The Reformed by Tod Goldberg

possible to have lookouts at all the possible angles without drawing any interest from the average citizen. For the cost of rent, Junior had a ready-made fortress. It would be disturbingly easy to run a very safe and secure base of operations for the entire Latin Emperors nation of prison and street gangs.
    Once I finally found Junior’s street, I turned the car around and headed back to the fake city center, which was a good half mile away.
    “What are you doing?” Fi asked.
    “I have a theory I want to test,” I said, and explained to Fiona my thoughts, and told her I thought it might be best to approach Junior’s home on foot so as not to raise any flags of suspicion. I grabbed several of the cell phones and their assorted parts, too. If my assumptions were correct, we’d need them.
    “If I’d known we were going for a midnight stroll I would have worn different shoes,” Fiona said.
    “It’s not midnight,” I said. “And I’ve seen you fight a Chechen terrorist in higher heels.”
    “It’s this place!” Fi let out an exasperated sigh. “It ages you by osmosis.” She slipped out of her shoes and then removed her top, too, revealing a plain white tank top underneath. “What?” she said. Apparently, the look on my face had a question attached to it.
    “I was just wondering if you were going to take off your jeans, too.”
    “Not tonight,” she said. “Besides, I’d better look the part, right? And what says ‘casual walk in the neighborhood’ more than no shoes and no bra?”
    “I couldn’t agree more,” I said, so I took off my shoes, too. I’d have taken off my shirt, but then the butt of my gun might have been a bit too clear an indicator that I wasn’t just out to enjoy the lovely night air ... which, that evening, carried the strong scent of the Everglades blowing up from the south.
    We got out of the car and walked, hand in hand, back toward Junior’s house. Had I known the plan for the evening, I would have found a dog to fill out the portrait of domestic bliss.
    It wasn’t until we started walking that I realized every street, avenue, road, court and cul-de-sac was named for some aspect of Native American culture, another element that must have escaped Lieutenant Frank’s keen eye. We passed Natchez Court, Cochise Lane, Anasazi Road, even the requisite Seminole Street crossed Pueblo Way. But what Fiona and I were really looking for were things Lieutenant Frank probably wouldn’t take note of.
    “That house up on the corner of Seminole there has a lovely window dressing,” Fiona said. “And some very nice rocks, too.”
    It sure did. The house in question was fully illuminated, which made it odd, as the other houses on the block were completely dark. I guess people in Cheyenne Lakes didn’t bother to watch the late-night news, either. The house was pointed at a diagonal from the entrance to Acuera Street, which was where Junior’s house was located. We were coming up from the right side of the lit house, and I could see through the cheap blinds that there wasn’t any furniture in the room, which could mean nothing. Plenty of banks keep the lights on inside foreclosed homes to discourage squatters and the like. But this house didn’t look like it was foreclosed upon, especially not with the two Honda Accords parked in the driveway.
    The rocks, however, were the giveaway: They were fake rocks with security cameras installed inside them ... and not very well. They were the kind of fake-rocks-with-a-security-camera-in-them that anyone can buy at Target, and so the neighbors probably paid no mind to them, not even when the cameras pointed away from the house. I looked up toward the roof and noticed a satellite dish, which was probably just the wireless receiver for the cameras. Junior was beaming security footage from down the block directly to his house. Smart.
    But not smart enough. Fi and I stepped back around the corner and found a park bench beneath an old-style lamp. It sure