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  "Because," Cline said. He suddenly realized that he was sweating profusely. "Because it's past your time. "You have to die. You should want to die." He brought the pillow down, feeling the pressure of the old man's hand.

  "No." The word wheezed out of the old man's mouth. "I don't want to die. I want to live."

  Why? Cline wondered. Why would anyone want to live in that dark room with that rank smell, with that body that was nothing but a husk?

  He held his breath and pressed down hard on the pillow.

  # #

  Cline needed the ten thousand. His salary at the university wasn't that bad, but he'd made a few bad investments right before the oil bust and his retirement plans had been set back five years. Worse, in need of some cash in a hurry to cover one of the investments, he'd borrowed heavily and was now in danger of losing both his house and his car.

  "It wouldn't be like you were killing him," Dana said. They were at a seafood restaurant now, a place known for the bounty of its buffet supper, and they had eaten crab and shrimp and gumbo until they could hardly eat any more. "He's practically dead already."

  "But he's not dead," Cline pointed out. "There's a big difference."

  "He doesn't know me when I visit," Dana said, spearing one more shrimp on her cocktail fork and popping it in her red mouth. "He doesn't move, he doesn't talk, and he even smells dead."

  Cline didn't give in that easily, but later that night, in the rumpled sheets of her bed, he capitulated.

  "It would be almost like you were doing him a favor," Dana said. "He doesn't have anything to live for, after all."

  # #

  The trouble was, no one had explained that to the old man. He clung to his life with a tenacity that surprised and frightened Cline, writhing under the thin covers and clawing at Cline's hands with amazing vigor.

  But Cline persisted, and finally the struggling stopped.

  Cline took the pillow away from the ravaged face and put it on the bed. There would certainly be an investigation if he left things as they were. The old man had kicked the covers loose from both sides of the bed and the foot, and even the rubber sheet over the mattress pad had twisted beneath him.

  The old man's bulging eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.

  Cline straightened everything as best he could. He wanted it to look as if the old man had died peacefully in his sleep. The last thing he did was close the staring eyes.

  Getting out of Happy Hills was easy. He had never been there before, and he had come in wearing a heavy tweed sport jacket, a beret, and very dark, very big sunglasses. He had walked right past the reception desk as if he knew exactly where he was going, because he did. Dana had given him explicit directions. Leaving, he had the jacket draped over his arm, the beret in one of its pockets with the sunglasses.

  It didn't really seem to matter much. The woman at the desk never looked up.

  # #

  The sun slanted in through a gap in the curtains and fell across the table as Cline scanned his newspaper at the breakfast table the next day.

  Cline had expected to see headlines about Randall's death; after all, at one time Randall had been a big man, a well-known name in financial circles.

  But there was nothing. Cline stared at the obituaries, wondering if Randall's body had even been discovered yet. Happy Hills had seemed pretty lax, but not that lax.

  Then the name Happy Hills caught his eye and he found himself reading an article about the death under suspicious circumstances of one Gregory McCarthy.

  "Jesus wept," Cline said. He kept reading and discovered that McCarthy's son Thomas had gone to visit his father at Happy Hills late in the afternoon and found the old man's body. He had called for a supervisor, who had called the police. The police were investigating the receptionist's story of a mysterious visitor to McCarthy's room. The visitor was described in detail, right down to the color of his eyes, and the description fit Cline like a thousand-dollar suit. An autopsy of the body had been ordered.

  "Son of a bitch," Cline said, and he knew he'd been screwed.

  Thomas McCarthy had been a student in the same class with Dana Randall. McCarthy was an athlete, and he had not performed well in class, but Cline had to admit that the young man was certainly handsome. He had broad shoulders, crisp and curly blonde hair, green eyes, and a killer smile.

  Cline, on the other hand, was balding, skinny, and prone to have dandruff on his bad days. He'd sometimes wondered how Dana Randall had been attracted to him, but he'd attributed it to his brains.

