But Peter performed his magic on old Randall, working the guy’s Rolodex like an insurance salesman looking for potential leads. Make a list of ten people who could help you out, Randall. Three of the four built-in advantages to dealing with addicts are: (1) They have no pride remaining; (2) They tend to automatically leverage themselves; (3) They will work everyone they know for help. And Randall needed a lot of help. By that time, he served as a computer programmer in the information technology department at a small federal contractor that developed systems for the Department of Justice. Earlier that year, he had attended a conference in Washington, DC, where he met two other programmers he casually befriended. They exchanged numbers as a means of expanding their circle of potential job opportunities.
So when Peter approached Randall and gave him an opportunity to wipe away his entire debt—the proverbial second chance—Randall wept like a girl, said he would do anything.
Anything.
We never knew how Randall manipulated his friends from Washington, never came to understand if the information materialized through charm or force or threat, for therein lies the true benefit of the minion. We never cared if the information was acquired through hacking or social engineering or stealing someone’s briefcase, for therein lies the true benefit of the hopeless spirit with a need to supply a demanding addiction, the at-any-cost means of completing a mission.
Suddenly we had the exact address of the McCartneys, their latest aliases, everything.
My first gun had strings. It had a purpose.
Randall Gardner became one of our greatest assets. As for the fourth built-in advantage of addicts: (4) No matter how many times you wipe the slate clean, you can count on this: They’ll be back in debt to you even sooner than before. No more than two weeks later, the Redskins cost Randall another five figures. Mr. Gardner gave us more collected data over the years than the Farmers’ Almanac and Encyclopaedia Britannica combined, and Pop made sure we fed the man’s compulsion for gambling like a stray cat, doled out a fresh can of tuna and a saucer of warm milk with assured regularity. Randall always arrived on our doorstep looking for more, along with a cache of information in return.
I didn’t go to the McCartneys’ on my own. The hits were planned, and part of those plans included my older cousin by five years, Ettore Vido, an overstrung, highly skilled marksman who’d recently proven his talent to my father, who consequently found him endearing. Ettore—Hector, if translated—spoke infrequently, as though he’d recently arrived from Catania. He possessed a peculiar personality trait of being interested in absolutely nothing at all—no sports, no music, no television. He had not a single hobby. He didn’t have a favorite food, favorite car, favorite movie. He didn’t prefer blondes over brunettes, voluptuous over skinny. On the other hand, ask him to scrape the serial numbers off a collection of guns or clean the kitchen and he would silently oblige. As for the overstrung part: If you did anything to keep him from finishing an assigned task—say, dropping a glob of marinara on his clean kitchen floor—he would come apart at the seams, occasionally to the point of requiring restraint. All I can say is this: robot. And here, on our trip to find the McCartneys in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, he served as an automaton to make sure the assignment of taking out the McCartneys would be brought to a clean, comfortable close.
He accompanied me for one reason only: mission completion.
The late-winter, fifteen-hour drive out with Ettore was memorable only because it was not memorable at all. We did speak a few times:
ME: “Need a couple bucks for the toll.”
ETTORE: “’Kay.”
An hour later.
ME: “Want your order supersized?”
ETTORE: “’Kay.”
Three hours later.
ME: “I gotta hit the head.”
ETTORE: “Right.”
It wasn’t until we got a room at a roadside motel a few miles southeast of Mineral Point that he finally talked about the plan.
We sat on opposing double beds, shades drawn, one sixty-watt bulb lighting the room from ten feet away. As I studied my virgin Beretta, slowly unscrewing and rescrewing the silencer, Ettore put on a pair of gloves and began piling his reserve of weapons on the table between our beds, cleaning one at a time. He pulled them from everywhere—ankle holster, belt holster, two from his duffel bag. When the cleaning was complete, he went through the ritual of putting each in its respective holster, then quickly