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“On tap, I have Budweiser, Miller Lite, and Heineken.”
“Okay. Well … then … I guess … Heineken.”
His voice was as thin and taut as a telephone wire, his words like birds perched at discreet intervals, resonant with a plucked note that might have been dismay.
By the time Rooney brought the beer, the stranger had money on the bar. “Keep the change.”
Evidently a second round was out of the question.
When Rooney went away, the stranger wrapped his right hand around the beer glass. He did not take a sip.
Tim was a wet nurse. That was the mocking title Rooney had given him because of his ability to nurse two beers through a long evening. Sometimes he asked for ice to enliven a warm brew.
Even if you weren’t a heavy drinker, however, you wanted the first swallow of beer when it was at its coldest, fresh from the tap.
Like a sniper intent on a target, Tim focused on his Budweiser, but like a good sniper, he also had keen peripheral vision. He could see that the stranger had still not lifted the glass of Heineken.
The guy did not appear to be a habitué of taverns, and evidently he didn’t want to be in this one, on this night, at this hour.
At last he said, “I’m early.”
Tim wasn’t sure if this was a conversation he wanted.
“I guess,” said the stranger, “everyone wants to be early, size things up.”
Tim was getting a bad vibe. Not a look-out-he’s-a-werewolf kind of vibe, just a feeling that the guy might be tedious.
The stranger said, “I jumped out of an airplane with my dog.”
On the other hand, the best hope of a memorable barroom conversation is to have the good luck to encounter an eccentric.
Tim’s spirits lifted. Turning to the skydiver, he said, “What was his name?”
“Whose name?”
“The dog’s.”
“Larry.”
“Funny name for a dog.”
“I named him after my brother.”
“What did your brother think of that?”
“My brother is dead.”
Tim said, “I’m sorry to hear it.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Did Larry like sky-diving?”
“He never went. He died when he was sixteen.”
“I mean Larry the dog.”
“Yeah. He seemed to like it. I bring it up only because my stomach is in knots like it was when we jumped.”
“This has been a bad day, huh?”
The stranger frowned. “What do you think?”
Tim nodded. “Bad day.”
Continuing to frown, the skydiver said, “You are him, aren’t you?”
The art of barroom banter is not like playing Mozart on the piano. It’s freestyle, a jam session. The rhythms are instinctual.
“Are you him?” the stranger asked again.
Tim said, “Who else would I be?”
“You look so … ordinary.”
“I work at it,” Tim assured him.
The skydiver stared intently at him for a moment, but then lowered his eyes. “I can’t imagine being you.”
“It’s no piece of cake,” Tim said less playfully, and frowned to hear a note of sincerity in his voice.
The stranger finally picked up his drink. Getting it to his lips, he slopped beer on the bar, then chugged half the contents of the glass.
“Anyway, I’m just in a phase,” Tim said more to himself than to his companion.
Eventually, this guy would realize his mistake, whereupon Tim would pretend that he, too, had been confused. Meanwhile, there was a little fun to be had.
Sliding the manila envelope across the bar, the guy said, “Half of it’s there. Ten thousand. The rest when she’s gone.”
As he finished speaking, the stranger turned on his stool, got to his feet, and headed toward the door.
As Tim was about to call the man back, the terrible meaning of those eleven words clarified for him: Half of it’s there. Tenthousand. The rest when she’s gone.
First astonishment—and then an uncharacteristic clutch of fear—choked off his voice.
The skydiver was intent on bailing out of the bar. He quickly crossed the room, went through the door, fell away into the night.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Tim said, too softly and too late. “Wait.”
When you skate across the days, leaving a wake as thin as spider silk, you’re not accustomed to shouting or to chasing after strangers with murder on their minds.
By the time Tim realized pursuit was obligatory and got up from his stool, a successful chase could not have been mounted. The quarry had covered too much ground.
He sat again and finished his beer in one long swallow.
Foam clung to the sides of the glass. Those ephemeral patterns had never before seemed mysterious to him. Now he studied them as if they embodied great meaning.
Feeling disoriented, he glanced at the manila envelope, which looked as portentous as a pipe bomb.
Carrying two plates of cheeseburgers and fries, Liam Rooney served a young couple in one of the booths. No waitress worked on a slow Monday.
Tim raised a hand to signal Rooney. The tavern keeper didn’t notice; he returned to the bar gate at the farther end of the room.
