“Keys and further instructions will be in the glove compartment.”

The dude started walking away.

“Yo,” said Gus after him. “I didn’t say yes yet.”

Gus pulled open the door—waited; no alarm—and climbed inside. Didn’t see no cameras—but he wouldn’t anyway, would he? Behind the front seats was a metal partition without a window. Bolted in there, aftermarket. Maybe truck full of PD he’s driving around.

Van felt still, though. He opened the glove compartment, again using the rag. Gently, as if a gag snake might jump out at him, and the little light came on. Laid out inside was the ignition key, the parking garage ticket he needed to get out, and a manila envelope.

He looked inside the envelope and the first thing he saw was his pay. Five new $100 bills, which pleased and pissed him off at the same time. Pleased him because it was more than he had expected, and pissed him off because no one would break a century from him without a hassle, especially nowhere in the hood. Even a bank would scan the hell out of those bills, coming out of the pocket of an eighteen-year-old tatted-up Mexican.

Folded around the bills was another index card listing the destination address and a garage access code, GOOD FOR ONE USE ONLY.

He compared the cards side by side. Same handwriting.

Anxiety faded as excitement rose. Sucker! Trusting him with this vehicle. Gus knew, right off the top of his head, three different spots in the South Bronx to take this baby for reconditioning. And to quickly satisfy his curiosity as to what sort of contraband goodness he was carrying in back.

The last item in the larger envelope was a smaller, letter-size envelope. He withdrew a few sheets of paper, unfolded them, and a warm flame rose out of the center of his back and into his shoulders and neck.

AUGUSTIN ELIZALDE, headed the first one. It was Gus’s rap sheet, his juvenile jacket leading up to the manslaughter conviction and his being kicked free with a clean slate on his eighteenth birthday, just three short weeks ago.

The second page showed a copy of his driver’s license and, below that, his mother’s driver’s license with the same East 115th Street address. Then a small picture of the front door of their building at the Taft Houses.

He stared at that paper for two straight minutes. His mind raced back and forth between that missionary-looking dude and how much he knew, and his madre here, and what kind of bad shit Gus had gotten himself into this time.

Gus didn’t take well to threats. Especially involving his madre: he had already put her through enough.

The third page was printed in the same handwriting as the index cards. It read: NO STOPS.

Gus sat at the window of the Insurgentes, eating his fried eggs doused with Tabasco sauce, looking at the white van double-parked out on Queens Boulevard. Gus loved breakfast, and, since getting out, had eaten breakfast at nearly every meal. He ordered specific now, because he could: bacon extra crispy, burn the toast.