The Road To Ruin

All of which was true, but Flip had other reasons as well, which he saw no reason to mention. For one thing, it was punishment to make the slobs view their own hopeless efforts, punishment they richly deserved. And for another, it gave Flip the opportunity to watch himself.

Flip Morriscone would rather watch himself than anyone else on the planet, man or woman, and that was because he was in the absolute peak of physical condition; rockhard abs, rockhard butt, legs like a centaur’s, neck like a plinth. On the treadmill, on the machines, anywhere, what he was really doing was not training the slobs. What he was really doing was watching himself, and getting paid for it. (In his dreams, he often walked beside himself, holding hands.)

After the jog, with Hall gasping and weaving, Flip gave a period on the leglift machine, so Hall would have a little opportunity to sit. While he groaned over the strain of lifting those weights, just from the knees down, his face streaming, sweats already living up to their name, Hall said, “Flip, this is horribly hard work, but do you know, I look forward to it?”

“Well, sure you do, Mr. Hall. It makes you feel better.”

“It makes me feel much worse, Flip.” Hall emitted another groan, then managed a ghastly smile as he said, “Do you know what does make me feel better, Flip?”

“What’s that, Mr. Hall?”

“You being here.”

“That’s what I’m talking about, Mr. Hall.”

“No, not this torture, Flip. You being here. You.”

Good God, Flip thought, is he throwing a pass at me? That did happen from time to time (why not, with such perfection as his?), and it was repulsive in the extreme, and usually ended with Flip saying farewell to that client, walking out on the “you must have misunderstood” malarkey. Was another client about to self-destruct?

“I don’t follow you, Mr. Hall,” Flip said, watching Hall’s eyes like a panther watching a deer.

“I’ve learned over the years, Flip,” Hall said, “that friendship is a sometime thing. People I thought were—Well, doesn’t matter. I know we’ve become good friends over the last few months, Flip, and I just want you to know I value that. I’m glad we’re pals.”

“Pals,” pronounced as though just learned from a foreign language. Flip smiled large in relief; it wasn’t a pass after all. “Of course we’re pals, Mr. Hall,” he told the client.

11

ANNE MARIE DIDN’T LIKE it when Andy brooded, because it happened so seldom that it had to mean something serious had gone wrong. He’d been his usual cheery optimistic self when he’d left for Pe

Generally speaking, A

But this funk had been going on for three days, which was an eternity in the weather of Andy Kelp, and it showed no signs of improving, so finally, in the midafternoon of the third day, a Saturday, when yet again she walked into the living room and Andy was slumped in his favorite chair, gazing glassy-eyed in the general direction of the television set, which didn’t happen to be switched on, she had to try at least kicking the tires a little: “Hi, Andy.”

“Hi.” His smile was as chipper as ever, but there didn’t seem to be anything behind it.

Feeling suddenly like the wife in a soap opera, although she was neither, she sat on the sofa, where she could see him most directly, and said, “Andy?”

His eyes rolled toward her; his brows lifted slightly. The smile on his lips was small and nostalgic, as though he were remembering happy times rather than being in them. “Mm?”

“What’s wrong, Andy?”

He sat up straighter. He looked surprised. “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong.”

“Ever since you came back from Pe

“Oh, that,” he said, and brushed it away, as though now he understood what she was talking about and it was nothing, nothing. “That’s not my problem,” he said. “That’s John’s problem.”

“What problem?”

“His.”

“Andy,” A

“Do I keep thinking about it?” He considered that. “Huh. Maybe I do, from time to time. You see, A

“I know,” she said. “That’s what you do.”

“Right.” Andy nodded. “That’s what we do. Get into a place, get what we want, get out, game over. The thing is, this place, you can’t get in. I mean, you really can’t get in.”

“So no game,” A

“Well, the thing is,” Andy said, “John came up with a great way to get in, a really great way. But now we’re stuck. We can’t make that way work. I mean, John can’t.”

A

“It won’t do any good, but sure, why not?” He adjusted himself more comfortably in his chair, and said, “The guy has this huge compound surrounded by electric fence and guards, no way through it without being seen and heard. The guy is also a rat, so the ships are deserting him. Not the ships, his crew, his staff, the people that work for him. So he’s got like a skeleton crew there, and John’s brilliant idea is, we hire on. We’re working for the guy, naturally we’re on the property.”

“Well, that is a brilliant idea,” A

“Oh, he’s hiring,” Andy said. “Or he would be, if anybody’d show up. Our trouble is, anybody he hires has to be checked by the law. Chester couldn’t work for him any more because he was an ex-con. All of us are ex-cons, A

“And you, too,” she told him.

“Well, maybe a little.” He shrugged. “Still, it’s John’s brilliant idea, so it’s John that feels so bad.”

She shook her head, surveying him. “You just wasted three days,” she said.

He gave her his alert look, almost like the old days. “I did?”

“We’re go

“Not bad at all,” he agreed.

“But this time,” she said, “I’m almost positive I can solve your problem.”

“Come on, A

“That’s what I’m talking about. Andy, you know, when I was a kid, my father was a congressman, in Congress, from the great state of Kansas.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Well, for a lot of that time,” she said, “and when I was in college, and after, he was on the Select Intelligence Committee in the Congress, to liaise with the FBI and the CIA and all of those other people in the intelligence community. The spooks.”

“Spies.”

“They call themselves spooks,” she informed him.