Life Expectancy

fortune, and she could not hide her fear for that innocent.
        From a coat pocket, he extracted a small black leather case and worked the zipper around three sides of it.
        "You took my son from me, my only child," he said, "and I'm certain that if you search your heart, you'll be the first to admit that now you owe me yours."
        "Your son? I don't know your son."
        In a voice of reason and sweet good will, he said, "You sent him to prison for life. And your husband, the ungrateful progeny of Rudy Tock, rendered him… unable to procreate."
        Stunned, Lorrie said, "You're… Konrad Beezo?"
        "The one and only, for many years on the run and often denied a spotlight to display my talents, but still a clown at heart and full of glory."
        He opened the black case. It contained two hypodermic syringes and a vial of amber fluid.
        Although he had seemed familiar to her, he didn't much resemble the photos in the newspapers that Rudy had kept from August 1974.
        "You don't look like you," she said.
        Smiling, nodding, his voice chirrupy with inexplicable bonhomie, he said, "Ah, well, twenty-four years takes a toll of any man. And as a fugitive of some notoriety, I spent a long holiday in South America with my little Punchinello, where I had just enough plastic surgery to restore anonymity."
        He unwrapped one of the hypodermic syringes. The point of the needle gleamed with unnerving brightness in the dim light.
        Although Lorrie knew that reasoning with this man would be no more fruitful than discussing the music of Mozart with a deaf horse, she said, "You can't blame us for what happened to Punchinello."
        "Blame is such a harsh word," he said with great geniality. "We don't need to talk of guilt and blame. Life is too short for that. A thing was done, for whatever reason, and now in all fairness a price must be paid."
        "For whatever reason?"
        Smiling, nodding, insistently cordial, Beezo said, "Yes, yes, we all have our reasons, and surely you had yours. And who am I to say that you were wrong? There's no need for judgmental ism nothing to be gained by ugly accusations. There's always two sides to every story, and sometimes ten. It's just that a thing was done, my son was taken from me and rendered incapable of giving me grandchildren, heirs to the Beezo talent, and therefore it's only fair that I be compensated."
        "Your Punchinello killed a bunch of people and would have killed me and Jimmy, too," Lorrie declared, stressing every word, unable to match Beezo's unshakable cheerfulness.
        "So the story goes," Beezo said, and winked. "But let me assure you, missy, nothing you read in a newspaper can be trusted. The truth never makes it into print."
        "I didn't read about it, I lived it," she said.
        Beezo smiled and nodded, winked, smiled and nodded, let out a little laugh, nodded, and returned his attention to the hypodermic.
        Lorrie realized that his fragile self-control depended upon maintaining an air of cheerful amiability, regardless of the fact that it was patently insincere. If that facade slipped at all, it would collapse entirely; his repressed self-pity and rage would then explode. Unable to control himself, he would kill her and the baby that he so much wanted.
        Under these smiles and chuckles was not a lovelorn Pagliacci but a homicidal bozo.
        Eyeing the contents of the vial, she asked, "What is that?"
        "Just a mild sedative, a little dream juice."
        His hands were large, rough, but dexterous. With the practiced efficiency of a physician, he tapped the vial and filled the syringe.
        "I can't take that," she protested. "I'm in labor."
        "Oh, worry not, dear, it's very mild. It won't much delay the baby."
        "No. No, no."
        "Dear girl, you're only in first-stage labor and you will be for hours yet."
        "How do you know that?"
        With a mischievous chuckle and a wink and a twitch of his nose, he said, "Darling, I must confess to being just a little bit naughty. A week ago, I planted a listening device in your kitchen, another in your living room, and I've been monitoring them ever since from Nedra Lamm's house across the highway."
        Lorrie felt dizzy. "You know Nedra?"
        "I knew her for a few minutes, the poor dear," Beezo revealed. "What are those totems with antlers all about,