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KINGPIN

Albert ran out minutes later with $10,000 in cash and jumped into the Camaro, and Chris sped away.

Chris drove them south out of town on an unpaved road that snaked through the rocky red hills surrounding Glenwood Springs, then transferred to a jeep trail where his girlfriend was waiting with the switch car. Jubilant and excited, Chris drove past her and spun the Camaro into a triumphant fishtail, sending a plume of dust twenty feet into the air.

He was jumping up and shouting, "We did it!" when a police cruiser, drawn by the dust cloud, rolled up on the robbers. Chris and Albert made a mad dash on foot over the craggy, tree-dotted terrain. Chris tumbled down a ridge and landed on a cactus, and the two cops caught up with them. Chris dropped his shotgun and surrendered.

Chris learned a valuable lesson from his experience: not that crime didn't pay, but that guns and getaway cars were a stupid way to rob a bank. When he made parole in 1986, after five years in federal prison, he delved into credit card fraud and enjoyed some modest success. Then he hooked up with a Mexican drug smuggler he'd met in the joint. Chris helped with the delivery of two thousand pounds of marijuana to a twenty-acre ranch near Riverside, California, only to be busted in a nationwide DEA undercover operation. He went back to prison in September of 1991.

When he got out in 1996, he was thirty-five years old and had spent more than half his adult life, and a portion of his childhood, behind bars. He vowed to go straight. With his mother's help, he founded a legitimate business called Mission Pacific Capital, a leasing firm providing computer and business equipment to start-up companies hustling to claim their place in the dot-com race.

Clean-cut and handsome with an empathetic gaze, Chris fit easily into the role of a Southern California entrepreneur. After a lifetime of crime and uncertainty, the charms of a normal, middle-class existence had an exotic and satisfying appeal. He loved traveling to conventions, interviewing and hiring employees, schmoozing with colleagues. At a marketing