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eBook Category: Suspense/Thriller
eBook Description: Retired CIA case officer, Adam Pray, discovers that the life of a rich and idle Seattle playboy bored him to tears. So when a former co-worker offers him the chance to do a free-lance job for the Firm, he jumps at it. The job involves an effort to snare an international arms dealer from Austria in an elaborate sting operation. What Pray doesn't know is that he is being used as a pawn in a deadly battle between warring factions in the Firm.

eBook Publisher: The Fiction Works, Published: http://www.fictionworks.com, 2004
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2004

This eBook is part of the following series:

• Paul Moomaw's Adam Pray Series

16 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [318 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [233 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [275 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [979 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [308 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [259 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [307 KB] , hiebook (KML) [723 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [348 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [253 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [317 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [373 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [418 KB]
Words: 94893
Reading time: 271-379 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

An underpowered wall unit labored to chill the air in Room 248, but the afternoon heat got through, accompanied by the filtered sounds of five fat old men who called themselves the Duwamish Jazz Band, and who played four horns and a banjo no better than they had to in the desert community of Richland, Washington. They stood at the edge of the swimming pool, just below the room, honking and plunking at a Dixieland arrangement of "Midnight in Moscow."

A naked man lay on the bed, half covered by a sheet. One of his hands burrowed under the pillow. The other, encased in a white, cotton glove, rested on his thigh. The man groaned and turned, and clenched the hand into a fist that left the glove's empty middle finger extended limply on the sheet.

The telephone rang. The man rolled off the bed, stepped to the table against the opposite wall. He started to reach for the telephone with his right hand, noticed that it had no glove, and reached with his left instead.

"Hello?"

"It's seven o'clock, Mr. Lopez."

The man grunted and hung up. He stretched and yawned, then slouched back to the bed. He reached under the pillow, retrieved the other glove, and slipped it on. Nobody would give a damn about someone named Raymond Lopez; but the man was sure that a fine set of nine fingerprints under his own name, Facundo Hesse, took up space in the files of more than one federal agency.

Hesse stretched again and strode into the bathroom, scratching the thatch of dark blond hair on his chest. He was large, a couple of inches over six feet, with powerful, hairy arms and meaty hands. The legs didn't fit the rest of him. They were pale, hairless, almost skinny.

His right hand, the one with all its fingers, squeezed absently at the beginning of a fat roll around his middle, then dropped and stroked the old scar that ran up his thigh to a lopsided scrotum that held only one testicle, mute testimony to Hesse's youthful infatuation with fighting bulls. He examined himself with pale, almost colorless eyes--a legacy from his Austrian father--and gave the fat roll another squeeze. Then he squared his shoulders and nodded at the reflection with a satisfied grunt.

"Not bad, considering the miles." His voice was high and thin. A woman had laughed at him about his voice, once. "It goes with your legs," she had said. He had broken her nose for that, and had been briefly under arrest. His father had bailed him out that time, as he had many times.

Hesse set the shower as hot as he could stand it. He pulled his gloves off and jumped in, soaped himself rapidly and rinsed, then twisted the control to cold and stood flinching under the water, "To close the pores." It was a thing someone, probably one of his father's mistresses, had told him when he was a young boy who still believed what women said to him. It was the sort of thing a mother might say, but hadn't; Hesse's mother was only a dim memory of soft Spanish, dark hair and perfume. She had walked out of his life when he was four.

Hesse jumped out of the shower and toweled himself dry. He pulled a can of shaving foam out of his kit and pressed the button. Nothing happened. He shook the can and tried again. Still nothing. With a muttered curse Hesse crumpled the can in his hand and threw it into the trash basket so hard that the basket fell over on its side. He left it that way, and lathered his face with hotel soap.

He had packed everything the night before, except for the shaving kit, and the charcoal jacket, trousers and gray sports shirt he planned to wear. He dressed slowly, almost fussily, and examined himself in the mirror when he was done. He rearranged the handkerchief in his breast pocket two or three times before he was satisfied. Then he shoved the wet gloves into the shaving kit and slipped the kit into his suitcase. He picked up the suitcase, took a last look around the room, and walked out, leaving the door open, and most of the lights in the room on.

The sun had dropped behind the low, barren mountains west of town, and the breeze coming off the river next to the motel was already cooling down. In another hour, Hesse knew, it would be chilly, giving him an excuse to put on the cashmere vest a girlfriend had given him a couple of months before. He couldn't remember which girlfriend, but he loved the vest. He loved all soft things.

The jazz band was packing its gear away as Hesse walked past the pool toward the lobby. A few people still sat outside in the October dusk, warmed by sunburns, and by the drinks they nursed. A teenage girl walked past Hesse, wearing shorts and a blue T-shirt with the word "Bombers" printed in white across her breast, superimposed over a stylized mushroom cloud. The girl looked at Hesse appraisingly, meeting his eye with a challenging stare, then glancing deliberately at his crotch. Hesse could tell the moment she noticed his missing finger; she made a small face and looked away with a toss of her head. He felt his ears burn, and had a momentary impulse to grab her, throw her down onto one of the deck chairs which surrounded the pool, and show her what a real man could do to a foolish bitch. He shook the impulse off and walked on with a laugh. At home, in Buenos Aires, he might have acted on an impulse like that, protected from the consequences by money and family connections. Here, he thought, money didn't count as much; too many people had it.

A man, more a boy, stood behind the registration desk, dressed a little too perfectly, and wearing a discrete but noticeable touch of green eye shadow. He smiled and gave Hesse a look not that different from the one the girl had initially thrown him. Hesse felt his stomach recoil.

"Room 248," he said. "The key's on the dresser."

He swiveled around, walked across the small lobby to a newspaper stand and read the headlines, tapping the fingers of his good hand impatiently against his thigh. He had trained himself long ago to keep the other hand quiet, hidden away. People sometimes met him several times before they realized he had a finger missing.

He glanced back at the registration desk. The clerk was staring at him and smiling. Hesse looked quickly away, embarrassed to be attractive to the man. Damned faggots, he thought. He knew what he would like to do to all of them. Faggots and Jews. There was no difference.

The clerk pushed the credit card slip toward him. Hesse walked stiffly back to the desk, signed it, ripped off the hotel copy and shoved the rest into his pocket, carbons and all.