that the same water that flows through this bay?”
“Hey,” I said, “I ain’t some kinda waterologist here. You want someone to explain to you how water works, go get yourself a dolphin. You want to know how money works, we can talk.” I was walking a very thin line between cocky and the victim of an assassination, though I thought it was unlikely Jarhead would do anything to me. If he knew who I was, he knew what I was capable of, and I was capable of taking down this entire room in less than a minute, though when I looked over at Jarhead again I did some quick math and decided it would probably take an extra forty seconds or so to deal with him. Thing was, right when I looked over at Jarhead he looked right at me, as if maybe he was doing the same math. “No disrespect,” I continued, “but this isn’t bocce ball we’re talking about here.”
Bonaventura laughed again. “You pretend that you’re dumb, Tommy,” he said. He walked back across the room and stood directly in front of me, so that I had to look up at him from my spot on the sofa. I could see the smoothness of his skin up close, could smell his cologne, could see the glint of diamonds off his watch.
Could break both of his legs in fifteen seconds.
Maybe less.
“But I know you’re smart,” he said, and then pointed a finger at me, but not in a threatening way. Just pointing out the obvious. “So I’m going to explain to you one time the universal truth of this business you think you’re in. All the water that I see is mine. I don’t care where in the world I am-if I want it, it’s mine. If I choose to have sway over a race in Miami, or in Italy, or in the fucking toilet you sit on each morning, I do it. There is no why. I do it. So you tell your people to leave his family alone, or you, your people, everyone your people know, have a problem. Do we understand?”
“I don’t know who we are,” I said. I spread my legs out so Bonaventura was actually in the V between my feet, effectively trapping him where he stood. “But I know I understand one thing, and you told me another.”
“Your smugness is not becoming and it will not last,” Bonaventura said. He looked down and saw my legs. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a birthday party to get back to.”
If you were a lunatic, this would be the moment when you would kick Christopher Bonaventura in the knees, and then while he was down you’d probably kick him in the head, too. You’d stand on top of him and you’d say something you first heard on television or in a music video or uttered by an action hero… And then Jarhead would shoot you in the back of your skull.
Tommy the Ice Pick was a lunatic.
Michael Westen didn’t want to get shot in the back of the head.
But neither of us was letting him go yet.
“Out of curiosity,” I said, “where do you get an elephant? My kid, she’s always asking for a puppy or a gerbil, and I figure one day, who knows, I might pick one up. But you can’t just go into PetSmart and find yourself an elephant, am I right?”
“Move your legs,” Bonaventura said.
“I’m not done talking to you yet,” I said. “I’m not some punk you can just brush off. I’ve got people ready to kill your friend Gennaro’s wife if things don’t go as I want them to go. Show him your phone, G.”
Gennaro dug his phone from his pocket and handed it to Bonaventura, who looked at the video for a moment and handed it back without a word.
I couldn’t tell if he was surprised or not. So I explained it to him; see if he blinked. He showed nothing, so I went on. “You want that I kill Maria and make poor Liz watch? You want that on your plate? Because the first person the FBI and cops and Interpol look to isn’t going to be Tommy Feraci. It’s going to be you, Chrissy. You think the FBI isn’t going to find out you’ve been fixing his races? That’s some RICO shit right there, partner, and it’s a lot easier to prove than mail fraud.”
“You have nothing,” Bonaventura said. “They have nothing.”
“No, they had nothing on Capone. You know where he ended up? Right here in Miami, brain sick from the syphilis. Ended up dead in his big-ass mansion over on Palm Island. You can probably see his place out your window, right there on your water. Me? I got your friend Gennaro here,” I said. “I got every single person my guy Slade put an ounce of pressure on, each rolled on you like it was their job, like if they rolled on you, I was gonna give ’em health benefits and a 401(k), you know? Rolled and rolled and rolled, Chrissy. Just one look from Slade was all it took. One look.”
Nate straightened up. Flexed his jaw muscles. Sucked in his stomach, puffed out his chest, narrowed his eyes. I’d ask him later where he picked up those moves, since it made him look like he had the stomach flu.
“That’s why we’re here,” I continued. “Just being a gentleman about things. Being reasonable. You let Gennaro’s interests go, or his wife dies, maybe his kid, too, and it’s on your ass. Besides, you’ve made your nut off of this, right? You can absorb a few gambling losses this week, right?”
Taking risks is about calculating the possibility of success. Hit a 17 against a face card in blackjack and it isn’t a risk, it’s poor judgment. Telling a mafioso exactly how he would be implicated in the murder of one of the wealthiest women in the world is just good business sense.
Provided the Mafioso isn’t already planning the same murder, of course.
That’s where the risk came in. I had to hope I was making the right play.
Bonaventura briefly shifted his eyes over to Jarhead. A real bully only attacks when he knows he can’t be beaten, when he has someone else to handle his business if it looks like the odds aren’t in his favor. And Christopher Bonaventura definitely had the odds.
“You touch Maria Ottone, and you will not sleep another night,” Bonaventura said.
A person with actual skill and training doesn’t care about the odds, especially when fighting someone who has always relied on personal intimidation and not actual physical prowess in defeating his opponents… Or if the person with skill is actually looking to get hit.
“I wouldn’t dream of touching her,” I said. “The plan is for one of my guys to chain her to the anchor, toss her over and see if she’s Houdini.” I looked at my watch. “In about fifteen minutes, if they don’t hear from me, Gennaro’s wife will be under your water, Chrissy.”
If you want to avoid getting hit in the face and aren’t much of a fighter, the best thing to do is run away. Adrenaline and fear will give you a burst of speed that your attacker may not be able to match. It will also give you the opportunity to find a weapon or, better, other people. Civil society is usually more of a deterrent to violence than a piece of balsa wood being waved by someone in mortal fear for their life.
If running isn’t an option, you want to control the situation as best as you can. That means controlling the point of attack. If you’re going to get hit in the face-if, in fact, you’re encouraging someone to hit you in the face-the forehead is the best possible landing position for their fist.
The forehead’s main job is to protect your brain, which makes it one of the hardest plates in the human body. As a side benefit, your forehead has an interstate of thick blood vessels crisscrossing from just above your eyebrows up through your hairline, and, when punctured, they tend to geyser. It’s how every professional wrestler is able to bleed out on the mat and still make it back into the ring the next weekend.
Most people not involved in professional wrestling don’t care for the sight of blood, particularly not blood in geyser form.
The other side benefit is that there’s a pretty good chance that the person hitting you in the forehead is going to break his hand or at least a few fingers or knuckles, especially if you’re someone like Christopher Bonaventura, who’d just tucked his thumb into his fist; it’s a common tactic seen in five-year-old girls and nervous Mafia bosses who realize they’ve been backed into a corner by someone calling himself Tommy the Ice Pick.
So as Christopher Bonaventura swung down at me, I tilted my head back and thrust my neck upward, letting him catch me flush in the forehead, but without losing any control over my neck muscles.
If you don’t want to get knocked out when being hit in the head or face, you have to learn to control the acceleration and deceleration of your head and neck muscles. When someone hits you in the face and you pass out, what’s actually happening is that you’re having a stroke.
A very small stroke, but a stroke just the same.
You want to avoid having a stroke.
A rotary blow-a roundhouse left, for instance-will cause your head to swivel sharply, compressing and constricting your carotid arteries, which is not a good thing if you enjoy having regular cardiac function or the ability to speak.
An uppercut works in much the same way, except that instead of constricting the carotid, the whiplash effect
