the abundance of large oaks shading cars from the relentless heat. In the far corner of the lot, inside a Pontiac parked under one of these oaks sat David Lobec and Richard Bern.
Bern was dozing, taking a break while Lobec read the short dossier they had compiled on Kevin Hamilton in the last few hours, cobbled together from his school files, a quick search of his apartment, and Texas Department of Public Safety records. Every thirty seconds, as if he had a built-in chronometer, Lobec would look up to observe Kevin’s first-floor apartment, whose front door faced the parking lot.
A truck with the words “Four Seasons Landscaping” emblazoned across its side in large green letters rumbled to a stop twenty yards in front of them. A man with no shirt and a huge gut hanging over a pair of greasy shorts climbed out and proceeded to unload a riding lawn mower out of the trailer hitched to the truck. Lobec, who hadn’t seen snow in the five years he’d been in Houston, wanted to ask the man when the other three seasons would arrive.
The mower belched a plume of smoke and the engine rose to an unmuffled crescendo, drowning out the distant sound of the street traffic and waking Bern. He looked around for the source of noise and through the car’s heavily tinted windows saw the fat man ride onto the grass.
“Damn! And I was having a great dream.” He turned to Lobec, who realized what was coming. He’d heard this kind of thing about fifty times from Bern.
“Oh man, what a dream! In this one I was like Frankenstein, right? You know, making my own person? Except, I wasn’t making a monster. I was making my dream girl from parts of all the girls who’ve ever been in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, cutting out somebody’s leg from this picture and somebody else’s tits from that picture. She was just hit by lightning, right? She was alive, buck naked, right on the table in front of me! So she got up and she was just about to…”
“You may save the details for your memoirs, Bern.”
Bern gave him a quizzical look. “Sometimes I don’t know if you’re really human, Lobec. You got any hormones at all?”
“I prefer to separate my sexual urges from my professional functions, and I suggest you attempt the same, if at all possible. It may help you better concentrate on your work.”
“What’s there to concentrate on? This guy ain’t even home.” He put a pair of headphones up to his ears and punched a button on a machine sitting on the seat next to him. “The tap’s working fine. What else am I supposed to do?”
Lobec looked around the parking lot. Every few minutes, a person or two would emerge from the building complex and get into one of the cars. “Perhaps we should discuss the new procedure we will follow when Kevin Hamilton returns.”
“New procedure? Too many people around for you?”
“Yes. Instead of approaching him at his apartment, we will monitor his telephone calls and wait. If no particular urgency arises, we will let him leave the apartment and stop his car in a more secluded area. I assume you have your identification with you?”
“Yeah, I got it.” Bern took out his wallet and flipped it open, revealing a Houston Police Department badge and identification. Lobec nodded and Bern returned it to his pocket. “But I’m sick of the name Kaplan. I think I’ll get Sheryl to make me a new ID after this op is over. What do you think of Braddock?”
“No. This is the third identification you’ve had this year. Changing aliases too often can compromise an operation. It may be difficult to remember in times of stress.”
“Afraid you’ll forget it?” Bern smirked.
“I wasn’t speaking of myself. Must I bring up the incident with the OGP?”
Bern’s smirk dissolved and he offered a curt no. The Old Growth Protectorate was a fringe environmental group bent on radical, sometimes militant, protection of primeval forests. Clayton Tarnwell had never even heard of them until his company announced plans to open a copper strip mine on virgin forest land in Montana. When the OGP threatened to destroy his mining equipment, Tarnwell sent Lobec to persuade the group’s leader to share his knowledge of their plans. Bern and Lobec had been wearing ski masks, but during the interrogation, Bern slipped and used Lobec’s name, requiring a more permanent method of dealing with OGP’s founder.
“What’s all this stuff about Adamas anyway?” Bern said, clumsily changing the subject. “Is that some new chemical Tarnwell’s trying to make?”
“You know as much as I do about Dr. Ward’s process. I am not well-versed in the chemical sciences, and Mr. Tarnwell has not seen fit to brief me on the details. I think for both our sakes it’s better not to talk about it.”
“Was he pissed about Stein?”
“You could say that he was upset.”
“Well, it’s not like it was our fault those kids found the body when they were playing in that dumpster.” Bern pulled a cigarette from the pack of Marlboros in his front pocket and stuck it in his mouth, then pulled a Bic lighter from the same pocket. “Christ, that lot looked so deserted, I thought it would be months before anyone would look in…”
“Mr. Bern,” Lobec said, his voice a dagger’s edge, “what have I asked you not to do in my presence?”
The Bic’s flame flickered two inches in front of the unlit cigarette. Bern’s eyes widened when he realized what he’d done and he sat up straight, releasing the Bic’s lever. “I’m s-sorry, Lobec,” he said in a rush. “I didn’t mean to, it’s just habit…”
“You know that smoking offends me, yet you do not respect my wishes. That offends me even more. I sincerely hope further correction won’t be necessary.”
Bern shook his head vigorously, and Lobec was satisfied that his point had been made. Bern had objected to his demands only twice, and he’d learned that Lobec did not take his smoking policy lightly. The burn scar on Bern’s forearm proved that.
Now that Bern was awake, Lobec returned his full attention to the folder in front of him and read from the beginning. He always liked to know as much as he could about the people he dealt with, even if it would be for only a short time.
Nicholas Kevin Hamilton. Age 26. Valedictorian of Sam Houston high school in Dallas, Texas. According to old letters of acceptance he had stored in a file box, he applied to and was accepted by 8 universities, including Stanford and MIT, but he attended Texas A&M on a National Merit scholarship and $5,000 a year in student loans. Graduated in five years with a B.A. in chemistry. Parents Frances May and Murray Hamilton both died of cancer while he was at A&M, most likely accounting for his five-year stay. He began graduate school at South Texas University in chemistry immediately after leaving A&M and was about to begin his third year of studies. He drove a nine-year-old red Ford Mustang GT hatchback, with three moving violations for speeding in the past three years.
“Is this all we have?” Lobec asked.
“Uh, no. I almost forgot,” Bern said. He pulled a notepad out of his pocket and flipped it open. “Mitch called while you were with Tarnwell. After he was done with the DPS records, he decided to access a local credit bureau. Said he finds lots of juicy stuff there. Anyway, it seems Hamilton has had a little trouble paying his bills lately. He’s been late with his rent three times this year, and he has a Visa and a Mastercard maxed out. Total limit $6000. Mitch says he’s been paying tuition with them.”
“What about the car?”
“That’s the funny thing. There’s no record of a loan on it. Must have been paid for with cash.”
“Life insurance?”
“No payout that Mitch could find. He has one checking account with the university’s credit union, current balance $85.86. We don’t know what his father did yet, but he wasn’t rich. Probably most of the benefits he did get went to pay for the funerals. Hamilton probably used the rest on the car.”
“Possibly.”
“Why do we got to get all this stuff this time anyway? I thought we were just gonna find out what he knows and take him out.”
“Bern, in my experience I have discerned one unchanging characteristic among all of the operations I’ve conducted. No matter how simple an operation seems, there will always be complications. And when they arise, the more information one has, the more likely one will be to succeed.”
Bern looked past Lobec’s shoulder and nodded as he put the microphone in his ear. “At least we don’t have to wait too long to find out.”
