The End Game Read online

“That’s what all women look like after age 70, Michael, to punish men like you for disregarding women like me in our prime,” she said and then got out of the car before I could respond, which was fine, because I didn’t have a response.

  I reached into the backseat and grabbed the Crock-Pot and the toaster oven, made a silent vow to myself to be pleasant and then got out of the car and walked up the front lawn toward the house. When I reached them, Fiona was already in the middle of hugs and kisses from my mother and warm handshakes from the woman dressed like a drag queen. I set the boxes down and tried to look dutiful.

  “Loretta,” Ma said to the woman, all pretense of joy gone, “this is my son Michael. He’s the one who works in shipping and receiving.”

  Passive.

  Aggressive.

  My mother.

  “A pleasure,” I said, and shook Loretta’s hand, which was like shaking a leather bag filled with chicken bones.

  Loretta looked me over with what could only be called disappointment. “My son works in Tallahassee,” Loretta said.

  “That’s great to hear,” I said.

  “For the governor,” she said.

  “Even better.”

  “Michael, Loretta just moved in across the way. I’ve been telling her all about you.”

  “I see that,” I said.

  “Your mother says you help people,” Loretta said.

  I smiled. I envisioned helping Loretta’s son out of a life of public service by virtue of the wholesale carpet bombing of Tallahassee, which, as far as capital cities goes, is about as aesthetically pleasing as a bleeding cyst. I smiled some more. I pushed my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose. And then I spoke, as calmly as possible.

  “My mother overestimates my abilities,” I said.

  “I have a package that needs to get to Milton-Freewater overnight,” Loretta said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Your mother said you worked for-who was it, Madeline?”

  My mother took a puff on her cigarette and really pondered the question. “Well, he doesn’t like to talk about it. Do you, Michael?”

  “No,” I said. I looked at Fiona, tried to curry a little sympathy for the torture, but she was enjoying this far too much. There’s not a lot of sympathy that exists in Fiona.

  “Was it FedEx?” Loretta said. “Or those brown people?”

  “That’s them,” my mother said. She jabbed her cigarette at me in affirmation. “UPS, right, Michael?”

  My mother would have made an excellent counterterrorism operative. You want to stop a terrorist cell from pouring polonium into the water supply? Need to stifle an assassination plot? Have to secure a booby-trapped bridge? Just drop my mother into the center of activity and by day’s end she’d have guilted every single person into passivity.

  “That’s right, Ma,” I said. “If you have a package I can deliver, why, Loretta, you just leave it on the trunk of my car and I’ll make sure it gets where it needs to go in twenty-four hours or less, or I’ll refund your money.”

  “I’ll do that,” Loretta said. She looked over at the Charger, back at me, briefly at Fiona, and then paused with a finger to her upper lip, seemingly confounded by something just out of her mental reach, which, if pressed, I’d say was the majority of human knowledge. “Would you like me to see if there are any openings in the mailroom where my son works?”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I love my job.”

  “That car is a hazard. And the gas prices you’re paying, well, you’re leaving quite the carbon footprint.”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “My son, he’s an accountant. He could look at your finances.”

  “Is he single?” Fiona asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “He likes women with some meat on their bones, not you South Beach types.” Loretta reached over and gave Fiona’s waist a pinch, causing Fi to emit a high-pitched squeal. People have lost the ability to walk for less. “If you turn to the side, no one can see you. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Fi said, but it was in a tone of voice that indicated to me that we were all about ten seconds away from being party to a homicide.

  I gave my mother a look meant to alert her of that very thing, but she was already in motion. “Loretta was just leaving,” Ma said, and gave her new neighbor a slight push on the small of her back, like you would a puppy who wasn’t getting outside fast enough.

  “I thought we were going to play canasta,” Loretta said.

  “Can’t you see my son is here? We’ll play some other time.”

  We stood on the porch and watched Loretta walk across the street, which was a long and arduous process.

  “She seems nice,” I said.

