“Man’s best friend,” Sam said. “He’d probably bark if a penguin walked up.” The man snorted out a laugh, but didn’t move any closer to the gate or make a move to let Sam in. “So, about the Ranchero. I just need to check to make sure you’ve not been driving it.”
“I look stupid to you?” the man said. He looked at Sam without any sense of aggression, maybe because he was still petting his dog. Studies said dogs made people more placid. Maybe they were right. “Since when does the DMV make house calls?”
“Part of the stimulus plan,” Sam said. The great thing about the stimulus plan the government had recently put into motion was that no one had any idea what was in it. You could tell people purple monkeys were part of the stimulus plan and if you said it with some conviction, they would consider it for at least a few minutes.
But not this guy.
“If you’re looking for my stepdaughter,” he said, “she’s gone.”
Not a good sign.
“Out shopping?”
“How many times do you think you can threaten someone before they get the hint?”
“What about you?”
“I’ve lived here fifty years,” he said. “No one ever comes here and threatens me. She has her own life. I live here too long to be bothered by idiots.”
“You the original owner of the house?” Sam said. Just keeping it light. Pretending that bit about the threat slid right past him.
“It was built in 1929. I moved in a few days later,” the man said, a hint of a laugh in his voice. Keeping it light, too, but still not budging from his spot next to the dog.
“When did Maria move in?”
“You do think I’m stupid, don’t you?”
Not good again. The thing was, Sam got the sense the man was enjoying the game.
“What did you say your name was?” Sam asked.
“Shouldn’t you know that?”
Sam walked back to his car and pulled out the envelope of documents. They were all in the name of Maria Cortes.
“I’m looking for a young woman named Maria,” Sam said. “Or a big woman named Maria. You’re not either of them, right?”
“DMV doesn’t know if I’m a man or a woman? I’ve been driving a car since before you were born.”
The problem wasn’t with the DMV. It was with all of the government. “Yes, yes,” Sam said, “I see it here.” He didn’t, but that didn’t mean he was going to admit that. See if maybe the man would just give up his damn name, make it easy on everyone.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Chuck Finley,” Sam said.
“Like the ballplayer?”
“No, not like anyone. Just me. Chuck Finley.”
“There was another Chuck Finley,” he said. “Owned baseball teams.”
“That was Charles O. Finley,” Sam said. “That’s not me, either.”
“Could be you,” he said. “That guy was known not to play on the level too much. He once tried to trade his manager. Who does that?”
“Not me,” Sam said, trying to figure the guy out. It seemed clear he was smart, knew a few things about life and didn’t believe a single thing Sam was saying. Sam sort of admired him for that. These old Cuban guys. They’d seen so much crap in their lives, it almost didn’t make sense to try to con them for information.
“One other thing you got going for you?” he said. “You’re not like the other dudes been showing up. You got a car. Not a nice car, but not some screaming motorcycle.”
Uh-oh.
“You said you were Maria’s stepfather?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Her mother around?”
“No,” he said. “They left together. Fine by me.”
“You’re a tender guy,” Sam said. He decided being straight was the only way to get what he needed. He wasn’t sure it was a two-way street, however. “Bad guys come here looking for your stepdaughter and you just boot her out?”
“She got in with a bad crowd,” he said. “I warned her that Nick was no good, and so she came crawling back here, I told her, ‘See, I told you.’ But she’s a grown woman now. Her mother, too. What can I do?”
“Maria is in a lot of trouble,” Sam said. “I’m not here to hurt her. I’m here to protect her.”
“I bet.”
“Her boyfriend Nick is dead.”
“I told you he was a bad guy.”
“He was cut up in pieces inside an apartment rented in your wife’s name,” Sam said. “Then he was dumped in acid. Was he that bad? Is anyone that bad?”
The man stopped petting the dog, considered the sentence Sam said, patted the dog once and then stood up. Finally, Sam thought, a reaction.
“You’re not with those bikers?”
“No,” Sam said.
“And you’re not DMV, right?”
“Right.”
This answer actually seemed to ease him more than the negative answer on the biker issue. Everyone hates the DMV. No wonder Rod was how he was. “I’m Jose,” he said. “And I drive that Ranchero all the time. Just hate to get it registered, you know? Piece of crap. Let it sit.”
“Right,” Sam said.
“Now, then, who are you?” Jose asked.
There was the rub. Sam couldn’t quite tell him the truth and couldn’t quite lie, not if he wanted his help in getting Maria safe. “I’m just someone who wants to help her stay alive.” Sam scratched out his cell phone number on the back of the envelope and reached it over the fence toward Jose. He finally moved away from the dog and took the envelope. “I don’t care if she’s illegal. I don’t care about anything but keeping her safe.”
“She’ll call you tonight,” Jose said and then he and the dog went inside, closing the door quietly behind them.
9
Before you attack a fixed enemy position, you always want to do a proper amount of reconnaissance. This is true if you intend to attack with firepower or if you intend to attack with psychological warfare. Either option requires a precise understanding of the lay of the land.
The first order of business is to obtain as much information about the physical area as possible. This is usually done by having several different people watching the same area from different vantage points, who then obtain salient intelligence and report back. In an ideal situation, all of that intel would be gathered and then you’d grid out the area from all angles and plan your attack.
You’d then break into seven teams: the assault team, which does the assaulting; the security team, which handles securing the area from reinforcements; the support team, which assists the assault team indirectly; the breach team, which cuts through obstacles; the demolition team, which blows stuff up; and the search team, which is sent to ferret out any remaining hostiles.
To do this effectively, a team of about fifty men would be best. A dozen claymore mines would help, some tank support wouldn’t offend anyone and an extraction team with a gassed-up Black Hawk would make it a nice, polite party
If you have less than fifty men, no claymores, no tanks and only a DVD of Black Hawk Down, you’re going to need to make adjustments. When you’re a spy, you’re often asked to do the work of fifty men simply by being better at everything.
Being better doesn’t really matter when a dozen violent bikers are beating you to death with lead pipes because you’ve cornered yourself due to poor planning, which is why Fiona and I were down the street from the Ghouls’ clubhouse just west of the airport watching who was coming and who was going, and attempting to figure out what the odds were that we could bust in and start making outlandish demands. I was keeping watch with binoculars and a camera with a telephoto lens. Fiona was keeping watch by reading InStyle magazine and periodically taking cell phone calls
“Why are the police able to pester Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan every ten minutes but can’t arrest these men at their own clubhouse?” Fiona asked.
“Because they aren’t doing anything wrong,” I said. It was true: Their clubhouse was technically a bar and they were technically patrons, which is perfectly legal. And since you could refuse service to anyone as a shop owner, they didn’t have a problem with not serving a person who might wander in off the street. Though the monster sitting in front of the door absently twirling a baseball bat probably dissuaded most casual onlookers. In the last hour, we’d watched about a dozen men who looked essentially just like Baseball Bat roll up on their bikes and enter the bar. Usually these guys had a few women with them-you could tell who they were since they wore jackets that said PROPERTY OF THE GHOULS on the back, because the Ghouls aren’t exactly known for their grand subtlety-but not today. It had been been a bad week for the company and it looked like they were doing some official business. Trying to place a legal bug into what is ostensibly a public place is a significant legal issue, which made the Ghouls’ use of a de facto clubhouse right out in the open a pretty savvy bit of criminality.