2
The night is deep and free of turbulence.
Below, the clotted clouds are silver with reflected moonlight, and for a while the shadow of the plane undulates across that vaporous sea.
The killer’s flight from Boston arrives on time in Kansas City, Missouri. He goes directly to the baggage-claim area. Thanksgiving-holiday travelers will not head home until tomorrow, so the airport is quiet. His two pieces of luggage—one of which contains a Heckler & Koch P7 pistol, detachable silencer, and expanded magazines loaded with 9mm ammunition—are first and second to drop onto the carrousel.
At the rental-agency counter he discovers that his reservation has not been misplaced or misrecorded, as often happens. He will receive the large Ford sedan that he requested, instead of being stuck with a subcompact.
The credit card in the name of John Larrington is accepted by the clerk and by the American Express verifying machine with no problem, although his name is not John Larrington.
When he receives the car, it runs well and smells clean. The heater actually works.
Everything seems to be going his way.
Within a few miles of the airport he checks into a pleasant if anonymous four-story motor hotel, where the red-haired clerk at the reception counter tells him that he may have a complimentary breakfast—pastries, juice, and coffee—delivered in the morning simply by requesting it. His Visa card in the name of Thomas E. Jukovic is accepted, although Thomas E. Jukovic is not his name.
His room has burnt-orange carpet and striped blue wallpaper. However, the mattress is firm, and the towels are fluffy.
The suitcase containing the automatic pistol and ammunition remains locked in the trunk of the car, where it will offer no temptation to snooping motel employees.
After sitting in a chair by the window for a while, staring at Kansas City by starlight, he goes down to the coffee shop to have dinner. He is six feet tall, weighs a hundred and eighty pounds, but eats as heartily as a much larger man. A bowl of vegetable soup with garlic toast. Two cheeseburgers, french fries. A slice of apple pie with vanilla ice cream. Half a dozen cups of coffee.
He always has a big appetite. Often he is ravenous; at times his hunger seems almost insatiable.
While he eats, the waitress stops by twice to ask if the food is prepared well and if he needs anything else. She is not merely attentive but flirting with him.
Although he is reasonably attractive, his looks don’t rival those of any movie star. Yet women flirt with him more frequently than with other men who are handsomer and better dressed than he. Consisting of Rockport walking shoes, khaki slacks, a dark-green crew-neck sweater, no jewelry, and an inexpensive wristwatch, his wardrobe is unremarkable, unmemorable. Which is the idea. The waitress has no reason to mistake him for a man of means. Yet here she is again, smiling coquettishly.
Once, in a Miami cocktail lounge where he had picked her up, a blonde with whiskey-colored eyes had assured him that an intriguing aura surrounded him. A compelling magnetism arose, she said, from his preference for silence and from the stony expression that usually occupied his face. “You are,” she’d insisted playfully, “the epitome of the strong silent type. Hell, if you were in a movie with Clint Eastwood and Stallone, there wouldn’t be any dialogue at all!”
Later he had beaten her to death.
He had not been angered by anything she’d said or done. In fact, sex with her had been satisfying.
But he had been in Florida to blow the brains out of a man named Parker Abbotson, and he’d been concerned that the woman might somehow later connect him with the assassination. He hadn’t wanted her to be able to give the police a description of him.
After wasting her, he had gone to see the latest Spielberg picture, and then a Steve Martin flick.
He likes movies. Aside from his work, movies are the only life he has. Sometimes it seems his real home is a succession of movie theaters in different cities yet so alike in their shopping-center multiplexity that they might as well be the same dark auditorium.
Now he pretends to be unaware that the coffee-shop waitress is interested in him. She is pretty enough, but he wouldn’t dare kill an employee of the restaurant in the very motel where he’s staying. He needs to find a woman in a place to which he has no connections.
He tips precisely fifteen percent because either stinginess or extravagance is a sure way to be remembered.
After returning briefly to his room for a wool-lined leather jacket suitable to the late-November night, he gets in the rental Ford and drives in steadily widening circles through the surrounding commercial district. He is searching for the kind of establishment in which he will have a chance to find the right woman.
3
Daddy wasn’t Daddy.
He had Daddy’s blue eyes, Daddy’s dark brown hair, Daddy’s too-big ears, Daddy’s freckled nose; he was a dead-ringer for the Martin Stillwater pictured on the dust jackets of his books. He sounded just like Daddy when Charlotte and Emily and their mother came home and found him in the kitchen, drinking coffee, because he said, “There’s no use pretending you went shopping at the mall after the movie. I had you followed by a private detective. I know you were at a poker parlor in Gardena, gambling and smoking cigars.” He stood, sat, and moved like Daddy.
Later, when they went out to Islands for dinner, he even drove like Daddy. Which was too fast, according to Mom. Or simply “the confident, skillful technique of a master motorman” if you saw things Daddy’s way.
But Charlotte knew something was wrong, and she fretted.
Oh, he hadn’t been taken over by an alien who crawled out of a big seed pod from outer space or anything so extreme. He wasn’t that different from the Daddy she knew and loved.
Mostly, the differences were minor. Though usually relaxed and easy-going, he was slightly tense. He held himself stiffly, as if balancing eggs on his head . . . or as if maybe he expected to be hit at any moment by someone, something. He didn’t smile as quickly or as often as usual, and when he did smile, he seemed to be pretending.
Before he backed the car out of the driveway, he turned and checked on Charlotte and Emily to be sure they were using seatbelts, but he didn’t say “the Stillwater rocket to Mars is about to blast off” or “if I take the turns too fast and you have to puke, please throw up neatly in your jacket pockets, not on my nice upholstery” or “if we build up enough speed to go back in time, don’t shout insults at the dinosaurs” or any of the other silly things he usually said.
Charlotte noticed and was troubled.
The restaurant, Islands, had good burgers, great fries—which could be ordered well-done—salads, and soft tacos. Sandwiches and french fries were served in baskets, and the ambiance was Caribbean.
“Ambiance” was a new word for Charlotte. She liked the sound of it so much, she used it every chance she got—though Emily, hopeless child, was always confused and said “what ambulance, I don’t see an ambulance” every time Charlotte used it. Seven-year-olds could be such a tribulation. Charlotte was ten—or would be in six weeks—and Emily had just turned seven in October. Em was a good sister, but of course seven-year-olds were so ... so sevenish.
Anyway, the ambiance was tropicaclass="underline" bright colors, bamboo on the ceiling, wooden blinds, and lots of potted palms. Both the boy and girl waitresses wore shorts and bright Hawaiian-type shirts.