“Bad night?” I say.

He glares at me and says, “You expect me to sleep good here?”

“What about soaring with the spirit of the night?” I say. “Isn’t that what your grandmother used to say?”

“The night sky in this place is too thick with crows,” he says. “I’ll sleep tomorrow night. If it comes.”

I take a sip of coffee and say, “Our guests haven’t even arrived and you’re ready for it to end.”

Bert sits down across from me and puts a napkin in his lap before taking a piece of grilled salmon off the serving plate and eating it with his fingers like a bear.

“I just hope that you don’t go so far down this river of darkness that you can’t get back,” he says, looking steadily at me without blinking his big dark eyes. “Because you know where that river goes.”

“I think with the money I have,” I say, taking a bite of toast, “that I can buy a boat with a motor.”

“Even a boat with a motor can’t go up a falls,” he says.

“I thought you hated the man,” I say.

“I do hate him,” he says. “I’d like him dead, but I wouldn’t invite him to stay at my house before I killed him. Besides, I don’t think you should mess with the spirits, man. Make them angry.”

I look at my watch and say, “Speaking of angry spirits, Mr. Lawrence should be here by now.”

“You better hope the real spirits don’t get mad,” Bert says.

“They’re okay with it. I checked,” I say.

I smell the smoke from a cigarette. A moment later, a man in dark slacks and leather jacket with long red hair rounds the corner of the house. He waves without speaking and tosses what’s left of his butt down on the grass, grinding it with his toe. Chuck Lawrence was recommended to me by Vance. He’s a former government employee. Very smart. Very connected. Very effective.

Chuck and I go upstairs to the guestroom where the Villays will be staying. Chuck holds out his palm. In his hand is something not much bigger than a pin. He points to a spot high up on the wall.

“I inserted one just like this right here,” he says. “It’s a projection filament. I took off the baseboard and put the transmission unit in the wall. There’s another one over here that’s a camera so you can see what’s going on. There’s a speaker here and a microphone there.

“I’ll do the same thing in their house tonight,” he says. “I just wanted you to see that you really can’t detect it. They’ll have no idea. Come on, I’ll show you how it works.”

He draws the shades in the room and turns out the lights, shutting the door behind us. We go into my master suite, and Chuck sits down at the desk. He opens the laptop that’s hooked into the ISDN line and boots it up.

“I can call it up from my computer too. Everything is transmitted digitally,” he says. “Like a cell phone. The guy who put the artistic part of it together is a special effects genius out in Hollywood. You said spend whatever it takes. What till you see how good this looks.”

He shows me what the images will look and sound like, then gives me two small vials.

“Green is for him,” he says, closing up his computer. “Red for her. One drop on each of their toothbrushes. Just one, and remember, green for go, he’ll be the one up all night. She gets red. Stop. She’ll be out of it.”

“And you’ve got their maid in Hewlett Harbor all set?” I ask.

“Took some doing,” he said. “I had to go all the way to a quarter million, but we’ll be watching her and she knows it, so we should be fine. Now, they’re definitely out of there tonight, right?”

“Yes,” I say. “And if something happens, I’ll call you right away.”

“I’ll be in and out in a couple of hours,” he says, “so, as long as they’re on that airplane this afternoon, we should be fine.”

“I like it, Chuck,” I say. “I like it all.”

He shakes his head and says, “This one’s different, I tell you that. Could have had the guy terminated a lot quicker and a lot easier.”

“Too easy,” I say.

I FIND BERT on the back porch leafing through Travel amp; Leisure. “Find anything interesting?” I ask. “Not that you care,” he says, “but there’s a dude ranch out in Montana that I’d like to visit someday.”

“We have to get to the airport.”

“You don’t want me to get them by myself?” he asks, getting up.

“No,” I say. “I want to give them a proper greeting.”

Bert purses his lips and slowly shakes his head, looking away from me and down toward the water.

We take the black Suburban to the private airport in Syracuse. The day is warm enough for Bert to put on the AC. The G-V is landing as we pull into the terminal, long and gleaming white with its super-size engines and its upturned wingtips. It streaks past, then taxis quickly around, meeting us out on the tarmac. The pilot hurries out and hands down my guests while one of the ground crew pulls the suitcases out of the plane’s cargo hold and places them in the back of my truck.

Rangle’s wife, Katie Vanderhorn, is first off in a cloud of perfume. I take her hand and kiss her cheek, then say hello to the former congressman himself. Allen Steffano and Dani Rangle step down to join us. Finally, the Villays appear in the cabin door. His curly blond hair has faded to the color of frozen butter over the last twenty years, but the odd tears in his pupils still give him that faraway look. He steps down and grips my hand firmly, showing his white teeth and introducing his wife, Christina, who is lean and creamy-skinned with lustrous black hair. She looks like a model from Victoria’s Secret and stands two inches taller than her little husband. Her big eyes are looking past me when she offers a limp hand. On her face is a small frown.

“Christina swore she’d never come back to Syracuse,” Villay says. “Hates it here.”

“I like the city,” she says, offering a small smile.

“Well, I’m honored that you’re willing to indulge me,” I say with a slight bow. “I think you’ll like it. My lake house has been completely remodeled. You’ll think you’re at the Four Seasons.”

“Until I go outside and smell some farmer spreading manure,” she says. “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m sorry. I’m almost as excited about this Supreme Court appointment as Dean.”

“We’re a long way from that,” Villay says. “But even the possibility was enough to get her to come.”

“You’re a lawyer as well, I understand?” I say to her.

“Bankruptcy,” she says. “Latham amp; Watkins.”

“Excellent. Well, this is Bert and we should get going.”

When we get off the interstate and onto the Thruway, it is Villay who says, “I thought we were going to Skaneateles.”

“There’s some construction on the bypass,” I say, “and it’s actually quicker to take the Thruway and get off at Weedsport.”

“I think that’s a lot longer,” Villay says, but he shrugs and closes his mouth and looks out the window.

The drive is pleasant enough. Rangle and Villay don’t try to hide the fact that they know of each other and there’s no tension between the two of them. If they were co-conspirators, their acting would be brilliant. For a moment, I am swamped with a sensation of uncertainty, as if my mind has been bent by prison, my reality imagined. But I remind myself that although they both are guilty of destroying me, neither knows about the other.

For his part, Bert is quiet. His eyes are blank and his face sags like a glob of dough. The only sign of his hatred for Villay is the way his fingers clench the steering wheel.

From Weedsport, we go south. When we crest the hill of State Street in Auburn, I can see the guard towers. My stomach twists and I can hear a sound like waterfalls in my ears. It isn’t until we are right alongside the looming walls that Rangle’s wife asks, “What is that thing?”

“Auburn Prison,” Villay says, before I can answer. “The worst of the worst. Mass murderers. Rapists. Maximum security.”