Free The Last Clinic by Gary Gusick Page A

venue to another. Fortunately, these venues were located in perfect proximity.
    The primary target was situated at the end of the strip mall, next door to a greasy Chinese take-out joint called Kan Wang. It was the only Chinese restaurant in Bellowville, Texas. It was a stroke of fortune—perfect.
    If things went as planned, no one—not the police, not the local newspaper, not even the target—would have a clue as to what had gone down, which, from his client’s point of view, was the whole idea.
    Early Monday afternoon he checked into the Bellowville Motel 6, four miles to the east of town. The motel had forty-eight rooms and was located right off the interstate. Most of the guests were one-night stopovers. Given the amount of turnover, it was unlikely that a desk clerk would give much notice to his comings and goings.
    He paid in cash for one night (he always paid in cash), telling the clerk he would be leaving before dawn Tuesday morning to attend a sales conference in Amarillo later in the day. This was a lie. He would be headed in the opposite direction.
    Once in his room, he plugged in his laptop, went online, found his assignment dossier complete with a photo of the strip mall, a blue print of the restaurant interior, plus photos of the owner, and even a menu. It was typical down-and-dirty Chinese. Six pages of items—the usual hodge-podge of Canton, Hunan, Szechuan. A hundred items and they’ll all taste the same , he thought.
    He looked up the web page for the Bellowville Community Fire Department. It was amazing what you could find on the internet. Their home page—their only page—featured a freshly painted, aging fire truck and ten volunteer firemen. He noted that the firehouse was located at the opposite end of town from the target. Yet another piece of good fortune. By his calculation, it would take at least ten minutes from the time the call went into the firehouse until the fire truck arrived on the scene. That would be more than enough time to achieve the desired result.
    He found himself with a few hours to waste. Bored, he visited a couple of online poker sites and ended up losing two hundred playing Texas Hold ‘em, but it didn’t matter. Gambling, an occasional prostitute, and first-rate dining when he was in the right city, were indulgences he allowed himself—perks for the inconvenience and loneliness of a life on the road and the pressure that accompanied each assignment, even the easy ones like this.
    At sixty-thirty in the evening, he unpacked his bag, assembled his small kit, and placed it into the specially created inner lining of his windbreaker. He checked himself out in the mirror and noticed there was no bulge. That was good.
    He drove around the area for twenty minutes to be sure he had the lay of the land, and arrived at strip mall at seven p.m. Kan Wang was open for business. The rest of the establishments (including his target) were closed for the night. It was your typical Monday evening in small town America.
    He parked his car, a silver late-model Toyota Camry—a rental—four spaces from the entrance to Kan Wang, where it couldn’t be seen from the inside of the restaurant. If asked later, the chinks at Kan Wang would remember a stranger coming in and might be able to provide a general description, but they wouldn’t be able to tell the authorities what kind of car he drove.
    Kan Wang was empty except for the two that ran the place. He recognized the owner from the photo, an elderly Chinese woman. His notes said she served as hostess, waitress, and cashier. The cook, another chink, looked young enough to be her grandson.
    The woman, with nothing better to do, sat behind the cash register playing solitaire on an iPad. He asked the woman for a menu, studied it for a minute, and ordered sweet and sour pork, egg rolls, and shrimp fried rice. Not very original, not that it made any difference. He didn’t eat Chinese food anyway. All that MSG. He’d dump the order once he left