The Good Guy

When you skate across the days, leaving a wake as thin as spider silk, you’re not accustomed to shouting or to chasing after strangers with murder on their minds.

By the time Tim realized pursuit was obligatory and got up from his stool, a successful chase could not have been mounted. The quarry had covered too much ground.

He sat again and finished his beer in one long swallow.

Foam clung to the sides of the glass. Those ephemeral patterns had never before seemed mysterious to him. Now he studied them as if they embodied great meaning.

Feeling disoriented, he glanced at the manila envelope, which looked as portentous as a pipe bomb.

Carrying two plates of cheeseburgers and fries, Liam Rooney served a young couple in one of the booths. No waitress worked on a slow Monday.

Tim raised a hand to signal Rooney. The tavern keeper didn’t notice; he returned to the bar gate at the farther end of the room.

The envelope still had an ominous significance, but already Tim had begun to doubt that he had correctly understood what had happened between him and the stranger. A guy with a sky-diving dog named Larry wouldn’t pay to have someone killed. All this was a misunderstanding.

The rest when she’s gone. That could mean a lot of things. It didn’t necessarily mean when she was dead.

Determined that the world would quickly be put right, Tim pried up the prongs of the brass clasp, opened the flap of the envelope, and reached inside. He withdrew a thick wad of hundred-dollar bills bound together with a rubber band.

Maybe the money wasn’t greasy, but that was how it felt. He returned it at once to the envelope.

In addition to the cash, he found a five-by-seven photograph that might have been taken for a driver’s license or passport. She appeared to be in her late twenties. Attractive.

A name had been typed on the back of the photo: LINDA PAQUETTE. Under the name was an address in Laguna Beach.

Although he had just finished a beer, Tim’s mouth was salt-dry and lemon-sour. His heart beat slowly but unusually hard, booming in his ears.

Irrationally, he felt guilty looking at the photo, as though he had somehow participated in the planning of this woman’s death. He put away the picture. He slid the envelope aside.

Another man entered the bar. He was nearly Tim’s size, with brown hair cropped short like Tim’s.

Rooney arrived with a fresh beer and said to Tim, “You keep chugging them at that pace, you won’t qualify as furniture anymore. You’ll be a real customer.”

A persistent feeling of being caught in a dream slowed Tim’s thinking. He meant to tell Rooney what had just happened, but his tongue felt thick.

The newcomer approached, sat where the skydiver had sat, with an empty stool between him and Tim. He said to Rooney, “Budweiser.”

As Rooney went to draw the beer, the stranger stared at the manila envelope, and then met Tim’s gaze. He had brown eyes, just as Tim did.

“You’re early,” said the killer.

Two (#u65e7b131-c2e7-55e0-bb92-b6c31e1b1967)

Aman’s life can pivot on the smallest hinge of time. No minute is without potential for momentous change, and each tick of the clock might be the voice of Fate whispering a promise or a warning.

When the killer said, “You’re early,” Tim Carrier noticed that the Budweiser clock showed five minutes shy of the hour, and he made an educated guess: “So are you.”

The hinge had turned. The door stood open, and it could never be closed again.

“I’m no longer sure I want to hire you,” Tim said.

Rooney brought the killer’s beer, and then answered a call to the farther end of the bar.

A trick of light, reflecting off the mahogany, gave the contents of the glass a rubescent cast.

The stranger licked his chapped lips, and drank. He had a deep thirst.

When he put down the glass, he said amicably, “You can’t hire me. I’m no one’s employee.”

Tim considered excusing himself to the men’s room. He could call the police on his cell phone.

He worried that the stranger would interpret his departure as an invitation to take the manila envelope and leave.

Carrying the envelope to the lavatory would be a bad idea. Under the assumption that Tim wanted privacy for the transaction, the guy might follow him.

“I can’t be hired, and I’m not peddling anything, either,” said the killer. “You sell to me, not the other way around.”

“Yeah? What am I selling?”

“A concept. The concept of your world profoundly changed by one … alteration.”

In Tim’s mind rose the face of the woman in the photo.

His options weren’t clear. He needed time to think, so he said, “The seller sets the price. You set the price—twenty thousand.”

“That’s not the price. It’s a contribution.”

This conversation made no less sense than typical bar talk, and Tim found its rhythm. “But for my contribution I get your … service.”

“No. I have no service to sell. You receive my grace.”

“Your grace.”

“Yes. Once I accept the concept you’re selling, your world will be profoundly changed by my grace.”

Considering their ordinary color, the killer’s brown eyes were more compelling than they should have been.

When he had sat down at the bar, his face had appeared hard, but that had been a mistaken first impression. A dimple adorned his round chin. Smooth pink cheeks. No laugh lines. No furrows in the brow.

The whimsical quality of his half-smile suggested that he might be remembering a favorite childhood story about fairies. It appeared to be his default expression, as if he were not entirely connected to the moment, perpetually bemused.

“This is not a business transaction,” said the smiling man. “You petitioned me, and I’m the answer to your prayers.”

The vocabulary with which he discussed his work might have been an indication of caution, a technique to avoid incriminating himself. When delivered with a persistent smile, however, his genteel euphemisms were disquieting if not in fact creepy.

As Tim opened the manila envelope, the killer warned, “Not here.”

“Just chill.” Tim removed the photo from the envelope, folded it, and put it in his shirt pocket. “I’ve had a change of heart.”