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“Correct, dress according. Wear a Vikings sweatshirt. Say in an hour. Two-thirty.”

Jesus. It was moving fast. “I’ll be there.” The call ended. Sheryl was impressed. That was fast. Which meant Werky’s “investigator,” Simon Hanky, was on the job. Simon wound up going by his first initial. There was a word in poetry, onimana something. Like when a words sound like the thing it describes. That was him to a T.

Drop the Y.S. Hanky. Then drop the Y.

Shank did some time for manslaughter after Werky pleaded him down from second degree for killing his ex- wife’s boyfriend. In the joint, Danny’s organization was impressed by his icy focus and recruited him after he decimated a bunch of Mexicans in the showers.

He had matured in prison and never killed in hot blood again. Now he only operated with methodical planning. Some people were into beginnings, and some people like to stretch out the middle. Shank was an expert on endings.

He killed people.

This corkscrew sensation squirmed through Sheryl’s chest. Old tapes. She had been around a lot of dangerous men in her life, and most of them had made her nervous, mainly because they were unpredictable and had poor impulse control. Shank had zero impulses, barely a pulse.

Wow.

Shit, man, something must have clicked for them to trot out the Shank.

At two-thirty sharp, Sheryl, face washed clean of makeup, hair gathered in a ponytail, stood at the check-in line at the Country Buffet chewing Juicy Fruit. She wore a pair of faded Levi’s, a brand-new, itchy purple Minnesota Vikings sweatshirt, scuffed tennies, and a cheap Wal-Mart wind jacket. Some Spanish was being spoken in the line, several gangs of Mexican laborers coming in for all-you-can-eat-a grotesque gallery of obese flesh fighting a losing battle against gravity. On top of which, excessive meat was apparently difficult to wash; the place smelled like an elephant house. Should hose them down, she was thinking when she heard the familiar voice behind her, in a loud whisper: “Hey, Sheryl Mott, long time no see.”

She turned and saw Shank, icy smooth, standing behind her. Sinewy, six feet tall; he had white-blond polar bear hair and eyebrows and startlingly pale blue eyes. They’d been an item briefly, when she returned from Seattle, just before she quit cooking for Danny’s crew and took up her waitress career.

The smooth pigment of his face avoided the sun and reminded her of the texture of mushrooms under cellophane in the produce section. He wore busted-out denim work duds and beat-up steel-toed boots to fit in with the crowd. Looked skinnier than the last time she saw him.

“Shank. You lose some weight?”

He heaved his shoulders, said, “I feel like a real heel-I shoulda called. You see, right after the last time we were together I tested HIV-positive…”

Sheryl clasped his horn-hard hand, noting the manicured nails set like jewels among the callus. “You’re shitting me, right?”

“Yeah,” he grinned. “It’s the South Beach diet.”

She cast her eyes around, sniffed. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”

“Let’s say I’m comfortable around real fat people. They eat like gamblers play slot machines. Totally oblivious to what’s around them.”

Sheryl gave him an appreciative nod. She liked what she saw so far. They were treating her decent for a change.

Shank paid admission, and they followed a tired-looking waitress who seated them at a booth, brought them glasses for their beverages, and said in a tone both cryptic and bored, “You can start now.”

“You hungry?” Shank asked after the waitress left them alone.

Sheryl rolled her eyes in mild revulsion at the shuffling feeding frenzy and shook her head. “Coffee black,” she said.

Shank got them two cups of coffee, resumed his seat across the table, and spread his hands in a respectful preamble. “First, Werky says Danny says hello.”

“Yeah, okay.” Sheryl took a deep breath, let it out.

“And he says to treat you right. You’re the birthday girl. ’Cause, guess what-so far your end checks out. There was a dude name Broker who hung out on the fringe of things. Seems he was more into running guns around than dope. Though there is a story about him bringing in a semi flatbed from North Dakota; piled with hay bales on the outside, bales of weed on the inside. He fixed things, had a bunch of tools in a truck and some landscape equipment. You been out to Danny’s place in Lakeland?”

“Yeah, before the feds took it away for taxes.”

“So, remember the backyard, all the terracing, rocks and shit?”

“Overlooking the river?”

“Yeah, well, Danny told Werky this fuck, Broker, did all that. And one of the guys recalled he put in Jojo’s sound system in Bayport.”

“Bingo,” Sheryl said.

“Meets our probable-cause threshold,” he said. “I don’t suppose you have a picture?”

“’Fraid not.” Sheryl thinking, Christ, I just became an accessory to murder one.

“No problem.” He leaned forward, agreeable. “So what’s it take to locate this ratfuck? You know where he is, correct?”

“Uh-huh. Him, his wife, his kid.”

“And to give them up you want…?”

“Let’s just say, down the line, I got this little project you guys might be interested in…”

“Uh-huh. You know, your name came up a couple weeks ago. Billy Palmer saw you in Arelia’s on University. Said you were talking around selling some shit?”

Sheryl sniffed, looked away, “Billy wasn’t interested, treated me like some meth whore.”

“So, what? You sold to another culture, huh? Mexicans probably, the brothers aren’t really into meth…”

“Do I have to answer that?”

“Nah, it’s cool,” Shank said.

“Heck, you know me.” She wiggled her hips in a taut rumba. “Wanna rattle my pots and pans.”

“I thought you gave it up.”

Sheryl leaned across the table. “Look, the reason I been laying off the scene is there’s too many meth suicide bombers out there burning down houses and littering the countryside with toxic waste. Agreed?”

Shank folded his arms across his chest, listened.

Sheryl carefully arranged her coffee cup, a spoon, and the napkin on the table. Tidying up before she began to speak. Then she said, “I’m not asking for anything for this narc. He’s a gift, understand?”

“Uh-huh. Right. Continue,” Shank said.

Sheryl’s face clouded with concentration. “Let’s just say I’ve spent the last year assembling state-of-the-art gear, the perfect partner, the perfect location, and the perfect operation.”

“Perfect,” Shank said judiciously, giving her his best North Pole stare.

“Absolutely fucking perfect,” Sheryl insisted, meeting the stare.

“Okay, go on…”

“Thank you. My problem is logistics and distribution. I need someone who can provide precursor and chemicals in large volume and deliver it in a discreet and timely fashion. If I can get that-with my setup-I can cook twenty pounds a heat-”

Shank made a face. “Twenty pounds, bullshit.”

Sheryl’s eyes didn’t waver. “Twenty pounds. No mess. Pfizer couldn’t do it cleaner. That’s twenty pounds of ninety-nine-percent-pure crystal four times a month for two months.”

Shank rubbed his chin, squinted at her. “How’re you going to have all that smelly chemical crap coming and going without drawing attention?”

“We’re way out in the sticks, right? So we have a huge tank of anhydrous parked in a barn, and”-Sheryl paused for effect-“we got the local garbageman.”