I had arrived this morning, having flown into Cedar Rapids where I rented a car, a little dark blue Ford Maverick. Iowa City was a half hour drive. I’d checked into the Holiday Inn and had purchased a few things, including the space heater, at a nearby Kmart. I already knew I’d be squatting in that split-level; I even had a key to the place.

Parking in the driveway or pulling into the garage might have aroused suspicion, right across from the target’s residence. The Broker-more about him later — had provided me with a second set of keys that had allowed me to park in the garage of the empty finished home behind mine. I’d been told I could risk camping out in either house, if I didn’t mind the cold. Well, I minded the cold; even a Holiday Inn is preferable to cold.

But I did find it interesting that the Broker had all these keys. He knew things, all sorts of things, and my surveillance was only designed for the most basic fact-finding-specifically, what pattern did Professor Byron maintain over the Christmas break.

Establishing the pattern of a target is key, particularly if collateral damage is undesirable, and let me be frank: collateral damage is where I draw the line. I was willing to protect myself with the death of an innocent bystander, if my survival was at stake; but going around killing people willy-nilly was for psychopaths, not professionals.

Collateral Damage, oddly enough, was the name of a book Professor Byron had written, a so-called non-fiction novel about death by friendly fire in Vietnam. I hadn’t read the book or heard of it, either, but the Broker said it was a bestseller and a pretty big deal. Supposedly the professor had written several critically acclaimed novels that had stiffed but was now making a new name for himself with this non-fiction novel dodge, and I say dodge because I never went to college but I know novels aren’t non-fiction.

Before I had taken this job-not the job of taking out the prof, but the job itself, of killing people for money-I had done a certain amount of soul searching. I had learned to kill in the jungle of Vietnam and figured I could kill in the zoo of America just as easily. When you take somebody out with a sniper scope, though, or you return fire in a rice paddy fire fight, that’s self-defense, even if a sniper represents a preemptive kind of self-defense.