He'd come round the east-side workroom every other Tuesday for six months to walk down the row and count us out. We weregoods to him. He'd been in the doorway of my da's shop on Victoria Street when they shot him. He'd walked out with my granddad's tool roll while my da was still on the cutting floor.
I went cold all the way down. It was the kind of cold where your hands stop being yours.
I'd thought about Mr. K most days for six months. I'd thought about killing him. I'd thought about what it would be like to be in a room with him again, what I'd say, how I'd hold my face. Turned out the reality was a chair in my pants and a head full of wet socks. Brilliant.
I opened my eyes.
The chair had creaked, the listening was over, and I was sick of being in the dark with my own thoughts, anyway.
It was a workroom. There was a cutting table, a leather strop, a Singer in the corner with a fresh bobbin on the plate. The whole setup was Mr. K's, hidden behind whatever the shop pretended to be from the street. Same as the east-side workroom, just dressed up in money.
I was back at it. Different room, same bench. It made me want to chew through the rope just to put my hands somewhere they couldn't sew.
Mr. K was six feet in front of the chair, hands behind his back, dark wool suit, the fake Rolex still on his left wrist. He gave me the inventory check. Same one he'd done eighty-odd times at the workroom. I'd been misplaced and now I was back. Some things you could count on.
Pavel was a step behind him. Cardigan, cross at the throat, the look of a man who'd been told there'd be coffee.
"Finlay. You look well."
I had to dig for my voice. "I'd stand up, but I'm a wee bit indisposed."
Mr. K looked me over. Chair, rope, pants, gooseflesh up my arms. "Pavel. Did you not think to put something on him?"
"He doesn't need it."
"He's freezing."
"He's an asset. Not the guest."
Mr. K made a small huff through his nose. He took off his suit jacket, walked four steps over, and laid it across my bare shoulders like a barber's cape. The silk lining hit my skin, and I recoiled. He stepped back.
"Better."
It wasn't better. It was worse. I'd rather have sat in the cold than wear the jacket of the man who'd had my da shot. The smell of him was in the lining. Cologne, smoke, money. I tried to shrug the thing off, and the rope at my elbows held my shoulders where they were. So I sat there with Mr. K on my back and my face on fire.
"You've had a hard week, Finlay. Pavel did not handle this well."
"He held a gun to my head and stuck a needle in my leg. Define handle."
"Indeed." He drifted back to the cutting table and rested one hand on the edge. The ring on his finger was thin, old gold. "Pavel had been in some difficulty. We accommodated him. The arrangement was that he would deliver to me what I had lost in the warehouse. He has delivered. You are what I lost."
"Christ. Yer terms of trade are dogshite."
"You always did have a mouth."
"Aye, well. It's the part of me ye didnae break."
"Pavel." He didn't turn. "Car?"
"Round the back. Five minutes."
"Good. We'll have him in the air by midnight." There's a kit in the car for him. See it gets on the plane." He didn't even look at me when he said it. "The asset is of no use to me in a coma."
Five minutes.
That landed hard. I'd been ready to die for six months. I wasn't ready to leave. Mr. K didn't need me dead. He needed my hands. He was going to put me on a plane in five minutes, and that was worse than dying.
I tried the rope hard. The chair grunted. Nothing else moved.
