As we waited for the big finale that Sue had said would incorporate all the pyro and noisy distraction we would need to do the deed, something unexpected happened. Dr. Love made a special speech about Alice and me.
“All of these couples are matches made in heaven,” he started. “But I want to call attention to one couple in particular that made an impression on me this week. Doug and Karen Goldstein, can you please join me for a moment.”
We were Doug and Karen Goldstein, named after the foster parents who once locked me in a woodshed for two days with a bag of dog food and a bucket of dirty water.
We stepped forward and stood proudly next to Dr. Love. He smiled warmly, shaking my hand and kissing Alice on the cheek for an uncomfortable amount of time.
“Doug and Karen showed me this week that sometimes compatibility can be fueled more by conflict than harmony.”
He had no idea.
“It speaks to a more animal part of our makeup that wants the heat of passion, but doesn’t require the comfort of being too like-minded.”
The other couples’ faces turned slightly sour and they stopped petting and kissing each other like deranged kittens.
“Because I’ve been inspired by Doug and Karen, I’m going to incorporate an element of friction into our system. And you know what happens when you have friction?”
He stared down the crowd, challenging them to answer.
“Anyone?”
Silence.
“Fire. Just like if you rub two sticks together, if you rub two people together, sparks will fly!”
Cheers from the audience. Then the lights went down and the pyro started exploding all around us, accompanied by Katy Perry’s seminal pop hit “Firework” playing at max decibels. In the heat of the moment, Dr. Love leaned over and whispered in Alice’s ear.
“Dump that stiff and let’s go fuck like jackrabbits on my private jet.”
Alice took that opportunity to lead Dr. Love by his throbbing gristle into a dark portion of the stage and put her own diamond of wisdom through his leering eyeball. Viva Las Vegas!
14
After the Dr. Love extravaganza, we decided to spend some of our hard-earned dollars and jetted off to the Amalfi Coast for a belated honeymoon. As we lay basking in the Mediterranean sun, we were feeling optimistic. Alice was looking at her iPad and quickly sat up in her chaise.
“John, we just received payment for Dr. Love,” she said with an ear-to-ear grin.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile that wide, not even when I asked you to marry me . . . twice.”
“Guess how much Mr. Anonymous Moneybags just forked over for the job.”
“I thought he kittied up five mil?”
“We got a bonus for creativity,” she said excitedly.
“I hate guessing. Just tell me.”
“No way. This is too good.”
“Fine. I’ll just throw out a ridiculous number. Eight mil.”
“Try seventeen.”
I sat up quickly in my chaise and knocked over my glass of Barolo.
“You’re shitting me,” I said.
“I shit you not, John Lago.”
“That is some serious cheese, me lady.”
“Cheese? That’s a motherfucking dairy farm.”
“I think a celebration is in order,” I said and flagged down the cabana boy for a magnum of champagne.
When it arrived, we were making out so hard we practically fell out of our chairs. The waiter filled our glasses and we raised them, looking at each other behind the cascade of crisp dry bubbles.
“Not bad for a day’s work,” I said.
“I think we deserve a raise,” Alice said.
We drank and kissed and drank some more and kissed some more and ended up back at our villa. We drank and made love until the magnum was gone and smoked cigarettes naked under the moonlight.
“We’re going to be all right,” I said.
She rolled onto me, her tan, sun-drenched skin hot against mine.
“John, we’re going to be more than all right. We’re going to be rich and fabulous. We already are, come to think of it.”
“No, I mean us. We had a bit of a rough patch there.”
“Ancient history, darling.”
She kissed me again and gave me a drag of her cigarette.
“I love you, you twisted son of a bitch.” She sighed.
“I love you, you sick freak,” I whispered.
Our last days in Italy were so good I really didn’t want to go back. I suggested to Alice that we just keep the money, set the recruits free, and live happily ever after. But, like Sue said, Alice had stars in her eyes, and I saw them come out that week. Our new client already had more jobs lined up for us and others were lining up as well. Like I’ve always said, word travels fast in our very small world, and when everyone knows you’re the best, they won’t settle for anyone else. Fine with me. What the hell else was I going to do? I didn’t care about money the way Alice did, but I cared about her and wanted to be with her. Basically, I would have followed her into hell in those days and that’s exactly what I did.
15
When we got back to Manhattan, we had to hit the ground running. Sue briefed us on the assignments he’d been supervising and they all required our attention. Alice and I were completely backed up with requests from existing clients, a long list of potential new clients, and our new anonymous moneybags client. Retainer money was flowing in mogul style, and Alice was chomping at the bit to expand. With the stringent training regimen I had established, I was reluctant to do this too quickly. Back in the day, I had seen Bob pack the place with a bunch of snot-nosed rookies when the workload got heavy and half of them got popped. I wasn’t about to revert to his old churn-and-burn model on my watch.