  “She’s a pill,” my mother said with absolutely no emotion at all. She reached down and picked up one of the boxes. “Is this the act of contrition or is it the other one?”

  “I bought both of them prior to lunch,” I said.

  “Well, bring them in and I’ll make some coffee while you apologize to me.”

  Two hours, a fixed halogen lamp first purchased when men in Miami were wearing pink T-shirts and white blazers, the systematic removal of spoiled food from the refrigerator (my mother had a veritable museum devoted to discontinued Swan-son chicken TV dinners deep in the permafrost of her freezer) and two bags of leaves raked from the backyard later, and I had served my penance.

  All while Fi and my mother sat on the sofa, reading magazines and watching Gary Coleman’s E! True Hollywood Story.

  “He hated his mother, too,” my mother said, pointing at the television.

  “I don’t hate you, Ma,” I said. Though I was now covered in sweat and smelled vaguely like a mixture of freezer burn and mulch, which didn’t exactly turn on the warm part of my heart. It was a little too much like when Nate and I were kids and we’d wake up to find a to-do list on the kitchen counter that consisted of the sort of chores perhaps best done by a crew of adult men.

  You’ve not lived until you’ve fallen from a palm tree with a saw in your hand.

  Even then, I didn’t actually break my leg.

  “I feel… frustrated… occasionally by you, but that’s not hate, Ma.”

  “I wanted to talk about that,” she said.

  This was about to be bad news.

  “Ma,” I said, “I’ve got a busy week ahead of me. Right, Fi?”

  “I’m not privy to your intimate plans, Michael,” Fiona said.

  My mother ignored us both. “I’ve made us an appointment.”

  “I’m not going to any more therapy appointments,” I said.

  “This isn’t therapy,” she said. “Loretta said she and her son really connected after seeing this woman.”

  I looked at Fiona for support, but she wasn’t giving any indication that she cared. She was back to being riveted by Gary Coleman. “What a strange little man,” she said. You grow up in Ireland, the easiest things capture you.

  “You said yourself that woman is a pill.”

  “But she and her son have a wonderful relationship.”

  “So do you and Nate,” I said.

  My mom frowned.

  I know how to speak more languages than a translator at the UN. I can shoot someone between the eyes from half a mile away. If I’m shackled to an anchor and dropped overboard in the Caspian Sea, provided the currents are light and I’ve got a paper clip, I can be free and swimming the backstroke in thirty seconds.

  But I don’t know how to diffuse my mother’s frown. Didn’t at ten. Don’t now.

  “I thought we were done with this stuff,” I said. “You kicked the last therapist out of the house.”

  “I think your recovery has hit a bump. They said it would happen.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “Well, on television. There’s a reality program about just this sort of thing and they say that people frequently return to their problems. They call it backsliding.”

  “There’s a reality show about a spy
whose mother makes him go to therapy?”

  “Michael, the point is you have to deal with your addiction.”

  “I’m not addicted to anything, Ma. What is this show?”

  “It follows drunks around and such. But the parallels are very clear to me and would be to you, too. Anyway, this isn’t about healing; it’s about bonding. We don’t ever bond, Michael. We just fight over the past and I’m tired of it. We need to make new memories.”

  “How do you make a new memory? By definition, a memory has already happened.”

  “For someone so worldly, you’re awfully naive about the way real people think,” she said.

  I exhaled, which was good because I’d been holding my breath without even knowing it. Sometimes, it’s just easier not to breathe around my mother. It reminds me that things could be worse. I could be buried alive, for instance.

  “When?” I said.

  “End of the week.”

  “What time?”

  “One. We’ll get lunch first. There’s a charming diner just across the street where Loretta says you can get soy smoothies.”

  “You don’t even like soy,” I said. I had doubts she knew what it was, but I decided to keep that to myself.

  “Michael, I’m making the effort,” she said.

  “If I’m busy,” I said, “I’ll call you.”

  “What could you possibly be doing?”

