UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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7

Saturday afternoon Barone caught his flight to Houston. On the plane he flipped through last month’s Life. NASA had picked fourteen new astronauts. Buzz cuts, bright eyes, square jaws. Barone couldn’t tell them apart. God and Mom and country. If they wanted to strap themselves to a bomb and go flying through space, Barone wasn’t going to stop them.

The guy sitting next to him was from Dallas. He told Barone that everyone in his office cheered when they heard the news about Kennedy. Good riddance. The guy said he didn’t know what was worse about Kennedy, that he was a Catholic or a liberal or loved the Negroes so much. Dollars to doughnuts, Kennedy probably had some Jew blood, too. The guy had it on good authority that the Oval Office had a special phone line direct to the Vatican. Jack and Bobby took their orders straight from the pope. The newspapers covered it up because they were owned by Jews. How did Barone like that?

“I’m Catholic,” Barone said. It wasn’t true, or not any longer, but he wanted to see the guy’s face.

“Well .  .  .” the guy said. “Well .  .  .”

“And I’m married to a colored girl. She’s meeting me at the airport if you want to say hello.”

The guy stiffened. His lips disappeared. “There’s no need to get smart with me, friend,” he said. “I’m not trying to start any trouble.”

“It’s all right with me,” Barone said. “I don’t mind trouble.”

The guy looked around for a stewardess to witness Barone’s poor manners. When one didn’t appear, he harrumphed and flapped open his newspaper. He ignored Barone the rest of the way to Houston.

A quarter to six, the plane landed at Municipal. Barone stepped out of the terminal in time to catch the last light of day burning on the horizon. Or maybe just a refinery flaring off gas. The air in Houston was even wetter and heavier than it was in New Orleans.

One of Carlos’s elves had left a car for him in the airport parking lot. Barone tossed the briefcase in back. Under the seat was a .22 Browning Challenger. Barone didn’t think he’d need a piece, but no one ever ended up in a morgue drawer by being too careful. He removed the screw-on can and checked the barrel for crud. He checked the magazine, the slide. The Browning was accurate up close and fairly quiet.

The guy from the plane walked across the lot. Barone put the front sight on him and followed along until the guy found his car, got in, drove off. Maybe some other time, friend.

Traffic. Barone inched along. It took him twenty minutes to get to Old Spanish Trail. The Bali Hai Motor Court was an L-shaped cinder-block building, two stories high, canted around a pool. Every few seconds the glow in the pool shifted from green to purple, from purple to yellow, from yellow to green again.

Barone parked across the street, in front of a bulldozed barbecue joint. Most of this side of Highway 90 was already a construction site, the roadhouses and filling stations and motor courts torn down to make room for a new stadium and parking lot. When it was finished, the stadium would have a roof, a giant dome you’d be able to see from miles away. Astronauts and an Astrodome, the future. So far only a few curved steel girders had been raised. They looked like the fingers of a hand trying to claw up through the crust of the earth.

The Bali Hai had two separate sets of stairs that led up to the breezeway on the second floor. Barone had been out last week to look the place over. One set of stairs at the far north end of the building. One set in the middle, crook of the L, in back. Only the maid used those stairs. You couldn’t see them from the pool or the highway or the office.

The mark had the room on the second floor that was closest to the middle stairs. Number 207. Seraphine said that the mark would check in around five. Barone couldn’t tell for sure if he was in the room yet or not. A light in the room was on, but the curtains were drawn.

Barone settled in. If he was lucky, the mark would step outside for a breath of fresh air. Some guys didn’t mind doing a hit on the cuff. Barone, no. He liked to be as prepared as possible. Seraphine said the mark was a big boy. Barone wanted to see how big, with his own two eyes.

The mark was an independent contractor from San Francisco, going by the name of Fisk. That was all Barone knew about him. That, and he was good with a scope. Long-range shooters tended to be oddballs. Barone had known one guy, years ago, who could barely tie his shoelaces by himself. But point out a German in the bushes three hundred yards away and pow.

Thirty minutes passed. An hour. Barone yawned, still thinking about the war. In Belgium once he fell asleep in his foxhole while his company waited for the Germans to come out of the woods at them. The sergeant shook Barone awake and asked if he had a screw loose, how calm he was all the time.

Maybe Barone did have a screw loose. He’d considered the possibility. But what if he did? There was nothing he could do about it. You’re born a certain way. You stay that way. Everyone got what they deserved.

It started to rain. The sign for the Bali Hai featured a hula girl with a neon grass skirt that shimmied back and forth. The rain and the light from the sign and the headlights from the cars driving past formed strange shapes on Barone’s windshield, slow, sinuous dancers. He hummed along, Coltrane’s solo from “Cherokee.”

At a quarter till nine, the rain stopped. A minute later the door to 207 opened and the mark, Fisk, stepped out onto the breezeway. A big boy, all right. Seraphine hadn’t exaggerated. Six foot two or three, with a barrel chest and a thick slab of gut that made his arms and legs look spindly. Around fifty years old. He was playing tourist, dressed in a short-sleeved Ban-Lon shirt the color of brown mustard, a pair of checkered slacks.

He lit a cigarette and leaned against the wooden balcony rail. The deep end of the pool was right beneath his room. The reflection rippled over him, the glow shifting. Purple, yellow, green. When he finished the cigarette, he flicked it away and took out a comb. He ran the comb through his thinning hair. A lefty. See? Seraphine hadn’t mentioned that. That was why Barone liked to take his time, gather his own information.

He couldn’t read the mark’s expression from this distance. Fisk didn’t seem jumpy. A strong gust rattled the fronds of the palm tree by the pool, and Fisk barely glanced over. He had a good forty pounds on Barone. Or look at it a different way: Barone had a good forty pounds on him.

