The End Game

6

There’s no such thing as an entirely safe Web site. There are levels of security, firewalls and booby traps and encrypted trapdoors that will send a rank amateur back to his single bed in his mother’s basement, but for anyone with a dedicated desire to break into a site, nothing is impossible. You don’t need to be a spy, or even of voting age, to figure out how to dismantle what one would presume to be the most secure sites.

NASA?

The Pentagon?

Both were hacked by the same fifteen-year-old boy, Jonathan James. A few years later, NASA, the Navy, the Energy Department and Jet Propulsion Laboratory were all hacked by the same twenty-year-old Romanian, Victor Faur. At the same time, NASA was being hacked by an unemployed British man named Gary McKinnon, who was looking for evidence of extraterrestrial life… and was doing it from his girlfriend’s aunt’s bedroom, which isn’t exactly like working out of Quantico.

Hacking into the highest levels of American government doesn’t require an MIT education, not if your girlfriend’s aunt has a broadband connection, and not if you know even a little bit about moving around encryption devices and have a good understanding of how to rewrite programs to work for you, not against you.

Sam doesn’t have an MIT education, either. He doesn’t mainline Red Bull. He’s not prone to wearing jaunty capes while discussing his favorite manga characters with his buddies in his parents’ basement. He’s done some “special projects” for the government, so he knows his way around a computer, but doesn’t have the skills to hack his own bank to move a few zeros around, much less search for the existence of space aliens on NASA’s Web site. So while I’d been busy cleaning my mother’s house that morning, Sam was trying to work a few contacts who could take a look at the Web site streaming the video of Gennaro’s wife and daughter. He probably didn’t plan on eventually scaring a half-naked grandmother out of her house a few hours later, but then not all days go exactly how you plan them.

Which is how he ended up having a breakfast date at the Roasters ’n’ Toasters deli on South Dixie Highway with a former NSA basement dweller named Walt. He’d called Walt the night previous in hopes of handling things on the phone, but Walt was one of those old-school guys who liked to be face-to-face, though Sam got the impression the guy just wanted a free meal. The more aggravating aspect was that Walt, now that he was retired, thought meeting somewhere at six a.m. was perfectly normal. Sam hoped that once his pension came in, he wouldn’t be one of those people. He didn’t want to see six a.m. unless he was creeping up behind it on the way home.

But there Sam sat, surrounded by a breakfast gang that seemed to know each other intimately. Sharing newspapers. Bitching about the Democrats. Drinking coffee like their prostates were made of Teflon. Not a Bloody Mary or Mimosa to be found, which Sam considered a punishable offense.

“You come here a lot?” Sam asked.

“Every morning,” Walt said. “Most of the people here are ex-military or government. It’s a good crowd.”

“Just so I understand,” Sam said, “you spent thirty years in the NSA so you could retire, move to Miami and surround yourself with all of the same people?”

“You want that I should have gone to San Fran cisco and moved into some liberal hippie commune?”

Sam liked Walt, thought he was a nice enough fellow, a good American, all that, but he got the feeling Walt hadn’t turned on a television since Reagan left office. That wasn’t punishable, but watching him eat runny scrambled eggs might have been, which he’d been doing for the last fifteen minutes. Three times the waitress had brought over a plate of eggs, and three times Walt had sent it back after a few bites, saying the consistency wasn’t right, until finally the waitress brought over a serving that made Sam seriously ponder vegetarianism for a few moments.

“All that’s missing are the feathers,” Sam said.

“You overcook scrambled eggs,” Walt said, “you lose all the iron.”

Sam didn’t think that was true, didn’t even know if eggs contained iron, but at this point didn’t even really care. Two Tums from now and this whole nauseating aspect of the experience would be rectified. Besides, there wasn’t a better computer security guy in all of Miami than Walt, even though by the looks of him now, in his country club windbreaker and yellow polo shirt, he was probably spending most of his time on a putting green. He was one of those guys who looked like he was fifty when he was twenty-five, from all that time spent sitting around dark rooms, analyzing data on a computer screen, which made Sam wonder just how old Walt really was, since now the poor guy looked damn near dead, albeit relaxed, in his new retired state. He noticed Walt even had dentures now. Weird, because the last time they’d done work together was just a few months previous, and the guy had a full mouth of god-given teeth.

