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How naive he’d been about the act of shooting a man to death In hisof a vagrant The killing was rando that tied the killer to his victione nowhere and it should have been written off as the perfect crime Naturally, a mistake was ht, but he endured a nasty fate of the sort only a novelist could cook up Jon realized no co another man’s life It was simple, of no consequence The only surprise had been the sound Michael Suttonon Jon would have to struggle to erase the quick cry

He tucked the gun in his waistband, poured another scotch, and carried it with hie, where he clis to pack yet Other than that, he was ready to rock and roll Over the past two years, he’d graduallywith the ten grand his father had left hily bequeathed hi the confusion in the days following his father’s fatal heart attack, Jon had had the foresight to remove Lionel’s passport from the juone He’d held on to it until it was due to expire and then filled out an application for renehich he’d subraphs of hilasses so the reseh Jon took a certain satisfaction in appropriating his father’s identity

As a boy, he’d worshiped his dad, proud that he was a college professor Many times he’d sat in on his father’s classes and eable he was Students were enraptured, laughing at his droll observations, scribbling down his witticisms, as well as the dense bits of information embedded in his lectures His father had written two books published by a well-known university press At cocktail parties, when Jon was a kid, he’d linger on the periphery of those gathered, listening to his dad tell anecdotes about faures

After Jon’s mother died and Lionel and Mona married, his father’s output had leveled off He’d written two more books, which hadn’t sold well, and a third he’d been forced to publish hiht after on the lecture circuit, and he was paid well for his appearances, but Jon had heard the sahter at thejokes By the time Lionel died, Jon saw hiht out of him

Meticulously, he went back over his preparations He had almost a hundred thousand dollars, in hundreds, packed in two body wallets that scarcely showed under his sport coat For two thousand dollars he’d bought an airline ticket, one-way, first class, to Caracas, Venezuela Once there he’d purchase another ID--driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate--and retire both the Jon Corso and Lionel Corso identities After he found a place to settle, he’d write his next book and subent, under a fictitious name He knehom he’d approach, a woent early in his career She’d ju forfeited a fortune by rejecting the original

He shrugged into a windbreaker and slid the gun in his right pocket How nice that an itehbor twenty-one years before had now set hiether, if they ever one and, he hoped, impossible to trace He folded and packed his favorite sport coat, his raincoat, and six shirts just back from the cleaner’s He went into the bathroom, added a few toiletries to his Dopp kit, and tucked it in the suitcase as well His second bag was already closed and waiting downstairs near the front door He sat down at his desk and called Walker at work

As soon as Walker picked up, Jon said, "Michael Sutton just called He wants to meet"

"Meet with us? Why?"

"How do I know? Maybe he wants to make a deal We pay up and he keeps his mouth shut"

"A shakedown?"

Jon kept his tone matter-of-fact "Now that he knohere you work, it doesn’t seem out of the question"

"Shit I told you he was trouble"

"We don’t know that Maybe we can coive him money now, it’s only a matter of time before he comes around for more"