One
Sometimes a mayfly skates across a pond, leaving a brief wake as thin as spider silk, and by staying low avoids those birds and bats that feed in flight.
At six feet three, weighing two hundred ten pounds, with big hands and bigger feet, Timothy Carrier could not maintain a profile as low as that of a skating mayfly, but he tried.
Shod in heavy work boots, with a John Wayne walk that came naturally to him and that he could not change, he nevertheless entered the Lamplighter Tavern and proceeded to the farther end of the room without drawing attention to himself. None of the three men near the door, at the short length of the "L"-shaped bar, glanced at him. Neither did the couples in two of the booths.
When he sat on the end stool, in shadows beyond the last of the downlights that polished the molasses-colored mahogany bar, he sighed with contentment. From the perspective of the front door, he was the smallest man in the room.
If the forward end of the Lamplighter was the driver's deck of the locomotive, this was the caboose. Those who chose to sit here on a slow Monday evening would most likely be quiet company.
Liam Rooney—who was the owner and, tonight, the only barkeep—drew a draft beer from the tap and put it in front of Tim.
"Some night you'll walk in here with a date," Rooney said, "and the shock will kill me."
"Why would I bring a date to this dump?"
"What else do you know but this dump?"
"I've also got a favorite doughnut shop."
"Yeah. After the two of you scarf down a dozen glazed, you could take her to a big expensive restaurant in Newport Beach, sit on the curb, and watch the valets park all the fancy cars."
Tim sipped his beer, and Rooney wiped the bar though it was clean, and Tim said, "You got lucky, finding Michelle. They don't make them like her anymore."
"Michelle's thirty, same age as us. If they don't make 'em like her anymore, where'd she come from?"
"It's a mystery."
"To be a winner, you gotta be in the game," Rooney said.
"I'm in the game."
"Shooting hoops alone isn't a game."
"Don't worry about me. I've got women beating on my door."
"Yeah," Rooney said, "but they come in pairs and they want to tell you about Jesus."
"Nothing wrong with that. They care about my soul. Anybody ever tell you, you're a sarcastic sonofabitch?"
"You did. Like a thousand times. I never get tired of hearing it. This guy was in here earlier, he's forty, never been married, and now they cut off his testicles."
"Who cut off his testicles?"
"Some doctors."
"You get me the names of those doctors," Tim said. "I don't want to go to one by accident."
"The guy had cancer. Point is, now he can never have kids."
Copyright © 2007 by Dean Koontz.
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Timothy Carrier, having a beer after work at his friend's tavern, enjoys drawing eccentric customers into amusing conversations. But the jittery man who sits next to him tonight has mistaken Tim for someone very different--and passes to him a manila envelope full of cash. "Ten thousand now. You get the rest when she's gone...." The stranger walks out, leaving a photo of the pretty woman marked for death, and her address. But things are about to get worse. In minutes another stranger sits next to Tim. This one is a cold-blooded killer who believes Tim is the man who has hired him. Thinking fast, Tim says, "I've had a change of heart. You get ten thousand--for doing nothing. Call it a no-kill fee." He keeps the photo and gives the money to the hired killer. And when Tim secretly follows the man out of the tavern, he gets a further shock: the hired killer is a cop. Suddenly, Tim Carrier, an ordinary guy, is at the center of a mystery of extraordinary proportions, the one man who can save an innocent life and stop a killer far more powerful than any cop--and as relentless as evil incarnate. But first Tim must discover within himself the capacity for selflessness, endurance, and courage that can turn even an ordinary man into a hero, inner resources that will transform his idea of who he is and what it takes to be The Good Guy.
