Boots Marnin stared at the two computers standing together in the corner of his Mariner Hotel room, thinking life was a whole lot simpler when you could get everything you wanted by sticking a gun in your target’s ear. Now most of the guys who made the big bucks at his end of the market never left their keyboards, they just hacked their way in, mined for information, then sold it on contract or to the highest bidder.
I’m a forty-year-old dinosaur.
He inspected his alligator-skin Tony Lamas, then smirked at the irony.
Maybe it’s survival of the fittest after all.
He reached for his cell phone and scrolled to a number. The man on the other end of the line didn’t answer so much as grunt.
“It’s me,” Marnin said. “I got it.”
“Palmer’s computer?”
“A couple of Gage’s. Everything from Palmer’s was copied over to it. A kid decided to cooperate and told us.”
“What about Palmer’s?”
“We’d need explosives to get to it.”
“Then let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. First we need to find out what kind of records Palmer was keeping. We can torch Gage’s place if we have to.”
“Where should I-”
“Evergreen Security in San Jose. We got an ex-NSA guy down there who can break into anybody’s hard drive. Somebody’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
“I don’t know why they’re going through all this. Why don’t they just wipe the slate clean and start over with a new team? Couple of bodies. Done in an afternoon-and their mistakes buried with them.”
“That would be sheer genius. You know the last time somebody got away with killing a federal judge?” He paused. “I’ll tell you. Never.”