Alice agreed in principle, but making big green was clearly one of her lifelong dreams and she wasn’t going to let anyone or anything derail that. I started to feel the distance I felt from her before the Dr. Love gig. The hardest thing to take was her tendency to circle the wagons around what she wanted and defend it like a junkyard dog with a bone. That kind of behavior was common among other HR recruits. Being desperately poor for most of one’s life tends to make one want to gather up as many shekels as possible before the fat lady sings and eats your bony ass for lunch. It was just human nature but it sucked coming from Alice because I wanted her to be different, despite the crushing influence of the past.
And it put me in a weird position. John Lago as the voice of reason? Please. Of course, when it rains it pours, and while I was trying to find my footing in the mud, my lovely wife decided to hit me up with my favorite pain-in-the-ass topic: her FBI mole hunt. Evidently, she had been making inquiries and trying to gather intel on the subject in the background since we’d had an argument about it. And by in the background, I mean behind my back. She had even gone so far as to ask our powerful new anonymous moneybags client from the Dr. Love gig for assistance, a move that I felt was extremely risky.
“What’s the big deal?” she asked, knowing full well what the big deal was.
“They’re probably NSA. They play golf with the FBI!”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Those guys despise each other.”
“Maybe, but you know how small that world is. If you’re right and there is a mole, the more outsiders know about it, the more likely it is that the mole will go underground or the feds will decide to make a move.”
“So we make a move,” she said, full of bravado.
“How? We don’t even have a target.”
“Maybe we do,” she said, smiling.
The smile at that moment was the one she used when she wasn’t sure if something was going to make me happy or enraged.
“Meaning what?” I said, knowing the answer.
“Meaning we have a name.”
/> “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Who is it?”
“Client is going to send an encrypted dossier. Right from the FBI personnel files.”
“Great,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to hide my ire.
“Honey, don’t be mad,” she said.
“I’m not. I’m glad it worked out.”
“But I should have talked to you about it first,” she placated.
“This is a partnership, right?” I asked.
“Come on, John. It’s a great partnership.”
“Then let’s do what partners do and work together. I don’t want to be someone you feel like you have to tiptoe around.”
“I was just afraid you would say no.”
“Because I would have. For good reason.”
“Baby, look at me,” she cooed.
I looked in her eyes. They were so bright and intelligent, she was like a snake charmer, wrapping me around her little finger.
“Trust me, okay? I know what I’m doing.”
I did trust her and she did know what she was doing. But it wasn’t her judgment I had an issue with. It was her gunslinger attitude. When I met Alice, I had been working within a system, an organization with a set of rules. HR, Inc. was by no means perfect, but there were checks and balances in place. We were employees, and with that comes a hierarchy and politics. Alice had always been freelance. Yes, she worked with Bob and probably had been trained by him to some extent, but she had never been part of our recruit ranks. She was used to making her own rules in the field and felt weighed down when she had to consult or collaborate with anyone. Even though she was my wife and loved me, when it came to the business I got grouped in with all the others who didn’t just sign up to the Alice way.
At that point, I had to make a choice. I could either continue to butt heads with her, exerting my own will and opinions to serve my ego, or I could just acquiesce and choose my battles sparingly. I couldn’t help but laugh about it over a couple of beers with Sue.
“JL, that’s pretty much how all relationships work. ‘I Got the Pussy I Make the Rules’ didn’t end up on a T-shirt for nothing.”
We laughed but it didn’t last. Sue got us a couple of whiskeys to try to smooth out the permanent crease on my brow.
“Need you to have my back, Sue.”
“You know I do, JL.”
“I love Alice but she can go off half-cocked and we can’t afford any spilt milk right now.”
“I hear you. Not into this FBI thing either. Waste of time. Like you say, whack a mole and up comes another.”
“Logistics. If she’s going to force me into this circus, I want to be the ringmaster.”
“I been thinking on it since you all brought it up,” Sue said. “Got some ideas. None of them good.”
“Lay ’em on me.”
Sue had already drawn up a plan that was so out-there crazy, I could hardly believe it made any sense to me. But if you really think about it, how many ways are there to break down the door of one of the biggest FBI field offices in the country and smoke one of its agents? Even coming up with one was a miracle. As we saw it, there was just no way to do it the usual way, with subtlety and finesse. We needed shock and awe. So, we spent the next thirty-six hours working round the clock to fill out the details in the framework of Sue’s preposterous plan. It was either going to work or be the most epic fail in the history of HR.
When it was fully cooked, we pitched it to Alice. I half expected her to laugh in our faces, but she was actually impressed by the plan and fired up to execute it right away. On that note, we were in total agreement. The longer we waited, the more likely our target might be moved or reassigned. Plus, we needed to sit on that like we needed a hole in the head. The mole was standing in the way of Alice and me being happy, and I couldn’t wait to put a serious hurt on that punk.
