She turned on the radiant smile. “Just how limited my experience really is.” Along the walls of the gallery were lengths of pipe, scattering of metal parts, half-crushed boxes, heaps of wet gravel. And the small, freight elevator-sized front loader she had expected to see. How much dirt could it carry at a time, a thousand pounds? The pile in the back yard suggested months and months of work for such a small machine. But that’s what Chino had said. One corner of the room had been given over to a makeshift office, with desks and drafting tables, computers, all of them turned off now, and a large display board on which was tacked to a map or diagram that was too faint for Amy to see from her position at the top of the ramp.

Behind the men was what looked like a miniature television studio, small cameras mounted on tripods that faced two chairs, lights facing the chairs and, on the near side of the cameras, a monitor facing the set, and a little control panel on a rough wooden table. Cables from the control panel went straight up in the air into a pipe hanging from a beam that ran the width of the room.

“Gentlemen,” Chino said in Spanish, “permit me to introduce to you my special guest for this evening, Senora Amy Merrill, of the United States of America!”

They applauded again. She decided to wave. They cheered. Chino took her arm and led her down the ramp. With eyes still on her, Amy thought it was wise to keep her gaze toward the ground in front of her — but something pulled her eyes to a crate beside a pile of trash against the wall to her right. The stenciled lettering on the side of the crate was not in English or Spanish or any language she could recognize.

“You don’t miss anything, do you?”

“Neither do you,” she said.

“I felt a slight, a sudden tension in your arm.”

“That language is Polish, isn’t it?”

“Very good.”

“And the real reason why you had those men killed.”

“Not what those words describe, a tractor crankshaft, I believe. More accurately, what was really in the box. That is the reason I had them killed. Forgive me for splitting hairs. I’m talking only about what they stole, the thing that originally brought them to my attention. Since the three men had made themselves disposable anyway, they were perfect for the job of collecting your husband and you.”

“Well, they weren’t. Added?”