She was all technique and no passion, like she lost that part of it somewhere along the line and spent lots of time since looking for it. She told me her husband hired people for industry and went around interviewing applicants all the time and when he discovered she was cheating while he was off on business, he started taking her along. The husband always did his interviews at downtown hotels wherever they happened to be, but she insisted that they stay at motels so she could be near pool and sunshine. That was as far as her explanation went, but the rest was obvious enough: while her husband interviewed at the downtown hotel, she picked up traveling salesmen and the like at the motel, mostly by sitting around the pool in her black bikini.

I had got to the Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge about an hour before I was supposed to meet the Broker in the restaurant part, so I checked in and managed to get picked up and laid by Helen or whatever-her-name-was before I was due to confab with Broker. Well, I did end up a little late but how was I to know the Broker had something last-minute urgent on his mind. I mean, he never pulled anything like that on me before.

And never again. I was glad I’d thought to arrange for a month rental on one of those lockers at the airport.

I figured Broker might be putting me onto something big and maybe I’d want to cache some or all of whatever it was for myself. So one of the lockers, which was good for only two days, had one of the little plastic bags of white powder in it; and another locker, good for a whole month, had the other. And I had both keys and Broker by the balls.

Of course this thing with Helen or whoever had worked out pretty nice, since the bitch provided me an alibi of sorts, not that I’d use it. As far as she knew, I’d screwed her, slept a while, then gone out for a swim. She didn’t know I stepped out to give last rites to a priest.