“Listen, Big Walt,” Sam said, “I’ve got a top-secret mission I need some help on.”

“If it’s so top secret,” Walt said, “why are you coming to a private citizen like me?”

“That’s how secret it is,” Sam said, “even people in government are suspect.”

That seemed to satisfy Walt, or at least found a spot in his ego that was sufficiently inured from actual truth. Anyway, working with ex-NSA guys was always a bit of a pain in the ass. They just knew a lot more than other people. But that was okay, Sam thought, since it gave someone like Walt something to be proud of in addition to his penchant for eating, essentially, the moderately warmed ovum of a chicken. And it wasn’t like Walt was feeding information directly to Rumsfeld back when they were both still employed, anyway. Walt’s job was your basic low-level computer security gig at the NSA, like tracking minor threats on things like the Eastern Interconnected System power grid and calls about suspected terrorists with MySpace pages. Nine to five, no weekends, no direct knowledge of Dick Cheney’s whereabouts at any given time, but a business card that said NSA, which was pretty good for getting people to waive late charges at Blockbuster.

Sam showed Walt the Web site and the video, which Sam noted had been updated since the night before. There was even more footage now.

“Don’t tell me this is some kind of pornography,” Walt said, shoving Sam’s laptop away at the first sight of the woman and child.

“No, no, nothing like that,” Sam said.

“Because I’m here to tell you that pornography leads to terrorism. Studies have proven this.”

The other pain-in-the-ass aspect of working with ex-NSA is that a lot of them were desperately odd people who’d spent their best years scared out of their minds by the shit they’d witnessed, even if they witnessed it on the computer or through secondary reports.

“Agreed, totally,” Sam said. Sometimes it’s just better to not argue over the peccadilloes of the retired. Sam explained to Walt the bare bones of the issues-which is to say he decided to just make everything up. “The woman in this video is the princess of Moldavia, as you know,” he said, “and we have reason to believe that she’s being tracked by Carpathians intent on harming her and her crown. But it’s not entirely certain where these evildoers are currently operating out of.”

Walt nodded and took another mouthful of egg and then broke off a piece of toast and dunked it into the liquid. “Interesting,” he said. “Haven’t seen anything on the news about this.”

“Very hush-hush,” Sam said. When he’d done some work with Walt in the past, he was upset to learn that Walt was one of those people who liked to lecture others about alcohol consumption before certain hours, which was too bad since Sam now couldn’t get it out of his mind what an injustice it was that he was up this early and couldn’t reasonably order a Bloody Mary without drawing undo attention. Sam thought it would make this meeting a lot less mentally taxing, never mind dulling the sounds of Walt’s chewing, which included a troubling amount of whistling. “I need to get some tracking on this site, get an idea of who is viewing it, who is uploading it, access points, whatever you can find out. The safety of Moldavia depends on it.”

Sam couldn’t remember if Moldavia was a real country or if it had something to do with the Ice Princess from General Hospital back in the day, a brief addiction he’d unabashedly had while recovering from a bullet wound. Anyway, it didn’t seem like Walt knew, either, since he took Sam’s laptop and started typing absently on the keyboard with one hand, the other still busy with breakfast. After about ten minutes of this one-handed show, which also involved Walt making a weird clicking noise with his tongue against the roof of his dentures, he set the laptop aside.

“A decent IT guy will see someone breaking into this site in fifteen seconds.”

Sam was afraid of that. Technology has a way of passing you by if you’re busy getting dentures and playing golf. He really had to ask him about the denture thing. It was quite curious, since the NSA had a helluva health plan. “I understand,” Sam said. “You know someone else I could talk to?”

