28. Mat #2
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 the thing 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.
Overhead, a crow calls. Just the one.
One for sorrow.
“How are you liking the upstate?” Raymond asks pleasantly, waving a hand around at our surroundings.
“It’s a beautiful property.”
“Isn’t it?” He swings the broken shotgun lightly as he.
“Out here in the damn middle of nowhere. Feels like the kind of place where the laws don’t apply anymore, eh?
” He laughs to himself. “I always thought that was a good thing for lawyers. Gotta remember sometimes that rules are made up, anyhow. Law of the wild is the only one that matters at the end of the day. Isn’t that right? ”
I incline my head. “I’ll take your word for it, sir.”
“Mm.” He makes a satisfied little sound in the back of his throat. “I wanted to say thank you, by the way. For the other night at the Pierre.”
My face goes numb. “Sir?”
“That indemnity nonsense. You stepping out to handle Gordon’s lawyer.” He taps the side of his head with one gloved knuckle. “Caring when you’re off the clock? That’s how you move up in this world. I noticed, you know. I notice everything. People think I don’t, but I do. I won’t forget.”
“I was happy to,” I say stiffly. “Anytime.”
“Good, good.” He smiles up at the trees. “Because I’m going to need that kind of attentiveness in the next few weeks. I’ve got a trip coming up soon, and I’ll need someone to keep an eye on things for me while I’m gone.”
“Where are you going, sir?” I ask with as much formality as I can muster.
“The Caymans,” he replies. “Having a little sit-down with some new friends of the firm. Important friends. They’re very excited to get face-to-face with Cassandra and I.
Well, she’s easier on the eyes, but you know what I mean.
” He laughs again and digs a teasing elbow into my ribs.
The pain flares up, white-hot, but I bite it back down.
“Mrs. Snyder is going with you?”
“Oh, Cassandra goes where I tell her,” he blathers.
“She’s good for that. Decorative little thing.
Like a piece of jewelry, you know? You wear it to the right party, it sets the right tone.
People relax around a pretty wife. Then they make worse decisions.
” He pauses, considers, and then goes on to say, “And if things get unpleasant, she’s a useful object to have on the table.
People don’t like to negotiate hard in front of a woman. Fairer sex and all that.”
My grip on my shotgun is suddenly white-knuckled. I make myself loosen it, one joint at a time.
“You sound like a man who’s planning for things to get unpleasant,” I observe.
I wonder for a moment if I’ve gone too far, judging by the way Raymond cuts his glance at me, heavy with intrigue.
“I plan for everything, son. That’s why I have the life I have, the money I have.
Everyone else hopes for the best and flounders at anything less than that.
But while others pray that nothing goes wrong, I spend my time choreographing what will happen when it does. ”
“And if it does go wrong…” I keep my voice idle. Lawyerly. Curious, nothing more. “Choreographically speaking. What happens to her?”
He stops walking. For one breath, I think he’s read me. That maybe he’s been choreographing what he’ll do if I make the kind of mistake I might’ve just made, and now, he’s about to lift that shotgun of his and find out which of us is faster.
Then he laughs. “You worried about her, Matvei?”
“I’m worried about exposure to the firm, Mr. Snyder. If something happens to a partner’s wife on a business trip with implications for the firm, that’s a line item I’d want to anticipate.”
He seems to accept that at face value as he nods slowly.
“Smart boy. Smart, smart boy.” He looks back up at the trees and squints like there’s something small to be seen there.
“Don’t worry about Cassandra. She’s been useful for a while.
She’ll be useful for a little longer still.
After that…” He shrugs, one shoulder, nothing in it.
“Well. Sometimes the jewelry gets left behind in the hotel room. Sometimes, a wife develops a pill problem in the Caribbean. Sometimes, she stays there with friends. There are a lot of ways for a woman to go quiet, Matvei. Some of them are even her idea.”
I keep my face neutral and my breath steady as I think to myself, I’m going to bury this man.
It’s not even him I’m seeing in my mind’s eye anymore. I’m seeing Yura’s sleeping baby in the arms of a thug and Cass’s bruised face in that hospital gurney. I see the pixelated spark of my unborn child’s life.
Simple murder is no longer enough to satisfy me. My rib is roaring with bloodlust, telling me to gut this motherfucker like a pig. Bleed him out over the snow, paint the birches red, let the crows feast on his fucking corpse!
“Understood, sir,” I hear myself say.
“Knew you would.” He claps me on the shoulder. The same clap he’s been giving Bill all morning. But unlike Bill, I don’t flinch. “I like having you around, Matvei. You keep your head. People who keep their heads, they get to keep them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Anyway.” He’s started drifting back along the line, done with me. “Better get to my mark before the birds come up. Hate to miss the first volley.”
He starts to walk away.
I watch him go. The wax cap. The L.L.Bean duck boots. The barrel of his open shotgun glinting dully where it crosses his forearm. The set of his shoulders, hunched against the cold.
His back, his back, his back.
His back, you fucking idiot, I sneer at myself.
It’s a back that he is presenting to me like a gift wrapped in tweed.
I lift the shotgun. It comes easily to me now, though I haven’t fired a gun in a long time. The stock settles against my shoulder. My cheek finds the wood. My breath goes long and slow on the exhale, and my finger slides inside the trigger guard.
This is for you, I think, aiming the thoughts toward Cass and the child inside her. For both of you.
A crow caws. Or is it two of them? Or is it seven?
Sorrow? Or joy? Or secrets never told?
And then the shot rings out.