That didn’t have Charles Saatchi calling me up at home.

The credit card bills kept coming. As did notices from the bank. Najad informed me that if I defaulted on payments my contract would be nullified and they would sell the boat to someone else. I had visions of my future sailing away without me.

What could I do?

I called Deke—the only moneyman I knew. Deke, who doesn’t have an office but always seems to be on the corner when you want him. And when you don’t. Deke, who doesn’t bother hiring muscle because he likes collecting debts himself, using pliers in a way that I don’t want to talk about. Deke, who would no doubt be displeased in the extreme to discover that I am not a talent scout for the Mets but am in fact a top-notch pulse and have personally accounted for the arrest and incarceration of at least five clients with outstanding debts.

Deke: either my best chance or my worst chance, but certainly my only chance.

The next day Deke gave me the money. I gave the money to Najad. And now the boat is mine. Well, Deke retains the title until I pay him off, so I can’t luxuriate in the thrill of ownership just yet. For the time being the Clean Getaway is stuck up on stilts in a boatyard.

But soon, I keep telling myself. Soon.

When I was the accolade-laden Otto Starks of a year ago none of this would have been a problem. After a few big-time gigs I would have just paid Deke off and sailed away, badabing bada-boom. But now that I’m on lousy mid-six jobs with crappy commissions, it’s complicated. I still owe Deke a harrowing amount of money. The commission from the K’plua job wasn’t going to come anywhere close to getting even, of course, but it would have been a good-faith gesture. And the successful pulsing of that job could have gotten me the gigs I need to get even with him and make sure I don’t end up on the wrong end of his pliers.

Now I don’t know what will happen.

Grimly, tenderly, as if reading a last letter from someone I had loved and lost, I untape the Najad brochure from the back of my locker, fold it up, and put it in my pocket. If security is going to clear out my locker today, I’m going to make sure I have this with me. At least I’ll have a souvenir.

“Where have you been, young man? Your mother and I have checked every shitter in the tri-state area. We’ve been worried sick.”

The voice has the sound of heavy machinery dieseling underground: Herk. He holds up a camera and there is a flash like sheet lightning as he snaps my pic. He is always spending his commissions on tech gadgets and I’ve grown accustomed to him snapping, beeping, and flashing at me all the time. Most of the time I hardly notice it, but he’s been going nuts with this camera for the last two weeks and it’s beginning to get to me. The last thing I want is the cleaning out of my locker recorded for posterity.