“So I need you to talk to her, explain to her the situation, and I think once you’ve done that, she’ll tell you where you can find the money, and you and I can go and get it.”

“Are you crazy?” I said. “She’s in jail. If you listened to the news, you know that.”

Merker nodded his understanding. “You’ll have to go visit her. I can’t do it. People might be looking for me. Last place I want to walk into is a prison. They might not let me out. But I bet you can get in to see her.”

“So I’m supposed to just walk in, into the jail, and say hey, where’s that money, and she tells me, we go find it, and you walk off with it.”

Merker smiled, delighted that I had grasped the concept. “Yup.”

Gavrilla interrupted. “How much money did she steal from you?”

“A lot,” Merker said. I knew it to be about half a million, but clearly he didn’t want to tip his hand.

“Then here is a deal,” Gavrilla said, glancing out the front door. “We let you take him to get the money, but we get a, what do you call it, a cut.”

“Yeah, right,” Merker said. “That’s a plan.”

Mrs. Gorkin turned her gun on me. “We kill him now then.”

“Whoa, hang on, wait a minute,” Merker said. “Let’s not get crazy.”

“Who’s that man in the truck?” Gavrilla asked.

“That’s Leo,” Merker said.

“Okay, so you leave Leo with us,” Gavrilla said, her mom watching her curiously, “and we let you take this guy to get your money, then you come back with the money, you give us our cut, Leo can go and you give us back this guy.”

“What, Leo’s, like, a hostage?”

“No, no. He just stays with us.” Gavrilla shrugged. “We’ll hang out.”

Ludmilla, on her feet now, said, “I could stay here.”

“There’s somebody else,” Merker said. “In the truck, with Leo. She’d have to stay too.”

“How much money?” Mrs. Gorkin asked.

“Like I said, a lot,” Merker said.

“Don’t give me this sheet, a lot,” she said. “We not letting you walk off with him we don’t know what’s in it for us.”

“The thing is,” Merker said, “I don’t know exactly how much she’s got. I know what she took, but she probably spent that, but she’s probably made some back. I’m betting she’s got it stashed away someplace and I want it back. With fucking interest too.”

“How much she take?”

Merker didn’t even hesitate. “A hundred thousand.” I couldn’t see any advantage, at the moment, in pointing out that he was underreporting potential income. I was not the tax man.

“Whoa,” said Mrs. Gorkin. “Okay then, we want thirty percent.”