  Now he knew it was something else. And it certainly hadn't been his goddamned brains.

  He put the paper down on the breakfast table. It lay there between the cup of cooling coffee and the plate of half-eaten bacon and eggs while Cline tried figure things out.

  Why would Dana have tricked him into killing someone else's father?

  Probably for the same reason he had been willing to kill hers.

  Money.

  She had set Cline up and played him for a sap. He had walked right into it. He remembered the way it had developed now, with her gradually allowing him more and more intimacy with her and finally mentioning her father's condition.

  It had never occurred to him to check out the truth of things. He had simply believed her.

  "Idiot!" he said aloud. What a fool he had been. Old man Randall was probably alive and well on a tropical island somewhere, or maybe he was living on ranch in Colorado or in a condo in San Francisco. It didn't much matter. It was certain that he still controlled all the finances in the family. Dana had no doubt told the truth about one thing. She had no money of her own.

  But Thomas McCarthy did. Or would, as soon as his father's will was probated. That part of the story had probably been true as well, except that it was Thomas rather than Dana who needed someone out of the way.

  So Thomas and Dana had met in the class, hit it off, and wondered about how to get the money. They needed someone else. A patsy, that was the term, Cline believed, and he certainly fit the definition.

  He could never go to the police, of course. How could he tell them that he was innocent in McCarthy's death, that it had all been a simple misunderstanding? They would get quite a laugh out of something like that.

  There was no way out, even if he did go to the police. He had believed Dana when she said that there would be no investigation. His fingerprints were probably all over the old man's room, and he didn't doubt that the receptionist could pick him out of any line up. She would have been coached carefully and provided with a good clear photo. All Dana had to do was deny everything.

  But what about motive? What motive did he have for killing Gregory McCarthy? None at all. Wouldn't the police see that?

  They might, he thought, but the fingerprints, the description, the identification by the receptionist—those would outweigh the lack of motive. The police wouldn't give a damn, and the jury probably wouldn't either.

  Cline was sweating as much as he had in the old man's room. He stood up and walked to the telephone. Maybe he was completely wrong. Maybe his imagination was getting the better of him. He had to find out.

  He reached for the phone.

  # #

  Dana knew who the caller was before she picked up the phone. She had been expecting the call.

  "Hello?" she said.

  "Dana?" Cline's voice was uncharacteristically weak.

  "Who is this?" she said. She held the phone in her right hand and examined the fingernails of her left as she talked. The polish was chipped on the index finger.

  "You know who it is. It's Jon."

  "Jon?"

  "Jon Cline, goddamnit."

  "Oh, yes, the professor at the university. What can I do for you, Dr. Cline?"

  Her voice was cool and impersonal. Cline knew he didn't have a chance against her. He hung up without saying another word.

  He knew there was no use to ask about his ten thousand dollars.

  # #

  Cline didn't go to the cam
pus that day. He called his department head and told her that he was coming down with something. He spent most of the morning wondering how in the hell he had gotten himself into such a mess and what he was going to do about it.

  Cline's problem was that he didn't think of himself as a murderer, but then he had never thought of himself as being someone who could be transformed into an total ass by a beautiful woman, either.

  As far as the murder went, he was probably in the clear as long as he kept quiet. His description was like that of a lot of other men his age, and his fingerprints would be meaningless to the police. He had never been in the military, never been arrested.

  It was the situation that was intolerable. He thought of himself as an intellectual, one who liked and appreciated the things of the mind and soul. Now he was a killer.

  In a way, he knew that he was kidding himself about the intellectual bit. The material things of life were of great interest to him, and so were the luxuries. His interest in the ten thousand was evidence of the first, and his passion for Dana spoke amply of the second.

  Another part of the problem, however, was that Dana would always have him in her power now. She didn't need him at the present, but there might be an occasion when she did.

