Hostile Takeover

  “John?” Alice asked me one night after we broke in our vintage Eero Aarnio floating bubble chair.

  “Yes, my sweet boudoir contortionist?”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I will be when I regain feeling in my lower extremities. What’s on your mind?”

  “I’m . . . this is so hard to say. Not hard, but weird.”

  “How weird could it be? We’re naked in an acrylic bubble chair. We just drank half a bottle of absinthe and we’re listening to Jimmy Page play banjo on a super-rare Japanese import eight-track—”

  “I don’t mean that kind of weird. I mean . . . I’ll just say it. I’m scared. Okay, happy?”

  She punched me in the shoulder. It really hurt.

  “Not anymore.”

  She kissed it to make it all better.

  “I’m sorry. This is going to sound arrogant and idiotic but I have never really felt this way.”

  “Scared?”

  “Yeah, scared.”

  “It does sound a bit suspect, but that’s neither here nor there. What are you afraid of?”

  “This. All of this. Going away. I never cared about a damn thing and now . . .”

  “How do you think I feel? Why do you think I would have let you put a bullet in my head? I couldn’t bear not having this with you. The idea of that made me want to blow my brains out.”

  “Stop it. You’re gushing.” She smiled. “Seriously, though, now that we have this, aren’t you terrified of losing it?”

  I kissed her, hard and deep. I don’t know why, but I was obsessed with communicating with Alice this way. I hated words because they just didn’t cut it. There is no way to tell someone that when you’re inside them you feel like you’ve been cut from neck to nuts and hollowed out by the hand of God without it sounding totally mental. It’s a feeling, an electric current from the heart to the brain that carries a million words and images like a fast pipe-data stream. And I was trying to zap her senseless with it because I loved her so much it hurt.

  “What was that?” she asked, feeling the buzzing on her lips.

  “That was my answer.”

  The next few months were the happiest of my life. Every day I woke up, I faced the day with anticipation instead of dread. Every night I collapsed on my pillow, usually from coital exhaustion, and welcomed sleep with warm resolve instead of paralyzing fear. And even though I knew that having children was both completely insane and out of the question, I could feel that urge, that familial drive to, in a godlike fashion, create two bright, pure eyes to look at us both and remind us of who we really are versus what we’d been made to be. And then one morning, while we drank espresso and cleaned our guns on the terrace, the honeymoon was over.

  Just like that.

  10

  I’m convinced that human beings are just not happy being happy for too long. We thrive on misery and invite it into our miserable lives every chance we get. Of course, the source of the misery is almost always related to something that has nothing to do with love. For most people, money is their Achilles’ heel. Either they have too much of it or not enough. For others, it’s the ennui that comes with routine. Of course, in the eyes of each person, it’s the other person’s fault that (a) the sex has dropped off, (b) unrealistic career dreams never came true, (c) the Joneses have a bigger boat, or (d) wifey has been banging the Joneses. And when the blame game begins, you’re already past tense. Your relationship is now adversarial and the influence your love had on you just got pissed away.

  For Alice and me, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the source of our marital friction was Human Resources, Inc. After all, if anything could’ve put a hex on us, it was that place. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, but we probably should have thought carefully about the co-CEO thing. Even though our areas of focus were different, we both had our opinions about the business as a whole and how to build it for the future.

  My big issue that Alice gave no credence to was my paranoia that, even though we whacked Bob II, there was still someone out there pulling strings who probably didn’t appreciate us taking over HR all that much. Let’s face it, Bob wasn’t smart or rich enough to keep the business afloat himself. We had a lot of revenue coming in, but HR was always much bigger than your average bootstrap start-up. So, the burning question for me was, Who was really running HR and when were they going to rain down holy terror on our little lemonade stand? Alice’s counterpoint was that if they were going to do something, they would have done it immediately after our wedding night melee. They didn’t, so she figured they were either frightened of us or they had moved on. This was not good enough for me. Each day I was twisting on this issue, waiting for the other wing tip to drop.

  Alice had different, equally paranoid concerns, although she would not characterize them as such. Since we took over HR, she had become obsessed with the idea of hunting down and killing an FBI mole Bob was convinced had infiltrated HR on his watch a few years back but who, she was convinced, had since returned to the bureau’s mother ship. When I met Alice at Bendini, Lambert & Locke, she was playing the part of an FBI mole, so the irony of her objective was hilarious to me, but not at all amusing to her. In her opinion, if Bob was suspicious of something like that, it was probably true. I told her that, over the years, I had been privy to dozens of conspiracy theories Bob espoused, and none of them ever turned out to be true. But that didn’t dissuade her.

  To make matters worse, Alice was convinced that ever since she left Honduras, someone had been watching her. She had taken volumes of notes on the subject prior to our meeting in New Hampshire and it all seemed very convincing. Where it went off the rails was when she even questioned the sources I had used to find her in New Hampshire. She asserted that perhaps that information had been conveniently disseminated to me with enough finesse to make me feel like it had not been handed to me on a silver platter? I attempted to explain that I had relied on exactly zero outside sources when I tracked her down—because I’m not in the business of telegraphing my moves—but that did nothing to change her mind.

