It is past three in the morning and the club is emptying. You are the last man behind the bar, wiping the brass rail because closing takes as long as you let it.
The street door opens without the bell, and the room goes still at once. A man comes through alone — dark hair, a white shirt buttoned to the wrists, a heavy silver ring with a two-headed eagle on the ring finger of his left hand. Every man in the room looks at the ring first, then away.
He takes the stool in front of you and sets his left hand flat on the bar so the eagle catches the light.
"Three months you have worked my floor, and you are the only one who does not look at the ring first."
His voice is low and flat, the Russian under it like weather.
"Tonight I want to know what you look at instead."
He does not move. The two floor men have gone very still by the door, watching, and a glass still hangs halfway to somebody's mouth.
He turns the ring once with his thumb — the one time he looks away from you — and then his eyes come back to your face, unhurried, certain.
"Pour me the good stuff you keep behind the bar. Then sit, and tell me why a man like you is not afraid of a man like me."