I stare out the window, watching as New York rushes past me, from the Brooklyn Bridge to the more industrial areas to the coldly sophisticated architecture of the Upper East Side.

The taxi pulls up in front of the HGVB Bank building. The meter flashes the fare.

I’m about to walk into a major American bank with a bag full of cocaine.

I pull out my phone and find the voice recording app I’ve recently downloaded. I’m not sure if recording the impending conversation with Travis will help or hurt, but I want to be ready, just in case.

As I get out of the cab, walk into the lobby, and pass the security guards, I find myself wondering exactly how this fucked-up day will end.

Travis has a cup of coffee in one hand while the other lazily pecks away at his computer. By his bemused, somewhat bored expression, you’d think he was flipping through the blog pages of OMG! rather than uncovering new ways to manipulate the world’s economy.

“You have something for me?” he asks in lieu of a greeting.

Without a word I pull the brown sack out of my purse and put it on his desk. I’d like to turn around and see if there’s a cop there, an undercover officer ready to kick my plan into a violent new direction.

But I keep my eyes on Travis. Again I remind myself of my poker metaphor: I can’t see Travis’s hand, but I know how to bluff.

Travis picks up the bag. “Did you look inside?”

“Your guy took it out of the paper bag before I could stop him.”

“Hmm, I’ll have to give him a call and talk to him about that,” he says distractedly as he pulls out the plastic bag filled with white powder. With slow, lazy fingers he feels the edge of the Ziploc, but then his fingers stop . . .

I watch as his fingers now follow the path of a strand of hair caught—or more likely, placed—in the bag, which I failed to notice earlier. It’s longer than L.J.’s, but even from where I’m standing I can see it’s a different color from mine.

Again he looks up at me, and the hard line of his mouth softens a little. It even turns up at the edges into something that might, in dim lighting, be mistaken for a smile.

“You didn’t open the bag.”

I shake my head. “Will there be anything else, Mr. Gable?”

He responds by raising his eyebrows . . . again, looking a little too much like his brother. For some reason their resemblance disturbs me.

He opens the bag and holds it out to me, as if in offering.

“Taste it. See if it’s any good.”