“No need,” Walt said. He pushed the laptop across the table. “I already got you the information.”

Cagey bastard.

Sam clicked through the files. It was a pretty extensive array, considering Walt managed to literally get it all with one hand.

“Impressive,” Sam said. There were almost fifteen pages of information stored now, but Sam couldn’t figure out what he was looking at, as most of it consisted of lines of letters and numbers that reminded him of launch codes.

“You don’t just lose it,” Walt said.

“What do we have here?”

“Everything. Lots of stuff for you to chew on.”

Sam considered that for a moment in light of all the information he’d gleaned just by looking at Walt. “What happened with your teeth?”

“Got tired of ’em,” he said. “One less thing to worry about. That’s the great thing about being retired. You get to make your own decisions about what you want to spend your time obsessing about. Mark my words. Day you retire, you’ll start thinking about getting rid of your chompers, too.”

Sam found that hard to believe. If he was going to get some kind of body modification, he might go for a robotic arm that fired missiles, or see about what a hollow leg would actually cost, or just go straight toward the Superman route and get X-ray vision, which would be pretty useful living in Miami. But his teeth were staying put. In the spirit of being fraternal, however, Sam thought he’d ask Walt for the name of his dentist at some point so Walt wouldn’t feel like Sam was just using him for his technological expertise.

“Tell me something, Walt,” Sam said. “This system you just cracked. How much would someone spend to set something like this up?”

Walt ran his tongue over the front of his “teeth” and thought about it for a moment. “Whoever did the work on this was pretty sharp,” he said. “And getting through the Italian was a challenge. Don’t Moldavians speak Moldavees?”

“Usually.” Sam was beginning to sense that Walt was slightly more versed in world history than previously assumed. “But they are a crafty people. Heavy on the linguistics.”

“Whoever set this up had decent training,” Walt said. “Even had a good idea of how an attack might come. Very interesting in terms of the flanking they did, but it’s about six months out of date. Lots of holes, if you know what to look for. But then, I’m former NSA.” Walt’s voice rose when he said former NSA, which Sam thought was probably a good way to get comped desserts and such. He made a mental note to play up his SEAL experience next time he was a little short on cash at a restaurant, see if he couldn’t get some sugar for his troubles.

“My guess?” Walt continued. “Whoever did this had some serious coin behind them. I cross-site scripted the mother without much problem, but I’ve got full faith and credit behind me.”

If you’re not interested in a long-term campaign of technoterrorism, or aren’t interested in finally learning if the truth is out there concerning the aliens, JFK and the existence of Bigfoot, and merely want to track the movements of those behind the screen and anyone who might be visiting the Web site you’ve staked out, the best way is via cross-site scripting.

If you’re trying to break into the CIA, it’s unlikely cross-site scripting will help you, because they already have it on their site to track you, but if you’re attempting to sneak inside open-source platforms like blogging shells or social networking sites, or a Web site set up by kidnappers to show a single video, you have a better chance of getting in and out without detection at least once.

All you have to do is inject a line of malicious code into a part of the Web site that you know is being viewed. Once the object is viewed-in this case, the video-the code leaches information from the viewer. A porn site might just want to know your e-mail address so it can bombard you with messages for penis-enlargement surgery, but a gambling site might start rooting through your computer for banking information; an identity thief might want to inhabit your life entirely.

Since the Web site with the video was a closed circle, it was easy for Walt to put the code inside the video player once he was able to slide past the security checkpoints, which Sam figured he did about midway through a mouthful of hash browns, and find out who else was viewing the site apart from Gennaro… Or at least where they were viewing it from.

“Can you give me an idea what I’m looking at here?” Sam asked.

