Dead Heat Read Free Page A

Collatos. But Donagher’s tone smoothed and apologized. Spraggue caught a sentence here and there, something about “avoiding panic” and “unfortunate publicity” and “a black eye for a gracious city right before one of her most prestigious events.”
    Good luck, Spraggue thought. Try to keep these twenty people from spilling their guts to all their friends and relations. Just try. Wait until the newsmongers get ahold of it. Shots fired at senator from Boston College graveyard. He wondered how lurid the headlines in the Herald would be. GHOST SNIPES SENATOR in three-inch-high black boldface.
    Collatos, still running, hove back into view.
    He halted near Spraggue, panting like an overweight dog, and tried to speak.
    â€œA car …” He got that much out, doubled over at the waist, bent his knees, and huddled into a ball.
    Spraggue knelt beside him. “You all right?”
    â€œOut … of breath …”
    â€œYou call the cops?”
    Collatos nodded. So much for Donagher’s eloquent plea to keep the incident under wraps.
    Spraggue waited until Collatos had drawn a couple of shuddery breaths. “What kind of car?” he asked.
    â€œOn Comm Ave … dark … gunned the motor just as I got there.”
    â€œYou see the guy get in it?”
    Collatos shrugged.
    â€œLicense plate?”
    â€œCovered … with mud.”
    â€œMake?”
    â€œOlds … maybe Buick … late model …” Collatos smeared the back of his hand across his forehead and drops of sweat spattered the ground. He grabbed Spraggue’s shoulder and hauled himself up to a standing position. He tottered, caught himself, walked the ten paces over to where Donagher stood, and placed a tentative hand on the senator’s arm.
    â€œSorry …” he said, still fighting for breath. “Sorry. Stupid to leave you …”
    â€œForget it,” Donagher said, but his voice was hard and tight.
    A siren closed in, different in tone and pitch from the one Collatos had identified earlier as a fire engine. A few stragglers in the crowd ran off, not eager to get involved. Most pressed in closer.
    A patrol car, its blue lights spinning and flashing, shrieked around the corner and blocked the road. Two uniformed men jumped out.

TWO
    He tore off his beard with the quick deft yank that experience dictated as the least excruciating way to perform a painful task. Then he cold-creamed and tissued the paint off his face, removing the heavy makeup that disguised one of Duke Senior’s courtiers from the man the audience had earlier encountered as the wicked brother, Oliver. Spraggue glanced at the table in front of him to ensure that all was laid out in preparation for his five-minute transformation back to Oliver; fake mustache, dark red lining pencils, brown shadow, white liner, two fine-tipped camel’s-hair brushes, medium powder, one grease stick in standard tan. He wouldn’t have time to blend a particular shade for Oliver.
    He smoothed on a light layer of grease and rubbed it in with face-washing motions, then selected the sharpest of his lining pencils by testing each of their points against his thumb. He raised both eyebrows to wrinkle his forehead and automatically traced the most prominent of the resulting lines with red pencil, highlighting each furrow with white. Pretty soon he could forget about the wrinkling ceremony, he thought. The lines were getting damn easy to spot without it.
    Just as he’d established a ritual for the makeup table and an order, from hairline to chin, in which to line his face, so there was a structure to his mental preparation for each role. Now was the allotted time to slip back into the character of the evil elder brother: to replay Oliver’s grim encounter with Duke Frederick at the new court; to reconstruct Oliver’s plans to do away with his brother, Orlando; to relive Oliver’s long journey to the Forest of