And I do not tell him to shove it up his Arc de coq au vin. I give him what he wants as if I’m out of my depth. I let him see all my doubts.

Then I swallow the urge to puke or rip his face off and I make a deal—I make a solemnly binding vow—with François Leclerc.

—

After that I call Mozart and I tell her I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. Mozart says she’s sorry too. I say why is she sorry and she says she has accidentally posted the security footage of me peeing on her plane on G-Bread so now all the low-to-mid-brow criminals in the world have seen my junk.

“…Sure why not. Put me on speaker.”

“You do not give me orders Jack. Plus your lady friend here is a drag she cries all the time and when she is not crying she yells bad words in Italian.”

“You have fifteen million euros you can retire with that why are you still here?”

“I dunno asshat why are you still here?”

“To fuck some guys up who are assholes and make even more than that doing it plus also I’m gonna be faaaaamous. You wanna do that too?”

“Speaker on man.”

“Flavia? Can you hear me?”

—

So here we are at last. Banjo’s event is due and there’s nothing left to do and when that happens you don’t wait. You go. It all comes together now or it falls apart.

Incoming VoIP call Solidcrypt. Accept: y/n?

y

Doc says:

“I’m at the Nordwandhüs.”

This is the name of the house where the security guard she has nominated to be her personal-entry key card lives. In Kircheisen, houses do not generally have numbers they just have names because it is small and totally picturesque. In fact, it is too much to say this guy will be her key card because although she considered bribing him, in fact, she assessed that way of doing things as being too high risk unless he was also unconscious, and in the end why would you pay a guy to be unconscious while you rob a bank? So he will not so much be a key card as he will be a key eyeball that she will carry around sedated because the machine can tell if the eyeball is not connected to a viable heart and if you have just ripped it out the doors will not open they are persnickety that way.

Doc says:

“It’s time.”

TWELVE

I AM HAPPY IN MY WORKING ENVIRONMENT and my professional role so I sing:

“Well I walked in / and she got up—I saw her draw / and I raised my cup—I looked right down that baaaaaarrel and I knewwwww—We’d be married and in bed / before that night was through—”

“Holy shinola boss what the crap is that appalling nu-country what—”