Lou Berney - November Road

The mark was an independent contractor from San Francisco, going by the name of Fisk. That was all Barone knew about him. That, and he was good with a scope. Long-range shooters tended to be oddballs. Barone had known one guy, years ago, who could barely tie his shoelaces by himself. But point out a German in the bushes three hundred yards away and pow.

Thirty minutes passed. An hour. Barone yawned, still thinking about the war. In Belgium once he fell asleep in his foxhole while his company waited for the Germans to come out of the woods at them. The sergeant shook Barone awake and asked if he had a screw loose, how calm he was all the time.

Maybe Barone did have a screw loose. He’d considered the possibility. But what if he did? There was nothing he could do about it. You’re born a certain way. You stay that way. Everyone got what they deserved.

It started to rain. The sign for the Bali Hai featured a hula girl with a neon grass skirt that shimmied back and forth. The rain and the light from the sign and the headlights from the cars driving past formed strange shapes on Barone’s windshield, slow, sinuous dancers. He hummed along, Coltrane’s solo from “Cherokee.”

At a quarter till nine, the rain stopped. A minute later the door to 207 opened and the mark, Fisk, stepped out onto the breezeway. A big boy, all right. Seraphine hadn’t exaggerated. Six foot two or three, with a barrel chest and a thick slab of gut that made his arms and legs look spindly. Around fifty years old. He was playing tourist, dressed in a short-sleeved Ban-Lon shirt the color of brown mustard, a pair of checkered slacks.

He lit a cigarette and leaned against the wooden balcony rail. The deep end of the pool was right beneath his room. The reflection rippled over him, the glow shifting. Purple, yellow, green. When he finished the cigarette, he flicked it away and took out a comb. He ran the comb through his thinning hair. A lefty. See? Seraphine hadn’t mentioned that. That was why Barone liked to take his time, gather his own information.

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