In Iraq and Afghanistan, it was more of the same, but a higher reliance on executing people and then altering the news, leafleting hamlets and then, if need be, engaging in blackmail, extortion and general malfeasance, all under the guise of democratic nation building.
Freedom has certain responsibilities, and very few of them are pretty if you happen to be standing on foreign soil and prefer a more totalitarian ruling technique.
“I don’t get a lot of mail,” I said. “I’m sort of an off-the-grid kinda guy, know what I’m saying? You ever live in the East?”
“Worked out there,” he said. “Went to school up North.”
Translation: was stationed in the Middle East, or at least dropped in a few times in the dead of night and took out Baath party members in advance of a Humvee line. Trained in North Africa, which meant we had similar skill sets.
Not a great development.
“You get to any clubs? Maybe I seen you at one?”
“Didn’t go out much after I stopped working at the post office,” he said. “Just wanted to stay home. And now I get to make my own hours. But who knows? Something interesting happens in the mail industry, maybe I’ll get back into it. I just love to work.”
Translation?
Covert Ops.
Decommissioned.
Freelance.
Loves to answer the phone at three a.m., put on black body armor and kill people.
Further translation:
No problem killing my entire family, if that’s what his orders were.
“Great,” I said. “Good you like your job.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds, each of us taking account.
There weren’t a lot of soft spots on Jarhead. My best chance with him would be to go for his eyes, try to get knuckle deep in one and see if he submitted, which was unlikely. Jarhead didn’t look like the kind of guy who submitted to anything.
Likewise, Jarhead was trying to calculate my soft spot. He looked me up and down slightly and then, almost imperceptibly, cut his gaze to Nate.
“Working with family is more rewarding,” he said. “I learned that from Mr. Bonaventura.”
He was good. And he knew it.
Happy with his progress in sussing out the threat level in the room, Jarhead told one of his men to get the boss, and a few moments later Christopher Bonaventura stepped into the room with a studied nonchalance.
In photos, Bonaventura looks dapper and collected, like he’s always about to sip a martini and smoke a cigar before engaging in a lively game of chance somewhere in Monaco, just prior to jumping on a Learjet bound for the Caymans.
Or ordering the murder of his father, because the truth is that he is a thug. Nothing more. Nothing less.
But on this day, he was a thug holding a birthday party for the five-year-old daughter, which meant he wasn’t looking terribly dapper. He had on a plain white T-shirt, tan shorts that showed off his pale knees, and I noticed that he hadn’t bothered to put on any shoes. There were bits of grass and dirt between his toes, and he smelled vaguely like cotton candy, which made sense since there were tiny pink gobs of it on his chin.
Bonaventura looked around the room, shrugged once, sat down on one of the couches, poured himself a glass of lemonade, drank it, wiped his mouth off with the back of his hand, and then turned to me and said, “Who the fuck are you?” His accent was prominent, but he’d been educated in America and spent enough time here to have a library stocked with books in English. It seemed like he was a big Harry Potter fan, but maybe that was for his kid.
“Tommy Feraci,” I said. I extended a hand towards him but he didn’t move. “From Las Vegas originally, but now I’m cohabitating in these here parts.” I pointed at Nate. “That’s my man Slade.” I pointed at Gennaro. “That’s your mark.”
“You know this guy, Gennaro?” Gennaro said he did. Bonaventura took another sip of his lemonade, swallowed, seemed to contemplate the information he had and then said, “You have some sort of business proposal for me, is that right?”
“Not so much a proposal,” I said. “I don’t propose. This is more like an infomercial. I’m gonna tell you what’s what and then you tell me how much you’re buying.”
Christopher Bonaventura burst out laughing. He laughed until it became uncomfortable for the rest of us standing and watching him, so I sat down across from him, poured myself a glass of lemonade, too, and waited for him to calm down, which he did directly.
“I like you,” Bonaventura said. “You come to my home, during my daughter’s birthday, you bring my old friend Gennaro with you like a captive and then you tell me how it’s going to be. You don’t need my permission Tommy. Go about your business with Gennaro with my blessing. That’s how much I like you. None of my business.”
“I think that’s where we aren’t seeing things correctly. My business with Gennaro directly relates to your business with Gennaro.”
“I’m not in business with Gennaro,” he said. “Are we, Gennaro?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Gennaro said.
“You leave that up to your wife now, too?” Bonaventura said. “First she tells you who you can be friends with, and now she tells you what to think? Your father would be ashamed of you.”
Gennaro flinched but didn’t say anything.
“Here’s the dilly-o,” I said, ignoring whatever was going on between the two of them. And by ignoring, I mean that I was paying absolute attention, but that Tommy the Ice Pick had a single-minded determination to get on with the conversation. “I can’t have you working the open seas like you’re Gaspar. This is my water, so you won’t be fixing races on it unless I say so.”
“Gennaro, why would you tell him I’m doing that?”
Gennaro looked at me and then back at Bonaventura. If he followed the script, we’d be fine. “He has my wife and child,” Gennaro said. “He told me if I don’t lose the race he’ll kill them and then me.”
Perfect.
“Here’s how it is,” I said. I motioned to Nate, who was holding up a bookcase with his back while trying to look menacing. “My guy Slade over there takes a lot of action on these races, and everyone he talked to this week said the Pax Bellicosa was the way to go. Lots of cheese going that direction. So I made a couple calls. Talked to some guys on the other boats-and by talk, I think you know what I’m saying, right, Chrissy? — and it all came back to you.”
“If this were true,” he said, “why would it be any concern of yours? Where did you say you’re from?”
“Las Vegas originally. Spent a couple years in Angola-the one in Louisiana-and finished up down here at Glades, and my friends have been nice enough to let me set up my own shop here. Guess I just got used to the clean Florida life,” I said. “See, no disrespect, but this race isn’t being held in Corfu, so you want to get into this in Miami, you go through my shop. And then there’s the issue that my shop has certain worldwide interests involving Mr. Stefania here, and they don’t involve him winning any more races.”
Bonaventura stood up and walked over to the window. He was still sipping on his lemonade. Perfectly casual. Not a single ounce of stress in his bones. “You seem like a reasonable person, Tommy.”
“That’s what people say,” I said.
“And I think I’m a reasonable person. Wouldn’t you say that, Gennaro? That people consider me reasonable above all else?”
“I don’t know,” Gennaro said.
“Sure you do,” Bonaventura said. “Wasn’t I reasonable when you came to me for help? Wasn’t I reasonable in not telling your family of your own insecurities? Wasn’t I reasonable when we were kids, Gennaro? Didn’t I handle all of your problems then in a reasonable way?”
I didn’t like where this was going.
“Hey, everybody thinks everybody is a peach, right?” I said.
“Right,” Bonaventura said. “So let’s do a little algebra, Tommy. Is the water in… what did you say, Corfu?… is
