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there had been no tornadoes, no violent summer shows of thunder and lightning, and the city hummed with the constant undercurrent of air conditioners like a giant monster breathing.
    Charlie started whining in the backseat of Grace MacBride’s Range Rover when she made the turn onto Summit Avenue.
    “Soon,” she told him, going a little faster than the speed limit, the Gothic turrets of Harley Davidson’s red stone manse already visible, two blocks away. By the time she pulled through the gate and under the portico, the black Town Car had already deposited the precious cargo of Annie Belinsky at the enormous wooden doors.
    Annie always traveled by Town Car, particularly in the summer, when the drivers tended to be muscular, tanned college boys. She could have seduced them all, but didn’t. She just liked to look at them.
    This morning Annie was an overly voluptuous Fitzgerald heroine in ankle-length linen and lace. A wide-brimmed sunhat, balanced on her dark bob, and T-strap pumps clicked nicely on the slate walk.
    If anyone had ever doubted that Charlie was a brilliant dog, all they had to do was watch the great restraint he always exercised when greeting Annie. His emotions wiggled all over him as he went within two inches of her and then stopped, eyes on her raised finger. “Respect the outfit,” she reminded him, then bent and willingly offered her cheek to the big sloppy tongue. No one had ever told him to respect the face.
    Grace smiled at her. “Very Gatsby. I like it.”
    “You know me, Fat Annie was just born for croquet and champagne, although you’re not about to get me out on a lawn in this heat. Come on, let’s get ourselves inside before I start to render.”
    Annie had always thought Gothic to be a particularly uncivilized and slightly distasteful architecture, which therefore suited Harley perfectly. The baroque furnishings he favored were as massive as his frame and his personality, but as far as she was concerned, they were just plain Frankenstein.
    They found Harley at the eight-burner stove in the kitchen, dumping canned chili in a pot with one hand, holding a beer with the other. Charlie was already next to him, nose up to a skillet of warming breakfast sausage. “Just for you, buddy.” He tossed a link into the air and Charlie rose on his hind legs to catch it.
    Grace leaned an elbow on a counter, chin in her hand, and watched the pair of them. The really amazing thing about this vagabond dog was what he taught you about the people he interacted with. Harley, for instance, oblivious to his own great value, bought affection shamelessly. Charlie was the easiest mark. One sausage, and he was yours for life. “Where’s Roadrunner?” she asked.
    “In the shower. He made a new land-speed record biking over here this morning, and I had to wring him out before I’d let him in the house.”
    Annie peered into the mess in the pot and punched her hands into her pillowy hips. “Nobody’s going to eat that crap. And why are you drinking at eight o’clock in the morning?”
    “Technically, since I didn’t sleep last night, it isn’t really morning. It’s just a continuation of the dark time, only with light.”
    Grace smiled at him. “You’re really shook up about this, aren’t you?”
    “You’re goddamned right I’m shook up about it. We’re going to have a Fed in this house for God knows how long, watching over our shoulders, looking at every move we make.”
    “So?”
    “So? So? Are you kidding me? We break about a hundred Federal laws every day when we work. We bust into secured sites—hell, we hack into the FBI like it was our own e-mail. They’re going to wait until they get the software program they want from us, then they’re going to throw us in the pen for about four hundred years. Christ. We beat these guys black-and-blue for ten years. They hate our guts, so what do they do? They ask permission to send this Trojan horse asshole right into our office and we open the