customs.”
“He means I’m no greaseball guinea,” Samantha said sourly.
Johnny slapped her so hard that he nearly knocked her off the chaise longue.
“You watch your mouth, bitch.”
She put a hand to her face, and tears shimmered in her eyes, and in a
little-girl voice, she said, “I’m sorry, Johnny.”
“Stupid bitch,” he muttered.
“I don’t know what gets into me,” she said. “You’re good to me, Johnny, and I
hate myself when I act like that.”
To Vince, it appeared to be a rehearsed scene, but he supposed that was just
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