“How about we look at ’em now? You see Clarke hanging up the phone when we walked in? I heard a snatch of what he was saying through the door. I think he tried to get his sister, and when he didn’t, he left a message with someone who knows her. Now, why do you think he felt a pressing need to reach out and touch that toe-rag as soon as he saw all of us in the driveway?”

To say his good-byes, was Vince’s theory, but he didn’t tell Race that. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this, does she? What’s she do? She make crank, too?”

“No. She’s a whore.”

“Jesus. What a family.”

“Look who’s talking,” Race said.

“What’s that mean?” Vince asked. It wasn’t the line that bothered him, with its implied insult, so much as Race’s mirrored sunglasses, which showed a reflection of Vince himself, sunburned and with a beard full gray, looking puckered, lined, and old.

Race stared down the shimmering road again, and when he spoke, he didn’t answer the question. “Sixty grand up in smoke, and you can just shrug it off.”

“I didn’t shrug anything off. That’s what happened. Up in smoke.”

Race and Dean Clarke had met in Fallujah—or maybe it had been Tikrit. Clarke a medic specializing in pain management, his treatment of choice being primo dope accompanied by generous helpings of Wyclef Jean. Race’s specialties had been driving Humvees and not getting shot. The two of them had remained friends back in the World, and Clarke had come to Race a half a year ago with the idea of setting up a meth lab in Smith Lake. He figured sixty grand would get him started and that he’d be making more than that per month in no time.

“True glass,” that had been Clarke’s pitch. “None of that cheap green shit, just true glass.” Then he’d raised his hand above his head, indicating a monster stack of cash. “Sky’s the limit, yo?”

Yo. Vince thought now he should have pulled out the minute he heard that come out of Clarke’s mouth. The very second.

But he hadn’t. He’d even helped Race out with twenty grand of his own money, in spite of his doubts. Clarke was a slacker-looking guy who bore a passing resemblance to Kurt Cobain: long blond hair and layered shirts. He said “yo,” he called everyone “man,” he talked about how drugs broke through the oppressive power of the overmind. Whatever that meant. He surprised and charmed Race with intellectual gifts: plays by Sartre, mix tapes featuring spoken-word poetry and reggae dub.