  "Yes, Jon," she might say. "I want you to kill someone else for me. . . . What's that? You don't want to? But what if that receptionist from Happy Hills were to accidentally pass you on the street and recognize you? You wouldn't want that, would you, Jon?"

  No, he wouldn't want that.

  He went into his study, pulled a volume of Keats from the loaded bookshelves, opened a decanter of Wild Turkey, and started to drink and read.

  # #

  The liquor made everything clear to him.

  He had done nothing really wrong. He had ended an old man's life, but the old man would not have lived long anyway. What did it matter that there was still some life in him? Couldn't he appreciate the fact that Cline had relieved him of the burdens of existence?

  Look at Keats. There was a man who would have appreciated a little relief, someone like Cline who could deliver him from the weariness, the fever, and the fret, where men sit and hear each other groan.

  It had been a mission worthy of Sleep, Death's brother. The old man was clinging to the tiller, and all Cline had done was push him over the side, nothing more.

  It was all Dana's fault, anyway. She had asked him to do it, taken advantage of his weakness and his feeling for her. She was the one who should be punished. Along with her stud, that Thomas McCarthy.

  Cline couldn't go to the police, naturally. That would just be playing into Dana's hands.

  He would have to take care of things himself. He took a last drink of the whiskey and got unsteadily to his feet. He tried to remember how much he had drunk. Too much, probably. It was already late afternoon. He had been sitting in the study all day. The decanter was nearly empty.

  He went into the bedroom and began rummaging in the closet. After a while he found the pistol, a .38 revolver that he had bought five or six years before because of a rash of burglaries in the neighborhood. He had even learned how to use the pistol by taking a course at the firing range of a nearby community college, though he didn't remember much of what he had learned. He had kept the pistol in his nightstand for several weeks, then put it in a box in the closet where it had remained ever since.

  The gun was not loaded. Cline had prudently removed the shells, but he found them in their green and yellow box. He extracted five of them and awkwardly thumbed them into the chambers.

  He struggled clumsily into a sport coat, slipped the pistol into the pocket, and left the house.

  # #

  There was a red Miata parked in front of Dana's house.

  Cline had known somehow they would be there, but he was surprised that McCarthy was already wasting his inheritance by spending two or three thousand dollars over list for a toy car.

  Cline parked his own car, a three-year-old Chevy Malibu that wasn't sporty but was at least made in America. When he got out, the pistol sagged against his hip.

  He walked around to the back of the house. He was sure they would be taking a swim or maybe sitting on the deck, sipping white wine before dinner, which they would probably eat at one of the town's trendy restaurants.

  They were there, all right, sitting in the same chairs where he and Dana had sat when she brought up the subject of her father's murder. They were both in bathing suits, Dana looking as if she'd just walked out of the SI swimsuit issue, McCarthy looking like something carved from a block of granite. The low sun slanted across their perfect bodies.

  Cline reached for the pistol. The sight caught on the lining of the pocket, but he got it out after making only a minor tear in the fabric.

  Then he found that he couldn't hold the weapon steady. His hand refused to stop shaking. Too much Wild Turkey, he thought.

  His foot scraped on the wooden steps of the deck, and McCarthy heard him.

  "Jesus Christ," he said, looking casually around. "It's the fucking masked avenger."

  Cline thought the comment was unnecessarily crude, as well as inaccurate. He wasn't wearing a mask.

  Dana turned her blue eyes on him. "Don't be silly, Jon," she said.

  Silly. That was what she thought of him, all right. That was what they both thought of him. Well, they were wrong.

  "Bitch," he said. He'd thought he could say it clearly, but it came out sounding like "Bish."

  McCarthy laughed. "The old fart's drunk."

  "Go home, Jon," Dana said. "There's nothing for you here."

  "Used me," Cline said, slurring the words. "Used me."

  "Of course I did," Dana told him. "What did you expect? Thomas and I needed a little help, and you seemed like just the person to provide it."

