I closed my eyes and saw the face of the man I would kill. Back at the Howard Johnson’s, in the restroom, the Broker had showed me the photograph and asked me if I wanted to take it with me; I said no, just let me look at it for a minute. Now, ten minutes later, I thought of the face: a soft fleshy oval with a fat Jewish nose sticking out of it.

I opened my eyes and saw the complex of brown brick buildings up ahead. The main building was a pair of long two-stories that joined a central tower. From where I was walking I could just make out the words “Quad City Airport” on the tower. The afternoon was just trailing into dusk and they hadn’t turned on the lights yet.

Before I’d started across the grassy field between the Howard Johnson’s and the airport, the group of buildings with the several hangars looked good-size, no O’Hare, but good-size. By the time I approached the parking lot, the place looked smaller, as if I’d been walking toward a scale-model. Tiny gardens of red and white and purple flowers were stuck here and there around the parking lot, lip service paid to nature in the midst of bricks and cement and jet fumes. The flowers didn’t belong here, and neither did I; I wanted to be in a T-shirt instead of a suit, and I wanted to be relaxing in the sun somewhere instead of on a job.

Especially this job, this pain-in-the-ass job.

Going in I almost got my briefcase knocked out of my hand as two guys in dark suits came rushing out the front door like their luggage had bombs inside and they were the Bomb Squad. Which was airport-typical: half the people in a hurry rushing around acting important; half the people in no hurry strolling around acting important. Assholes.