The envelope still had an ominous significance, but already Tim had begun to doubt that he had correctly understood what had happened between him and the stranger. A guy with a sky-diving dog named Larry wouldn’t pay to have someone killed. All this was a misunderstanding.
The rest when she’s gone. That could mean a lot of things. It didn’t necessarily mean when she was dead.
Determined that the world would quickly be put right, Tim pried up the prongs of the brass clasp, opened the flap of the envelope, and reached inside. He withdrew a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills bound together with a rubber band.
Maybe the money wasn’t greasy, but that was how it felt. He returned it at once to the envelope.
In addition to the cash, he found a five-by-seven photograph that might have been taken for a driver’s license or passport. She appeared to be in her late twenties. Attractive.
A name had been typed on the back of the photo: LINDA PAQUETTE. Under the name was an address in Laguna Beach.
Although he had just finished a beer, Tim’s mouth was salt-dry and lemon-sour. His heart beat slowly but unusually hard, booming in his ears.
Irrationally, he felt guilty looking at the photo, as though he had somehow participated in the planning of this woman’s death. He put away the picture. He slid the envelope aside.
Another man entered the bar. He was nearly Tim’s size, with brown hair cropped short like Tim’s.
Rooney arrived with a fresh beer and said to Tim, “You keep chugging them at that pace, you won’t qualify as furniture anymore. You’ll be a real customer.”
A persistent feeling of being caught in a dream slowed Tim’s thinking. He meant to tell Rooney what had just happened, but his tongue felt thick.
The newcomer approached, sat where the skydiver had sat, with an empty stool between him and Tim. He said to Rooney, “Budweiser.”
As Rooney went to draw the beer, the stranger stared at the manila envelope, and then met Tim’s gaze. He had brown eyes, just as Tim did.
“You’re early,” said the killer.
Two (#u65e7b131-c2e7-55e0-bb92-b6c31e1b1967)
Aman’s life can pivot on the smallest hinge of time. No minute is without potential for momentous change, and each tick of the clock might be the voice of Fate whispering a promise or a warning.
When the killer said, “You’re early,” Tim Carrier noticed that the Budweiser clock showed five minutes shy of the hour, and he made an educated guess: “So are you.”
The hinge had turned. The door stood open, and it could never be closed again.
“I’m no longer sure I want to hire you,” Tim said.
Rooney brought the killer’s beer, and then answered a call to the farther end of the bar.
A trick of light, reflecting off the mahogany, gave the contents of the glass a rubescent cast.
The stranger licked his chapped lips, and drank. He had a deep thirst.
When he put down the glass, he said amicably, “You can’t hire me. I’m no one’s employee.”
Tim considered excusing himself to the men’s room. He could call the police on his cell phone.
He worried that the stranger would interpret his departure as an invitation to take the manila envelope and leave.
Carrying the envelope to the lavatory would be a bad idea. Under the assumption that Tim wanted privacy for the transaction, the guy might follow him.
“I can’t be hired, and I’m not peddling anything, either,” said the killer. “You sell to me, not the other way around.”
“Yeah? What am I selling?”
“A concept. The concept of your world profoundly changed by one … alteration.”
In Tim’s mind rose the face of the woman in the photo.
His options weren’t clear. He needed time to think, so he said, “The seller sets the price. You set the price—twenty thousand.”
“That’s not the price. It’s a contribution.”
This conversation made no less sense than typical bar talk, and Tim found its rhythm. “But for my contribution I get your … service.”
“No. I have no service to sell. You receive my grace.”
“Your grace.”
“Yes. Once I accept the concept you’re selling, your world will be profoundly changed by my grace.”
Considering their ordinary color, the killer’s brown eyes were more compelling than they should have been.
When he had sat down at the bar, his face had appeared hard, but that had been a mistaken first impression. A dimple adorned his round chin. Smooth pink cheeks. No laugh lines. No furrows in the brow.
The whimsical quality of his half-smile suggested that he might be remembering a favorite childhood story about fairies. It appeared to be his default expression, as if he were not entirely connected to the moment, perpetually bemused.
“This is not a business transaction,” said the smiling man. “You petitioned me, and I’m the answer to your prayers.”
The vocabulary with which he discussed his work might have been an indication of caution, a technique to avoid incriminating himself. When delivered with a persistent smile, however, his genteel euphemisms were disquieting if not in fact creepy.
As Tim opened the manila envelope, the killer warned, “Not here.”
“Just chill.” Tim removed the photo from the envelope, folded it, and put it in his shirt pocket. “I’ve had a change of heart.”
