Down the hill from where they sat was four hundred thousand dollars in small bills. It was stuffed in a briefcase in a garbage can, waiting to be picked up by the kidnappers who had swiped ten-year-old Buddy Smith. The money had been dropped the previous day by Buddy’s father. Along with a dozen other agents who staked the garbage can, Kelly and Charlie believed that someone would soon show up to claim it.

“Could they wait a week?” Kelly asked as she studied the can through a pair of binoculars. A mile distant, the loot was stashed behind a 7-Eleven that stood on Sunset Boulevard between a strip joint and a pharmacy. “Could they leave it altogether?”

“They could do anything. They could have killed the kid already.”

Kelly lowered the binoculars and glanced over. “But you don’t think so?”

“No.” Charlie straightened his lanky form and sipped his coffee. It was a cool February afternoon but the sun was bright through the windows. Charlie had stripped down to his T-shirt. She wore shorts and a tank top. They both needed showers and deodorant in the worst way. Charlie added, “When Vicki spoke to that bastard last Tuesday, he tried hard to sound like a murderer, but he was a weenie.”

Vicki Bane was the head of their L.A. office, bitch and boss in one tight-assed package. Twenty years ago, after a Christmas party, she and Charlie had gotten drunk and slept together. They had been in their thirties, both between marriages. Later, Charlie swore he had been more afraid screwing Vicki than the time she’d shot a bank robber who was holding a gun to his head.

Vicki was a crack shot. She had missed Charlie by two inches and poked out the guy’s eye. And she knew how to talk to kidnappers. At that instant she was farther down the hill; it would not have surprised either of them if she was sitting inside the garbage can, chewing tobacco.

“What does a murderer sound like?” Kelly asked.

“They can be anybody.”

“But you just said—”

Charlie raised his hand. “The guy was small time, had no idea how to negotiate. He should have asked for at least two million.”

Buddy Smith’s parents were big-time sitcom producers. They had won six Emmys in ten years. In industry-speak they had so much clout they just had to make a “call.” It didn’t matter what the call was about, if the person on the other end of the line did not make sure that they got what they wanted, then no one in town would ever call the fool again. And since Buddy was the Smith’s only child, if he so much as got scratched, never mind died, then for the next decade, every FBI character on network TV would look like a total asshole.

In other words, it was a high-profile case.