Walt exhaled hard through his mouth, which sounded like the opening strains of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” as it whistled through his gum line. “You’ve got three users on this Web site,” he said. “Four counting us.” He sounded frustrated, like Sam should have been able to figure that out on his own, which maybe he could have if he’d not bothered to have a life all these years. That was one other thing about working with these ex-NSA computer guys, Sam realized; they used their geek factor against you. “Two of them are in Miami using the same wireless IP. One of them, the person actually maintaining the site, is smart enough to use a proxy server, but not smart enough to use a good proxy server.” He typed a few things into the laptop again and then smiled. “Corsica. The other person is in Corsica.”

Mounting an armored assault on the island of Corsica didn’t seem like a real possibility, so Sam chose to focus on the two people in Miami.

“Can you pinpoint where, exactly, the people in Miami are?”

Walt sighed, like he couldn’t believe Sam would ask him such a stupid question. He had a lot of ego for a guy with no teeth, but a few seconds of clicking delivered Sam the answer he was afraid of. “This is the IP for the Setai Hotel.”

A part of Sam sort of wished it was Madonna who was putting the screws to Gennaro, but he had a pretty good idea that the Material Girl wasn’t in the kidnapping business. But then he couldn’t imagine anyone else with the cash to stay at that hotel who would be, either.

“One other thing,” Sam said. “In light of the recent information here, and as it relates to the safety of Moldavia, could you sweep into the Setai’s reservation system and get me a list of names of the people staying there?”

“That’s illegal,” Walt said.

“No, no,” Sam said. “This has all been cleared by the top levels of Her Majesty’s Royal Guard. We have nothing to worry about. So quick like a bunny, before the princess dies, get me that list, will you?”

A few seconds later, and after much heavy breathing from Walt, as if he were really exerting himself and not just typing, Sam had a list of more than a hundred names open on his computer, along with all of their salient information. He recognized a few names-Madonna was staying on the eleventh floor and had ordered a lovely lobster ravioli for lunch; Al Pacino was on the fifteenth but was checking out this afternoon, which was good since he was already three hundred dollars in the red on valet fees; and Carson Daly was staying on the twenty-first, which seemed silly compared to the relative fame of the others, but Sam figured maybe Daly required less oxygen to survive-but no other names jumped out directly. He’d get a buddy at the FBI to run the list, anyway, see if anyone showed up as wanted for anything interesting.

He wasn’t even sure who he hoped to find on the list, since it’s not as if there were bands of famous kidnappers floating around. Sam couldn’t even think of anyone who did it regularly and with much success apart from, well, Hezbollah, but he didn’t think they were in the market for Italian heirs.

He scanned back over the list one more time and landed on one curious name: Nicholas Dinino, Gennaro’s father-in-law. Nicholas was staying in the other penthouse suite just adjacent to Gennaro’s, which made sense. It didn’t mean anything insidious. They were family, after all, but in the scope of the information Walt had just delivered, it felt… curious.

“Quid pro quo,” Walt said, and Sam immediately cursed the existence of that Hannibal Lecter movie that taught everyone the term quid pro quo. More than fifteen years later, and half the universe was still tossing it around like it meant something. Combine that with “Man up!” and “Wassup?” and “You go, girl!” and Sam was pretty sure that most of the people he came into contact with only said things parroted from morons and beer commercials. Not that there was anything wrong with beer commercials conceptually, just that they weren’t especially deep with philosophical thought and nuance.

“Sure, Walt.”

Walt smiled, which made Sam recoil. Man, those teeth looked strange. They were just too white, and his gums were too pink and his tongue, well, his tongue was too gray. Sam made a mental note that when he retired he was going to brush his teeth three times a day, just to make up for whatever karmic tarnishing was going on this day. “You think you could take out my neighbor’s parakeet? It chirps all night long and keeps me up like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I’m not in the assassination business,” Sam said, and Walt seemed disappointed.

“Well, next time,” he said.

Next time, Sam thought, he’d ring up a different buddy.

Sam’s original plan was to make some phone calls about the list of names, but it was too damn early. It wasn’t even seven thirty a.m. by the time he got out of Roasters ’n’ Toasters, which just wasn’t right. Who retires so they can wake up at the ass-crack of dawn? He’d go to the Carlito, but he still had another three and half hours before the doors opened and the scenery picked up.

