirt, blue pants, a white baseball cap and bright red boat shoes, all of which made him look like a waiter at a nautical-theme restaurant at Disney World. He’d have to tell Gennaro’s crew some plausible story, but I wasn’t too worried. I had a good feeling that expert sailor Chuck Finley was about to be on the deck.