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Chapter One - Shades of Despair

THERE WERE OMENS FROM THE BEGINNING

First off, I didn't want to do a job at the Mission Inn Anywhere in the country, I would have been willing, but not the Mission Inn And in the bridal suite, that very rooht to myself

Of course ave nment that the Mission Inn here I hen I didn't want to be Lucky the Fox, when I didn't want to be his assassin

The Mission Inn was part of that very suise I was siray eyes--a person who looked like so many other people that he didn't look like any special person at all I didn't even bother to wear braces to disguise my voice when I went there I didn't even bother with the de rigueur sunglasses that shielded my identity in every other place, except the aparthborhood where I lived

I was just who I ah who I auises when he did what he was told to do by The Right Man

So the Mission Inn was mine, cipher that I was, and so was the bridal suite, called the A told to systematically pollute it Not for anyone else butto harm the Mission Inn

A giant confection and confabulation of a building in Riverside, California, it here I often took refuge, an extravagant and engulfing place sprawling over two city blocks, and where I could pretend, for a day or two or three, that I wasn't wanted by the FBI, Interpol, or The Right Man, a place where I could lose myself and my conscience

Europe had long ago become unsafe for me, due to the increased security at every checkpoint, and the fact that the law enforce le unsolved murder they had on the books

If I wanted the atmosphere I'd loved so ue and all the other places I could no longer visit, I sought out the Mission Inn It couldn't be all those places, no Yet it gave me a unique haven and sent me back out into my sterile world a renewed spirit

It wasn't the only place where I wasn't anybody at all, but it was the best place, and the place to which I went the most

The Mission Inn was not far from where I "lived," if one could call it that And I went there on iive ht, especially the Inn keeper's Suite, but I was patient in waiting for the Amistad And sometimes they called me on one of the many special cell phones I carried, to let me know the suite could be mine

So as a week in the Mission Inn I'd bring my lute with me, and maybe play it a little And I always had a stack of books to read, ales, or the Renaissance, or Ancient Ro uncommonly safe and secure

There were special places I went from the Inn