Besides, he had a niggling sense that something just wasn’t adding up about the names on the list, even before calling on them. If Christopher Bonaventura were in town, wouldn’t he be staying at a place like the Setai? Sam didn’t think a guy like Bonaventura would have the moxie to set up a Web site as first-rate as the one he’d just viewed, nor did he really think Bonaventura was behind the kidnapping in the first place, but he figured that getting a jump on the other side of the problem with Gennaro would solve some issues later on, so he called the one buddy he knew who might be up at this early hour and who might know where to find visiting mafia dignitaries.

Darleen worked organized crime in New York when Sam first met her, and he was pretty sure they had a night of passion right around the turn of the millennium, back when everyone- especially everyone who was privy to inside information about what they feared was likely to be the total destruction of the American infrastructure-thought they could write checks that would never be cashed. Fact was, he just wasn’t 100 percent certain about it. It was a long night. There were several bottles of champagne involved, and all of it happened in an unmarked building in Newark that housed an alphabet soup of secret agencies. Nothing good ever happened in Newark, though technically, neither of them were even there. Anyway, she’d never mentioned it and he’d never mentioned it, and that was okay. Sam didn’t think that if his performance had been notable there would be this silence, so he thought not poking a stick into the issue was likely to keep the specter of disappointment away from both of them.

At any rate, Darleen was now working in Miami, proctoring the old-school five families, the new-school Russians and Cubans, the executive branches of the Bloods, Crips and Mexican Mafia, and whoever else came along through the Port of Miami wanting to organize and do crime. It meant she had a lot of late nights that looked like early mornings, so he wasn’t too worried about calling her before eight. Though as he dialed her number, he tried to figure out what she looked like at eight a.m. from his previous recollection, but just kept coming up with the sensation of pain in the back of his skull, which was likely a champagne hangover flashback and not anything exciting or acrobatic being conjured.

“Sam Axe,” Darleen said, “I must say I wasn’t expecting a call from you this fine morning. You locked in a cell in Kabul or something?”

“No, no,” Sam said, “I’m just picking up a protein shake and then heading off for my morning ocean swim.”

“I’d like to see that,” Darleen said.

Sam wanted to believe she was being flirtatious, but he got the sense that she was being facetious. Maybe he was wrong about that night. That whole “partying like it was 1999” business did tend to dull the old cerebrum. “Listen, Darleen, small favor.”

“Small?”

Hmmm. Now he really wasn’t sure. There was a lot of subtext to this woman. A lot of levels. A lot of ramps. He started thinking of her like a parking garage and realized it was really far more than he could reasonably be asked to deal with before noon. Tough to be really smooth when Regis and Kelly are still on in most houses. Never mind he’d already spent far too long talking to Walt, which was like intellectual antifreeze.

“Yeah,” he said. “Tiny.” Be humble, he thought, just go with it. “I’m trying to track down Christopher Bonaventura. You got any idea where I might be able to find him this week?”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, a change in the energy of the phone call, and Sam recognized that dropping Bonaventura’s name into the middle of a nice chat that may or may not have been reflective of a brief sexual liaison about a decade ago might have been a surprise. “You’ve got no reason to be looking for Christopher Bonaventura.”

Normally, Sam liked that kind of direct talk. Simple orders. Do this. Do that. Put it there. Nice thing about being a SEAL was that you pretty much always knew how your boss felt about you and what was expected of you; there was not a lot of emotional negotiation. But this was more like a personnel directive from human resources, both for today and tomorrow and probably the foreseeable future.

“I don’t even need to talk to him,” Sam said. “I just need to know where he’s staying while he’s in town.”

“Why would you think he’s in town?”

The problem about digging a hole is that if you’re not careful, someone is liable to push you into it.