  The bottom line is Alice was always right, even when she was wrong.

  That morning, a pleasant Sunday on which I had wanted, actually needed, to relax, she casually brought up the topic. Unfortunately, her solution for the so-called problem we had with the FBI was not so casual. Basically, she wanted me to agree that we needed to take steps to whack a mole to eliminate any kind of advantage the FBI might have in potentially launching an offensive that would take us down. I tried to talk her off that particular ledge due to all of the really bad juju that could come about from conspiring to murder a federal agent.

  “Even if we kill the mole, whom we’re not absolutely certain exists, they can just send another one. It’s not going to scare them off. They’re the FBI.”

  “First of all, I’m not trying to scare them off. That’s stupid. I’m trying to destroy the one person who might be able to destroy us on a witness stand. Why is that so hard to understand?”

  Her hands were on her hips. Not good. I evened my tone.

  “It’s not hard to understand. As long as there is a mole.”

  “Bob was convinced there was. And it makes perfect sense that they would send one.”

  “You’ve really been thinking about this,” I said.

  She liked my conciliatory tone. The hands abandoned the hips and busied themselves with cleaning up the kitchen, a sign of mental resolution.

  “Yeah, and we need to clip that snitch on his or her home turf. Show them who’s boss.”

  My brain had a very difficult time computing that last line.

  “Wait, you’re not suggesting we go after an agent at the Manhattan field office?”

  “Where else?”

  “Wow, you’re actually serious.”

  Her hands indignantly shot back to her hips like a gunfighter settling into showdown mod
e.

  “I’m serious about protecting what we have, by any means necessary.”

  “Then don’t try to do an FBI hit. At the FBI.”

  “John, we risk everything if we don’t do something about this. And we have to hit them where it hurts—Mafia-style—so they know not to fuck with us again.”

  “You may be right, but I need more than Bob’s fortune cookie theories that the threat is real.”

  “I have other intel sources.”

  I could tell by the look on her face that her desire to be right just trumped her desire to keep that particular bit of information from me.

  “From?”

  “Reliable sources. Far more reliable than Bob.”

  “And you expect me to trust that?”

  “I expect you to trust me.”

  * * *

  There it was. The sanctity of marriage all cozied up with the poison of paranoia. As a husband, you’re supposed to have your wife’s back, no matter what. That’s the unwritten rule. Even if you think she’s bat shit crazy, maintaining loyalty is greater than the perils of the sinking ship.

  “I do trust you. I just don’t agree this is a good use of our time and resources. And if this problem does exist, going after them might make it a lot worse.”

  “You just don’t care. You’re a lone wolf. I’m trying to build something here and you’re still thinking about number one.”

  “Alice, of course I care. Don’t you care about my perspective? You seem so eager to quickly dismiss it.”

  “Yeah, because you don’t think ahead. Your answer to everything is not to act, but to react.”

  I felt how quickly the conversation was deteriorating, so I tried to adjust to her, to lighten my tone.

  “How about we agree to disagree?”

  As soon as the words left my mouth, I immediately wished I had them back. Alice was livid.

  “Maybe that’s why we suckered you so easily in Honduras, John. You think what you want to think and can’t see the forest for the trees.”

  Have you ever heard of something called imminent impact silence? That’s the eerie moment of silence that occurs just before a bullet tears through your chest or a semi tractor-trailer T-bones you at full speed. Alice’s words created one of those silences. For me, the world spun down into slow motion and I was outside of myself, floating above, like the newly dead. I could see myself morph into an instrument of black rage, every muscle in my body contracting like a tightly wound watch spring.

  “Truth hurts,” she said, smiling maliciously, her voice low and distorted.

  “I’m going out for some air,” I said.

  And it took every fiber in my being to slowly, casually grab my jacket and walk out the door.

  11

  I vaguely remember walking. The street was a blur of color and noise and swirling plumes of car exhaust. My body was going somewhere, but my mind didn’t bother asking where until I realized I was in Brooklyn, standing outside of one of those neighborhood bars with no name, just a crusty old Miller Lite neon sign in the window. At first, I was completely clueless as to why I had walked there. Then it hit me. I mentioned earlier that Bob had my first real girlfriend Eva killed—mainly because he believed love was likely to whip a killer into a soft and submissive domestic pet. Speaking of which, the chicken shit bastard didn’t even have the cojones to do it himself. He just gave the order and did his best to make it look like she’d been raped and strangled by a bunch of junkies desperate for money. I never bought it. The whole thing stunk like Bob to high heaven.

