Crashed

operations in the country.”

“Actually,” she said briskly, “it’s the biggest. And you left out quite a lot, although you’re wrong about the protection and the hookers. I’ve offloaded both of those operations. They’re no longer under the Annunziato umbrella, so to speak. The other businesses, the ones I named, not the ones you did, are one hundred percent legit. And, of course, pornography is legal, although I’m repurposing that business,”

“Re what?”

“Repurposing.”

“Is that MBA language?”

“It is.”

“Good, because it certainly isn’t English.”

“It means I’ll no longer make the films. I’ll own the things people use to make the films: cameras, lights, microphones, postproduction equipment, even studio space. The printing presses to make the box. The DVD duplication facility, the website for online distribution. You want to make Girl Guides Run Wild Three, you rent everything from me.”

“If there was ever a film that needed two sequels, Girl Guides Gone Wild is that film.”

“You have absolutely no idea,” she said, “how much the first two made. So much we didn’t know where to put it. But I won’t be filming the third one. I’ve sold the franchise and I’ll rent the equipment. Because that’s where I’m going, Mr. Bender. Within eighteen months, the Annunziatos will no longer be part of the shadow economy.”

“The shadow economy,” I said. “What a romantic way to put it.”

“I’m in the middle of handing off the marijuana operation right now. Forty-eight hours from now, we’ll be out of the dope business. The others will follow.”

“Well, with no desire to offend,” I said, “if that’s your plan, why are you talking to a crook?”

“We’re going to come to that.” She turned her head and said, without raising her voice, “Eduardo.” And there he was, in all his glowering Blackness, standing in the doorway in suspended animation. Kill? Sure. Vacuum? Sure. “Could we have some more wine, please? Another Scotch, Lyle?”

Hacker said, “You bet.” Eduardo crossed the room and picked up the bottle, which was no more than eighteen inches from Trey Annunziato’s elbow, and poured for her. I waved him off. Then he took Hacker’s glass, dropped in a new ice cube, and filled it almost to the brim. Hacker took it without glancing up or grunting thanks, and from the look in Eduardo’s eyes, what was all right for Trey was very much not all right for Hacker. He turned and left, and the room brightened noticeably.

“You’re asking yourself why you’re here,” she said to me.

“Not at all,” I said. “It’s not every day I get to taste a good second growth.”

“You’re here because I need someone,” she said. “So that’s really two questions, isn’t it? Why do I need someone, and why is it you?”

“Which one would you like to answer first?”

She scooched her rear around on the seat a little and extended an arm over the top of the chaise, not so much to get more comfortable as simply to make sure I was completely focused on her. “Let’s start with why it’s you. Do you remember someone named Flaco Francis?”

Whatever I’d been expecting, this wasn’t it. “Vaguely.”

Her smile this time was tolerant. “I’m sure it’s more vivid than that. The name alone should guarantee it, Flaco being Spanish slang for skinny, and Francis being, well, Francis. According to my father, Flaco was like those white guys now who want to be black, with the watch caps and the-what do they call that awful jewelry?”

I didn’t feel like playing. “I don’t know. Awful jewelry?”

“Bling,” she said. “They call it bling. If he were around now, Flaco would be wearing bling. But this was fifteen years ago, and Flaco wanted to be Mexican.”

“Let’s back it up a minute. Your father knew Flaco?”

“My father owned Flaco.”

Suddenly several things from long ago made sense. “Did he.”

“Body and soul. And you got a little tangled with Flaco, didn’t you?”

“If you say so.”

“No, no, no, Mr. Bender. You got very tangled with Flaco.”

I had. “He stole something from a friend of mine.”

“He stole seven Cadillacs, all brand new. Cadillacs that your friend had acquired by unconventional means. This was when Cadillacs still had some cachet. When they were bling, so to speak. And your friend couldn’t very well go to the police, since they take a dim view of crooks who have a bunch of Cadillacs without pink slips. So he called you, and you figured out who took the cars and recovered three of them. And then, just to prevent retaliation, you set Flaco up on a phony burglary, and he was arrested. On Thursday, he had seven new Cadillacs, and on Friday he was sitting in jail in Van Nuys, looking at three to five.”

“I remember.”

“Finally. Well, since your memory has kicked in, what happened next?”

“Somebody from Flaco’s posse came to me and told me Flaco had five kids and a pregnant wife, and promised to tell me where the other four Cadillacs were if I could somehow pop Flaco out of jail. He also suggested that there were lots of people willing to get even with me even it Flaco personally couldn’t.”

“There certainly were,” Trey said.

“I had no way of knowing that. Anyway, since I had essentially put Flaco there, the guy figured I might be able to get him out.”

Trey nodded encouragingly. “And you did.”

“Evidence got lost,” I said. “Right at the station.” I kept my eyes off of Hacker, who had sat up. “And don’t ask who lost it for me, because that’s off-limits.”

“End of the day, your friend had all seven cars back, and Flaco was a free man. And Flaco went to my father and told him the story.”

I said, “What a guy.”

“He didn’t have much choice. He had to explain what he’d been doing in jail. My father didn’t like it when his people wound up in jail.”

“Understandable.”

“And then there was Antoine Duvall,” she said.

“Jesus Christ,” I said, “What is this, This Is Your Life?”

“Antoine Duvall fell for the Nigerian scam, didn’t he?” She turned to Hacker. “Do you know about the Nigerian scam, Lyle?”

“Uh-uh,” Hacker said. He was staring at me, trying to figure who I might know at the Van Nuys station.

“The way I understand it,” Trey said, “the person working the Nigerian scam sends just thousands and thousands of people an e-mail telling them that he’s an investor who got involved in a deal in some African country and ran afoul of the authorities. Some very complicated story. Right so far?”

“Right,” I said.

“Anyway, the hook is an absurd amount of money-say forty or fifty million-in a bank account in whatever country. Let’s say Nigeria, since that’s where it started. Because the authorities have him on their bad list, he can’t pull the money out. But you could, and if you’ll do it for him, he’ll pay you ten or fifteen percent. A nice chunk of money for essentially doing nothing. All he needs is for you to sign some meaningless forms, which are just there because they look official, and on one of them you list the number of the bank account to which you want these millions of dollars transferred.”

“An account number?” Hacker said. “Ain’t nobody going to fall for that.”

“Out of the twenty or thirty thousand e-mails every month, they are going to reach, statistically speaking, three or four bona fide idiots,” Trey said. “Or maybe they’re old people whose judgment isn’t so good. Antoine, who had worked for my grandfather, was seventy-seven, and not quite as sharp as he might have been. He responded with his account numbers and got cleaned out.”

“Antoine was a sweet old guy,” I said. “He baked cookies for the local fire department every week.”