Under Cover of Daylight by James W. Hall Page A

woods south of his house.
    He was only an average marksman, even with all those hours of shooting. He could never group more than four within a baseball-size circle, always wavered at least one round a few inches away. Passable, but nothing more.
    Funny thing was, he’d left the Colt behind the day he hitched up to Miami to settle up finally with Dallas James. He hadn’t even been tempted when the time came. All those afternoons in the woods fantasizing, that had just been to learn how hatred felt, to practice it, to learn to hold it up clear of the rest of the emotions. The .357 had been just a tool for doing that.
    For the last few weeks he’d been meaning to make a present of the Colt to Sugarman or maybe take a boat ride out beyond the reef and feed it to the sea. But whenever he got ready to do it, he found he had no stomach for opening the trunk, touching it again after twenty years. He always discovered something important that needed doing.
    When he finished the last Crazy Charlie, he went out onto his porch, leaned against the railing, and for a while he watched a heron standing in the shallows next to his dock. Its neck coiled, beak aimed at some shiny shadow. Finally, after minutes in that pose, it struck, nabbed a silver pinfish, and walked over to the mangroves in its stiff-legged gait.
    Thorn walked down his stairs, humming, smiling as the words came back to him, phrase by phrase. “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Such a silly song, about such a silly feeling. He walked, humming the words, out the dock to the concrete picnic table on the point. He sat out there and looked east across the island to the sunrise sprouting through a wall of ragged clouds. Was this a rosy-fingered dawn? He’d never got that. Rosy-fingered? Never seen the fingers, but he’d kept looking. As Thorn watched, the clouds grew pink, their fringes darkened. He should ask Sarah about it. All that college. She’d know.
    He stretched some creakiness out of his neck, stood, and touched his toes. Something to kick-start his heart. He’d been feeling it lately. The first nicks. Bruises taking too long to disappear, a burn in the knee joints in the morning. The squeaky wheels of the winged chariot gaining on him.
    Sugarman’s patrol car came crunching down his drive. Thorn waved him out to the dock. A part of the ritual of Saturdays. Sugarman, off from the barroom brawl shift, came over to wind down, shoot the shit, let the sun come up before going home. He was back in his off-duty things, cutoffs and a blue work shirt.
    Sugarman went about six-three, leaner now than ten years ago. The only features he’d gotten from his black father were the black, coiled hair and the dark eyes. His skin was lighter than Thorn’s tan. He had a straight, almost delicate nose and his mother’s sharp cheekbones. Long lashes. If Thorn had just seen this guy on the street, he would’ve guessed Sugarman put on a Lena Horne revue in some late-night Key West bar.
    “I brought the book back.” He dropped the novel on the table and sat down with a sigh.
    Thorn asked him how he’d liked it.
    “Truth is, Thorn, I couldn’t get into it. Got as far as him hitching down U.S. One on drugs.”
    “That’s the first page.”
    “Yeah, well, I skipped around some, too. I’m sure it’s a good book. I appreciate your loaning it to me and all. I don’t know, I just didn’t have any feel for the way it was going. The way it’s written. It’s like the sentences don’t sound like anything I recognize.”
    “It’s got Key West in it, fishing the flats, gunplay, all the stuff you like.”
    Sugarman shook his head sadly. “Jeannie read it. She flipped it open and started reading it out loud and what the hell. She came right to a place where two of them were going at it doggy style, and she asked me what kind of books you were trying to give me.”
    “Whoops.”
    “It’s OK.” Sugarman picked up the book and fanned himself with it. “You know Jeannie, hell,