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because they’d been through it so many times before, both privately and publicly. From the shine in Samantha’s eyes, Vince could tell she enjoyed being slapped around; she smart-mouthed Johnny just so he’d hit her. Johnny clearly liked slapping her, too.
    Vince was disgusted.
    Johnny The Wire called her a “bitch” again, then led Vince out of the living room and into the big study, closing the door behind them. He winked and said, “She’s a little uppity, that one, but she can just about suck your brains out through your cock.”
    Half-sickened by Johnny Santini’s sleaziness, Vince refused to be drawn into such a conversation. Instead, he withdrew an envelope from his jacket pocket. “I need information.”
    Johnny took the envelope, looked inside, thumbed casually through the wad of hundred-dollar bills, and said, “What you want, you got.”
    The study was the only room in the house untouched by Art Deco. It was strictly high-tech. Sturdy metal tables were lined up along three walls, and eight computers stood on them, different makes and models. Every computer had its own phone line and modem, and every display screen was aglow. On some screens, programs were running; data flickered across them or scrolled from top to bottom. Drapes were drawn over the windows, and the two flexible-neck work lamps were hooded to prevent glare on the monitors, so the predominant light was electronic-green, which gave Vince a peculiar feeling of being under the surface of the sea. Three laser printers were producing hard copies with only vague whispering sounds that for some reason brought to mind images of fish swimming through ocean-floor vegetation.
    Johnny The Wire had killed half a dozen men, had managed bookie and numbers operations, had planned and executed bank robberies and jewelry heists. He had been involved in the Fustino Family’s drug operations, extortion rackets, kidnapping, labor-union corruption, record and videotape counterfeiting, interstate truck hijacking, political bribery, and child pornography. He had done it all, seen it all, and although he had never exactly been bored by any criminal undertaking, no matter how long or often he had been involved in it, he had grown somewhat jaded. During the past decade, as the Computer opened exciting new areas of criminal activity, Johnny had seized the opportunity to move where no mafia wiseguy had gone before, into challenging frontiers of electronic thievery and mayhem. He had a gift for it, and he soon became the mob’s premier hacker.
    Given time and motivation, he could break any computer security system and pry through a corporation’s or a government agency’s most sensitive information. If you wanted to run a major credit-card scam, charging a million bucks worth of purchases to other people’s American Express accounts, Johnny The Wire could suck some suitable names and credit histories out of TRW’s files and matching card numbers from American Express’s data banks, and you were in business. If you were a don under indictment and about to go to trial on heavy charges, and if you were afraid of the testimony to be given by one of your cronies who had turned state’s evidence, Johnny could invade the Department of Justice’s most well-guarded data banks, discover the new identity that had been given the stool pigeon through the Federal Witness Relocation Program, and tell you where to send the hit men. Johnny rather grandly called himself the ‘Silicon Sorcerer,” though everyone else still called him The Wire.
    As the mob’s hacker, he was more valuable than ever to all the Families nationwide, so valuable that they didn’t even mind if he moved to a comparative backwater like San Clemente, where he could live the good beach life while he worked for them. In the age of the microchip, Johnny said, the world was one small town, and you could sit in San Clemente—or Oshkosh— and pick someone’s pocket in New York City.
    Johnny dropped into a high-backed black leather chair equipped with rubber wheels, in which he could roll swiftly from one computer to the next. He said, “So! What can the Silicon Sorcerer do for you, Vince?”
    “Can you tap into police computers?”
    “It’s a snap.”
    “I need to know if, since last Tuesday, any police agency in the county has opened a file on any particularly strange murders.”
    “Who’re the victims?”
    “I don’t know. I’m just looking for strange murders.”
    “Strange in what