  Just as I was about to explain to my mother the entirety of the possibilities, I was saved by the ringing of my cell phone. It was Sam.

  “Mikey,” he said, “there’s been a slight change of plans.” His voice sounded a touch on the anxious side. If there’s one thing to know about Sam Axe, he doesn’t get overly anxious.

  “We didn’t have any plans, Sam.”

  “Right. That’s the change.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Incognito.”

  “A little more specific, Sam?”

  “About a hundred meters from your mother’s house, watching the person watching you.”

  I walked across the living room, out the front door and onto the porch. On the trunk of my car was Loretta’s package, which was wrapped with so much tape that I could actually see my reflection in it. I looked down both sides of the street. Nothing. “I don’t see you,” I said.

  “That’s because I’m a highly trained operative, Mike,” he said. “Do you see the Lexus parked on the other side of the stop sign to your southeast?”

  I turned and casually gazed down the street behind me, gave a hearty belly laugh and patted the top of my head like a trained monkey, all while staring at a car in the wrong neighborhood. The last time someone pulled down this street in a silver Lexus IS and parked under a shady tree for the afternoon… well, they were probably looking for me, too. This is a Dodge and Honda street, and Honda had to muscle its way in.

  Inside the car was a man trying to look inconspicuous, which is difficult when the burned spy you’re watching is looking right at you and could, if he wanted, pull you from the car by your eyebrows.

  “Who is he?” I asked, still in full laugh. Just having a nice day on the front lawn. Inhaling the humidity. Enjoying the clouds in the sky. Having a pleasant conversation with my buddy the ex- Navy SEAL about the meathead in a Lexus and relishing the start of hurricane season.

  “I’m not sure,” Sam said. “I’ve got a buddy running the plates now. But he isn’t one of ours. Not a Fed boy.”

  “No,” I said, “the Lexus gives that away. When did you pick him up?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I came here to give you the news on what I’d found out about Gennaro’s problem and saw him. You want me to bring the wrath of Neighborhood Watch Commander Chuck Finley upon him?”

  I looked around again to see if I could locate Sam. He was really hiding quite well, though his tendency to wear floral prints was probably helping the situation here in the land of palm trees and birds of paradise.

  “Give me a minute to get back inside,” I said.

  “Got it,” Sam said.

  Just as I started to walk back toward the house, Loretta came sprinting-well, comparatively speaking-from across the street, her pelican shirt buttoned haphazardly, her hair in a set of rollers, a single word bursting from her in a fracture of frenzied repetition: “PERVERT! PERVERT! PERVERT!”

  “Sam?”

  “CALL NINE-ONE-ONE. CALL NINE-ONE-ONE. CALL NINE-ONE-ONE…”

  “I’m Oscar Mike,” Sam said, slipping into the military parlance for, essentially, “on the move,” which was fine since the Lexus was officially Oscar Mike, too.

  “Great,” I said. “Tell me she didn’t see your face.”

  “Impossible,” he said. He didn’t sound terribly convincing, which might have been because he was sprinting away from his previous location, which I suspect was somewhere near Loretta’s bathroom, judging by the way she was screaming, the status of her hair and her difficultly in putting her clothing back on correctly.

  “Let me diffuse this before my mother calls in an airstrike,” I said.

  “PERVERT! IN MY BACKYARD! PERVERT! CALL NINE-ONE-ONE!”

  “I’ll meet you back at the loft,” he said. “We’ve got a few, uh, problems I need to fill you in on.”

  “Of course you do,” I said.

  “Oh, and Mikey? Maybe stay away from anyone who looks like they might be, you know, gang affiliated between now and when we meet up.”

  “PERVERT! DO YOU HEAR ME? PERVERT!”

  Loretta was only a few feet away from me and gaining as quickly as a snail might gain on a cheetah. “Tell me you didn’t tweak Bonaventura,” I said.

  “Ah, Mikey, it was just one of those things that happens unexpectedly in the course of gathering information,” Sam said.

  “Like peeping on someone’s grandmother, Sam?”

