Body Guard by Rex Burns

carefully tended lawns. Shortly after the blue and white milk van pulled out of sight, the first of the day’s workers backed from garages and parking slots to turn into the gleam of rising sun. Then the pulse of the neighborhood picked up with the main migration of cars leaving the condominiums. After that, traffic slowed to the occasional school bus, followed by housewives, salesmen, and delivery vans. And a few people—like Kirk—who seemed to have no reason for being there. No Jean Truman this morning. He pulled out into the small increase of traffic that came with noon. The street wound through the trimmed common areas and past privacy fences that marked each unit’s own attached patio. He found an Arby’s restaurant and dawdled over the hot bread and beef with his legs fully stretched out. Then he drove back to sit again and wait for Truman to do something.
    That kind of waiting makes for long days, and it was with relief that as the return migration of evening began to peak he headed back to the office. He’d be back later this evening. Maybe those drapes would open enough to show her walking without the brace. Maybe she’d put on her dancing shoes and trip the light fantastic down the sidewalk. She was attractive in a dark and intense way, and Kirk had seen a blond man visit the address occasionally. Woman does not live by neck brace alone. But how long it would be before she slipped up, Kirk couldn’t say. Still, that possibility—like an angler’s faith in a fish’s hunger—was what made surveillance bearable.
    Chris, too, had found the day a long one despite the extra janitorial work caused whenever a large shipment of components came in. Visser hadn’t called last night, and today neither Visser nor Johnny Atencio said a word to him. In fact, they avoided him. If they saw him coming, they headed suddenly in another direction down a warehouse aisle. It was puzzling— especially Johnny, who had seemed like a nice enough guy and who enjoyed telling Chris about his amateur boxing career. Chris stripped off his sweaty wool socks and padded barefoot to his bathroom to splash cool water across his face. He was due to make his daily report in fifteen minutes and he’d ask Devlin about it. He was half undressed for a shower when a knock rattled his door.
    Through the peephole, he saw Scotty Martin on the landing, half smiling at the little fisheye of glass. Surprised to see the man at his door, Chris quickly unlatched the security chain. This was it—the contact.
    He started to say hello to Martin when a large figure, as big as Devlin, moved quickly from the wall to the doorway. It was a face Chris thought he recognized—maybe the one in the car the other night. Up close, the face was chiseled with hard lines around the eyes and mouth, and it was dark with heavy tan. Chris looked at Scotty half hidden behind the big man’s shoulder. Scotty looked back at him with distant, expressionless eyes. It was the same look Chris had seen on cowboys at branding time when they threw a calf and, hooked castrating knife clutched in a fist, approached the bawling and helpless animal.

CHAPTER 8
    A N ACCIDENT SOMEWHERE up near the Mousetrap had turned the rush hour Valley Highway into a miles-long parking lot. Devlin and the Subaru, caught between exits, crept and braked while the cheery babble of a radio talk-show host kept telling commuters how bad the traffic jam was. By the time he could pull off the interstate and work his way along crowded side streets through downtown, the hour for Chris’s report was long past. He finally reached the office and dialed the young man’s home number, but there was no answer.
    It didn’t mean anything—Chris often called in from wherever he happened to be. And maybe what he had to say, he hadn’t wanted to leave on the office’s telephone answerer. Kirk walked from his office over to Larimer Square for an early dinner while Josephina’s Restaurant was still uncrowded, then came