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producer.
    â€œI know.”
    â€œCould you undress?”
    Joan stepped out of her shoes, unbuttoned her dress, slipped it off her shoulders, and let it fall. She raised her arms, hands cupped as if holding mourning doves that would fly away on violet wings.
    They were writing notes. “Now Joan, if you could lie on the bed?”
    Of course. The bed wasn’t there for the fun of it. She crossed the room and lay down, closed her eyes, and pretended she heard rain on rooftops.
    She hadn’t worked her body into this shape to be ashamed before filmmakers. She was the dream that troubled their sleep, lying ageless as they grew older and older.
    Joan opened her eyes. The men had gathered around the bed with anxious eyes as if visiting a sick friend.
    â€œThank you, Joan,” the director said. “I find myself still lost in your reading. We will be in touch.”
    Joan put her clothes on, shook hands with everyone, and left a manila envelope with her résumé and head shot. She rode down in an elevator with cheap golden walls.
    â€œI certainly hope I get that part,” she said.

C HAPTER F OUR
    J ACK SNOW , the artifacts dealer Dan had been hired to investigate, first came to Grouse County in the winter, fresh out of the federal prison at Lons Ferry, North Dakota, where he’d served federal months for embezzling money from a credit union. He’d had gambling debts. They were not considered a mitigating factor.
    FCI Lons Ferry was a cold stone fortress bound by rules, exercise, seniority, the call-out sheet. Prohibited acts ranged from killing to conference calls to kissing.
    Jack didn’t mind prison as much as he thought he would. You could wear your hair any way you wanted so long as you didn’t carve words or figures into it. The barbershop was closed for maintenance on Mondays.
    In prison Jack met a man known as Andy from Omaha, with whom he played chess on Wednesdays and Fridays in the yard or the library. Andy gave up knights for bishops any time and took oppressive command of the diagonals. He was serving a long stretch for buying and selling figurines and pottery stolen from excavations around the world.
    â€œI’ve found the error in my practice,” he said one time.
    â€œWhat’s that?” said Jack.
    â€œYou take something, somebody will be looking for it. Whereas, a fake, see, nobody’s looking for a fake.”
    â€œThey don’t know there is one.”
    Andy pinned Jack’s rook to his king. “Bam,” he said.
    Andy’s work sounded exotic and lucrative compared with robbing the returns of retirees, and he gave Jack a number to call when Jack got out of Lons Ferry. The man who answered the phone told him to find some out-of-the-way place and rent a warehouse.
    Having little money, Jack tried staying with people he knew in Stone City. The first turned him down after a few minutes of unfriendly conversation. He lived in a yellow ranch house on an empty hill west of the city—no grove, no outbuildings—and Jack was not disappointed when it didn’t work out.
    So then he stayed with the other friend, who had a small and neatly kept brick house on New Hampshire Street in town. That lasted till summer, when they argued over a canoe.
    It belonged to the friend and one day Jack took it to a used sporting goods place and sold it.
    â€œI figured you’d want it off your hands,” he explained when his friend came home. “It’s not like you use it.”
    â€œWhat I do with my canoe is my business.”
    â€œIt hangs behind the garage. That’s what you do with it.”
    â€œIf I never so much as touch the motherfucker that doesn’t give you the right to sell it.”
    â€œOkay, okay,” said Jack. “I was going to take a commission, but you can have it all, if that’s how you’re going to be.”
    Jack’s friend counted the bills. “That was a nine-hundred-dollar