Jan was looking away. “Yeah.”

“What’s going on? You okay?”

“I’m fine. Just drive.”

Oscar Fine had parked his black Audi A4 on Hancock Street, looking south, the back of the State House up ahead to the left. From this side, parked on the downslope, the gold dome was not visible. But that wasn’t what he was looking for, anyway.

He liked Beacon Hill. He appreciated it. The narrow streets, the sense of history, the beautiful old brick homes with their extraordinary window boxes full of flowers, the uneven sidewalks and cobblestone streets, the iron boot-scraper bars embedded into almost all the front steps, not quite so important now that the streets weren’t full of mud and shit. But it was too crowded for him around here. Too jammed in. He didn’t like having a lot of neighbors. He liked being on his own.

But still, it was nice when his work brought him up here.

He was watching an address about a dozen doors up, on the other side of the street. It was early evening. It was about this time that Miles Cooper got home from work. His wife, Patricia, a nurse over at Mass Gen, was, as usual, working the late shift. She’d left about an hour ago. She usually walked, although sometimes she’d only hoof it as far as Cambridge and then grab a bus part of the way, and occasionally she’d even grab a cab. Most nights, when she got off, she was dropped off by a coworker who drove and lived in Telegraph Hill and didn’t mind taking Hancock on her way home.

Oscar had been watching their routine for a few days now. He knew he was being more cautious than he needed to be. He already had a good idea of what Miles Cooper did, day in and day out. He knew Cooper liked to spend his weekends on his boat, that he spent too much money on the horses, that he was a lousy poker player. Oscar knew that firsthand. The guy had so many tells it was laughable. If he was dealt a useless hand, he shook his head side to side. Not noticeably. A millimeter in each direction, if that, but enough for Oscar to notice. If he was holding a flush, you could feel the floor shifting underfoot because Miles’s right knee was bobbing up and down like a piston.

There were other things Oscar knew about Miles. He was seeing his doctor about gastrointestinal pains. He went through a medium-sized bottle of fruit-flavored Tums every day. He had a storage locker outside of the city where he was hiding, for his younger brother, three stolen Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Every second Monday, he went to the North End and paid three hundred dollars to a girl who worked out of her apartment over an Italian bakery on Salem Street to take her clothes off very slowly and then blow him.

Oscar also knew he was stealing from the man they both worked for. And the man had figured out what Miles was up to.

“I’d like you to look after this for me,” the man said to Oscar.

“Not a problem,” Oscar said.

So he’d tracked Miles’s movements for the better part of a week. Didn’t want to drop in on him when the wife was home. Or their daughter. She was in her twenties, lived in Providence, but she often came to visit her parents on weekends. This being Sunday, there was a chance she could have been here, but Oscar had determined she was not. If Miles Cooper followed his usual routine, he’d be walking down the hill from the direction of the State House any moment and-

There he was.

Late fifties, overweight, balding, a thick gray mustache. Dressed in an ill-fitting suit, white shirt, no tie.

As he reached his home, he fished around in his pocket for his keys, found them, mounted the five cement steps to his door, unlocked it and went inside.

Oscar Fine got out of his Audi.

He walked up the street, crossed diagonally, reaching the other side out front of Miles Cooper’s home.

Oscar rang the bell.

He could hear Miles’s footsteps on the other side of the door before it opened.

“Hey, Oscar,” Miles said.

“Hi, Miles,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in?” Oscar said.

Something flickered in Miles’s eyes. Oscar Fine could see it. It was fear. Oscar had gotten a lot better at reading people the last five years or so. Back then, he’d been a bit cocky, overconfident. Sloppy. At least once.

Oscar knew Miles wouldn’t close the door on him. Miles had to know that if Oscar didn’t already suspect he was up to something, he surely would if Miles refused to let him into his house.

“Sure, yeah, come on in,” Miles said. “Good to see you. What are you doing around here?”

Oscar stepped in and closed the door. He asked, already knowing the answer, “Patricia home?”

“She’ll be at work by now. She’s usually half an hour into her shift by the time I get home. What can I get you to drink?”

“I’m good,” Oscar said.

“You sure? I was just going to get a beer.”

“Nothing,” Oscar said, following Miles into the kitchen. Oscar Fine did not drink, which Miles could never seem to remember.

Miles opened the fridge, leaned down, reached in for a bottle, and by the time he turned around, Oscar was pointing a gun at him, holding it in his right hand, his left arm stuck down into the pocket of his jacket. The gun had a long tubular attachment at the end of the barrel. A silencer.

“Jesus, Oscar, what the fuck. You scared me half to death there.”

“He knows,” Oscar said.

“He knows? Who knows? Who knows what? Christ, put that thing away. I nearly wet my pants.”

“He knows,” Oscar said again.

Miles twisted the cap off the bottle, tossed it onto the countertop. His mouth twitched as he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Please, Miles, show some dignity. He knows. Don’t play stupid.”

Miles took a long swig from the bottle, then moved to a wooden kitchen chair and sat down.

“Shit,” he said. He had to put the bottle on the table because his hand was starting to shake.

“You need to know why this is happening,” Oscar said. “It would be wrong for you to die not knowing why this is happening.”

“Oscar, come on, we go way back. You got to cut me some slack here. I can pay it back.”

“No,” Oscar said.

“But I can, with interest. I’ll sell the boat. I’ll sell it tomorrow. And I’ve got some other cash set aside. The thing is, it’s not really all that much. He won’t have to wait for his money. He’ll get it back right away, and that’s a promise. Plus, I’ve got some motorcycles. I was holding them for my brother, but I can sell them and give the money to him. Fuck my brother. Tough shit for him, right? I mean, it’s not like he had to pay for them in the first-”

The gun went pfft, pfft. Oscar Fine put two bullets in his head. Miles Cooper pitched forward, hit the floor, and that was it.

Oscar let himself out, walked down the street, got in his Audi, and drove out of Beacon Hill.

Oscar Fine only had to slow as he approached the security gate at the shipping container yard. The guard in the booth recognized the car and driver and had hit the button to make the gate slowly shift to the right. Oscar waited until there was just enough of an opening, then guided the car into the compound.

There were thousands of the rectangular boxes, stacked like monstrous colorful LEGO blocks. They came in orange, brown, green, blue, and silver and were labeled Sea Land, Evergreen, Maersk, and Cosco. They were stacked six high in some places, and it was like driving through a narrow steel canyon. The compound took up a good ten acres on the outside of the city. Oscar drove his car to the far side, parked up against a ten-foot fence with coils of barbed wire adorning the top. He got out of the car, taking with him some milk he had bought at a 7-Eleven after driving out of Beacon Hill, and walked over to the square end of an Evergreen container that had two others stacked atop it. He reached into his right pocket, found a key, and unlocked the container door.