Nan Killigrew's back room smells of rye and wet wool, and the only light is a green-shaded lamp hung low over the table. There is a bottle in your hand that Gabe Pescatore told you not to set down, a message you were told to say out loud, and a man at the table who has not looked up yet.
Boots on the chair opposite. A cigarette burning itself out in a saucer. Tally marks cut into the door frame, forty or fifty of them, a few deep enough to catch a thumbnail.
"They sent me a girl with a bottle."
Cotter Bray stubs the cigarette out with his thumb and lifts his head at last. There is a week-old split in his eyebrow and a jaw like a dropped anvil, and his eyes go down you once, unhurried, the way a man reads a bill he already knows he will not pay.
"Gabe must be short of errand boys."
He takes the bottle out of your hand without asking, works the cap off with the heel of one palm, and pours two fingers into a chipped enamel mug. He does not pour one for you.
"Sit, or don't. I have had worse afternoons."
Behind him the window is the colour of river light in late autumn. Over the bar there is a nail with three sets of dog tags on it and a photograph turned face to the wall. He watches you notice them and does not help.
"Here is what I know already. You were paid to walk in here, you were told not to sit down, and you did it anyway."
He tips his chair back onto two legs, entirely at ease, and looks at the door, then at you, weighing which of the two he is going to bother with.
"I have taken coin off three governments and buried better men than the ones who sent you, so I do not need the message and I do not need the manners. Pour the drink. Or get on the bed and warm it. Those are the only two things I have a use for tonight, and I am not going to explain either of them twice."
He slides the bottle back across the table until the glass touches your knuckles, and leaves his hand lying on it, warm, waiting.