“Don’t get my boy shot,” Davenport said to Virgil after Virgil told him how they’d work the approach.

“Yeah, don’t get his boy shot,” Andreno said.

“We should be okay-we’ll have it scouted, we’ll be inside, it’ll all be on tape,” Virgil said. “We’ll make movies of everybody coming and going.”

“What could possibly go wrong?” Jenkins asked.

THE “WAY MORE COOL” surveillance device was a laptop computer, brought in by the film guy, Dan Jackson. The computer had two battery slots, one of which had been replaced by a high-definition digital video recorder with four tiny cell-phone cameras, four tiny microphones, and a transmitter.

“The way it works is, you hit F-10. The computer doesn’t come up, but it starts the recorders and transmitter. It’ll pick up every word within ten feet, and it records wide-angle photographs in all four directions, and transmits,” Jackson said. “You’re gonna want to sit away from the kitchen… it really picks up plates and silverware. And you’re gonna want to set the computer so one of the lenses is looking across the table at Warren and one of them is looking at you. They got wireless there, so you could have it open and be working on it, so they know it’s really a working computer. When he shows up, you get offline, and close the lid, and shove it off to the side.”

“Why’s that better than a wire?” Andreno asked.

“Because everything is so much bigger, they can jam more shit into it. Get better sound, you get movies, you get a better radio, and a bigger battery,” Jackson said. “But the main thing is, a bug-detection device will pick up a computer every time. If they scan you, they’ll pick up the laptop. And they make an allowance for it. And the computer works, if they want to see it work. The trick is, it really is a bug.”

Andreno looked skeptical. “Maybe I should just take a wrist radio.”

Andreno would give Warren color xerox copies of the photos, saying that the actual photos were nearby. “He won’t believe it if you just hand over the originals,” Virgil said. “Or, if he does believe it, why would he give them back to you? It’s not like you’re gonna shoot him right there in the restaurant.”

ANDRENO PRACTICED with the laptop a bit, put in his own e-mail address and figured out how to call it up. When they were satisfied that he knew what they were doing, they headed out, across town, to the restaurant, a sandwich-and-pie place, and they all got coffee and a piece of pie and worked out the seating arrangements.

When they were done, Virgil asked, “You happy?”

Andreno nodded and said, “I am. It’s almost noon. Let’s make the call.”

They went out to Virgil’s truck, gave Andreno a clean cell phone, which Shrake plugged into the microphone attachment on the laptop, and Warren ’s cell-phone number.

Andreno sat in the passenger seat, hunched over the phone, cleared his throat a couple times, and dialed. The phone call lasted a minute, and they replayed it from the recorder.

ANDRENO: “Ralph Warren. I’m an ex-employee of a very old friend of yours, going back to the sixties. I need to talk to you.”

“What friend? Talk about what?” Warren had a high-pitched, reedy voice on the phone. “How’d you get this number?”

“We need to talk about all these dead people with lemons in their mouths. Your old friend figures that you might know something about it, and he’s very nervous. Therefore, he’s hiding out. The thing is, he took some pictures way back then, in that house, the one where the trouble started. He sent you copies. I had a little problem with your friend, and he canned my ass, so I lifted the pictures and here I am. All I want is my fee. Thirty thousand dollars. Then I go away.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, pal.”

“Okay. Well, then, don’t show up,” Andreno said. “I’m gonna be at Spiro’s Restaurant, which is three blocks west on University from your Checkerboard Apartments, at one o’clock. If you’re not there by ten after one, fuck it, I mail the pictures to the television people and go on back to Chicago. See you there, or not. I know what you look like… from the pictures. Oh-if you want to know where your pal is, I can tell you that, too. ’Bye.”

“Wait…”

But Andreno had hung up.

“He bit,” Shrake said from the backseat. “He’ll be there.”

JACKSON SET UP three hundred yards away with a camera lens as long as his arm. The rest of them stayed on the street, sitting in the backseats of plain-vanilla state cars, behind lightly smoked glass, each with a radio. For the first half hour, they saw nothing at all. Then the radio burped and Jenkins said, “Look at this guy. Red Corolla. He’s five miles an hour too slow and he’s checking everything.”

“Can’t see his face,” Shrake said. Virgil was at the end of the line, watched the Corolla as it passed, but was on the wrong side of the street to see the driver’s face. He watched as the car made an unsignaled right turn off University. They’d driven the neighborhood before taking their parking spots, and there wasn’t much down that street-a crappy old industrial street with no residential.

A minute later, the Corolla poked its nose back onto University and turned toward Virgil. “Corolla’s on the way back,” he said. “He’s probably our guy.”

The car rolled past: the driver was a big guy, wearing a steel-gray suit, wine-colored necktie, and sunglasses. He looked like one of Warren ’s security people: good physical condition and too big for the Corolla.

“Got another one,” Jenkins said. “Look at the Jeep.”

Red Jeep Cherokee, a few years old, slowed and turned into the parking lot. The Jeep made a slow tour, parked at the far end, sat for a moment, then slowly came back out. “I think they’re taking down the tag numbers on the cars,” Jenkins said. “It’d be interesting to know who’s running the numbers for them.”

“Let’s figure that out,” Virgil said. “Let’s get the numbers on the plates ourselves, see who ran them.”

The Jeep rolled out of the parking lot, turned back into traffic, drove a hundred yards up the street, then did a U-turn and parked two cars behind Shrake. “This isn’t good,” Shrake said.

“Maybe they’ll get out when Andreno shows or Warren shows,” Jenkins said.

“Hope so. Makes me nervous to have them right on my back.”

THEY ALL SAT, and waited, and got hot, and Andreno showed up at ten minutes to five, showing the Illinois tags, and turned into the parking lot. Shrake was watching the guys in the Jeep, through the windshield and rear window of the car behind him, and called, “They made him. They picked him out. As soon as they saw him get out of the car, the driver was on his cell phone.”

Andreno went inside. Three minutes later, he said, “I hope you guys can hear me.”

Virgil called him on his cell phone and said, “You’re loud and clear.”

WARREN SHOWED UP at one o’clock in a black Cadillac Escalade, got out of the passenger side, brushed the seat of his pants. Virgil said, “There he is, the guy in the black suit.”

Warren was wearing wraparound sunglasses and took them off and dropped them in his jacket pocket. One of his security people had been driving, and he checked out the parking lot, his eyes lingering on Andreno’s Crown Vic. Then he nodded at Warren and they disappeared into the restaurant.

They heard Andreno say, “Mr. Warren.”

Warren: “What’s your name?”

“Ricky.”

Warren must have sat down, Virgil thought. Warren said, “Call in,” apparently to his security guy, and then said to Andreno, “We’re checking in with my security people.”

A new voice said, “Yeah, we’re in. He’s here.”

Then Warren said, “What’s this about pictures?”