I should have said “no stick of furniture” original to the house, because in the living room, by the front bay-type window, was some recently-brought-in stuff that indicated the presence of a human being, not a rodent (except maybe figuratively).

The blond kid’s set-up included a folding chair, the beach variety (Mike Love again), like he’d been sitting by a pool or maybe on the deck of cruise ship, and not in the front room of an old farmhouse where he could maintain surveillance on the target of a contract killing. He had a portable radio with cassette player that ran off batteries (yes, Poison tapes), and a Styrofoam chest with ice keeping cans of Pepsi cold as well as a few wrapped Casey’s General Store sandwiches. Some small packets of potato chips leaned against the Styrofoam chest, and a pair of binoculars rested on the window ledge. Having searched the house, I’d already determined that the toilets still worked, so he had a decent stakeout post here, though my own back couldn’t have stood that flimsy chair for days on end.

If the fact that he was a Pepsi drinker wasn’t disgusting enough, I noted to one side of the beach chair a pile of Hustler magazines, a box of Kleenex, some baby oil, and a metal wastebasket filled with crumpled, wadded tissues, which told me more about how the blond kid dealt with boredom than I wanted to know.

For two hours and maybe fifteen minutes, I sat in his beach chair, long enough to get so thirsty I almost drank one of his damn Pepsis. I used the binoculars and could see the Paddlewheel okay, but without any meaningful view into a window. The late afternoon turned blue and then black. The house was warm and stuffy at first and then, without the sun, got cool and stuffy. At one point, I thumbed through a Hustler, but did not partake of the baby oil and Kleenex. I was raised on Playboy and still preferred Hefner’s fantasy to Flynt’s gynecology.