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it was all over, her cheeks white and a little tremble in her voice, Karen had made the only ultimatum of their relationship. If he ever slipped, she’d walk without a backward glance.
    Now, seven years later, the man she’d gone to watch stared at him with an expression Danny couldn’t read, and spoke her name.
    ‘Yeah, it was her.’ He paused. ‘I asked her to go.’
    ‘You had other plans.’
    ‘They would have made me. The owner of the store, the woman, they would have made me.’
    Evan blew a plume of gray smoke. ‘So why send her?’
    ‘I felt like I owed it to you.’ Picking his words carefully. ‘To have someone there.’
    ‘Seeing as I was taking a solo fall, you mean.’ Evan’s eyes hard again. ‘I thought maybe you just wanted to see if I’d drop your name.’
    ‘I knew you wouldn’t.’ And he had, too, known that Evan would do the time cold, even though Danny had walked out, even though a word might have saved him years.
    Evan nodded. ‘Got that right.’
    The music was repeating ‘I’ve got to get away from here,’ and part of Danny knew just what the singer meant. But he was surprised to realize that another part of him was enjoying this.
    Thing was, some nights, lying in bed in his safe neighborhood, he pictured a round metal door a foot thick, like a bank vault. Inside waited a dim room with racks like safe deposit boxes. He’d step in, close the door behind him, slide open one of the little boxes and remember theelectric-dicked thrill of drag racing stolen cars down the Dan Ryan at four in the morning. Or the soft, almost sexual yielding of a lock to his picks. His fist in the air in St Andrew’s, lungs raw with howling as Evan fought in the finals of the Golden Gloves.
    It was his little secret, and it didn’t change anything. There was a reason he walled off those memories behind a foot of imaginary steel. But talking to Evan, the real guy, not the symbol from his dreams, it was like visiting that vault.
    ‘So you got out early.’
    Evan nodded. ‘They needed to clear some bunks. It was my first fall for a violent crime. And inside I kept myself to myself.’ He shrugged.
    ‘Simple as that.’
    ‘If you say so.’ Their eyes met again, feeling each other out. Danny sipped his beer, more aware of the taste than usual. He didn’t know what to say next, looked at Evan, looked back at his drink. A moment passed in silence.
    Then Evan spoke. ‘You hear about Terry?’
    Danny could picture him, stringy hair and bad breath. The last time he’d seen Terry was when he’d tipped them off to the pawnshop. A lifetime ago. ‘No.’
    ‘I met one of his old dealers inside. Apparently Terry cleaned up, quit using. Managed to talk someone into letting him middleman product, God knows how, fucking track marks on his arm. He was doing well, selling to college kids wanna walk on the wild side. Then one day, he decides to take a little blast himself, for old times’ sake.’
    Danny shook his head.
    ‘Soon he’s cutting his stuff to skim for his own supply. Isn’t long before he’s selling milk sugar. Even the college kids can tell the difference. He has to hit the street. Only now his habit is back, and shorting is the only way he can supply himself.’
    Something about this story felt familiar. Not the specifics, but the structure. The course of it. The illicit thrill of the conversation began to evaporate as Danny guessed how the story would end.
    ‘One day he sells a couple of weak grams to a Mexican kid. The guy turns out to be a baby banger, a Latin King trying to earn his stripes.’ Evan took a sip of beer. ‘So Terry bled out in the basement of a tar house on South Corliss.’
    A wave of rolling nausea washed through Danny. Of course the story had seemed familiar. He’d heard it before in a thousand variations. It was the story of what happened if you stuck with the life. Terry had been a junkie, but that wasn’t what killed him. It wasn’t even the gangbanger he’d