I had, but I didn’t take the map out now. I didn’t need to. In high school, I’d spent a summer working as a guide in Algonquin Park, and the first thing I’d learned was not how to repel black bears and blackflies, but how to memorize maps. Nothing destroys tourists’ confidence—and a guide’s chance at a tip—so much as having her stop in the middle of an endless expanse of forest to pore over a map.

From below came muted whispers of conversation against the backdrop of the constant whirs and dings of distant slot machines. As I crossed one room, the sound changed to a steady clinking, a river of chips going through a mechanical counter—the sound of broken marriages, busted kneecaps and shattered lives. Never saw the appeal of gambling. Not with money, anyway. The risk of parachuting or white-water rafting is one thing—you know the odds are in your favor. But casino gambling? Just take a look at the owners, and how they live, and tell me where you think all that money is going.

I supposed it was all about the threat of risk and the possibility of reward. But the risk of financial ruin was, for someone who’d been there, not enough to get my heart pumping. Not like this—the thrill of true danger, crawling into the unknown.

Regular spelunking is risky enough. But there, in a cave, you have partners who can go for help and, most times, the biggest danger you face is broken bones. Here, if I fell, I’d be exposed as a thief or, worse, an assassin. Men like Gallagher didn’t handle either by simply breaking bones.

And with spelunking, it’s all about the journey, the thrill of knowing every move you make could land you in a crevasse, that you can try your damnedest to control every variable, but you still leave something to chance. The goal is the simple satisfaction of survival. Here, there was more. Not just increased stakes, but an actual prize. A name that could rip the mask from the Helter Skelter killer.

Crawling through this ceiling was the ultimate extreme sport. Or, perhaps, only the precursor to it.

As I moved, the clatter of coins gave way to slurping, interspersed with moans set to a sound track of “yeah, baby, that’s right, baby, uh-huh.” I listened for the familiar wocka-wocka music of a seventies porn movie. Yes, I knew what porn movies sounded like. When you’ve worked in a testosterone-dominated occupation, you have two choices: lecture the guys on the political incorrectness of watching porn with a female co-worker or laugh it off with cracks like, “Hey, how come my pizza delivery boys are never hung like that?”