“You gave them an interview.”

“Yep.”

“You never did that before. Talked about the injury.”

“True.”

“You wouldn’t even watch replays of what happened.”

“True.”

It had been too overwhelming to watch. Normal, right? Your dream, your life goal, everything you ever wanted—it’s there, in your grasp at the age of twenty-two, and snap, lights out, buh-bye, it’s over, nada mas.

“I didn’t see the point,” Myron said.

“And now?”

Myron took a deep swill of the ale. “They kept saying that this injury ‘defined’ me.”

“At one point, it did.”

“Exactly. At one point. But not anymore. Now I could finally watch Burt Wesson slam into me, and I felt little more than a ping. The stupid narrator. He kept saying the injury”—Myron made quote marks with his fingers—“‘destroyed my life.’ But now I know it was just a fork in the road. All those guys I started out with, all those superstars who made it and had successful NBA careers—they’re all retired now. The light went out for them too.”

“But in the meantime,” Win said, “they scored boatloads of chicks.”

“Well, yes, there’s that.”

“And the light didn’t snap off for them. It dimmed.”

“Slowly,” Myron said.

“Yes.”

“Maybe that makes it harder.”

“How so?”

“You rip off the bandage all at once versus slowly peeling it away.”

Win took a sip of his beer. “Fair point.”

“I could also add the cliché about being thrown into the deep end. The suddenness forced me to act. It made me go to law school. It made me become a sports agent.”

“It didn’t ‘make’ you,” Win said.

“No?”

“You were always a competitive—nay, overly ambitious—son of a bitch.”

Myron smiled at that and raised his mug. “Cheers, mate.”

Win again clinked his glass, cleared his throat, and said, “Der mentsh trakht un got lakht.”

“Wow,” Myron said.

“I taught myself the Yiddish,” said the blond-haired, blue-eyed Anglo-Saxon. “It does wonders when I hit on Jewish chicks.”

Der mentsh trakht un got lakht. Translation: Man plans and God laughs.

Man, it was good to be back with Win.

They both went quiet for a moment. They were both thinking the same thing.

“Maybe the injury isn’t such a big deal anymore,” Myron said, “because I know there are a lot of worse things in life.”

Win nodded. “Patrick and Rhys.”

“What do you know about cybercurrency?”

“Ransoms are sometimes paid with it, but with all the recent antilaundering laws now, it is extraordinarily difficult. My expert says that you have to buy the currency, put it in some kind of online wallet, and then transfer it to them. It’s part of the dark web.”

“Do you understand what that means?”

“I told you. I’m an expert in nearly anything.”

Myron waited.

“But no, I don’t have a clue.”

“We may be getting old.”

Win’s phone buzzed. He checked it. “I’m getting information on our friend Fat Gandhi from a constable friend.”

“And?”

“His real name is Chris Alan Weeks.”