Sam was always surprised by how much other people knew about his business. “Discreet it is,” he said, and then made a mental note not to let Fiona set fire to anything valuable.
Most criminals like to keep a low profile. If you’re a bank robber, the odds are you don’t carry around a card that says BANKS KNOCKED OVER 24-7! If you’re a serial killer, you probably don’t run an ad on the back page of the Miami New Times offering severed heads for sale. Even if you’re a hit man-a job predicated on people knowing about your services-it’s fair to assume you’re not standing on A1-A with a sandwich board offering your wares.
All of which made the house Christopher Bonaventura was staying in that much more suspect. It wasn’t just the phalanx of black-on-black Mercedes-Benzes and Suburbans, with bulletproof body armor, encircling the drive that made it so suspect, though that certainly wasn’t helping matters; it was also the men standing behind the front gate of the house on Harbor Drive holding modified M1911A1. 45s like they were rolling with a Marine Force Recon unit.
Thing of it was, Sam thought, they sort of looked like Marines, too. Close-cropped hair. Square jaws. Arms as thick as thighs. Used to be mafia foot soldiers were on the chunky side. It wasn’t like they were big on hand-to- hand combat. They shot you or hit you in the head with a rock or clubbed you to death with a bat and then buried you in a cornfield. Physical work, sure, but quick work. Nothing where you’d need big muscle endurance. But these guys looked like they were hitting the free weights pretty regularly. Maybe taking a syringe or two, also, since Sam thought he could make out the entire arterial path of the guy closest to the gate and he wasn’t even out of the car yet.
Despite Darleen’s admonition to avoid it, Sam figured he’d drive by the house where Bonaventura was staying for the week, anyway, just to get the lay of the land, see what was what, and any other cliche he could think of. The truth was that he just wanted to see the damn place, since a house on Harbor Drive in Key Biscayne meant bucks he frankly didn’t think even the mob could afford.
At least not publicly.
So now he was parked across the street from a house three stories tall with a visible tennis court on the roof, the mere idea of which made Sam wonder just how dedicated you have to be to a sport to put it on the roof of your house. Apart from the Benzes and Suburbans, it was about all he could really see from the street, since the front gate was thick black steel and the line of men behind it didn’t exactly allow for great sight lines, at least not from across the street. So Sam got out of his car and started walking toward the house. What was the worst that could happen? Sam thought it was unlikely that they’d open fire on him right away, plus it would be hard to explain the blood spatter all over the nice McMansion across the way. Gunfire on the nicest street in Key Biscayne was likely to cause a stir, so while these guys were strapped like they were expecting the Chinese Red Army to come stomping down the street, it was probably more about intimidation than action.
“Pardon me, boys,” Sam said, “but I’ve lost my dog. Little cocker spaniel? White and sort of off-red. Party colored, they call ’em, but I just call him Chuck. You guys see anything matching that description?” The guys looked back and forth at each other with confusion, as if Sam were speaking gibberish, so he just kept walking toward the gate and talking. “Pink tongue, tends to poke out the side of his mouth when he’s running? Just a nub of a tail? This sound familiar? Barks at every leaf and bug he sees? Anybody?” He kept phrasing everything like a question, thinking that eventually one of the guys holding the. 45s would think to respond, if only to stop the cavalcade of queries.
He stopped talking when he got close enough to the gate that he could peer in rather easily, since now all of the guys were grouped together and muttering to each other in low voices Sam couldn’t quite make out. He wasn’t even really sure what he was looking for, but had a general feeling that because of the way things normally went down, he’d probably need to scale the wall and cause a ruckus at some point, so he might as well start looking for ways in now, before he was dodging bullets.
There was a sign in the middle of the gate that warned people away with threats of armed response units and fatal levels of electricity. If a dog really did get loose in this neighborhood and decided to raise his leg on Bonaventura’s gate, he’d be electrocuted, which made Sam think that the wisdom behind HOAs was truly lost on the rich. Nevertheless, the guards didn’t seem too concerned about the electricity, if their relative proximity to that gate was any judge.
Most people tend to shy away from electrified fencing, but the ten men assembled behind this one didn’t seem to be too tense, which meant it was likely turned off. Maybe ten guys with guns and lethal electricity was considered overkill even for mob guys.
Sam counted up the cars. Five Suburbans, five Benzes, a few other dark black cars that didn’t look quite so fortified, as well as three MV Agusta F4 CC motorcycles, a bike that runs around $130,000 out the door, and goes out that door at nearly two hundred mph. The aggregate value of the parked transportation was fairly mind- boggling. Really, being the good guys just didn’t pay as well.
“No dog here,” one of the guys said, but it was impossible to tell which one, since they all looked exactly the same: same hair, same facial features, same guns, probably the same flash grenades strapped to their chests, too. Whoever spoke did so in perfect, unaccented English. He might have been Italian, but he wasn’t from Italy and didn’t exactly fit the profile of someone who’d been cracking heads since getting “made.”
“You sure? He’s a gassy fella, so even if you didn’t see him, you might smell him. Know what I mean?” Sam said. He was looking at one guy, the one he figured spoke to him a moment previous, but the answer came from a different person.
“You heard me,” he said. “Now go. You’re in the wrong neighborhood.”
Testy.
“No, no, I live just down the block,” Sam said. “Mind if I leave you my phone number? In case you see the dog, you could call me? My daughter and I, we, well, don’t know what to do with ourselves. That dog has really helped my daughter with her, uh, spina bifida.”
Sam wasn’t sure what spinal bifida was, but figured it sounded just bad enough that not even these guys could turn away from it; testy de meanor or otherwise.
“Fine,” the man said. “Give me your number.” He pulled out a Talla-Tech RPDA-57, the official PDA of the Marines, a rugged green device that did everything from make calls to calibrate mortar coordinates. Not exactly the kind of thing you purchase at Office Depot. And not exactly the kind of thing mafia foot soldiers kept in their back pockets. If these men were employed by Christopher Bonaventura, it meant the game was a whole hell of a lot more complicated.
Sam gave the man his cell number and when the man asked him for his name, Sam said, “Chuck Finley.”
For some reason, this got the men to exchange awkward glances with each other. Finally, Sam thought, old Chuck’s getting a rep with the criminal element…
“You said your dog’s name was Chuck,” the lone speaking man said.
Crap. Testy and paid attention. A Marine for sure.
“It is his name,” Sam said. “It is. I love that mongrel so much I gave him my own name. It’s easier for my daughter to remember, too. As you know, with spina bifida, the memory is often the first casualty, and with her mother gone, well, that dog is almost like another father to her.”
All the men nodded in unison and with matching solemnity. It was like watching the Rockettes doing that kicking thing, and just as creepy. These guys might not be active service Marines, Sam thought, but they sure were regimented. And judging by their guns, PDAs and fresh haircuts, well funded. He just didn’t have any idea what they were doing guarding Christopher Bonaventura’s vacation house.
Or at least he didn’t until Nicholas Dinino, Gennaro’s stepfather-in-law, pulled up behind the men in a convertible Bentley Continental, waved innocuously as they opened the twin sides of the gate and then nearly ran Sam down as he sped away from the house.
7
When a spy decides to turn coat and start giving information to the enemy, it’s rarely for the reasons you might expect. Most spies, if they choose to cross the aisle, do so of their own accord and not because they’re being blackmailed. Cold War movies and spy thrillers always suggested that American agents were pushed into corners by
