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 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?”