Fisk finished combing his hair, inspected the teeth of the comb, and then went back inside.

The pool deserted, the breezeway empty. The hula girl on the sign shimmied. Room 207 had the only second-floor light on down the long leg of the L. No lights on down the short leg. A couple of lights were on below, on the first floor, but those rooms had the curtains pulled.

The motel office faced Old Spanish Trail. From behind the reception desk, the night clerk could see the street, the pool, the short leg of the L, the parking lot. Most of the parking lot. His blind spot was the turn-in from Old Spanish Trail and the northeast corner of the lot.

The dashboard clock ticked. Let Fisk start to worry. Let him get steamed. At a quarter past nine, fifteen minutes late, Barone pulled onto Old Spanish Trail, looped back around, and parked in the northeast corner of the Bali Hai lot. He grabbed the briefcase from the backseat, put the burned-out bulb in the pocket of his suit coat, and climbed the middle stairs. Knock-knock.

The door cracked open. The thinning hair on Fisk’s scalp like the whorls of a thumbprint. He took a long look at Barone. “You have it?”

“What do you think?” Barone said.

Fisk let Barone inside and shut the door behind him. He motioned to the bed with the Police Positive .38 in his hand. “Sit down while I make sure,” Fisk said.

“You have anything to drink?”

“No.”

“Nothing?” Barone said. “Or nothing you want to share with me?”

Fisk popped open the briefcase. He took out the first envelope, ripped it open. Passport. He went over the passport inch by inch, using his thumbnail to pick at the corners.

“How long is this going to take?” Barone said. “I was just supposed to drop the case and fly.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Fisk said.

He set the passport on the nightstand and ripped open the second envelope. Plane ticket. He went over that inch by inch, too, and then reached for the cash. Two fat stacks.

“That was some nice shooting yesterday in Dallas,” Barone said. “How far away were you? Couple hundred yards?”

Fisk stopped counting. He looked up at Barone, a dead, empty stare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure,” Barone said. “My mistake.”

Fisk held the stare for a while. He had to start the count over again.

Barone waited until Fisk was almost done with the second stack of cash and then stood. “All right, then.”

“Hang on,” Fisk said.

“Happy trails, pardner.”

“You’re light a grand.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Barone said.

“Ten up front, fifteen when the job was done,” Fisk said. “That was the deal.”

“I’m just the delivery boy.” Barone, out the door and onto the breezeway. “Take it up with management.”

“I said hang on, asshole.”

Barone kept walking. He felt Fisk coming after him, light on his feet for such a big boy. At the top of the stairs, Fisk grabbed for Barone’s shoulder. Barone, ready for the first touch, slipped away and under, two steps to the left, and hit Fisk beneath the chin with the heel of his hand. If Fisk had been a smaller guy, the shot would have knocked his block off. Barone didn’t need to knock his block off. Fisk’s head snapped back and smacked against the cinder-block wall of the breezeway.

The impact dazed Fisk, his hands floating in front of him. Barone cinched his belt around Fisk’s wrists and kicked his feet out from under him. Down the stairs Fisk tumbled. All that beef, nothing to slow it. Barone had played through every move in his head a hundred times. It was like watching something from the grandstand. Like watching a replay of something that had already happened.

Fisk hit bottom hard. Barone moved down the stairs and retrieved his belt. Fisk lay sprawled on his back. The top half of him looked like he was running left, the bottom half like he was running right. Breathing, just barely. One eye open, the other filled with blood. Barone crouched over him. Careful now. Make sure it looks right, one good pop. Lift the head and crack it like an egg on the edge of a skillet. Barone grabbed Fisk’s ears.

He sensed the knife. Luck, or maybe his guardian angel. Barone just managed to get a hand up, between the knife and his ribs. The blade slid through his palm and out the other side.

No pain yet, just surprise. Barone fought the impulse to jerk his hand away. Jerk your hand away and you give your pal his knife back, you give him a mulligan, another shot. Fisk tried to pull the switchblade free. Barone held on. Now the pain came, building and building, like a band warming up before a show, one instrument at first and then the others joining in. Barone held on. With his good hand, he grabbed Fisk by the hair. Fisk watched him with his blood-filled eye. Barone lifted Fisk’s head and drove it back down. The lights went out.

Barone’s concern now was blood. Yank the blade out of his hand, he’d bleed everywhere. So he left the knife in his hand and went back upstairs. Over the sink in Fisk’s bathroom, he inched the knife out. He rinsed his hand with cold water and wrapped it up in a towel, best he could. He didn’t have time to get too cute.

Everything went into the briefcase. The passport, the plane ticket, the cash, Fisk’s .38, his switchblade. Take your time. You always have more time than your body thinks you do.

Barone locked the door behind him. He checked the spot in the breezeway where Fisk had smacked his head against the wall. No blood. Good.

He swapped his burned-out bulb for the one in the socket overhead, at the top of the stairs. Whoever found Fisk’s body would think the poor unlucky bastard had tripped in the dark. No one would ever guess how he’d really died, or why.

No blood from Barone’s hand at the bottom of the stairs. Good. He tossed the briefcase in the backseat of the car. He pulled onto Old Spanish Trail. He had to drive with only his left hand, reaching across the steering wheel to work the gearshift and the turn signal. He kept his right hand, wrapped in the towel, pressed between his thighs.

The pain played on, the whole band. Barone ignored it. Carlos had a guy here in Houston, a hophead doctor in the Mexican part of town. A shot, a pill, a proper bandage. That was all Barone needed, and then he’d be ready for the next job.