  “I didn’t see a thing,” Sam said, “and I’ll take that to the grave.”

  “ARE YOU CALLING NINE-ONE-ONE?”

  “You might have to,” I said.

  “I’ll fill you in,” he said, “but right now I’ve gotta jump over a fence guarded by a pair of vicious-looking poodles.” Working with Sam was like working with a meat grinder: The end result tended to be palatable, but getting there occasionally involved a bit more blood and guts than you might expect. “And hey, Mikey? I need you to remind me never to get dentures, okay?”

  6

  There’s no such thing as an entirely safe Web site. There are levels of security, firewalls and booby traps and encrypted trapdoors that will send a rank amateur back to his single bed in his mother’s basement, but for anyone with a dedicated desire to break into a site, nothing is impossible. You don’t need to be a spy, or even of voting age, to figure out how to dismantle what one would presume to be the most secure sites.

  NASA?

  The Pentagon?

  Both were hacked by the same fifteen-year-old boy, Jonathan James. A few years later, NASA, the Navy, the Energy Department and Jet Propulsion Laboratory were all hacked by the same twenty-year-old Romanian, Victor Faur. At the same time, NASA was being hacked by an unemployed British man named Gary McKinnon, who was looking for evidence of extraterrestrial life… and was doing it from his girlfriend’s aunt’s bedroom, which isn’t exactly like working out of Quantico.

  Hacking into the highest levels of American government doesn’t require an MIT education, not if your girlfriend’s aunt has a broadband connection, and not if you know even a little bit about moving around encryption devices and have a good understanding of how to rewrite programs to work for you, not against you.

  Sam doesn’t have an MIT education, either. He doesn’t mainline Red Bull. He’s not prone to wearing jaunty capes while discussing his favorite manga characters with his buddies in his parents’ basement. He’s done some “special projects” for the government, so he knows his way around a computer, but doesn’t have the skills to hack his own bank to move a few zeros around, much less search for the existence of space alie
ns on NASA’s Web site. So while I’d been busy cleaning my mother’s house that morning, Sam was trying to work a few contacts who could take a look at the Web site streaming the video of Gennaro’s wife and daughter. He probably didn’t plan on eventually scaring a half-naked grandmother out of her house a few hours later, but then not all days go exactly how you plan them.

  Which is how he ended up having a breakfast date at the Roasters ’n’ Toasters deli on South Dixie Highway with a former NSA basement dweller named Walt. He’d called Walt the night previous in hopes of handling things on the phone, but Walt was one of those old-school guys who liked to be face-to-face, though Sam got the impression the guy just wanted a free meal. The more aggravating aspect was that Walt, now that he was retired, thought meeting somewhere at six a.m. was perfectly normal. Sam hoped that once his pension came in, he wouldn’t be one of those people. He didn’t want to see six a.m. unless he was creeping up behind it on the way home.

  But there Sam sat, surrounded by a breakfast gang that seemed to know each other intimately. Sharing newspapers. Bitching about the Democrats. Drinking coffee like their prostates were made of Teflon. Not a Bloody Mary or Mimosa to be found, which Sam considered a punishable offense.

  “You come here a lot?” Sam asked.

  “Every morning,” Walt said. “Most of the people here are ex-military or government. It’s a good crowd.”

  “Just so I understand,” Sam said, “you spent thirty years in the NSA so you could retire, move to Miami and surround yourself with all of the same people?”

  “You want that I should have gone to San Fran cisco and moved into some liberal hippie commune?”

  Sam liked Walt, thought he was a nice enough fellow, a good American, all that, but he got the feeling Walt hadn’t turned on a television since Reagan left office. That wasn’t punishable, but watching him eat runny scrambled eggs might have been, which he’d been doing for the last fifteen minutes. Three times the waitress had brought over a plate of eggs, and three times Walt had sent it back after a few bites, saying the consistency wasn’t right, until finally the waitress brought over a serving that made Sam seriously ponder vegetarianism for a few moments.