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“So I’ve got the school district,” he says.

“You got it.”

“I got a piece of it. There are three of us on it. I’ve got the interior partitions and the millwork, which is the good part anyway. That’s a hundred and ten if it runs clean.” He’s talking with his mouth full, very pleased with himself. “The Bergens want their whole second floor done before the fall. They asked for me by name because of the Tesler job in ’23. By name, Kieran.”

“That’s good.”

“That’s not the good thing.” He puts the sandwich down, wipes his hands on his knees, and doesn’t look at me. “The good thing is I’m going to start paying you back.”

“Fin.”

“No, listen. Listen.” He holds the bad hand up flat. “Not the big number. I know about the big number. I know I can’t touch it. I’ve stopped lying to myself about that, all right? I mean the six thousand a month. The five years of six thousand a month that you’ve never mentioned to me and that I’ve taken every single month like it was the weather.”

The radio keeps going.

“I’m not saying I can do six,” he says. “I can do eight hundred. Starting the end of April, out of the school district draw. I want you to take it. Don’t say the thing you’re going to say.”

“What am I going to say?”

“You’re going to say keep it.” He points at me with the bad hand. “Every time. Every single time since you were twenty-two. ‘Keep it, Fin. Put it in the business, Fin.’ I kept it. Look where that got us both.”

I look at the window. There’s a hawk sitting on a fencepost about forty yards out doing absolutely nothing.

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

He stares at me. “Just okay?”

“You said not to say the other thing.”

He laughs so hard he has to put his hand on the wall.

“You went to Beau’s,” he says, when he’s gotten himself back. “On Sunday. He posted a picture of a table with about forty people at it.”

“Yeah.”

He waits for more. He’s been doing that for twelve years and has never been rewarded for it. I don’t tell him that Beau’s wife hugged me at the door like she’d been waiting six years to do it, or that there were four kids, two dogs, and a cousin from Trois-Rivières. A slow cooker the size of a car battery. Three hours at that table without one question I had to work out how to answer. Standing in the driveway afterward, cold, unable to get in my truck for a while.

“It was good,” I say.

“Look at you,” Fin says. “Out in the world.”

Then he picks up the gun and goes back to work. He doesn’t mention any of it again all afternoon. At six, I drive two hours south with the sun going down over the fields. I have a brother who’s happy, and everything is fine until nine forty the next morning.

Priya Raman is standing at the front of the room at nine forty with a woman in a gray suit.

There are no chairs left because I come in last, which I always do, so I stand at the back by the door with Beau and one of the young defensemen.

“This is Frances Yeardley,” Priya says. “She’s an integrity investigator with the league. She asked to speak to the room, and I said yes. She’s not here about anybody in it.”

Yeardley stands with a legal pad in one hand and doesn’t use it.

“Good morning. This is going to take four minutes,” she says. “Since the start of December, there’s been unusual betting activity on games involving this club. It’s concentrated on first-period totals and first-period goal scoring. It’s coming through several offshore books and two domestic ones. The volume is well outside what a market this size supports. That’s all I am going to tell you about it, because that’s all I’m able to tell you.”

Somebody’s chair creaks.