Blow Fly

110

BENTON DROVE AROUND for a while, then checked into the Radisson under the assumed name of Tony Wilson.

Inside his suite, he sits on the bed, his door secured with the dead-bolt lock and burglar chain. He requested a block on his telephone, not that he is expecting calls. The clerks at reception seemed to understand. He is a wealthy man from Los Angeles and wants privacy. The hotel is the finest one in Baton Rouge, its staff accustomed to accommodating a lot of people from all over who don't use the valets, preferring to come and go discreetly. They don't want to be bothered and rarely stay long.

Benton connects his laptop to the modem line in his room. He enters his code to release the lock of the new black briefcase he deliberately scuffed by scraping it against furniture and sliding it across the floor. He takes off his ankle holster and places his.357 magnum Smith amp; Wesson 340PD on the bed. It is double-action, loaded with five rounds of Speer Gold Dot 125-grain.

From the briefcase he removes two pistols: a pocket-friendly.40-cal-iber Glock 27, capacity ten rounds, including one in the chamber. The ammunition is Hydra-Shok: 135-grain, center-post hollow-point with a notched jacket, velocity 1,190 feet per second, high-energy and with effмcient stopping power, punches into the enemy and splays like a razor-sharp flower.

His second and most important pistol is the P 226 SL Sig Sauer nine-millimeter, capacity sixteen rounds, including one in the chamber. The ammunition is also Hydra-Shok: 124-grain, center-post hollow-point with notched jacket, velocity 1,120 feet per second, deep penetration and stopping power.

It is conceivable he can carry the three guns at once. He's done it before, the.357 Smith amp; Wesson in his ankle holster, the.40-caliber Glock in a shoulder holster, and the nine-millimeter Sig Sauer in the waistband at the small of his back.

Extra magazines for the pistols and extra cartridges for the.357 magnum go in a designer leather butt pack. Benton dresses in a loose-fitting London Fog jacket and baggy jeans that are slightly too long, a cap, tinted glasses and the rubber-soled Prada shoes. He could be a tourist. He could work in Baton Rouge and barely merit notice in this city of transients, where hundreds of professors, some of them eccentric, and thousands of oblivious students and preoccupied visiting scholars of all ages and nationalities abound. He could be straight. He could be gay. He could be both.