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We finish the coffee. We leave cash and walk out into the lot like three men who have just discussed the weather.

Maxim’s city car pulls away first. Nikolai follows. I stand by the Mercedes for a moment longer than I need to and watch the highway.

They may come around.

Or they may not.

Either way, I cannot wait on other men’s caution.

If I have to go at the Lucci family alone, I will.

The city is already dark by the time I walk back into Keller’s.

Night suits this place. The lights are lower. The staff move quieter. The men who come here after dark do not come to be seen. They come to speak without being recorded and to drink without being asked why.

Mackensie is already at the bar. He has taken the corner seat that gives him the door, the stairs, and the mirror behind the bottles.

I taught him that years ago. He never forgot it. And perhaps that’s why I like him so much.

I sit beside my closest confidante.

“Well?” Mackensie asks. He does not waste time on weather.

“They want time,” I say.

Mackensie turns his glass once between his fingers.

“Maxim first?”

“Maxim first. Then Nikolai,” I say. “Same answer. Different mouths.”

Mackensie nods like he already expected it.

hat irritates me more than the answer itself.

“They have been useful,” I say. “The accord made sense. I did not go to them as a beggar. I went as a man reminding them of the structure we all live under. And they looked at me like I had asked them to donate a kidney.”

“They’re busy,” Mackensie says.

I look at him. “Busy.”

“West Coast drama,” he says. “Both of them. Maxim’s been putting out fires in the ports for months. Nikolai’s people are stretched across two states and at least one messy partnership that should have been killed off last winter. They don’t want to say that to you. Not in a diner. Not to your face. So they delay.”

I let that sit.

It makes sense. But that does not make it better.

“Then they should have said so,” I say. “I do not need poetry. I need men who can tell me when their hands are full. What is the point of an arrangement if the first time I ask them to stand they hide behind time?”

Mackensie does not flinch. He never does, and probably never will either.

“Don’t do anything rash,” he says.

I almost smile. Almost.

“Define rash.”

“Calling the accords dead before they are,” Mackensie says. “Pushing them into a corner they will remember. Making this about pride instead of the Lucci clan.”