Goddamn Africa thing a few years back, Mooney and his charity shindig. Last place on earth Fenn had ever planned to go, fucking Darfur. But his publicist had kept riding his ass telling him this thing was sponging up all the press. Fenn was in the running for a couple big roles just then; last thing he needed was to be on the dark side of the moon all of a sudden, so he called Mooney up, said sure, he’d love to help out.

Then he ran into that fucker Hardin.

Leno and Letterman made him their steady punch for weeks after Darfur. The parts he was up for? Nothing. Then the producers on his next picture dropped him, everybody making all the right conciliatory noises, but Fenn knew what it smelled like when they started pushing you downhill. The part went to that Leo Harris punk, kid ten years younger than Fenn. Fucking Harris got an Oscar. Fenn’s goddamn Oscar.

Had to go under the knife for the nose twice, and it still wasn’t right. His agent kept telling him go with it, said it gave him some character. What the fuck did he know? When Fenn went to Darfur, he was People’s reigning Sexiest Man Alive, then his agent starts telling him to go with the Owen Wilson look?

Some scripts that used to come to him first didn’t come to him at all. Finally, a director who’d had a couple of arty films tank on him called Fenn in for a meeting. Guy needed another blockbuster so the studios would keep bankrolling his vanity projects. Fenn had played the lead in the guy’s two big paydays, so the man was reaching out. But the producers had written this anger management shit into Fenn’s contract – Fenn had to go see this shrink, had to get him to sign off that Fenn wasn’t going to bust anybody up.

Fenn figured he was an actor, right? He couldn’t convince some shrink he had his mind right, then he might as well hang it up. But at their first meeting, quack actually said one thing that made sense. Said that what you were angry at wasn’t why you were angry. Said you needed to reach down, find that main hurt and deal with it.

Just like that, Fenn saw a way out. Sat down that night, worked up a whole backstory – how some trusted family friend had abused him as a kid. Ran through the scenes in his head, even had a guy in mind, guy his dad used to know. Did his homework, and the guy had been dead better than a decade, no family left to dispute the story. And the guy’d gotten in some tax evasion trouble in the early Eighties, so nobody had him up for sainthood or anything. Once Fenn was sure he had it down, he dropped it in the session. Some of his best work – crying and furious all at once. Screaming at one point, tossing a chair. Curled up in a ball on the floor blubbering like a baby later. The shrink ate it up. Signed off, but not before priming his own pump, telling Fenn that they should continue therapy, that identifying the cause was just the start. Fenn figured what the fuck; it gets him back to work. So if he’s got to drop a few bills a month in this shrink’s lap, so be it.

Then Fenn’s agent cranked up the PR machine; started leaking the abuse shit to the right contacts, until finally they got the big cover story in the Enquirer – “The Dark Secret Behind Shamus Fenn’s Fury”. So the agent sets up a press conference, Fenn playing the reluctant hero – talking about how he had always been a private man, preferred to keep his business to himself, but then saying, maybe some other kid out there will know he can stand up, maybe some kid won’t let this eat him out from the inside the way it had with Fenn. Then they went on the charm offensive, even did the obligatory weepy gig with Oprah.

Fenn was back on top now. Nothing America liked better than a sinner come to his understanding, especially if you could throw in a little prurient sex in the back-story. Looked like he was finally going to get his Oscar, too. Oprah wasn’t daily anymore, but he had a sit-down with her a couple days back, her pre-Oscar special for that O network of hers. That interview was airing tomorrow. Meant he’d had to slip into his victim persona again, do the child abuse dance one more time. Old hat by now, had that down, even thought he sort of had a handle on the anger management thing.

Then he saw that fucker Hardin heading for the entrance to the luxury boxes. The one thing that had kept Fenn sleeping nights since the Darfur fiasco was knowing he’d fixed Hardin’s wagon. The studio types may not have been real pleased with Fenn after the Darfur thing, but the last thing they needed was this Hardin guy pissing on their parade. So the studios had leaned on the networks and the networks leaned on Hardin. What Fenn had heard, they had dried up that bastard’s pond but good. Fenn figured Hardin was over in some African shithole, begging for scraps. Now here he was in Chicago heading for the luxury boxes. The fucking shrink was right. You had to know what you were angry for, and Fenn was angry that this goddamn Hardin still had him doing the talk-show circuit, pretending he’d let some slimy bastard cornhole him all through junior high, while Hardin was upstairs playing footsie with the high rollers.

Fenn pulled out his cell and called Tony Corsco, mob guy who had consulted on Cal Sag Channel, the Chicago gangster pic Fenn had made maybe ten years back. Fenn got on with Corsco, and Corsco liked hanging with the stars. Helped out where he could, somebody needed a new coke connection or whatever. Hardin was the type of problem Corsco could solve.

CHAPTER 5

It was just past 11pm when Hardin checked into the downtown Hyatt on Wacker. Lots of rooms, lots of people coming and going, lots of exits, and it connected to some pedestrian tunnels. He’d stashed his rental in a huge public garage that stretched for several blocks under the fancy new park along Michigan. Short enough walk to the hotel, and he wouldn’t have to wait on a valet if he needed to get out quick.

Hardin had no illusions. It had been thirty-six hours since he bounced the couriers outside Kenema. He figured four, maybe five hours after that they were late in Freetown, and maybe another couple hours before their Hezbollah contacts had shit their pants. That meant some pretty bad guys had spent at least a day leaning on anybody who knew anything about the blood diamond trade – and those fuckers knew how to lean. Somebody would remember that Hardin had been nosing around. Hardin wouldn’t be the only name on their list, but he’d be on their list by now, so they’d be looking. For $150 million, they’d look hard.

At least he’d seen Stein. Stein set the meet at his luxury box at the Bulls game. Hardin waited until the game was almost over, watching Stein’s box for the crowd to clear out. When the Bulls went up big late and it looked like Stein was alone, Hardin made his way up to the suite.

Stein got up and shook Hardin’s hand as he came in.

“Long time,” Stein said.

“Yeah,” said Hardin.

“So, Hardin now?”

“My képi blanc name,” said Hardin. One of the perks of serving in the Legion – in fact maybe the only perk – was a new identity and French citizenship when you mustered out. Hardin had known Stein from his Marine days, riding shotgun on some weird-smelling Mossad deal in Kuwait (and well up into Iraq, though they weren’t supposed to have been there) just after Gulf War I.

“So, a drink? Some ribs?” Stein had quite a spread.

“Let’s just get to it.” Hardin had eaten breakfast at an IHOP somewhere on the way down from O’Hare earlier and still wasn’t hungry. His stomach was on Africa time, and the IHOP breakfast was more calories than your average African family might eat in a week.

“Straight to business with you, eh? OK, so you got some raw rocks, you got no Kimberley certificates on them, and you want to dump them on somebody who can cut them and get them papered up so they go from being useless gravel to being an actual asset. I’m straight on that?”