FLOYD MAITLAND LEANED back in his beach chair and stroked his luxurious moustache. Floyd loved the beach, though it was hard to maintain his image there. He couldn’t wear his Stetson with a bathing suit. On the other hand, he could enjoy tall, cool mixed drinks with little umbrellas in them. In a Texas barroom, he wouldn’t be caught dead drinking anything but straight bourbon.
The blond waitress, in the skimpy bikini that Maitland liked, padded by in the sand. He waved to her. She nodded at him, but stopped to take the order of two young Frenchmen in beach chairs. He could see her laughing and flirting with them.
He bawled her out when she took his order. Some nerve. She was supposed to be bending over him and giggling in that flimsy top.
He had another wicked frozen concoction.
By the time Maitland left the beach he was quite loaded, which wasn’t fair somehow. He knew exactly how much bourbon he could drink. These mixed drinks snuck up on a fellow.
Maitland went back to his room, hopped in the shower to wash away the sand, and dressed for dinner. It took a little longer than if he hadn’t been drinking all afternoon, but a half hour later he was fully decked out in a denim shirt, blue jeans, and cowboy boots, a casual ensemble that cost more than the monthly salary of one of his farmhands. He put on his Stetson hat and looked in the full-length mirror. He cut a dashing figure, if he did say so himself. He hoped that the little brunette he’d been talking to the night before would be in the bar. Of course, in the bar he’d have to go back to bourbon. How would that mix?
There was a knock on the door.
Maitland frowned. He hadn’t called room service. Surely he would remember that. Perhaps it was the little brunette. He’d given her his room number. No, it would be the bellboy with some annoying message or other.
Maitland crossed the room, not staggering, but very aware of where he was putting his feet. He opened the door and gawked.
Staring back at him was . . .
Floyd Maitland!
It was like looking in a mirror.
What the hell?
“Take off your hat.”
Maitland blinked stupidly. “What?”
“Take off your hat,” the man said, raising his own Stetson.
Maitland blindly mimicked him, raising his hat.
Before Maitland had a chance to realize what was happening, his doppelgänger aimed a gun at his head. It was an automatic. It had a long barrel. A silencer.
Maitland had time to think, That’s not my gun, before it shot him in the head.