Cover of Night by Linda Howard Page A

in a knot, a bottle of aspirin, and a silk tie rolled up. She wanted to look in the shopping bag, but was afraid the county investigator would disapprove. What if Mr. Layton had been the victim of a crime? Cate didn’t want to leave her fingerprints on his things.
    In the small attached bathroom, a disposable razor and a can of shaving cream lay on the edge of the sink, and a can of spray deodorant sat next to the cold-water handle. An open Dopp Kit sat on the back of the toilet, and inside it she could see a hairbrush, a tube of toothpaste, and a toothbrush holder, as well as a few loose Band-Aids.
    There was nothing here of value that she could see, but people tended to cling to their things. If he’d left all this behind, surely he’d intended to return. On the other hand, he had climbed out the window, for all the world as if he’d been escaping instead of simply leaving.
    Maybe that was it. Maybe he wasn’t simply nuts. Maybe he’d escaped.
    The question was: from what? Or whom?

 
4
    YUELL FAULKNER CONSIDERED HIMSELF, FIRST AND FOREMOST, a businessman. He was in operation to make money, and since he gained clients by word of mouth, he couldn’t afford screwups. His reputation on the street was that he got the job done…whatever the “job” was, efficiently and without fuss.
    Some jobs he refused outright, for a variety of reasons. Number one on his list was that he didn’t take any job that had a high probability of bringing the Feds swarming down on him. That meant for the most part he stayed away from politics, and he tried never to do anything that would make national news. The real trick was to do a newsworthy job but pull it off so slickly that it was passed off as an accident.
    With that in mind, the first thing he did when receiving a job offer was research it thoroughly. Sometimes clients weren’t entirely truthful when presenting an offer—fancy that. It wasn’t as if he dealt with people of pristine character. So he always double-checked the information he’d been given, and then would decide whether or not to take the job. He tried to never let his ego enter into the decision, never let the adrenaline rush of finessing a difficult situation sway him. Yeah, he could take all the hot jobs and pit his brains and organizing skill against the odds, but the reason the casinos in Vegas didn’t go bust playing the odds was that the long shot usually didn’t win. He wasn’t in business to gratify his ego; he was in business to make money.
    He also wanted to stay alive.
    When he walked into Salazar Bandini’s office, he knew he’d have to take this job, no matter what it was, or he wouldn’t be walking out.
    He knew about Salazar Bandini, or as much as anyone did. Yuell knew that wasn’t the man’s real name, but where he’d come from before arriving on the
Chicago street
scene and adopting that name was up in the air. Bandini was an Italian name; Salazar wasn’t. And the man sitting behind the desk looked maybe Slavic, maybe German. Hell, maybe even Russian, with those broad cheekbones and prominent brow ridges. Bandini had pale hair, of a thinness that allowed pink scalp to show through, and brown eyes as soulless as a shark’s.
    Bandini leaned back in his chair and didn’t invite Yuell to sit down. “You’re very expensive,” he remarked. “You think highly of yourself.”
    There wasn’t anything to be said to that, because it was true. And whatever Bandini wanted, he wanted it badly, or he wouldn’t have summoned Yuell past the barricades, both human and electronic, that surrounded him. Based on that, Yuell had to assume his price wasn’t too high; in fact, maybe he should increase his fees.
    After a long minute in which Yuell waited for Bandini to tell him why his services were needed, and Bandini waited for Yuell to betray any hint of nerves—which wasn’t going to happen—Bandini said, “Sit.”
    Instead, Yuell leaned over the desk, took a pen from the expensive set beside