“Nervous. Nervous,” he said. “But not too nervous to take a little something for the missus.”

On the table he set a six-karat pink diamond engagement ring. Villay covered it quickly with his hand and looked around before slipping it into the pocket of his charcoal gray pants.

The lawyer chuckled. “No, not too nervous for that. A million dollars. That’s what it’s worth. A rare stone for a rare stone.”

Villay narrowed his eyes and said, “What about the cash?”

The lawyer knit his brow and said, “I’m a man of honor. If I say five hundred thousand in cash and the ring, I mean it. I’m just telling you you’re getting prime rib for the price of hamburger.”

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Maybe a little discount will be in order next time, eh?”

The waiter brought the lawyer a glass of red wine, then set Villay’s glass with ice and lime down and filled it from a green glass bottle.

When he’d gone, Villay took a sip, looked at his watch, and said, “Can I go?”

The lawyer swallowed a mouthful of wine, shrugged, and said, “Suit yourself.”

“I mean, is it there?” Villay asked, scowling.

The lawyer reached into his coat pocket again and handed him a blue plastic chip with a white number on it.

“There,” he said.

Villay took another sip and stood to go.

“You should eat,” the lawyer said. “Life is a lot better when you’ve got a full stomach and a nice glass of wine. Hey, aren’t you gonna even say thanks?”

“Aren’t you?” Villay said, turning.

“Yeah,” the lawyer said, leaning back in his chair. “You did good. Thanks.”

Villay gave him a two-finger salute. At the coat check, he took back his raincoat as well as the lawyer’s bulging brown leather briefcase without leaving a tip for the girl. He pushed out through the tight crowd and into the rain with the briefcase under his coat. The smoky clouds were teeming now, blurring the river of taillights and yellow cabs. He looked left and right, felt a small stab of panic at the sight of a police car with its lights flashing, but quickly chastised himself when he saw a cop writing out a ticket.

Still, he clutched the briefcase tight and kept his eyes riveted on the rearview mirror the entire way home to make sure Jack wasn’t looking at him. By the time the black car rolled through the gates, he’d chewed a crater on the inside of his lower lip that was big enough to bleed.

I THOUGHT THAT EVEN the remotest sparks of hope were buried and long cold in the ash heap under my ribs. But at the sound of Lester Cole’s words, a phoenix springs up.

I am afraid, but unable to stop it. I do not want to die all over again. I have been comfortably numb, slowly rotting away at my own pace. My life is empty, but the only sharp pain I feel is physical and it pales next to the anguish of being destroyed.

Lester tells me he doesn’t want to talk anymore now. He just wants me to know that things are different.

The loaf is the shittiest-tasting slice of crap ever made, but time goes by and I behave. Lester is a genius. He teaches me things I never knew. The way particles are assembled on a picture tube. Why airplanes fly and compressed Freon cools air. How J. J. Thomson used cathode rays to discover electrons. The weather on the day in AD 445 when Attila the Hun murdered his brother Bleda to secure the throne and how much the Eastern Roman emperor Theodosis II paid him to maintain peace. The affair between Gauguin and van Gogh that was the real cause of the great artist’s self-mutilation.

He pours it out and I suck it up. We whisper to keep the maniacs at bay. During rec, he diagrams things for me in the snow and then the dust. The battle plans of Alexander the Great. The layout for a particle accelerator. Michelangelo’s design for the dome of St. Peter’s Cathedral.

Bluebeard is giddy with the power he appears to have over me. He gloats at my docile behavior, taking credit for kicking my ass into line. I am given an additional three months in the box for crushing the Colombian’s hand and breaking his nose, but my release now nearly coincides with Lester’s. We put in a request to be bunked together, and Lester works it out for us to get an end cell on the ground floor, A block First Company.

There are five blocks in Auburn, A through E. Each block has five floors of cells, forty-five in a row, two rows, front and back. It used to be one man to a cell, but to save money, the governor now allows double bunks on the end cell of each company by request.

Clarence takes me down the elevator from Special Housing and across the yard. I blink at the bright sunlight and shuffle my feet along the faded blacktop, enjoying the scuffing sound of long even strides. The yard is a rectangle of pavement surrounded by the cellblocks. Lester has familiarized me with everything during our hour-long rec sessions on the roof by drawing in the grit. The administration building rises above C block to the east. At the west end is the mess hall and auditorium. Corroding basketball hoops are staggered around the inside of the yard in no apparent order.

It’s after breakfast, so only a few inmates are scattered in small groups, sitting at metal picnic tables in the shadow of A and B blocks. The men are mostly black. They wear the faded forest green outfits and stare sullenly at me. My heart begins to pound. There are two guard posts on the roofs and what they call a sergeant’s box, a trailer without wheels in the yard, butted up to the wall of D block. All the guns are on the roof and in the towers and I can feel them.

I am light-headed with the sensation of freedom, but scared by the thought that I am sticking my neck out for some wild-ass notion of an old man who might be crazy, even if he is brilliant. I keep my eyes straight ahead as I am escorted up the steps and into A block. I think of the first rule and force a sneer onto my face. I think I hear a low whistle, but I pretend not to. I think of the third rule. Exact revenge. Does that whistle mean I have to punch that man’s teeth out?

Clarence passes me off to another guard and says he’ll see me around. The guard rattles his keys and opens the box of levers.

“Clear on one,” he says, and pulls down on one of the brass levers.

I hear the cell door begin to hum. The guard rattles his keys again and opens the barred door leading into First Company. I step inside. All along the wall, inmates push their faces against the bars to see who the fresh meat is. They look like zoo animals. Some hoot and catcall. Some laugh and holler. Lester is standing in the gloom of the double bunk, his thin white tufts of hair blazing. Those enormous eyes shine and his smile exposes how badly he needed dental work as a kid. I step inside and the door begins to hum shut. It clanks in place, and I feel relief as I take Lester’s gnarled hand.

“Welcome,” he says, pumping my handshake.

I see now that the walls and ceiling are plastered with museum posters. Reprints of famous works of art from Europe and the United States.

“What’s all this?” I ask.

Lester’s blue eyes glow and crinkle at their corners. I don’t even see the yellow scum of the cataracts any longer.

“A surprise, kid,” he says. “I never told you what kind of a thief I was.”

I know he killed a man during a job. That’s all he’s ever said about why he’s here.

“You stole this kind of stuff?” I ask.

“Picasso, Miró, Rubens, Dalí, Monet, Cassatt,” he says. He is beaming now and has straightened his crooked little form up to its full height. “Even a small van Gogh. Jewels too.”

I whistle to make him feel good and lean toward the wall to study the brilliant red flower on a Rembrandt, but I can’t say that it matters all that much to me.

“I guess a lot of people would kill for this stuff,” I say.