"All right, so you're looking for something. Give me some parameters? What are we talking about here?"

"Cash. One job."

"One job?" He seemed surprised and maybe even disappointed. "How big?"

"Big enough to disappear on. To get a good start."

"Must not be going too good then."

"It's just that things are happening. I can't…"

She shook her head and didn't finish.

"You sure you're okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I feel good, actually. Now that I know."

"I know what you mean. I remember the time when I decided for good. When I said fuck it, this is what I do. And at the time, hell, I was only boosting air bags out of Chryslers. I've come a long way. We both have."

Cassie turned and glanced back at the man on the bench. He was continuing his conversation. He hadn't really needed Cassie to be there.

"You know, don't you, that with these parameters, you're probably talking Vegas. I mean, I could send you down to Hollywood Park or one of the Indian rooms but you're not going to see a lot of cash. You're talking fifteen, twenty a pop down there. But if you give me some time to set something in Vegas I could push the take."

Cassie thought a moment. She had believed when the bus to High Desert pulled out of Las Vegas six years before that she would never see the place again. But she knew that what Leo was saying was accurate. Vegas was where the big money was.

"Vegas is fine," she said abruptly. "Just don't take too long."

"Who's that talking behind you?"

"Just some old guy. Too much pruno while in lockup."

"Where are you?"

"I just left the PO."

Leo laughed.

"Nothing like having to pee in a cup to make you see life's possibilities. Tell you what, I'll keep an eye out for something. I got a heads up about something coming up in the next week or so. You'd be perfect. I'll let you know if it pans out. Where can I reach you?"

She gave him the dealership number. The general number and not her direct line or her cell phone number. She didn't want those numbers written down and in his possession in case he took a bust.

"One other thing," she said. "Can you still get passports?"

"I can. Take me two, three weeks 'cause I send out for them, but I can get you one. It will be fucking grade A, too. A passport will run you a grand, a whole book twenty-five hundred. Comes with DL, Visa and Amex. Delta miles on the Amex."

"Good. I'll want a whole book for me and then a second passport."

"What do you mean, two? I'm telling you the first one will be perfect. You won't need another with – "

"They're not both for me. I need the second for somebody else. Do you want me to send pictures to the house or do you have a drop?"

Leo told her to send the photos to a mail drop. He gave her the address in Burbank, then asked her who the second passport was for and what names she wanted used in the manufacture of the false documents. She had anticipated the questions and had already picked the names. She offered to send the cash with the photos but Leo told her he could front it for the time being. He said it was an act of good faith, seeing that they were going back into business together.

"So," he said, returning to the main business at hand. "You going to be ready for this? Been a long time. People get rusty. If I put you out there, I'll be on the line, you know."

"I know. You don't have to worry. I'll be ready."

"Okay, then. I'll be talking to you."

"Thanks. I'll be seeing you."

"Oh, and sweetheart?"

"What?"

"I'm glad you're back. It'll be like old times again."

"No, Leo. Not without Max. It will never be the same again."

This time Leo didn't protest her use of his name. They both hung up and Cassie walked away from the phones. The man on the bench called after her but she couldn't make out what it was he had said.

She had to walk up to Victory Boulevard to get to the Boxster. It was the closest she had been able to get to the criminal justice complex. Along the way she thought about Max Freeling. She remembered their last moments together; the bar at the Cleo, the beer foam in his mustache, the tiny scar on his chin where no whiskers grew.

Max had made a toast and she repeated it now silently.

To the end. To the place where the desert is ocean.

Thinking about what happened afterward left her depressed and still angry, even after so many years. She decided that before she went to the dealership she would drive by Wonderland Elementary and catch the lunch recess. She knew it was the best way possible to chase the blues away.

When she got to the Boxster she found it had been ticketed after the two hours on the meter expired. She pulled the citation off the windshield and tossed it onto the passenger seat. The car was still registered to the deadbeat it had been repossessed from. So when the ticket went unpaid, the bill from the city would go to him. He could deal with it.

She got in the car and drove off. She took Van Nuys Boulevard south to the 101. The boulevard was lined with new-car dealerships. Sometimes she thought of the Valley as one big parking lot.

She tried listening to a Lucinda Williams compact disc but the stereo was so jumpy that she had to pop it out and just listen to the radio. The song playing was an old one. Roseanne Cash singing about a seven-year ache.

Yeah, Cassie thought. Roseanne knew what she was talking about. Seven years. But the song didn't say anything about what happened after seven years. Did that ache go away then? Cassie didn't think it ever would.

IN the following days, while she waited for word from Leo, Cassie Black found herself dropping into the rhythm of preparation that was both familiar and comforting to her. But most of all it was exciting, putting a thrill into her life she had not felt in many years.

The preparation was also a solitary time of introspection. She studied her decision repeatedly and from all angles. She found no cracks, no second thoughts, no intruding guilt. The hurdle had been in making the choice. Once decided upon, it only brought her relief and a great sense of freedom. There was the excitement of danger and anticipation in her that the years of incarceration had robbed from her memory. She had forgotten how truly addictive the charge of adrenaline could be. Max had simply called it outlaw juice because he could not put his feelings into words. In those days of preparation she came to realize that the true essence of incarceration was aimed at removing that charge, of washing it from memory. If so, then five years in lockdown had failed her. The charge of outlaw juice was boiling in her blood now, banging through her veins like hot water through frozen winter pipes.

She began by changing her body clock, dramatically shortening her sleeping hours and pushing them well into the morning. She offset the sleep deprivation with a regimen of energy-enhancing vitamins and an occasional late-afternoon nap on her living room couch. Within a week she had dropped from seven to four hours of sleep per night without a noticeable impact on her alertness or productivity.

At night she started taking long drives on the dangerously curving Mulholland Drive so that she could sharpen her sustained alertness. When home she moved about her house without lights on, her eyes adjusting and becoming reacquainted with the contours of night shadows. She knew she would have the option of night-vision goggles when the job came up but she also knew it was good to be prepared for any eventuality.

By day, when she wasn't working at the dealership, she started gathering the equipment she might need and making the tools she would use. After carefully making a list of every conceivable thing that would help her overcome any obstacle on a job, she memorized its contents and destroyed it – such a list in her possession was enough in itself to violate her parole. She then spent an entire day driving to a variety of hardware stores and other businesses, gathering the items on the list and spreading her cash purchases across the entire city so that the various parts to her plan could never be construed as the whole.