The End Game

Kidnapping an heiress and her daughter in order to ensure a race’s outcome is like setting fire to the Amazon to make s’mores: It would work, but it’s a might excessive.

“I’ve never understood why anyone bothers with kidnappings anymore,” Fiona said. “They so rarely work and then there’s all that care and feeding that must take place so your captive doesn’t die before you’re ready to kill them. Or, worse, they have a heart attack or a stroke and you’re left with some dreadful mess.”

“You’re a tender person, Fi,” I said.

“Seriously, Michael, if you are the type of person to kidnap someone, you’re ill equipped to care for your captive, which is only going to lead to bigger problems. It’s so much easier to just do identity theft these days. You never have to worry about some sweating, crying child making a mess on your sofa or in the trunk of your car.”

“You should film a public service announcement,” I said.

“Would you want to spoon-feed some terrified person? Walk them to the bathroom? Beat them if you have to, which, as I think you can attest, is not as much fun as it seems? No, thank you,” she said.

“Anyway,” I said, “in this case, as of right now, Maria and Liz don’t know any different. They’re somewhere in the Atlantic, eating lobster off Wedgwood.”

“That’s a lot of trouble just to get some money.”

“But that’s the thing. If they wanted money, they could have yanked the diamonds out of Maria’s ears. There’s something else here.”

Fi was still looking at the photo of Bonaventura. “Am I going to get to play with him?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said.

“That is a lovely suit.”

“Fi.”

“I’m just saying, Michael, that if given the chance and I need to execute him, we might remember to ask him for his tailor’s name before he expires.”

We pulled up in front of my mother’s house. She was standing on the front porch, smoking and talking to a woman who looked vaguely familiar, in the way that many old women in Florida look vaguely familiar: She was wearing a white blouse that had a lovely multicolored pelican stitched over the right breast pocket, her hair was somewhere between blond and the color of an old French horn and was done in such a way that it looked strangely translucent. Even from the car, I could see that her lips had a lacquering of bloodred lipstick. She looked like a person wearing a Halloween costume of an Old Woman from Florida.

“Who is that?” I asked Fiona, since over the course of the last several months she’d gotten to know many of my mother’s friends by virtue of attending Ma’s weekly poker nights, the cooking course they took together and, frighteningly, for a time, a silent movie night at the Luart Theatre.

“That could be Esther,” Fiona said. “But I don’t think Esther would wear a pelican. She’s always struck me as more of a seagull or egret type. So it might also be Doris. Or Cloris. They’re sisters. Neither can bluff. But they play the river like pirates.”

“Why does she look like that?”

“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?”