The End Game

But I don’t know how to diffuse my mother’s frown. Didn’t at ten. Don’t now.

“I thought we were done with this stuff,” I said. “You kicked the last therapist out of the house.”

“I think your recovery has hit a bump. They said it would happen.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“Well, on television. There’s a reality program about just this sort of thing and they say that people frequently return to their problems. They call it backsliding.”

“There’s a reality show about a spy whose mother makes him go to therapy?”

“Michael, the point is you have to deal with your addiction.”

“I’m not addicted to anything, Ma. What is this show?”

“It follows drunks around and such. But the parallels are very clear to me and would be to you, too. Anyway, this isn’t about healing; it’s about bonding. We don’t ever bond, Michael. We just fight over the past and I’m tired of it. We need to make new memories.”

“How do you make a new memory? By definition, a memory has already happened.”

“For someone so worldly, you’re awfully naive about the way real people think,” she said.

I exhaled, which was good because I’d been holding my breath without even knowing it. Sometimes, it’s just easier not to breathe around my mother. It reminds me that things could be worse. I could be buried alive, for instance.

“When?” I said.

“End of the week.”

“What time?”

“One. We’ll get lunch first. There’s a charming diner just across the street where Loretta says you can get soy smoothies.”

“You don’t even like soy,” I said. I had doubts she knew what it was, but I decided to keep that to myself.

“Michael, I’m making the effort,” she said.

“If I’m busy,” I said, “I’ll call you.”

“What could you possibly be doing?”

Just as I was about to explain to my mother the entirety of the possibilities, I was saved by the ringing of my cell phone. It was Sam.

“Mikey,” he said, “there’s been a slight change of plans.” His voice sounded a touch on the anxious side. If there’s one thing to know about Sam Axe, he doesn’t get overly anxious.

“We didn’t have any plans, Sam.”

“Right. That’s the change.”

“Where are you?”

“Incognito.”

“A little more specific, Sam?”

“About a hundred meters from your mother’s house, watching the person watching you.”

I walked across the living room, out the front door and onto the porch. On the trunk of my car was Loretta’s package, which was wrapped with so much tape that I could actually see my reflection in it. I looked down both sides of the street. Nothing. “I don’t see you,” I said.

“That’s because I’m a highly trained operative, Mike,” he said. “Do you see the Lexus parked on the other side of the stop sign to your southeast?”

I turned and casually gazed down the street behind me, gave a hearty belly laugh and patted the top of my head like a trained monkey, all while staring at a car in the wrong neighborhood. The last time someone pulled down this street in a silver Lexus IS and parked under a shady tree for the afternoon… well, they were probably looking for me, too. This is a Dodge and Honda street, and Honda had to muscle its way in.

Inside the car was a man trying to look inconspicuous, which is difficult when the burned spy you’re watching is looking right at you and could, if he wanted, pull you from the car by your eyebrows.

“Who is he?” I asked, still in full laugh. Just having a nice day on the front lawn. Inhaling the humidity. Enjoying the clouds in the sky. Having a pleasant conversation with my buddy the ex- Navy SEAL about the meathead in a Lexus and relishing the start of hurricane season.

“I’m not sure,” Sam said. “I’ve got a buddy running the plates now. But he isn’t one of ours. Not a Fed boy.”

“No,” I said, “the Lexus gives that away. When did you pick him up?”

“I didn’t,” he said. “I came here to give you the news on what I’d found out about Gennaro’s problem and saw him. You want me to bring the wrath of Neighborhood Watch Commander Chuck Finley upon him?”

I looked around again to see if I could locate Sam. He was really hiding quite well, though his tendency to wear floral prints was probably helping the situation here in the land of palm trees and birds of paradise.

“Give me a minute to get back inside,” I said.

“Got it,” Sam said.

Just as I started to walk back toward the house, Loretta came sprinting-well, comparatively speaking-from across the street, her pelican shirt buttoned haphazardly, her hair in a set of rollers, a single word bursting from her in a fracture of frenzied repetition: “PERVERT! PERVERT! PERVERT!”

“Sam?”

“CALL NINE-ONE-ONE. CALL NINE-ONE-ONE. CALL NINE-ONE-ONE…”

“I’m Oscar Mike,” Sam said, slipping into the military parlance for, essentially, “on the move,” which was fine since the Lexus was officially Oscar Mike, too.

“Great,” I said. “Tell me she didn’t see your face.”