“I saw that explosion yesterday and figured it had to do with him,” Sam said. It was worth a shot, he figured, since Gennaro had mentioned it the night previous. And if Gennaro knew, well, then the FBI knew. And if the FBI knew, then everyone with a security clearance above a janitor at the field office over on Northwest 2nd Avenue probably already had a peek at the incident report. It was a nice office, really, with strong, soundproof walls and a good location. There was a bar across the street called the Dorsal Fin where, for the price of a shot, and on a particularly slow news day, you could probably get a few mundane state secrets.

Darleen stayed silent. When she finally did speak, all she said was, “And?”

“And, well, I’m sort of working with a friend who has business interests affected by this terrible calamity,” Sam said. When Darleen didn’t reply immediately, he added, and kept adding and adding and adding, “And as you know, I’m concerned about the intercoastal byways and that was a significant environmental accident out there, which, when you take into consideration the migration patterns of the seagull, and the swallows of Capis trano which, as you know, are endangered, could be considered a problem. Internationally. As you know.”

Sam was of the opinion that if you added the words “as you know” to anything, people tended to pretend as if they did know, if only to not seem comparatively ill informed. It was a skill he’d gleaned working with intelligence people. No one wants to seem like a moron, even if admitting they don’t know something would likely make them seem all the more reliable.

“Sam,” she said, “he got away with killing his own father. You don’t just walk up and talk to him unless you have a good reason to have the mafia on your ass. These guys are true blood killers, not a bunch of Newark posers.”

Newark.

Sam was pretty sure that was a signal.

Really, it didn’t matter. He’d recently had a brush with unwanted marriage, and then there was the fact that he was technically still married to an ex-hippie, but it was useless to dwell on the past. Well, maybe not useless, but not advisable, anyway. Faced with dealing with history or dealing with the moment, Sam always advocated the moment. It was controllable. Besides, what was nice about his current position in life was that he got to spend a long time at the old romantic buffet, but even still you never knew when your favorite place might get shut down with an E. coli break-out. Or, in the case of Veronica, whom he didn’t hate, certainly, just didn’t want to, uh, spend forever with, another marriage proposal. Though he sure missed his Cadillac.

It was tough being a desirable man, Sam knew, but he wasn’t Burger King-some people just weren’t going to get it their way.

“All I’m asking is if you know where he’s staying,” Sam said. “I’m not planning on some Elliot Ness takedown.”

Darleen kind of snorted in response. It was a weird sound coming from a woman, but then he’d heard and seen a man whistle through his false teeth today without any sense of embarrassment in the least, which made Sam think that vanity was really an underrated thing. It wasn’t even eight thirty in the morning and he was already having moments of clarity, and without any liquid encouragement.

Maybe he actually would start waking up and taking ocean swims.

Sam thought he’d try one more parry before giving up the whole story just to get an address. Worst case scenario, he’d just tell Darleen the truth. She was FBI, after all. If she really wanted the truth, she could probably get it without Sam ever knowing. “Look, fact is, it’s not really for me. It’s for a sick friend. He thinks Bonaventura might be the only person who has a matching bone marrow profile. Not even a natural-born killer can turn down someone in need of a little bone marrow. If I can make the effort to find him, well, I think Mr. Bonaventura might make the effort to help my friend.”

That should do it, Sam thought. Find some middle ground. Appeal to her emotional center. Remind her of just how cuddly old Sam Axe was. Though the more he thought about it, he was starting to think that maybe the woman there that night in Newark was actually named Carlene.

“He has a compound that he uses on Key Biscayne,” she said, though her voice sounded kind of robotic, like she was giving a report, but then gave Sam the address. “I wouldn’t stop by with a scalpel and try to get that marrow out of him; you’re likely to end up gator bait.”

“Noted,” Sam said.

“And Sam? Whoever is employing you? Tell his to pay his debt and get out of the country and then see about getting into the space program. Bonaventura is not the kind of person who chalks things up to being part of the game. It’s all personal to him.”

“Noted,” Sam said. He wasn’t sure why he kept saying noted, but he sort of thought it made him sound more official. “Anything else, Darleen?”

