grainy photos of illicit affairs, but the fact is that it’s hard to trap a good spy in a blackmail scheme. If spies are worth turning, if they are at the level where they can provide truly useful information, pictures of them having sex with anyone or anything at any time and in any place will have no bearing on the situation.
Most spies that flip do it for one core reason: Money. Aldrich Ames ended up on the Russian payroll after he decided to divorce his wife and marry a Colombian woman with decidedly more expensive taste. So in order to pay off his debts, cover his alimony and lavish his new bride, he needed a quick capital infusion. First it was fifty thousand dollars for the names of several Soviets spying for the U.S.; then it was nearly $1.7 million for even more information once he realized that if you’re going to go all in, you might as well go all in.
And if it’s not money, it’s ego… with some money thrown in to sweeten the deal. Robert Hanssen needed money to pay for his children’s expensive education, but most of all he wanted to feel valued for the work he’d done and wanted to get back at those who hadn’t let him rise to the top echelons of the FBI. He wanted to feel valued. And what better way to feel valued then to have someone else tell you you’re important, even if that someone is your blood enemy? An open checkbook is usually capable of changing long-held beliefs, even existential ones about love of country and patriotism and such, but it’s hard to buy emotional relevance. That comes from a far stranger and more difficult place to locate.
When you cross your family, it’s usually for similar reasons. Money, ego and twisted emotion make people do stupid things.
If you’re essentially decent, maybe you end up hurting your mother’s feelings on Mother’s Day.
If you’re essentially awful, maybe you orchestrate a kidnapping plot. If you’re essentially awful and stupid, and not merely an opportunist, you orchestrate the plot in broad daylight and without concern for getting caught. It helps if you don’t actually love the people you’re screwing.
After hearing about Sam’s morning of activity-and after spending time with my own mother-I was of the opinion that Gennaro Stefania was being manipulated for reasons far beyond simple yacht races and that he wasn’t going to be able to make it all right by cleaning out the freezer.
Still, the perception of impropriety didn’t make it true. It was perfectly reasonable to assume that Nicholas Dinino was going to Christopher Bonaventura’s for reasons other than the planning and execution of nefarious deeds. They were both exceptionally rich men with common interests, which I explained to Sam and Fi as we stood in my kitchen a few hours after assuring Loretta, my mother and the entirety of their neighborhood that they didn’t need to contact the governor’s office to see if FEMA might pay for the emotional stress of Sam’s prowling.
At some point, I had to see about getting my mother moved into a gated community somewhere in the Yucatan.
“Just because you saw Dinino going into Bonaventura’s doesn’t mean he’s involved,” I said. “We are dealing with some eccentric people here, Sam, who work in a lot of the same circles.”
“He has a point,” Fi said to Sam. “Look at the three of us. You might assume if you saw all of us together that we were planning some elaborate plot that would involve any number of crimes and misdemeanors, that would probably end up violating several people’s civil rights, might even involve what I think they call domestic terrorism- right, Michael?”
“The difference is we’re the good guys,” I said. Fi raised her eyebrows. “Sam and I are, at any rate.”
“You can put a killer whale in a tank at a zoo,” Fi said, “can even train it to do adorable tricks and squirt water at people, but it’s still a killer whale that would eat your face.”
“I have a buddy who told me a story about that sort of thing,” Sam said. He was relaxed and sipping on a beer but still had a few stray bits of leaf and grass stuck in his hair from his adventure in suburban surveillance. He had another unopened beer waiting on the counter, I guess to keep the other one company. “He said that if you keep those babies in captivity long enough, they’ll just start feasting on human flesh.”
“I am concerned that you have a buddy who knows that,” I said.
“It’s a vast network, Mikey. I have friends who don’t even know they’re my friends yet.”
“Why do you think you have so many friends, Sam, and Michael has so few?” Fi said.
Sam shrugged. “I have a kinetic personality. People gravitate to me. You might say people like me.”
“And I’m an acquired taste?” I said. Fi and Sam shared a look. It used to be that they never stood on the same side of any argument. Now they were practically Siamese twins. I decided to change the subject, permanently if possible. “Who was the guy outside my mother’s house?”
“Weird thing,” Sam said. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper that looked vaguely like the tag you might find on the back of a pillow. “The car is a rental, paid for with a corporate Visa by the Star Class Association.”
“What’s that? Some new CIA shell?” I said.
“I thought the same thing,” Sam said. “But it checks out.” He flipped the paper over and examined it closely. “It’s one of the official sanctioning bodies for these yacht races Gennaro is in.”
“What were they doing watching me?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Maybe they have a security detail that was on you?”
“If they had a security detail,” I said, “I would have spotted it. And they wouldn’t have peeled out like that at the first sign of trouble.” I thought about it for a moment. “You get a name on the rental?”
Sam flipped the paper over again. I could now make out the existing text. In bold letters across the top it said, DO NOT REMOVE. “The license they had on file is for Timothy Sherman.”
“Any flags?”
“Only that it looks like he declined the extra insurance coverage he was offered and that he’s letting people not on the rental agreement drive the car, since he’s the license on ten different cars the group rented for the week. That’s a pretty serious offense in the car rental business.”
“Worse than ripping a warning tag from a mattress?” I said, pointing at the paper in Sam’s hand.
“Technically,” Sam said, “I got this off a duvet cover hanging on a line in Loretta’s backyard, but I believe that’s a state law. Lying on your rental agreement violates your own car insurance, so it’s probably worse in the long run.”
“We should execute him,” Fiona said.
“We don’t even know who he is,” I said.
“Next of kin will show up to claim the body, and all of your questions will be answered.” She picked up Sam’s unopened beer and examined it closely, as if she wanted to make sure it didn’t have cooties on it, and then opened it up and took a sip.
“That wasn’t a twist top,” Sam said.
“I have exceptionally strong wrists,” she said.
“Instead of killing Mr. Sherman, maybe you could pay him a visit for me, Fi? Let him know he’s violated his rental agreement? Tell him we need the proper names of who is operating the cars?”
Fi took another sip of beer and swallowed it with exaggerated brio. “Love to,” she said. “But I have plans.”
“Really?” I said.
“My friend who is visiting.”
“The plutonium salesman?”
“He’s not a salesman,” she said. “More like a broker. And anyway, he said he didn’t end up bringing it with him into the country. He said he’d rather just relax with a good friend and not be concerned about such trivial things.”
“Like world security?”
“Like commerce,” she said.
“Fi,” I said. “I need your help here, and let’s be honest, you haven’t heard from the guy, have you?”
“Even if I haven’t,” she said, “there is the potential that I might.” Fi took a long pull from her beer and then set it down. “Fine, but I demand handsome payment for this job.”
“That’s the other thing,” Sam said. He went into what might graciously be called my bedroom, but which is just a mattress on the floor about three feet from my kitchen, and retrieved his laptop. Earlier, when I got back to the loft with Fi, Sam was napping beside the laptop and snoring like he had a trademark on sleep apnea. He explained to me then that he just wasn’t physically constituted for early morning work and that I needed more lumbar support in my mattress.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Gennaro is broke.”
