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ten seconds flat. The only thing you can’t change is the smell, I’ve learned. You can mask it with whiskey and perfume and expensive creams, but the way you smell is the way you smell. My mentor taught me that. I will always smell of black pepper and coriander.
    I went in past the line cook, who was taking a break with a nonfilter cigarette on the upturned flat of a soup-base can. I nudged behind the flat top through the kitchen where the Mexican fry cook was working. He glanced at me, then quickly looked away. The kitchen smelled of bacon, chorizo, fried eggs and salted butter. I crossed through the servers’ doors into the back of the place. Marcus was waiting for mein the eighth booth under a neon Bud Light sign. He sat in front of an untouched plate of ham and eggs, with a cup of coffee at his elbow.
    He didn’t speak until I was close.
    “Jack,” he said.
    “I thought I’d never see you again.”
    Marcus Hayes was tall and stringy, like the president of some computer company. He was as thin as a stalk and looked uncomfortable in his own skin. The most successful criminals don’t look the part. He wore a dark blue oxford shirt and coke-bottle trifocals. His eyes went bad after serving a six-pack on a work camp on the Snake River in Oregon. His irises were dull blue and faded around the pupils. He was only ten years older than me, but he looked much older than that. The palms of his hands had gone leathery. His appearance didn’t fool me.
    He was the most brutal man I’d ever met.
    I slid into the booth across from him and peered under the table. No heat. I’ve never been shot at from under a table before, but it would be easy enough, especially for a man like him. A P220 or some other small pistol with a silencer might do the trick. Subsonic bullet. One to the gut, one to the heart. He’d have one of the cooks chop off my hands and head, wrap me up in garbage bags and dump the rest of me in the bay. It would be like I never even existed.
    Marcus stretched his fingers in mild annoyance. “Don’t insult me,” he said. “I didn’t bring you in to kill you, Jack.”
    “I just thought I was burned in your book. I thought you never wanted to work with me again.”
    “Then clearly you were wrong.”
    “I got that much.”
    Marcus didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I looked him right in the eye. He held out his palm, open on the table, and shook his head like he was disappointed.
    “The bullets,” he said.
    I said, “I didn’t know your intentions.”
    Marcus said, “The bullets, please.”
    I responded slowly. I took the revolver out of my shoulder holster with two fingers, to let him know I didn’t plan on using it. I released the cylinder and pushed out all the bullets. I put the handful of hollow points on the table next to his plate. They clattered on the wood like silverware. They rolled around for a moment before coming to a stop halfway between me and him.
    I holstered the gun.
    “What’s this about?” I said.
    “Did you know Hector Moreno?”
    I nodded slowly. Noncommittally.
    “He’s dead,” Marcus said.
    I didn’t react much. It wasn’t really news. I knew Moreno was heading for an early grave the first time I met him. I was in a bar in Dubai a couple of years ago. I was drinking an orange juice for the ride home. It was a classy place, full of guys in suits. Moreno came up from behind me all dressed up in a new pinstripe Armani. He smoked no-bull cigarettes, two puffs at a time. When he spoke, he mixed in words from a language I couldn’t understand. Arabic, or maybe Persian. He fired up a love rose behind the shed in the parking lot when we were done talking. I could smell the freebase cocaine in his clothing and I could see his heart beating through his ribs. He was as much a soldier as I was Santa Claus.
    “What does this have to do with me?” I said to Marcus.
    “How well did you know him?”
    “Well enough.”
    “How well?”
    “As well as I know you, Marcus,