Bobby Ditto’s thinking that it doesn’t just pour when it rains. It shits all over your head. Ruby Amaroso was the most responsible of the young kids Bobby recruited two years ago. When you gave him a job, he got it done, plus he kept the rest of the jerks in place. Now he’s in the morgue with a tag on his toe, and yours truly, meaning Roberto Benedetti, is the chief suspect. The cops have been to visit twice, even though Bobby referred them to his mouthpiece when they first showed up.
And now this, the final insult, he has to turn for help to the goddamned Russians and they send him a slanty-eyed chink who doesn’t weigh more than a hundred and fifty pounds. A little pussy-boy with a flat-nosed face carved from stone. They’re in the bunker and he’s offering the chink coffee, but the chink’s not showing the slightest respect, for Bobby or for the Blade, who’s standing with his back against the wall. No, the jerk’s actually refusing Bobby’s hospitality.
‘See,’ Bobby explains, ‘I need to know what you can do for me, if anything. This card?’ He holds up Louis Chin’s business card: XAO INVESTIGATIONS. ‘It wouldn’t mean a thing to me, even if I could pronounce it.’
‘“Zow.” It’s pronounced “Zow.” But I understand that we’ve been recommended by people you trust.’ Chin’s thoroughly enjoying the gangster’s obvious discomfort. He’s worked with the guineas before. As self-centered as drag queens, they have a hard time coping with people who aren’t afraid of them.
‘Yeah, that’s all well and good,’ Bobby says, ‘but I gotta know what you can do for me before I tell you my business. And I don’t think I need to explain why.’
Chin steeples his fingers. ‘Two basic facts. First, there are nineteen hundred private companies under contract to one or another of the federal government’s intelligence arms. Second, more than two hundred and sixty-five thousand individuals working for these companies have a Top Secret clearance, which allows them access to sensitive data. Most of these individuals are honest and hard-working, but not all. For a fee, some are willing to pass along information. A smaller number will actually conduct investigations.’
‘So, these guys, they’re like traitors? They sell information to terrorists?’
‘If that’s going on, which I very much doubt, it’s news to me. What my contacts do is more like what happens at the Motor Vehicle Bureau or the IRS or the various credit agencies. For a fee, they pass data to private investigators.’
Lou Chin recites the pitch more or less from memory. He’s a year out of the Marine Corps where he led a company operating in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan. Chin had loved his job and fully expected to make the Marine Corps his permanent home. But then, one cold, moonless night, a mortar round landed two yards from where he crouched on a roof in Kandahar. His three comrades were killed instantly, while he, himself (except for a minor flesh wound tended by a company medic) was uninjured. Four months later, he accepted an honorable discharge and came home, figuring that some higher power had sent him a strongly worded message.
‘Why don’t you describe your needs,’ he concludes, ‘and I’ll tell you whether or not we can meet them.’
‘And you’ll guarantee confidentiality, right?’
‘Absolutely. We never compromise a client.’
‘No, you just sell government secrets.’
Chin spreads his hands and shrugs. Someone’s got his fingers wrapped around Bobby Ditto’s balls and the gangster lacks the capacity to unwrap those fingers on his own. That’s why he’s called on Xao Investigations.
‘What about money? What about your ... your fee?’
‘One thousand dollars for this consultation, which you’ve already paid. The rest depends on what you need.’ Chin smiles for the first time, a thin smile that’s gone in an instant. ‘Which, I suppose, brings us back to square one. I can’t very well price our services without knowing what they’ll be.’
Louis Chin’s wearing tan slacks, an off-white linen jacket and a copper-colored golf shirt. To Bobby Ditto, the clothing looks expensive and sophisticated, which annoys him all the more. He’s thinking Chin (whose forebears in America reach back to the California gold rush) should be serving him wonton soup and egg rolls.
‘I need a minute to talk it over.’ Bobby stands up and motions for the Blade to follow as he walks out of the bunker and closes the door behind him. They’re now standing in the warehouse’s storage area, surrounded by rolls of substandard carpet that Bobby expects to unload on the New York Housing Authority. ‘Whatta ya think, Marco? Is the asshole legit?’
The Blade rubs his nose, an annoying habit that he simply can’t break, no matter how much it pisses off his boss. ‘What I’m thinkin’, Bobby, is that we gotta do somethin’. We can’t afford to have this Carter gunnin’ for us, not right now.’
The Blade’s referring to an upcoming deal, the biggest in the short history of Bobby Ditto’s crew, seven kilos of pure heroin at $71,000 per kilo. Bobby’s in the process of putting the $497,000 together and he’s still got time – the dope won’t reach the US for another week or so – but the last thing he needs is some crazed mercenary out to kill him. And for what? To protect a whore?
‘I feel like I stepped into a world where nothing makes sense,’ he tells the Blade. ‘Like I’m on fuckin’ Mars.’
‘Ditto that,’ the Blade responds. ‘But here’s somethin’ to dream about when you go to sleep tonight. You pay this slant-eyes a few grand, which is chump change, and he tells us where to find this Carter guy. Then we snatch Carter, along with his fuckin’ whore, and spend a week givin’ ’em exactly what they got comin’.’
‘A week?’
‘A week.’
Bobby Ditto smiles for the first time in days. ‘Ya know why I pay you the big bucks?’ he asks as he opens the door to the bunker. ‘Because you’re worth every penny.’
Chin nods when Bobby Ditto resumes his seat. He’s come to sell his services and he knows he’s succeeded before his client says a word. A good thing, too, because Xao Investigations’ entire workforce is limited to a single man with a good front and better connections, a man named Louis Chin who’s pretty much surviving day to day.
‘All right,’ Bobby Ditto says, ‘here’s what I know. The asshole’s an American named Carter. And don’t ask me if Carter’s a first or a last name, it could be either. What’s definite is that he was a mercenary – or still is – and that he hung out with a former British officer, also turned mercenary, by the name of Montgomery Thorpe.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yeah, that’s it.’
‘Well, mercenary’s a big category. It covers everything from private contractors like Halliburton to rogue units buying opium from the Taliban.’ Chin clears his throat. ‘Still, from what you’ve told me about Carter’s skills, he has to be ex-military. That means he also has to be in a DOD database.’
‘What’s DOD?’
‘The Department of Defense.’
‘And you can get into their computers?’
‘Much more than that. The people I use can access parts of the CIA’s many databases, and the National Security Agency’s, and others besides.’
‘And these people, they don’t work for the government?’
‘They work for private companies under contract to the government. But the important thing, for you, is that if Carter left the military to become a merc, some agency most likely tracked him. That would also hold true for Montgomery Thorpe.’ Chin shuts down abruptly, the message plain. No more freebies. The ball’s in Bobby Ditto’s court.
‘OK,’ Bobby says, ‘how much?’
‘Fifteen thousand to do an investigation. No guarantee on the results.’
‘Fifteen grand’s a lot of money.’ Bobby’s voice carries a little edge, not quite threatening, but close enough to make a point which the chink apparently doesn’t get.