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The woman behind the bar puts another soda water down without being asked.

I take my phone out at the second intermission and call him.

It rings all the way out, eleven or twelve times. Then the recording: his voice asking me to leave a message.

I don’t say anything. I sit with the phone face down on the bar, ice melting in a glass I’m not drinking. With total clarity and no self-pity, I know what staying away will look like. I have a practice, four clients, an office over a sewing shop, and a hard drive taped under a kitchen drawer. A hundred yards isn’t very far to stay away from a building.

Ashgate win four to two.

Roth calls on Thursday at twenty past four.

“Brandt.”

“Yes.”

“The brother’s house. Two hours north, off the county road.” No preamble ever, with him. “Give me the layout.”

I have a pen in my hand, a client’s tax file open on the desk in front of me, and a window with a wall four feet in front of it. I hear myself say, “Hold on, I’ll get the sheet.”

I don’t have a sheet. I sit at my desk with the phone against my shoulder for eleven seconds.

The calculation takes less time than it would take to write down. Roth will get that layout today from me, from a man with a camera, or from the rental agent’s file. If I answer quickly, I get one advantage: I know what time he’s going.

“Single story, four rooms. Front door faces the road, three steps up, no light on the porch. The bulb’s been out since he moved in. Straight in, you’re in the kitchen and the sitting room, it’s one space. Two bedrooms off the left and a bathroom at the end. The back bedroom’s the far one, and it’s got the only door in the house with a bolt on it because the landlord’s daughter used it.”

“Doors.”

“Front and a back door off the kitchen. The back one has a keypad on it, the landlord put it on. Five four three three. The front is a key.”

“Times.”

“He’s on a school district job in the valley. He leaves at half six and he’s back between half five and six unless he’s collecting materials, in which case seven. There’s nobody else there. He eats at seven. He watches television and he goes to bed at ten because he starts early.”

There’s a pause. I can hear him writing.

“Tonight,” Roth says, and hangs up.

I sit and look at the tax file.

Then I stand. I don’t hurry. I’ve never hurried in my life, and it’s the only asset I have left. I lock the office and go down past the sewing-machine repair shop. The man in the window is doing his four short bursts and one long one at four in the afternoon, exactly as he does at nine in the morning. Outside, I remember I don’t have a car anymore. I sold it in March to give a woman a hundred and ninety thousand dollars she didn’t take.

The rental place on Corliss Street has a gray hatchback and takes forty minutes over the paperwork.

I’m on the county road by twenty past six.

Fin Doyle opens the door with a plate in his hand.

He has his brother’s eyes in a completely different face.

“You.”

“Get inside.”

“No, hold on.” He’s already backing up, already talking, and he doesn’t stop. “Hold on. You’re the one. You’re him. Kieran said you’d been sorting it, so what is this?”

“There’s a man coming to this house tonight, and he’s the one who did your hand.” I get the door shut behind me. “Go into the back bedroom. Put the bolt across. Don’t come out. Not for a noise, not for me, not if I call you. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

He doesn’t move. He stands in the middle of his own kitchen with a plate of food in his hand and his mouth open. He puts the plate down on the counter very slowly, then stands there with both hands empty.