Fun and Games

they weren’t.

The only disappointing thing was that the vehicle was… well, a Honda. Perfectly okay car, don’t get him wrong, if you were a suburban dad who worked in a cube and equated kinky with jacking off to photos of a New Jersey Housewife. The instant he slid himself behind the wheel, O’Neal felt that much lamer. Good thing he’d be driving it for only a couple of minutes—off the road and into a safe haven. In this case, a storage facility on Vine, right under the 101.

O’Neal made an efficient search of the interior, reporting details to Mann over a hands-free unit as he worked.

“Okay, nearly full tank, one twelve on the odometer. Small black duffel bag in the passenger seat.”

Then O’Neal popped the glove box and found the rental papers—the driver had simply stuffed them in there, like every other human being on the planet.

“Vehicle rented to a Charles Hardie, eighty-seven Colony Drive, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania one nine one five two.”

“Good,” Mann said, then thumbed the vitals into the phone, sent it off to the researcher. Within minutes, a short but complete summary of Charles Hardie’s life would be winging its way back.

Soon the man who called himself “Factboy” had the basics nailed down. Factboy knew better than to bore Mann with the minutiae of Charles Hardie’s life—high school attended, last book checked out of the library, blood type. What mattered now was what Hardie did for a living. Why he was here, at this address on Alta Brea Drive, right now, in the middle of their business.

“He’s a former consultant with the Philadelphia Police Department,” Factboy said. “Now he’s a freelance home security specialist, working with an agency out of Dallas.”

“Home security?” Mann asked. “We didn’t trip any alarms.”

“No, he’s not a guard. Hardie’s just a house sitter. The owner of the house, one Andrew Lowenbruck, is away for a month. Hardie’s here to watch the place.”

“And he shows up now, of all times?”

“Seems legit to me. Lowenbruck left just last night according to the agency’s records. Hardie caught a red- eye, made it here this morning.”

“So he wasn’t called in because of the target,” Mann said.

“There’s no indication. No phone calls have been made from the residence, or from the target’s phone.”

Factboy waited for the smallest indication that Mann was impressed by how much he’d cobbled together in such a short span of time, but Factboy knew better. Mann wasn’t impressed by miracles; they were expected.

Factboy had a large array of digital tools at his disposal, but lately his weapon of choice was the National Security Letter, something the FBI invented over thirty years ago but really came into its own after the Patriot Act. NSLs were lethal little mothers. If presented with one, you had to open up your files, no questions asked. Didn’t matter if you were a used-car dealer or a US Customs official—all your base belong to them.

And the NSL came with a nifty feature: a built-in gag order, lasting until your death. Say one word about the NSL, and you can be thrown into prison. Before 9/11, the FBI used NSLs sparingly. But in the hazy, crazy days that followed, the FBI handed them out like candy corn on Halloween—something like a quarter of a million in three years alone.

Factboy had quickly learned how to fake them. He could even send one digitally. No voice, face, no human contact whatsoever.

This was just like his relationship with Mann—which, like “Factboy,” was a code name. They had never met. They probably never would. But hey, as long as the checks cleared.

“You said he was a consultant,” Mann said. “What kind?”

“I’m still working on that.”

“Work harder.”

Mann disconnected. Factboy stood up, slid the phone into the pocket of his cargo shorts, stepped on the metal handle to flush the toilet, then opened the stall. The men’s room was crowded. He walked over to the one open sink, splashed some lukewarm water on his hands and face, then went outside to rejoin his family.

They were on vacation.

Factboy had a real name, but he made it a point never to reveal it. His real identity wasn’t even known to Mann, who accounted for roughly seventy percent of his income. Factboy presented himself as a ghost in the system, a man (or maybe a woman!) living off the grid somewhere in a country where extradition laws do not apply, with servers spread throughout the globe with a nominal headquarters in Sweden. Trying to catch Factboy would be like trying to grab a fistful of smoke—physically impossible. But if you needed information quickly, Factboy could find it for you quickly, cleanly, untraceably.

In reality, Factboy was a suburban dad, thirty-four, with two laptops, a smartphone, and really, really good encryption software.

And right now, he was on vacation with his wife and two kids at the Grand Canyon, ready to have a nervous breakdown.

This was unusual for Factboy, who spent most of his waking hours in his attic office “programming.” A total lie. He was busy retrieving information, then selling it to people who would pay him a lot of money for that information. This took anywhere from ten seconds to a couple of minutes, depending on the type of information. Nothing—nothing—took more than a few minutes. The rest of the time Factboy watched 1980s-era horror movies, prowled message boards, and jacked off. Which was pretty much his life twenty years ago, too, come to think of it, down to the same movies. A wife and kids hadn’t changed things all that much.

The problem was, Factboy had to be available to Mann more or less all the time. While the info retrieval might take ten seconds, the request might come in at 3:13 a.m., and Factboy was expected to respond within seconds.

Factboy excused himself to go to the bathroom quite often.

So much so that Factboy’s wife thought he had irritable bowel syndrome. Instead, he was usually sitting on top of the toilet, thumbs flying over the tiny keypad on his phone, fielding a request, hoping he wasn’t too late.

Then he’d flush.

Lately, though, the wife had started in on him about spending more time with his family. Usually this was something that politicians or executives said after being caught with a dead ladyboy in their secret apartments, but the wife meant it for real. More time. Quality time. She thought they should travel. They should go see the Grand Canyon, she said.

Factboy and his family lived in a modest three-bedroom in Flagstaff, AZ—just an hour away from the Canyon. They’d never seen it.

Sensing that refusal might lead to separation, possibly divorce, and a smart enough lawyer might start taking a close look at Factboy’s revenue streams, jeopardizing pretty much everything, Factboy caved.

They went to the Grand Canyon. Stayed at the El Tovar, the oldest resort hotel, which looked like a huge pile of smoky timber perched within yards of a big gaping hole in the earth.

Within minutes of arriving at the South Rim, Factboy started having panic attacks. He wasn’t particularly afraid of heights, though the mile plunge to the bottom of the canyon was kind of terrifying. Instead, he found that he was completely freaked out by the lack of a fence. Not even a halfhearted little mesh-wire number. Not so much as a guardrail. Nothing. And there were kids everywhere—Factboy’s kids included—dancing, posing, goofing around, completely oblivious of the fact that certain death was just one fucking ooopsie away. Factboy couldn’t bring himself to look. He couldn’t bring himself to not look.

And then he received his urgent request from Mann.

One look at the screen and he told his wife—

“I’ve got to use the facilities.”

The “facilities”: marriage code for number two.

“Now?”

“Yes. Now.”

“Everything in place?” Mann asked.

“Yep,” A.D. said. “All he has to do is step outside.”