So if you’re really invested in subterfuge as a profession, you want to find a sport that doesn’t rely on any kind of points or any kind of luck. A sport that exists on an equal playing field, where wins and losses are calculated by human error, machinery and the unpredictable aspect of nature. Like horse racing. Betting on animals is stupid. They’re animals. They don’t know what they’re doing. But at least the playing field is even, since none of the horses is any more sentient than the other. And because they are animals, they can’t rat you out. Or NASCAR. The advent of the restrictor plate means that engine power became uniform in many of the races, or at least the races you’d want to fix, like Daytona and Talladega. Betting on cars is just as stupid as betting on animals, since they tend to break down, crash and then blow up and kill people, which frequently requires investigation. But cars don’t speak, either, which means you can disable one without anyone ever knowing, particularly if you are at least somewhat adept with remote devices. And provided no one is immolated in the process, you might just get away with it, too.
Or boat racing. In a regatta, like the one the Pax Bellicosa was about to run in, all the yachts are precisely the same, Swan 45s, sleek racing yachts with towering sails totaling more than 1,400 feet of mainsail and jib. With the machinery uniform, you fix a race not by tweaking the system, but by altering-or failing to perform-the subtle duties of the people on the boat, none more so than the helmsman.
Gennaro’s job.
Think of a helmsman like a quarterback, but one who not only knows how to throw a tight spiral and read defenses, but also has an intimate relationship with wind currents and retrograde velocity. The helmsman doesn’t simply pilot the boat and direct the other members of the team; he interprets the elements.
The other men on the boat can effect change, too. It can be as simple as reacting a few moments late on an order, carrying more weight on your person than expected, or, if need be, falling overboard.
If you need to make a lot of money fast-and that means illegally-you want to avoid the ponies and cars, since both are bet on regularly without criminal involvement, and both are so deeply regulated that trying to muscle in to affect a race of any significance is simply not worth the time and effort. It would take less time to heist a casino.
But the international regatta world is different. The players-the people who own the yachts-are millionaires and billionaires, which means that most of the fans are of a similar caste. Instead of a league like the NFL, yacht racing is frequently proctored, at least overseas, by the luxury corporations. Makers of watches, fine wines and cars advertise at these events to suggest a way of life. In addition to the races, these corporations run a week of events catering to every desire of the fan base. This means fashion shows, wine tastings, seminars where Warren Buffett comes in and talks about how to fold money properly-things like that.
According to that morning’s Miami Herald, for the next week the inhabitants of South Beach would be worth collectively more than the GNP of Honduras. It wasn’t much of a surprise to me, then, when I picked up Fiona and found her in a more chipper mood than the day previous, particularly after I filled her in on the latest job I’d found myself party to.
“You don’t intend to pretend that you don’t require payment again, do you?” she asked. We were in the Charger heading toward my mother’s house. I thought bringing Fi with me on the drive of shame back to my mother’s house would make it less awful. I didn’t really want to go and fight with my mother, but the longer I waited to drop off her gifts, the more likely I was to take them apart and use them for something else. Ever find yourself imprisoned in your home and need to make an IED? Turning a slow cooker into a bomb takes only a few household cleaning items, a bit of foam from an old ice chest and, if you’re looking to really hurt someone, a handful of paper clips, or, in a pinch, the zipper from your pants.
I also figured that if I had Fiona with me, two things might happen: I’d attempt to be more civil in the face of the now-vivid memories I had of my leg encased in plaster, and I’d be able to use her as an excuse to get out of recaulking the fireplace or cutting a cord of wood for the frigid spring months, or shoving my hand into the disposal again to fish out calcified animal fat.
“Sam was working on the financial end,” I said.
“And to think your government used to trust you,” she said.
“The job came through a contact of Sam’s,” I said.
“So now there’s a finder’s-keepers rule?”
“Whatever you need will be covered, Fi,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you’re coming out of this with your own catamaran. Just because these people have money doesn’t mean anything.”
I never liked taking money. It made this all feel like a job, like something I was now doing permanently versus doing to keep my skills up, or to bide time, or simply because it was the right thing to do. You’re employed by the people when you’re a spy, even if they aren’t aware of it most of the time, and my feeling was that once I figured out my burn notice, I’d be paid back.
But, just the same, I have to eat. And Fi needs shoes and purses and that lipstick that makes her lips look irresistible, and I’d prefer she made money with me instead of selling guns or picking up jobs for bounty hunters and such.
Even if we weren’t together as in together, life was still fundamentally more interesting with Fiona in the frame.
“I once owned a yacht, I’ll have you know,” Fi said.
“Owned?”
“Possessed might be a better word,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means for about a month I managed to live on one off the coast of Montenegro, fully staffed, even had a girl who came in and fluffed the pillows and a small boy who would come in at night-fall with a plate of cookies and chocolates.”
“What happened?” I said.
“The owners came out of their comas.”
“That happens,” I said.
Fiona had the dossier from Sam’s friend Jimenez and was flipping through it absently. Fi has always been more of a read-and-react kind of girl versus the type to do in-depth critical analysis, which means she’s best on her feet with a gun or an M-19 grenade launcher or just her fists, using her experience as a guide instead of doctrine.
“He’s cute,” Fi said. I looked over and saw the photo of Gennaro with Bonaventura.
“Which one?”
“The gentleman in the fifteen-thousand-dollar suit.”
“That’s Christopher Bonaventura.”
“I know.”
“He’s one of our problems.”
“He doesn’t look like much. He has a manicure in this photo. I’ve never liked a man who cared for his nails.”
“I’m going to guess that he has a staff who digs the graves and dumps the people in them.”
“Gennaro seems below his pay grade.”
I explained to Fiona that when you get down to the working level of the yacht-racing business, after Rolex lays out their cash for their race and Ferrari theirs, much of the hard work, the swinging of hammers, the actual running of the show, falls into other hands: the mafia. Not even the America’s Cup could avoid a scandal a few years ago when the race was held in the Sicilian port city of Trapani and lucrative deals were cut with government officials for the Cosa Nostra to gain huge windfalls of cash, both in construction contracts and, just for kicks, the nebulous realm of “entertainment.”
You have two choices if you want to place major action on a yacht race. You can either shout across your bow at the captain of international industry anchored just adjacent to you, or you make a call to someone like Christopher Bonaventura. Bonaventura-or someone like him, since there are a hundred men just like him in Miami alone, never mind Italy-will give odds and take proposition wagers, and will treat you like the king you might very well be. If you’re a billionaire, dealing with someone like Bonaventura isn’t really like getting yourself involved in organized crime, since in your case, it’s truly a victimless crime. You win, he pays. You lose, you pay. No one ends up getting their legs broken. It’s a world of high-stakes betting by people who can afford to lose.