But he needed money. He talked himself into an apartment but he needed to pay the rent. And there was no job an unskilled guy like him could do to meet that rent. He filled out applications at the big box stores, which turned him down flat, even when he left off his convictions. Smaller places—dry cleaners, mom-and-pop grocers—couldn’t give him enough hours.

So within weeks, he went back to the crew he’d worked for, been so loyal to, but they had nothing for him. Which pissed him off. Although he knew why they had nothing for him. Because no one liked him. No one liked being around him. He didn’t know what it was about him, or why it was, but it had always been this way, and he could see it and feel it from a mile away. No one liked spending time with him, and their work, if you wanted to call it that—hijacking, debt collection, illegal gambling, dock work, airport work, organized burglary—was always done in teams. And the team had to like you.

But there was one job he could do for them, he learned. And it paid really well. ’Cause the risks were way higher. And you worked alone, you had to, occupational necessity. And you had to be smart.

But nobody trusts him to do his job. Again, he doesn’t really understand why. He’s always been totally stand-up, never ratted anyone out, always kept his mouth shut in prison. It’s just…well, it’s just that he isn’t like them. Tried to be, tried to fit in with the crew, but couldn’t. And they don’t trust anyone who’s different.

So they’ve made it a condition of his new job that he has to show them that he’s doing the job correctly.

You’ll use a cell phone, they told him. You’ll take pictures on the cell phone. You’ll contact your clients on the cell phone, and tell them that you contact them, and they never contact you back. Don’t keep anything on the phone but what you need. This camera on this phone is how you prove to us what you’ve done. Welcome to modern crime, Joey. You been in the Crowbar Hotel so long, welcome back to the world.

Cell phones. He had to learn them. In all his years in prison, he’d kind of missed out on cell phones. Hadn’t grown up with them. He didn’t really know everything they could do.

They were prized in prison culture. Guards would smuggle them in, offering them to special prisoners in exchange for special favors. The prisoners traded in them. Old models, pretty limited in what they could do, but prized and prestigious on the inside nonetheless. Having one meant you were pretty high in prison hierarchy. Meaning Joey never even got close to one.