  Eventually I tracked down the Neanderthals who actually did the deed. They were a low-rent set down in Bensonhurst. Mostly janitorial and dirty laundry types for the mob. Think lower than prison snitches and you’re about halfway to the bottom where these guys feed. I didn’t do anything about it at the time, because I was afraid of the repercussions from Bob. But I never forgot about them and there I was, standing outside the bar I knew they frequented and used for “business.” It all made sense. I was going to channel all of the rage I was feeling for Alice and Eva into those unsuspecting goombahs. Kind of like going to get your aggression out on the heavy bag at the gym but with a heavy bag that has a mustache full of soup and a diamond horseshoe pinky ring.

  As soon as I walked in, I was a wolf entering the den of a competing pack. All the pockmarked nut crushers in the place practically snarled at me. I strolled up to the bar and took a seat on an open stool.

  “Piña colada, please.”

  The bartender glared at me, then looked at the patrons out of the corner of his eye. Then his right hand disappeared under the bar.

  “Get the fuck out of here, fairy. We don’t sell umbrella drinks.”

  “You Terry?” I asked casually.

  “Who the fuck wants to know?”

  “I was banging your ma last night. She told me you never call anymore.”

  He took a Ted Williams cut at me with the baseball bat he’d been gripping under the bar since I sat down. I stopped the bat barrel with one hand and knocked him out cold with the other. And it was on. Weapons were flashing. Guys stepped to me quickly, even the fat ones, and tried to get a piece. You should’ve seen the looks on their faces when I kicked them so hard to the deck they were pissing blood and crawling for streetlights. Some of them pulled knives and guns and I quickly disarmed them before breaking their jaws or limbs and chucking their weapons through the bar windows, showering the sidewalk with glass.

  When the cops finally came, the looks on their faces were even more hilarious. I could see by their reactions that this was one of their payoff spots—probably worth a few grand a month to give the guys in this bar a pass. So, they showed up more to protect their investment than to enforce the law. I disarmed them both and handcuffed them to the bar rail with their pants down. Then I doused them with Bacardi 151 and told them to shut it or we’d have us a proper pig roast.

  When everyone had either run or passed out, I sat myself down back at the bar—just in time for the bartender to wake up and stagger to his feet, totally disoriented. Terry. I knew he had killed Eva and I could imagine his sweaty fat face hovering over her when he did it.

  “How ’bout that colada now, Jimmy Buffett,” I joked.

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  I showed him a picture of Eva that I carried in my wallet. She took it in a photo booth when she was drunk and gave it to me as a joke. He tried to pretend he didn’t recognize her but he wasn’t very convincing.

  “No one will ever know what really happened to her. But they’re going to know what happened to you, Terry.”

  He reached for his gun and I let him wrap his fingers around it under the bar counter. I wanted him to feel the false sense of power one gets from gripping what I’m guessing was a .357 with the serial number filed off—straight from the police impound, courtesy of his copper friends. I heard the hammer cock and the cylinder rotate. I allowed him to get the gun up from behind the counter and I even let him point it at me. But like most nonprofessionals, he hesitated for a half second. And I took that opportunity to pull my S.T. Dupont Elysée fountain pen—a platinum and black mother-of-pearl work of art that was partial payment for a job I did when I was nineteen in Paris—and (reluctantly) slipped it into the end of his barrel.

  Then I ducked behind the bar and he pulled the trigger. When the hammer came down, the revolver exploded in his face and the fountain pen buried itself in the back wall. C’est dommage. I looked up and saw him standing there, surprised because he no longer had a jaw, a tongue, or any teeth. The lower half of his face was a ragged suckhole.

  “Say hello to Bob for me.”

  His surprise turned to the expressionless wax visage of the newly dead and he fell facedown into the ice trough. His life drained into the sweating cubes in fertile red blooms as he melted like Dorothy’s Wicked Witch. I heard the soun
d of police sirens and I ran. I kept running flat out until I was back home. I sat on the stoop because I was beginning to black out from lack of oxygen. My head was exploding and my shoes were full of blood. When I got back to the apartment, Alice was gone. She had left a note next to a bottle of bourbon: I’m looking for you. Stay put and have a drink.

  I cleaned my feet and poured myself a fist of whiskey. I didn’t try to call her or text her. I wasn’t sure I was ready to look her in the eye without losing my mind for good. What she’d said still rang in my head like a gong.

  Sucker.

  I tried to shake it but I knew I never would. When you’ve lived as long as I have on pure survival instinct, your brain instantly catalogs all things that it sees as a potential threat. Even though it was said in anger and meant to cut me to the quick—an argument technique used by pretty much every couple on the planet—I couldn’t help but focus on the arrogance in her voice. There was a kind of satisfaction to it, as if deep within Alice some part of her was ultimately proud of her “work” with Bob, the work that had been designed to eviscerate me.

  Distrust almost always begins with a question. In my case, I was asking myself, Is Alice using me to get what she wants? Is this just part of another con? Will she dispose of me when she feels my usefulness has run its course? I tried to talk myself down in the hours that I waited for her to come home, but the persistence of those questions was more powerful than my lame attempt at self-reassuring answers.