Tod Goldberg - The Reformed

“Price is irrelevant,” he said. “I just want you out of my home before she breaks anything else.”

Junior shoved Fiona in my direction-his first action that actually betrayed his true personality-and when I caught her, I had to hold her back from, well, doing what Fiona does.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” I said, but he didn’t respond. He just walked back to his front door, opened it wide and waited for us to walk through.

It wasn’t until we were sitting inside the Charger again that Fiona felt it prudent to speak. “If he ever touches me again,” she said, “I’m going to break all of his fingers. And then-then I’m going to really hurt him.”

“No problem,” I said, since it’s usually better just to agree with Fiona in these situations.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a silver BlackBerry. “Plus, he won’t be so upset about missing this when he doesn’t have workable digits. I understand it’s hard to text with your toes.”

“I knew I could count on you,” I said.

She reached into her other pocket and came out with an envelope with a bank logo on the return address. “I thought this might be helpful, too,” she said.

“That’s my bank robber,” I said.

And from the small of her back she pulled out a set of car keys. “This I just did to be mean.”

When dealing with an adaptive enemy, making contingency plans can be a fruitless endeavor. An adaptive enemy is one who can morph his defenses on the fly, can change his goals to meet the situation and is willing, above all else, to make extreme sacrifices in pursuit of victory. In order to have a Plan B against this kind of enemy, you’d need to imagine every possible scenario while also acknowledging none of the things you’ve imagined might actually be the right answer.

In the case of Junior Gonzalez, everything I’d expected to learn about him was wrong. That he was living well in a planned community, that his home looked to have been decorated out of Pottery Barn (albeit a Pottery Barn that offered handsome metal doors covered in a wood veneer) and that he was initially polite (until he wasn’t polite) and uniformly well-spoken… All of it ran counter to my expectations. I shouldn’t have been surprised in light of who (and what) Eddie Santiago had become, and yet it all had come as a surprise to me that a career criminal could change his outward persona.

Spend enough time locked away in prison, and it’s only natural that you’ll begin fantasizing about the life you’ll lead once you’re free and the lengths needed to fulfill that fantasy. Maybe it will be a life of revenge. Maybe it will be a life of peace. Maybe it will be a life lived out of a catalog. Or, just maybe, it will be a life lived out of a catalog and that is filled with a desire for revenge.

Pottery Barn and revenge seemed like strange bed-fellows, even to Fiona. It was the next day, and we were sitting poolside at the Ace Hotel, waiting for Sam. He’d asked us to meet him at the hotel, which was odd, but he said it would all make sense once he arrived. I had a suspicion that it would only make sense to Sam, but there we sat, Fiona in a bikini that contained roughly the same amount of fabric that goes into a cotton ball, and me wearing an Armani suit, because I assumed we’d be sitting inside. And because I look good in it.

“For a brute,” Fiona said, “he did have a lovely set of chenille throw pillows. How can you want to hurt people when you can put your head down on chenille throw pillows?”

“It’s a great mystery,” I said. I had Junior’s BlackBerry in my hand and was busy going through all of his e-mail and phone contacts. Fiona was busy absorbing UV rays.

“Would you mind getting my back?” Fiona asked. She flipped over and undid her bikini top.

I’d spent the better part of the last hour putting suntan lotion on different parts of Fiona’s body, enough so that I was pretty sure she could walk on the sun without getting a burn, but then Fiona was always partial to putting on a show for the tourists, and there was a new batch of young men sitting across the pool, ogling her. The Ace was one of those hotels designed to look like it had been built in the 1970s, except that all of the things that were deemed dreadful in the seventies were now covered in glitter and made to look exceptional. Even the drinks had names from the seventies, like the DY-NO-MITE! Mudslide and the Jim Jones, which was basically a Long Island Iced Tea. Most of the pool denizens were born in the 1980s, so the significance (or insignificance) of it all was likely lost on them. But Fiona’s near-naked form certainly wasn’t.

I squeezed out a dollop of coconut-scented tanning oil into one hand and rubbed it into Fi’s back while still perusing the BlackBerry with my free hand. It’s not the kind of multitasking they teach at spy school, but I was able to make do.

“Here’s something interesting,” I said. “Last night, Junior received an e-mail from someone with an Honrado Incorporated e-mail address.”

“Aren’t all of the people working there ex- or current criminals?” She reached around to the small of her back. “Did you get this spot, Michael? I don’t want an uneven tan.”

“You’re all covered.” I opened up the e-mail. It was blank but contained an attachment, which I opened. It was the visitor sign-in sheet that Sam and I had signed as Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin. “This isn’t good,” I said, and handed the BlackBerry to Fiona. “It’s the daily sign-in of people coming to see Father Eduardo.”

“It seems that the Man from U.N.C.L. E has been compromised,” she said.

“And the mayor,” I said.

“The problem with employing criminals,” Fiona said, handing the BlackBerry back to me, “is that they tend not to be very trustworthy.”

The e-mail was from the blanket info@honradoinc. com, which was probably accessed by several people, but it was unlikely that more than one person had immediate access to the sign-in sheet. The receptionist was the only one. I’d have to check with Eduardo on that, but even the process of snooping for that info might tip off the wrong people. Better to take care of that on the down-low.

I scrolled through the rest of the e-mails, but they went back only two days and didn’t provide much in the way of apparent action items. But if you really want to know about a person, read his nonpersonal e-mails, like the e-mails from Amazon. com noting the upcoming delivery of items, which, in Junior’s case, provided even more insight than I could have imagined.

“Would you like to guess what books Junior has headed his way?” I asked.

“I’d like to think he’s got some of those Chicken Soup books. Did they make a Chicken Soup for the Violent Criminal’s Soul yet?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But he does have The Art of War and The Revolutionary’s Cookbook on a three-day delivery.”

“What is it with men and The Art of War?”

“Have you ever read it?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t need to. Do you want to know what the art of war is, Michael? Kill the other person. It’s really very simple. No reading or extra training required.”

It wasn’t really The Art of War that concerned me. The Revolutionary’s Cookbook wasn’t dangerous as a book, but it was a favorite of garage-based terrorists for years. Most of them didn’t know what to do with it, really, but someone like Junior, who was brighter than I’d given him credit for, just may. At the very least, he had the muscle and the means to acquire the goods required for large-scale explosions that didn’t require weapons-grade explosives. Worse, though, was that if he didn’t know precisely what he was doing, there was a good chance he’d blow up his own neighborhood by accident.