Kabul at a roadblock. The funny thing is that I had the odd sense that I had seen him in Kabul.
Not funny like it was amusing, but funny like I was starting to wonder if I was walking into something much larger than myself.
A few moments later, Jarhead stepped back through the gate and stood by Nate’s window. “Thank you for your patience,” he said, his voice flat; friendly even. He looked from Nate to me-maybe a moment longer on me-and then back toward Gennaro. Made eye contact with each of us, let us know he was in control of the situation. “Mr. Bonaventura would be happy to meet any friends of Mr. Stefania’s. However, you pull through this gate and make a single move I determine to be threatening? We will light you the fuck up. We understand?”
I had to hand it to Jarhead. He knew how to play the game. “That’s what I like to hear!” I pounded my hands on the dashboard. “You get tired of this yes-man shit, you got a job with Tommy the Ice Pick, Jarhead.” His eyes flickered slightly. Either he didn’t like being called Jarhead or he was silently filing away my name. Either way was fine with me. “Let me correct myself: Mr. Jarhead,” I said, and put up my hands. “No disrespect. Don’t light us the fuck up, okay?”
Jarhead didn’t say another word. He just stepped away from the window and waved open the gates.
“Nice guy,” Nate said after he put his window back up.
“That’s why I don’t want you talking,” I said.
Surprisingly, Nate didn’t argue the point. Maybe it was because we were pulling past the phalanx of guards, each of whom looked at us with nothing short of boredom in their eyes, which was a touch disconcerting since they had their guns pointed at us, too. Jarhead and two other men followed behind us in a golf cart.
“I didn’t think the Mafia hired out,” Nate said.
“It’s a recent development,” I said.
If you’re a decent crime boss, invested in staying a crime boss who rules from a mansion, not a prison cell, you take note of changes in law enforcement. It used to be easy to kill off your competition by bashing them to death with a phone and then burying them in a field somewhere or tossing them into a river.
That was before DNA testing and the advent of forensic crime scene investigation.
Beat someone to death with a phone and you’re going to leave a million clues for investigators, everything from skin cells to hair fibers to microscopic bits of plastic that contain their own fingerprints from their production cycle. Hit someone on the back of the head with an old rotary-dial phone and forensic experts will be able to trace one slice of plastic molding all the way back to the day it was poured.
Beat someone with your fists and you might as well just leave your social security number on the body, too.
Likewise, if you dig a grave in a cornfield, you’re going to leave footprints and fingerprints and hair follicles and skin cells from your car all the way to the grave, and unless you’re wearing a hazmat suit, there’s an excellent chance you’ll drop fibers from your car, your home, your victim’s clothing and your Doberman’s chew toy along with it all.
If you want to kill someone these days and want to avoid capture, you hire a professional.
Not a hit man.
A professional. Trained by the government in espionage and assassination. A person who not only knows how to kill but knows how not to leave evidence or, better, only leave evidence that points in the direction you want it to point. When investigations consisted only of a detective pounding on doors, you could afford to be brazen-pay off enough people above him and it wouldn’t matter what he found.
But today you’d need to pay off scientists in the basement of a university maybe five hundred miles away. You’d have to know what every single piece of evidence was to figure out which labs were being used.
You’d need to pay off a blood-spatter expert.
A biologist.
A chemical engineer.
The evidence chain used to go between one or two people. Now it’s more like a hundred.
Mafia bosses don’t get away with murder anymore because they’re criminal masterminds or are able to act above the law by virtue of their payoffs; they get away because they understand the science of investigation and how to kill someone in a clean environment. Or if they don’t, they hire people who do.
As we pulled up the expansive drive, I noticed that in addition to the men there were also the armor-plated cars Sam mentioned, the bikes and, to my surprise and delight, running around the vast acreage to the east of the house, about twenty children with balloons. I also made out a clown, a small elephant with a child on its back being guided around the circumference of the property and tables covered in presents, food and pyramids of glasses. There were a few older women sitting in lawn chairs and other younger women milling about with the children and lingering near the tables of food. Under a white tent there were a dozen tables being set up, and a series of cooking stations were being arranged along the back of the room. There were pink and white streamers everywhere, including one huge one strung across the front of the tent that said HAPPY 5TH BIRTHDAY, TINA!
“We grew up in the wrong part of town,” Nate said.
“I’m not so sure,” I said.
“Did I even have a fifth birthday?”
I told him I thought we went to Red Vest Pizza, a place our father liked to go to on account of the dollar beers. “There wasn’t a pachyderm in sight, if you’re curious,” I said. “Who is Tina?” I asked Gennaro.
“Christopher’s daughter.”
This new information-the party-required a distinct change in thought.
“Gennaro,” I said, “if at some point during this meeting it looks like there’s going to be a fight, just know that I’m not going to let anyone hurt you. Okay?”
“What?” Gennaro said, now in full panic.
“When was the last time you were in a fight?”
“Never,” he said.
“Not once?”
“I told you, Christopher protected me when we were kids, and these days I have people like you.”
People like me. Great.
“If it looks like a situation where you might find yourself in a compromised position, I’ll hit you first. If I have to hit you, just know you probably won’t remember it.” This didn’t ease Gennaro’s panic. “But it probably won’t come to that, really. So just be calm.”
I actually wanted Gennaro slightly uneasy, as if he were really being yanked about by someone like Tommy the Ice Pick.
Christopher Bonaventura was in the Mafia. Tommy the Ice Pick was in the mob.
The difference is that a person like Tommy the Ice Pick would actually kill you with his own hands. Christopher Bonaventura was more about outsourcing.
“And, Nate, don’t do anything, okay? I don’t want you getting hurt, either. These guys aren’t thugs, they’re actual professionals. Something happens to me that I can’t control, you’re not going to control it, either.”
“Then why am I here?”
“In case I need you to do something. And in that case, make it happen.”
That got Nate smiling. There’s a part of Nate’s reptilian brain that responds well to conversations that essentially state the obvious but in ways you might hear in old Clint Eastwood movies.
Nate parked the limo next to one of the black Suburbans, and by the time we stepped out Jarhead and the other two men were already waiting for us. Their guns were out of sight, but I figured Jarhead for the kind of guy who would prefer to stick his KA-BAR into your kidneys.
“Mr. Bonaventura is inside,” Jarhead said, as we walked toward the front of the mansion. Nate and Gennaro were just in front of me, the two other guards at their flanks. “He can give you ten minutes. Minute eleven and you’re back in your car. There is no negotiation.”
“If we get out in five,” I said, “you think I could get a slice of cake to go?”
“We get inside,” Jarhead said, “and you act like a gentleman and give me whatever you have on your leg, whatever you have on your back and anything else you think I might want. Minute eleven, you get it all back.”
“Yeah, and what’s in it for me?” I said.
Jarhead smiled. It wasn’t menacing. It wasn’t mocking. It wasn’t even an inadvertent twitching of the facial muscles. It looked like Jarhead was actually happy about something. “Your meeting goes off without a hitch,” he