Sam could hear a light tapping sound, as if maybe Darleen was clicking her teeth together, getting pensive, thoughtful, conjuring that night in Newark herself. Sam Time is hard to forget. He imagined her sitting in her office and really trying to get a fix on her memories, maybe even pondering a meet up at the Dorsal Fin for a few drinks and then, well, why plan it?

He heard that tapping sound again and realized that was actually the sound of her typing in the background. “Yes,” she said, “come to think of it, one other thing. As you know, having your friend Mr. Westen involved with Bonaventura would be bad for his profile. So I’d say it would be smart to be discreet.”

Sam was always surprised by how much other people knew about his business. “Discreet it is,” he said, and then made a mental note not to let Fiona set fire to anything valuable.

Most criminals like to keep a low profile. If you’re a bank robber, the odds are you don’t carry around a card that says BANKS KNOCKED OVER 24-7! If you’re a serial killer, you probably don’t run an ad on the back page of the Miami New Times offering severed heads for sale. Even if you’re a hit man-a job predicated on people knowing about your services-it’s fair to assume you’re not standing on A1-A with a sandwich board offering your wares.

All of which made the house Christopher Bonaventura was staying in that much more suspect. It wasn’t just the phalanx of black-on-black Mercedes-Benzes and Suburbans, with bulletproof body armor, encircling the drive that made it so suspect, though that certainly wasn’t helping matters; it was also the men standing behind the front gate of the house on Harbor Drive holding modified M1911A1. 45s like they were rolling with a Marine Force Recon unit.

Thing of it was, Sam thought, they sort of looked like Marines, too. Close-cropped hair. Square jaws. Arms as thick as thighs. Used to be mafia foot soldiers were on the chunky side. It wasn’t like they were big on hand-to-hand combat. They shot you or hit you in the head with a rock or clubbed you to death with a bat and then buried you in a cornfield. Physical work, sure, but quick work. Nothing where you’d need big muscle endurance. But these guys looked like they were hitting the free weights pretty regularly. Maybe taking a syringe or two, also, since Sam thought he could make out the entire arterial path of the guy closest to the gate and he wasn’t even out of the car yet.

Despite Darleen’s admonition to avoid it, Sam figured he’d drive by the house where Bonaventura was staying for the week, anyway, just to get the lay of the land, see what was what, and any other cliche he could think of. The truth was that he just wanted to see the damn place, since a house on Harbor Drive in Key Biscayne meant bucks he frankly didn’t think even the mob could afford.

At least not publicly.

So now he was parked across the street from a house three stories tall with a visible tennis court on the roof, the mere idea of which made Sam wonder just how dedicated you have to be to a sport to put it on the roof of your house. Apart from the Benzes and Suburbans, it was about all he could really see from the street, since the front gate was thick black steel and the line of men behind it didn’t exactly allow for great sight lines, at least not from across the street. So Sam got out of his car and started walking toward the house. What was the worst that could happen? Sam thought it was unlikely that they’d open fire on him right away, plus it would be hard to explain the blood spatter all over the nice McMansion across the way. Gunfire on the nicest street in Key Biscayne was likely to cause a stir, so while these guys were strapped like they were expecting the Chinese Red Army to come stomping down the street, it was probably more about intimidation than action.

“Pardon me, boys,” Sam said, “but I’ve lost my dog. Little cocker spaniel? White and sort of off-red. Party colored, they call ’em, but I just call him Chuck. You guys see anything matching that description?” The guys looked back and forth at each other with confusion, as if Sam were speaking gibberish, so he just kept walking toward the gate and talking. “Pink tongue, tends to poke out the side of his mouth when he’s running? Just a nub of a tail? This sound familiar? Barks at every leaf and bug he sees? Anybody?” He kept phrasing everything like a question, thinking that eventually one of the guys holding the. 45s would think to respond, if only to stop the cavalcade of queries.

