precisely one inch apart across the clothes rod in his closet. He selected one of each, adding blue socks and running shoes. The leather belt he slipped through his belt loops contained a narrow pocket with a thirty-inch length of piano wire inside, handles neatly taped. Philip had never used the wire to kill a man.
He removed a Sig Sauer Pistole 75 from a locked drawer, checked the nine-round magazine already in place, and slipped it into a quick-release holster at the back of his belt. In the mirror, he looked like any other nineteen-year-old, especially when he smiled.
“That smile could melt the heart of a hangman,” Anna Marie often told him, and Colonel Jay encouraged Philip to use it. “Our most secret weapons,” Colonel Jay instructed, “are the most valuable. An enemy expects guns and knives and explosives. But he’ll always underestimate the force of a smile.”
Philip shrugged into a loose, lightweight khaki windbreaker to cover the pistol’s bulge. From a polished wooden box, he extracted a triangular lapel pin, blue and red enamel with a gold letter “P” in the center: blue for loyalty, red for the blood of the enemy, and gold for the golden future of The People. He pinned it to the jacket, above his heart.
Then he closed off the gym by sliding two floor-length panels in place and locked his bedroom on the way out. In the kitchen, he popped a stick of sugar-free gum in his mouth—his only vice—and kissed Anna Marie on her left cheek.
Chapter Nine
A ten-minute drive and a three-minute elevator ride brought Dixie from Amy’s house to the forty-seventh floor of the Transco Tower and the offices of Richards, Blackmon & Drake. She found Belle Richards staring out her spacious corner window. Most of Houston stretched below like a giant Monopoly board, the most expensive properties dotted with skyscrapers, but the tiny segment holding Belle’s interest lay directly below the tower, at the base of the Water Wall.
Brave the Galleria area traffic, find a legal parking place within walking distance, plant yourself in front of the sixty-four-foot, semicircular wall of cascading water, and you escaped city bedlam instantly into absolute tranquility. Each minute, eleven thousand gallons spilled over the gabled surfaces, playing a symphony of splash and trickle. Dixie had spent many late-night hours on the pebbled walkway in front of the Water Wall when a knotty problem held her thoughts hostage. Right now she found Belle’s composed presence plenty soothing enough after the range of emotions she’d dealt with all day. Dixie was glad she’d stopped by instead of phoning.
“What’re they doing down there?” she asked Belle, referring to a half-dozen people milling below.
“Brainstorming the Mayor’s Memorial Day bash. Blackmon’s on the committee. He got the harebrained ideathat some of the festivities should take place in that minuscule park. Guess what that will do to traffic.”
Belle wore her red power suit today—Austin Reed, Bill Blass, or Donna Karan—Dixie couldn’t recall and couldn’t tell the difference, but she’d helped Belle’s husband shop for it as an anniversary gift. Standing on a stool to offset the defense lawyer’s three-inch height advantage, she’d even modeled the suit—looked darn good, too, but not as classy as Belle did today—then helped him choose accessories. With the amount Belle’s husband spent on one outfit, Dixie could’ve stocked up on jeans, shirts, and boots to last a decade.
“What traffic?” Dixie asked now. “Isn’t Memorial Day a national holiday?”
“How soon you forget. What lawyer with a heavy caseload doesn’t spend the holidays catching up? And all the retail stores around here will have major sales.”
“Oh.” The Galleria Mall attracted shoppers like a mud puddle attracts tots. “You paged me earlier. What’s up?” In a roundabout way, some of Dixie’s most lucrative jobs came from Richards, Blackmon & Drake. Their
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