“John, thank you,” Alice said that night in bed.
“For what?”
“For being on my team with this FBI thing. I know pretty much everyone at HR thinks it’s a terrible idea, including Sue.”
“They don’t run the company. I don’t care what they think.”
“I appreciate you saying that, but I know you do.”
She kissed me and I felt a little like an irresponsible father who just reluctantly bought his daughter a Porsche 911 for her sweet sixteen. “Thank you for having my back,” she said.
“Of course. Thank you for having mine,” I said, hinting at our agreement.
“As soon as this is off our plate, we’re going to just focus on the future and get filthy rich,” she said, totally missing my hint or just avoiding it all together.
“Alice . . .”
“Yes, my love?”
I wanted to remind her that I wasn’t just helping her out and having her back, although that was part of it. I wanted to ask her if she had thought about the issue I wanted to chase down, the issue of the puppet master running HR, the issue that really did represent a threat to everything we had built. But I didn’t. In retrospect, I realize that I had assimilated into Alice’s world, not vice versa. I did what she wanted me to do in order to avoid unpleasantness between us. She didn’t do what I wanted because I never cried bloody murder like she did if I didn’t get my way. It was like brainwashing. Whether she knew it or not, she had changed me into something I didn’t want to be, someone I didn’t want to be. And I resented her for it. When she kissed me that night, the sweetness was gone. I smelled the garlic and wine on her breath and found it revolting instead of slightly endearing.
I felt distance from her, mainly distance I myself was creating. Of all the times she had hurt me in the past, none of them felt as sinister as the slow transformation she had created in me, a transformation I hadn’t even noticed happening. I told myself I would confront the issue with her after the FBI gig. If she refused to change, I was going to walk. I had no desire to leave her or HR, but I had been to hell to find myself and I wasn’t about to go back.
16
After a couple weeks of preparation, we were ready to rock. We chose a Friday night before a three-day government holiday weekend to take advantage of all the goldbrickers who would slip out early or be absent altogether because they were “working at home.” It was also the night of a major sporting event and guy’s guys can’t resist the siren call of wings and beer. Last but not least, our op window was during a two-hour period wherein there would be a shift change at the FBI field office—from full-day crew to skeleton crew—followed closely thereafter by a shift change at the closest NYPD precinct.
The intel on the mole offered by our anonymous client had been solid and verifiable and had enabled Sue to pinpoint her—yes, I said her—location in the building. All we had to do was flawlessly execute the umpteen steps involved in our wildly complicated and dangerous plan and we’d be home free.
The first part of the op was the most dangerous, but also the most fun. Decent entry points in a highly secure building are, by design, few and far between, but there is always a weak link in the chain and, as with most facilities, in this case it was the roof. It’s very difficult to secure a roof in a city like New York, mainly due to the dense bird population. There are hundreds of bird species in Manhattan, from pigeons to peregrine falcons, and they own the rooftops. Any kind of electronic security system would be compromised hourly in New York, so, unless you’re dealing with a bank, you don’t see them that often.
We were dealing with the FBI, so Sue had done due diligence and located some physical entry systems and video surveillance units, but nothing we couldn’t handle. But getting in to the building was not the problem. The problem was getting on to the roof. You’re not going to just scale the side of an all-glass building with suction cups, and speed roping down from a cho
pper would surely raise some eyebrows.
Oddly, it was within our discussion about New York birds and security systems that we came up with the solution: wingsuits. The lunatics from the Red Bull Air Force fly those things at two hundred miles an hour about ten feet from the face of a rock wall. It’s amazing tech. Closest you’ll ever get to being a bird without sprouting wings of your own.
For our purposes, we needed wingsuits that were heavily modified for lift versus speed. We were on the roof of a building five blocks away that was probably two hundred feet higher than the FBI building, with a clear shot to the FBI roof. Our goal was to glide on the updrafts and float down to the FBI rooftop like hawks vectoring in for a kill. Easier said than done. The buildings in Manhattan create an environment similar to canyons with closely spaced rock formations. Wind patterns are unpredictable at best, especially due to the fluctuations in heat and air pressure created by traffic, solar reflection, eight million human beings living, breathing, and fucking, you get the idea.
As we stood on the precipice of the building, we went through the checklist. Sue was monitoring everything from an empty apartment in the building across the street. He was going to be our eyes and ears during the op, and he was our ride home when the deed was done.
“Sue, you set?”
“Yeah, chilling in the rear with the gear,” he answered quietly over our closed-channel radio systems.
“Don’t sound so glum,” Alice said. “What we’re doing is definitely the short straw.”
“She says as she gets ready to fly over Manhattan in the baddest-ass op ever invented,” he answered back.
“We have you to thank for that, Sue,” I said. “How’s the wind pattern?”
“Still swirling like a mother. Twenty knots up, down, all the way around, JL.”