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—Yes.

—Good. So, have you made any progress on my money?

T drops the boxes, gets up, and walks back to Tim’s bedroom.

—Yes.

—Good. Tell me, please.

T comes back down the hall carrying Tim’s bong.

—I am lying low while I ascertain if my position here is tenable.

T looks at me and crosses his eyes. I listen to Dylan.

—Good. And?

—I expect to make contact with my “banker” in the next twenty-four hours.

T is shaking his head. He cracks open one of the little bud boxes and starts filling the bong.

—And?

—Within twenty-four hours of that, I expect to receive your money and have it in your hands shortly thereafter.

T puts his lips to the top of the bong, holds the flame of his lighter over the bowl, and rips.

—Good. That’s good. See, this is the kind of clarity I’m looking for. Like I told you, Hank, I’m a control freak. The more information I have, the more in control I feel. And that makes me more comfortable. None of this is about you or your abilities, it’s about my personal weaknesses. And I want you to know how much I appreciate you dealing with them so well.

—Sure.

—And . . . I guess that’s it?

—It is.

—OK, I’ll expect to hear from you in the next twenty-four, and look forward to seeing you in the next forty-eight to seventy-two.

—Yes.

—Well . . . good-bye.

He hangs up. T exhales and starts hacking.

—What? Hack! What the fuck was that? Hack! Bullshit?

—That was the kind of bullshit he wants to hear.

—Fuckin’ A. Hack! What a prick he must be.

I nod, and lie back on the carpet. T comes over and stands there looking down at me, bong in one hand and one of the pot boxes in the other.

—What now?

I stare at the ceiling. What now? Fucked if I know. Why can’t someone just tell me what to do for a change? Why can’t someone tell me how to stop all of this?

—T, I get it that you’re not a criminal mastermind or anything.

—Thanks, asshole.

—But do you know how to get information? About people?

He smiles.

—Shit, yeah. No problem.

T SITS in front of Tim’s iMac. I sit on the foot of the bed and look over his shoulder as he scrolls through the Google results for “Dylan Lane.”

—There’s a shitload here, man. Guy’s got a record

—What for?

T clicks around.

—SEC violations.

—What?

He clicks on the heading.

—Looks like he was investigated for insider trading and some other shit.

I shake my head.

—I don’t think that’s him.

He clicks a couple times and a photo starts to resolve on the screen.

—This your boy?

I look at the pic. It’s Dylan. He’s a few years younger, standing in a big, partitioned office space, surrounded by a group of very young and geeky-looking men and women.

—Yeah, that’s him.

T clicks through a series of articles from the New York papers.

—So dickhead here was some kind of financial whiz kid in the stock market. Kind of a flavor of the week broker in the early nineties, but then he got busted for manipulations and shit and disappeared for a couple years. Didn’t do jail time, of course. Fuckos like that never go to jail. Then he pops back up just in time for the fattest part of the Internet boom. He got money from somewhere to get a start-up rolling in Silicon Alley. Well, he was the flavor of the week again, and his company is a big fucking hit, and then the market folded. No criminal charges this time, but he disappears again, except for some gossip column shit about him. Stuff like, “Dylan Lane was MIA for fashion week, but several of his comrade investors were in attendance in hopes of giving a bear hug to the former dot-com darling.” And more of the same. Innuendo about him being a shady character, but no details. Any help?

I flop back on the bed.

—It explains why he talks like an asshole.

T spins the chair around to face me.

—So?

—What?

—What now?

—What now? I’m fucked, that’s what now. I don’t know how to find Tim. I can’t go to the cops without risking Mom and Dad. I don’t have anything to use to cut a deal with Dylan. I have a few days till Sunday to do something, and I don’t know what the fuck