He looked at me, long and hard, raising his eyebrows, mocking me. I looked away. The same envelope that had been Jack’s bookmark, a piece of certified mail addressed to Pine City, LLC, from Eliot&Sprain, poked out of a stack of papers on his kitchen counter. I tried not to stare at it too obviously.

“Soooo…then tell me about the paintings you lost,” he said casually, like it was nothing, flipping a hamburger.

I balked and offered a half-truth. “Um. Prudence was originally inset with a verdigris made from the copper gutters of St. Patrick’s Cathedral—I, um, befriended the janitor there and he let me scrape them when they came down for cleaning—but I couldn’t get that again. Obviously.”

“Obviously.” He shook his head and looked up, a grin on his face—a look that said, Lady, don’t bullshit a bullshitter. “We can play this game if you want. But, look, I’m not going to rat you out. I swear.”

I stared at him for a minute before I replied. He stared back. “Prove it,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, smiling, taking out his phone, and pulling up a photo. “Look at that.”

It was a human brain, encased in a tall plastic take-out container.

The little microscopic pink lines of it; the squish against the walls of the jar—ugh—my mouth went dry, papery, and I had to grab the counter for support.

“It’s so illegal,” he said, taking back the phone, “and so delicate that I haven’t been able to finish working with it. I can’t get it to survive the electroforming bath. Thus far the legal arguments have hinged on the work as a form of public interest. But this is not a work yet—it’s a stolen brain in a plastic Tupperware container that I bought in New Jersey for twenty thousand dollars in cash. That’s why we don’t throw big parties here anymore, by the way. Now: You have something on me.”

“I still want to know why you do it.”

“You already asked me that.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t satisfied with your answer.”

“Why do I acquire human organs on the black market, or why do I bronze them, or why do I sell them?”

“All of the above. Full enchilada.”

“Uh—okay.” He turned around and leaned against the counter, holding the spatula at a thoughtful angle. I did the same, aping his body language, and it seemed, for a second, like we were going to tell each other the truth.