The End Game

“Maybe friend is a bit of a stretch,” Sam said. “A guy I know from a thing I did in Latvia a few years ago-let’s just say it was totally legal within the constructs of common treaties currently in place-has a small business venture whereby certain people come to him looking for help with projects that require sensitivity and care in the retrieval of certain products or persons. A former client of his contacted him today in relation to an event of a dangerous nature.”

“So,” I said, “a mercenary?”

“Essentially,” Sam said.

“If he’s so good,” I said, “why did he need to come to you with things of a ‘dangerous nature’?”

“This job is a little out of his area of expertise.”

On the beach, people were playing volleyball, tossing Frisbees, applying suntan lotion. A bank of thick gray clouds lined the horizon, making me think that a storm might be coming, or if it were like any other Miami afternoon, they’d just sit out there all day as if to let everyone know that somewhere else people had it just slightly worse.

I sighed. It was better than speaking.

“And my friend isn’t technically allowed in America,” Sam said.

I sighed again. This one was meant to convey a sense of quiet resignation tinged with muddled anger.

“Now, Mikey,” Sam said, “I wouldn’t have agreed to take this job if it didn’t seem like something you could do with your eyes closed. You wouldn’t even need to take off your sunglasses.”

“Where is this client?”

“He’s staying at the Setai,” Sam said.

The Setai is the most expensive hotel in South Beach. It’s the kind of hotel you stay in when you want people to know that money means nothing to you, but not in the frugal sense. Odds are that if you’re staying at the Setai, you don’t have a Crock-Pot and a toaster oven in your trunk, you didn’t have lunch at T.G.I. Friday’s and your problems are not the kind that can be solved with your sunglasses on.

“Who is this person? One of the Medicis?”

Sam cleared his throat, “Gennaro Stefania.” He waited, as if I might suddenly bolt from the table, or pass out, or have any response at all.

“That supposed to mean something to me?”

“At any time in the last ten years did you pick up a magazine with an actress or model on the cover?”

“No.”

“People?”

“No.”

“You are aware such magazines exist?”

“I am aware that I’m about thirty seconds from going home.”

Sam slid the manila file folder toward me. I opened it and saw a photo of a man on the deck of a catamaran cutting through rough seas. There were other men surrounding him, but for reasons unknown their faces were pixelated. The man looked to be about forty, athletic, his arms long and sinewy with muscle, like a runner’s. He was handsome in a regular way, which is to say he didn’t look like a model, just your average alpha male: an angular face, deep-set green eyes, wavy brown hair.

I turned the page and saw a word that immediately made me close the file: Ottone.

The Ottones were a family made for tabloid journalism. They were nineteenth-century money that had migrated from land wealth in the Old World to the currency of luxury: the Lux, a two- seater sports car modeled after their Formula One racecars, which became quickly favored in the 1970s by men on their way to the disco and the women who loved them, in the ’80s by would-be investment bankers and the women who held their cocaine and hair gel, in the ’90s by midlife-crisis humans of all sexes who didn’t realize they weren’t driving Porches. In the twenty-first century, they sold their car line to Ford and began a full-throttle investment into opulence: clothing lines, jewelry, watches, fragrance, casino properties. They added their name to anything that connoted the good life, including Fashion Week in Milan, tennis tournaments and golf opens in Dubai, polo in England, open-wheel racing in Monte Carlo, nightclubs in New York and Los Angeles that attracted people who merely wanted to be near the kind of money they’d never earn. In a few years people would think Ottone was just another word, not a proper name.

And with all of that, of course, comes scandal. Mistresses, drug addictions, deaths-the sorts of things that happen to normal people all the time but that are heightened by a place in world society.

A place I was not interested in being a part of.

A place Gennaro Stefania was connected with by virtue of being married to Maria Ottone, which was a little like being married to the key to Fort Knox.

A place that invariably led to publicity. Not what a burned spy craves, ironically.

“Not interested,” I said, and slid the file back to Sam.

“His family is in peril,” Sam said. His voice was serious, but I could tell that he’d practiced that line. Peril wasn’t a word that rolled off Sam’s tongue.

“Isn’t that the sort of thing that would be on the news by now?”

“It’s complicated,” Sam said.

“This is not something I can do with my sunglasses on, Sam, I can tell you that already.”

“It’ll be a piece of cake,” Sam said, “trust me.” He swallowed the last of his Stella and stood up.

“You going somewhere?”