Chino sighed. “Rosario is yours. On any other night, my friend, I’d tell you to enjoy him in good health, but tonight there isn’t the luxury.”

“I understand, Chino. Thank you anyway.” Gregory’s eyes returned to Amy. “Her husband could be anywhere. But the moon is still up —”

“Fuck the moon, the electronics are up,” Chino answered. “Getting him is the only matter of time. Take her to the bar. Chain her, but not too tightly, while you tend to Rosario.” He paused to look in her eyes and stroke her cheek. “She’s bruised enough. Take care of Rosario outside, so her husband can know. If after that he still gives you trouble, there may be no choice but to make an example of both the Merrills. In any event, when we have him, we can reconsider all of our options. Amy, you may be grateful yet that you have no children.” He put the tip of his tongue on the bruise, as if that would allow him to taste it. “But as you can see, the matter now is entirely in your husband’s hands. And yours. And you are not as stupid as he is.”

Her next thought was the most vicious and violent of her life, and because she was looking at the man at whom it was directed, she smiled. He grinned — he thought he had turned her around. He thought she was intimidated, and he was thrilled. The smile still playing on her lips, she turned away, to hold the thought a moment more before she began to pray for her husband.

Merrill hunkered down behind a concrete-block storage shed and turned on the laptop computer. The clock showed ten minutes to two. The battery condition indicator said the battery still had almost half a charge left. What he was looking at was a daytime photograph of the oversized upscale suburban block in which Merrill was situated, and pressing Page Down zoomed him in the single very large estate in its center, the house surrounded by a wall, at the end of a long, curving drive. Behind the house was a relatively small oval pool, and behind that, a pale circular shape that only its own shadow allowed him to identify as a conical pile of construction debris. What was it doing inside the wall? Was it the result of the same kind of bad planning that had led to the seizure of the Ghost? O’Malley had questioned that. Merrill wasn’t sure what he believed anymore. The money is where the money is. If the debris was inside the wall, it had been created after the wall’s completion. Where had the stuff come from?