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fuck the Russian asshole, he prefers his company to mine.
    “Andrew, if you’re there, you’d better pick up the fucking phone, and while you’re doing that, you’d better be thinking up one hell of a fucking excuse.”
    There was a long beep.
    The Clean-Up Crew
     
    D OWN BY THE RIVER, THEY FOUND MIKAL’S TRUCK, TWO open body bags with no bodies inside of them, and a spray of blood. They were forced to report back to Mikal’s father, by cell phone. It was supposed to be just a routine checkup, to see what the kid was up to tonight. He hadn’t shown up for his gig down in Wildwood—a buddy had called it in.
    “He’s nowhere in sight?” Mikal’s father asked.
    No, they said.
    “Is there blood inside his truck?”
    No. Just around the construction site. Some tarp and concrete and pipes sticking out of the ground.
    “There anything inside these pipes?”
    Not that they could tell. Not without flashlights or anything. Probably not. But they could check. They hung up, promising to call back soon.
    “Fuck.”
    “What do we do now?”
    “Chill. Just chill the fuck out, that’s what we do.”
    “I don’t want to do that. Gotta think, gotta think.”
    Fifteen minutes later, they called Mikal’s father back.
    Mikal’s appointment book was still in the truck, they said, and on today’s page they saw a note for a meeting. The names: Patrick Lennon, Harrison Crosby, and Holden. The exact details of the meeting were not known, but these three names happened to be the names of three bank robbers who were suspected of stealing $650,000 from a Wachovia branch in Center City that morning. It was in the paper today. Didn’t he see it?
    This was bullshit. No such news story had made the papers. But Mikal’s father didn’t know that.
    Mikal’s father didn’t know about any of this. This had been Mikal’s deal.
    “Bank rob-bers?” said the father, through clenched teeth.
    They didn’t have to see the man’s face to know his teeth were clenched.
    The first matter of business was to find Mikal. (Yeah, right.) They were instructed to split up: one guy to Mikal’s townhouse in Voorhees, New Jersey and the other to his friend, this piano player named Andrew, to his house. He lived in the northeast, not far from where some of the crew made their homes.
    “Let’s go, then.”
    “You know we’re not going to find shit.”
    “That’s not our problem. The man speaks, we go. Let’s go.”
    An Unfinished Boy
     
    M IKAL’S FATHER RETRIEVED AN ICE-COLD BOTTLE OF Stoli from his miniature office fridge. He poured a drink to his son, who’d been so eager both to please his father and pursue his art at the same time. Sitting in some recording studio in downtown Philadelphia, along the waterfront, were the tapes of Mikal’s unfinished rock album. Mikal’s father had paid $18,500 for two weekends of studio time, complete with professional engineers and mixers. It had been a late birthday present for Mikal. He had been so thrilled, and was due back in the studio the following weekend—it had to be postponed because of a performance at the shore. Mikal had just turned twenty-two.
    Now, Mikal’s father considered that $18,500, and considered how he’d pay ten—no—one hundred times that amount just for the bitter pleasure of renting out a large soundproof room with concrete floors, two meat hooks, and a large industrial hose for cleanup afterward. He wanted those three bank robbers run through electric meat grinders and the remains doused in gasoline and burned.
    Mikal thought about sending someone into the studio to take the tapes, just so that the robbers could listen to the music. In the spare moments when they weren’t screaming for their lives.
    Forty-five minutes later, his cell phone rang. It was his employees. They had discovered that someone was sleeping in Mikal’s friend’s dormitory room. And it wasn’t Mikal’s friend.
    Above and Below
     
    L ENNON HEARD THE WRENCHING OF STEEL AND HIS eyes snapped