“I appreciate that, sir.”
“No, you don’t. You’re not the kind of man who appreciates anything he hasn’t been given yet.” His mouth tugs into a pained half-smile. “I mean that as a compliment, by the way.”
I wait. There’s something coming, but I don’t have a sense of what it might be yet.
I just know it’s definitely fucking coming.
He glances back the way we came. I check, too, but there’s nothing there save for more white-skinned birches. When he turns to me again and talks, his voice is hardly a murmur.
“How well do you know Raymond, Matvei?”
The question is like a cold finger running down the back of my neck. “As well as one knows one’s senior partner, I suppose,” I say cautiously. “I’ve worked under him on most of my major matters. He’s been generous with his time.”
“Mm. Generous. That’s one word for it.” He fidgets with the cap of the flask. “Listen, son. I’m going to say something to you, and I’m only going to say it the once, and then we’re going to talk about the birds. Are we clear?”
I nod.
“Raymond Snyder is not a good man.” Bill’s pale eyes lock on mine. “I’m not talking about the way he speaks to that wife of his, although Christ knows that alone would be enough. I’m talking about the things he does that don’t make it onto the firm letterhead. The clients he keeps. The favors he’s collected.” He draws a breath through his teeth. “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
I keep my face exactly as it is. “I’m not sure I do, sir.”
“Yes, you do.” He almost smiles before thinking better of it. “There’s a reason I’m having this chat withyou,Matvei. You don’t blink. So I’ll spell it out. He has something on me. He has stuff on most of the senior partners, in fact. We have all, at one point or another, signed something we should not have signed, or looked away from something we should not have looked away from, and Raymond keeps a very thorough file.” His mouth thins into a dark slash that looks just like the eyes on the birch trees. The effect is unsettling. “Lately, he has been less than subtle about reminding us of the fact.”
The wind pushes through the branches and rattles the last dry leaves. I feel the old, familiar quiet settle in behind my eyes, the one that arrives whenever a conversation becomes therealconversation.
“Mr. Oglethorpe,” I ask, “why are you telling me this?”
“Because—”
His mouth is open around the next word when his eyes flick over my shoulder, and the color drains out of his face so fast I can almost see it pour down the front of his jacket.
I don’t have to turn around to know who’s joined us.
“Bill!” Raymond’s voice. Bourbon-warm and entirely too cheerful. “There you are, you old goat. I’ve been looking for you.”
I turn in my own time. Raymond is ambling along the line, perfectly at ease. That grin of his is as broad as it’s been all morning, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Those remain cold and dead.
“Raymond.” Bill’s voice has acquired three layers of starch in three seconds. “Just keeping the new blood company.Reminding Mr. Satyrin here what end of the gun the trouble comes out of.”
“Ah.” Raymond’s eyes flit to me. There’s no recognition in them of anything beyonduseful associate. I look hard, but I see no flicker ofI have seen this man near my wife. Nosomething is off about this man.It’s simply the cold, pleasant assessment of a senior partner appraising a junior asset. “Don’t worry about Matvei, Bill. He could shoot the wings off a fly. Couldn’t you, son?”
“I’ve never been asked to try.”
“Well, you inspire confidence that you could do anything you set your mind to. Isn’t that right, Bill?” He clamps a hand on Bill’s shoulder, the same theatrical clap he’d been giving him by the gun table earlier, and I watch Bill’s whole body absorb the impact like a man taking a punch in the gut. “Say, Bill, mind if I borrow Matvei a minute? Got a thing I want his ear on.”
“Of course,” Bill says. The flask has disappeared back into his coat. “Of course, of course. I should— Susan’ll be wondering. I’ll be in the tent if anyone needs me. I don’t think I have the stomach for killing this morning after all.”
He doesn’t look at me again as he goes.
Raymond watches him go with an expression I cannot quite parse, and then turns back to me. “Christ,” he says. “That man is one bad hip away from a funeral urn.”
I force a polite chuckle. “He didn’t look well.”
“He never does, lately.” Raymond cracks his shotgun open, peers down the barrels with no real interest, and snaps it shut again. “Feeble old men. They reach a certain age and start jumping atshadows. Forget what side of the table they’re sitting on, and how they got to the table in the first place.”
The wind moves through the birches and lifts a curl of his thinning hair off his forehead before laying it back down. Raymond is in no apparent rush to tell me about thething he wants my ear on. He’s just standing there, smiling that ugly smile, sucking on his own teeth as the bracing, bitter cold reaches through the gaps in my jacket.
My rib gives a single, vicious throb.