He stopped talking when he got close enough to the gate that he could peer in rather easily, since now all of the guys were grouped together and muttering to each other in low voices Sam couldn’t quite make out. He wasn’t even really sure what he was looking for, but had a general feeling that because of the way things normally went down, he’d probably need to scale the wall and cause a ruckus at some point, so he might as well start looking for ways in now, before he was dodging bullets.

There was a sign in the middle of the gate that warned people away with threats of armed response units and fatal levels of electricity. If a dog really did get loose in this neighborhood and decided to raise his leg on Bonaventura’s gate, he’d be electrocuted, which made Sam think that the wisdom behind HOAs was truly lost on the rich. Nevertheless, the guards didn’t seem too concerned about the electricity, if their relative proximity to that gate was any judge.

Most people tend to shy away from electrified fencing, but the ten men assembled behind this one didn’t seem to be too tense, which meant it was likely turned off. Maybe ten guys with guns and lethal electricity was considered overkill even for mob guys.

Sam counted up the cars. Five Suburbans, five Benzes, a few other dark black cars that didn’t look quite so fortified, as well as three MV Agusta F4 CC motorcycles, a bike that runs around $130,000 out the door, and goes out that door at nearly two hundred mph. The aggregate value of the parked transportation was fairly mind-boggling. Really, being the good guys just didn’t pay as well.

“No dog here,” one of the guys said, but it was impossible to tell which one, since they all looked exactly the same: same hair, same facial features, same guns, probably the same flash grenades strapped to their chests, too. Whoever spoke did so in perfect, unaccented English. He might have been Italian, but he wasn’t from Italy and didn’t exactly fit the profile of someone who’d been cracking heads since getting “made.”

“You sure? He’s a gassy fella, so even if you didn’t see him, you might smell him. Know what I mean?” Sam said. He was looking at one guy, the one he figured spoke to him a moment previous, but the answer came from a different person.

“You heard me,” he said. “Now go. You’re in the wrong neighborhood.”

Testy.

“No, no, I live just down the block,” Sam said. “Mind if I leave you my phone number? In case you see the dog, you could call me? My daughter and I, we, well, don’t know what to do with ourselves. That dog has really helped my daughter with her, uh, spina bifida.”

Sam wasn’t sure what spinal bifida was, but figured it sounded just bad enough that not even these guys could turn away from it; testy de meanor or otherwise.

“Fine,” the man said. “Give me your number.” He pulled out a Talla-Tech RPDA-57, the official PDA of the Marines, a rugged green device that did everything from make calls to calibrate mortar coordinates. Not exactly the kind of thing you purchase at Office Depot. And not exactly the kind of thing mafia foot soldiers kept in their back pockets. If these men were employed by Christopher Bonaventura, it meant the game was a whole hell of a lot more complicated.

Sam gave the man his cell number and when the man asked him for his name, Sam said, “Chuck Finley.”

For some reason, this got the men to exchange awkward glances with each other. Finally, Sam thought, old Chuck’s getting a rep with the criminal element…

“You said your dog’s name was Chuck,” the lone speaking man said.

Crap. Testy and paid attention. A Marine for sure.

“It is his name,” Sam said. “It is. I love that mongrel so much I gave him my own name. It’s easier for my daughter to remember, too. As you know, with spina bifida, the memory is often the first casualty, and with her mother gone, well, that dog is almost like another father to her.”

All the men nodded in unison and with matching solemnity. It was like watching the Rockettes doing that kicking thing, and just as creepy. These guys might not be active service Marines, Sam thought, but they sure were regimented. And judging by their guns, PDAs and fresh haircuts, well funded. He just didn’t have any idea what they were doing guarding Christopher Bonaventura’s vacation house.

Or at least he didn’t until Nicholas Dinino, Gennaro’s stepfather-in-law, pulled up behind the men in a convertible Bentley Continental, waved innocuously as they opened the twin sides of the gate and then nearly ran Sam down as he sped away from the house.