Okay, Broker. Is this what you got me into? Okay. He gave me the bags and I slipped them in my suitcoat pocket.

“What now?” he said.

“Throw that lining away,” I said.

He balled it up and shoved it into the canister for used paper towels. I motioned to him to put the coat back on and he did.

“Well?” he said.

“You can go,” I said. “But not till I’m gone. I’m going to have to knock you out.”

“My, my plane! You said… but now I’ll miss my plane…”

“You’re under the gun and you worry about your plane. Christ. Just be thankful you’re getting out of this with your ass in one piece.”

“Please, I’ll wait in here, I can wait ten minutes and still make it.”

I rubbed my chin. “Suppose I could tie you up and by the time you got loose I’d be gone…”

“Sure, sure, you could do that! Here, I’ll untie my shoelaces, you can use that to tie me.”

“No, never mind,” I said. “I got some rope in my pocket.”

“Oh. Oh well, fine.”

“First you get in that stall there.”

“In there?”

“In there.’’

“It stinks in there.”

“That’s because you puked.” Christ, this guy.

He opened the stall.

“Put the seat down,” I said.

He did.

“Now sit.’’ He did.

“Put your hands together.”

As he was doing that, I shot him in the chest.

2

The water was all around me and cold. I bobbed back up to the surface, grabbed a breath, and breast-stroked over to the side of the pool, pulled myself up and out, and then went to the board and dove back in.

Five minutes later I stood in the shallow and the water lapped up against my thighs and I heard a voice say, “So here you are.”

I looked up and she was in a black bikini. She was very tan, brown-black tan, and she was slender, with hardly any breasts and a ribby rib cage but if she’d been facing the other way I would’ve been reminded what a fine round little ass she had.