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needs to go before the two-day clock runs out. You’re my insurance policy, Jack.”
    “You’re completely insane.”
    “Do you know how many people smoke crystal meth in the Pacific Northwest?” Marcus said. “Everybody. Demand is huge. Pure rock goes for sixty to ninety a gram. Half as much as cocaine, but at fifty times the volume. And that’s assuming the meth is just average quality. That’s twice as expensive as it is on the border. That’s fifty times what it costs to cook up. Think of the profits. On this one deal alone, with one major competitor eating prison or worse because of the bad money, we could stand to make eight-figure profits. Start a half dozen labs. Be on every street corner from here to San Francisco. I could turn the hundred thousand dollars I paid Moreno into a seventy-five-million-dollar industry in six months. So when I said it was a big payday, it was the big payday. It all comes down to what’s sitting in front of you. Mounds and mounds of it.”
    I took a long look at the cash.
    “It’s all the same to me,” I said, “whether you’re buying straight meth or trying to cook it yourself. I don’t do drug deals. You know my rules. I only work for cash or art, nothing else. No exceptions.”
    “What makes you think you have a choice?”
    “Because you’re going to let me walk out of here alive,” I said. “And I still owe you.”
    Marcus chewed his lip and gave me a withering look. “I have a jetwaiting to take you to Atlantic City. When you get there, I know a few people who’ll help you pick up what you’ll need. If you won’t deal for me, I want you to find the money and call me. I’ll figure out what to do from there. I just need this mess cleaned up before it comes across the contiguous forty-eight and shuts me down. I’m not serving time because Moreno got plugged, and I don’t care what happens to you afterward. Go ahead, disappear. You clean this up, we’re even, got it?”
    Marcus gave me a look, then another at the money sitting in front of me. He reached forward and flicked one of the bullets with his finger. It rolled toward me, then off the table.
    I pursed my lips.
    “I don’t like your new face,” Marcus said. “Too innocent.”
    I put the bullet back on the table.
    “Why are you a dead man if the cash blows?”
    Marcus didn’t say a word for a moment. He didn’t have to. I could hear sounds from the kitchen. Coffee was percolating behind the counter. Marcus’s words were as dry as a stone, as if they’d sucked all the moisture from the air.
    He said, “I made the deal with the Wolf.”

5
    PACIFIC CITY, OREGON
    Let me get one thing straight. I despise Marcus with all of my being. But he was right. I owed him.
    It happened almost five years ago, on something we called the Asian Exchange Job. Marcus had invited seven of us out to a resort hotel in Oregon to pitch us a heist. It was a huge job for huge money, so he wanted a handpicked crew. I’d been in the game since I was fourteen years old, more or less, but I’d never been handpicked like that before. It was the first time, in fact the only time, I ever broke my rigorous system of anonymity. Marcus got a message to me, through one of my e-mail accounts, which included a latitude and longitude deep in the woods, and I went without knowing a thing about the job. I had no idea what was in store for me. The only reason I agreed to it was that the message also said my mentor would be there. Angela. When my limo pulled up to the hotel, she was waiting, leaning against an ivy-covered brick column and smoking a cigarette. I hadn’t seen her in six months. I smiled at her through the glass.
    The resort was small and surrounded by forest, but it looked veryexpensive and Marcus had booked every room in this old brick building that looked like it might once have been a school. The rooms had real keys, not those magnetic swipe cards, and the bathrooms were down the hall. It was like stepping back in time.