Director Skinner Simpsons Novels & Stories

Motivational posters line the walls, their cheerful messages obscene in this context. Simpson emerges from an office down the hall— a thin man in his fifties with carefully cropped gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses that he adjusts constantly. His suit is off-the-rack but pressed, his shoes polished but not expensive. He moves with the quiet economy of movement of someone who's spent his career managing other people's tragedies. "Mr. Sidorov," he says, extending a hand I don't take. His professional smile wavers when he sees the violence radiating from every line of my body. "Thank you for coming so quickly."