  "Damn right," McCarthy said. "You don't think she fucked you because she liked it, do you?" He stood up and ran a hand over his completely hairless chest. "Not when she had something like this around."

  Cline wanted to shoot McCarthy more than anything in the world, but the alcohol had not quite short-circuited his brain. He knew now that he wasn't going to kill anyone. "Told me you usually couldn't get it up," he said. "Told me when you did, it wasn't any bigger than her little toe."

  "Asshole," McCarthy said. He started across the deck toward Cline.

  "Don't, Thomas," Dana said. "He's just trying to upset you."

  "It worked," McCarthy said. He was reaching for the pistol. "I'm gonna take that thing and make you eat it, Cline."

  Cline was trying to pull the trigger, but he couldn't hold the gun steady, and his finger didn't seem to have any strength in it.

  McCarthy's big hand closed over Cline's smaller one and crunched. Cline's fingers felt like chicken bones about to splinter and pop through his skin.

  "Gimme that gun," McCarthy said.

  Cline stubbornly held on, and McCarthy reached out to swat him in the face with a palm the size of a tennis racquet.

  The palm connected, snapping Cline's head back, and the pistol went off though Cline wasn't conscious of having pulled the trigger. He staggered back into the yard and fell down.

  When he looked up he saw McCarthy staring his right shoulder. Bright red blood was running down over his chest.

  "Are you all right, Thomas?" Dana said. She still hadn't gotten up.

  "I'm gonna kill that sumbitch," McCarthy answered, coming down off the deck after Cline.

  Cline's head seemed to be vibrating, and he couldn't get to his feet. He looked around him for the pistol, which he had dropped, but he couldn't see it. The whiskey he had drunk was burning in his stomach, and he felt it about to come up. He didn't try to stop it.

  "Gross!" McCarthy said when Cline spewed the Wild Turkey on the lawn. McCarthy was obviously repulsed, but he didn't slow down. He kicked Cline in the chest with a right foot that could have propelled a field goal attempt through the posts at fifty-five yards.

  Cline felt something in his chest cra
ck as he tumbled backward. He didn't even try to get up this time, and McCarthy kicked him again, in the face this time. Cline's nose flattened with a grinding sound and he felt teeth break.

  McCarthy reached down and grabbed a handful of Cline's thinning hair and hauled the older man to his feet. He held him up as he punched him repeatedly in the stomach and chest.

  As the fist smashed into his ribs, Cline felt as if someone were stabbing his insides with a sharp knife. He opened his mouth to scream, and McCarthy unhinged his jaw with another blow from his open palm.

  "Mine's bigger than yours, goddamnit," McCarthy said.

  In a frenzy of desperation, Cline yanked his head back as hard as he could, leaving McCarthy with a handful of hair and a bit of scalp to go with it. Blood trickled into Cline's eyes.

  Cline's knees were wobbly, but not because he was drunk. He had never been more sober. The pain had done that for him. God, he wished he were drunk, now.

  He stumbled backward, trying to escape McCarthy. Through foggy eyes he saw Dana calmly watching them from the porch. She didn't seem to be disturbed or excited in the least.

  McCarthy was both. It was as if the blood had inflamed him. He caught up with Cline and grabbed his left arm. Cline slumped, and McCarthy brought the arm down sharply over his bent leg, snapping Cline's radius and ulna like dry cane.

  Cline shrieked and nearly fainted, but McCarthy wasn't through.

  He pulled Cline up and rammed his knee into Cline's testicles, raising Cline up a foot off the ground. Cline's mouth opened in the rictus of a scream, but only a dry cawing sound came out.

  "Don't matter how big it is if you can't use it," McCarthy said.

  Then he kicked Cline twice more. The toe of his shoe hit Cline's stomach and then nearly touched his backbone.

  Cline lay on the ground, gagging. McCarthy was hardly winded. He spit on Cline's upturned face.

  "Asshole," he said, turning to go back up on the deck.