Programmed for Peril

Handy silent sandals. He paused at the doorway.
    “He’ll be here any minute!” Charlotte’s voice called from upstairs, edged with uneasiness.
    Champ slid away from the door frame.
    “Be cool! I’m here,” Mr. Shoulders shouted.
    “Remember, you listen to us, Chuck. If there’s any kind of trouble, I want you up here—fast. In fact, I think I want you at the head of the stairs after he gets here. Right behind the door. Sit on the step and wait—just in case.”
    “Whatever. If you’re so scared, you shouldna asked him over.”
    “Oh, it’ll be all right, I’m sure. I’m just jiggy.”
    Champ edged his face across the door frame. Mr. Shoulders had returned his attention to the TV. Champ stepped into the room and advanced. Mr. Shoulders was watching a “Gilligan’s Island” rerun. Clearly a man of intellect.
    From the inside pocket of his linen jacket he drew a stiff piece of wire. Why hesitate? “Audacity!” General Patton said. In French, of course. He held the pointed wire in his right hand. He spread the left to brace the back of Mr. Shoulders’s head when he reared back.
    With swiftness worthy of a sleight-of-hand magician he reached forward and slid the wire into Mr. Shoulders’s right eye socket, through the eyeball—and beyond. How thin the curve of bone behind the eye! Brain meets wire. Wire wins! A weak cry scarcely left Mr. Shoulders’s thick throat.
    Complicated tools were overrated....
    Champ performed his second entrance—front door this time—with equal élan, charming Charlotte despite herself. The caterer had delivered his order of champagne, her favorite raspberry sorbets and Swedish cookies—eighteen dollars a pound! Why no black mask and pistol? The florist had come through with the sheaf of tropical blooms. Champ’s tucked-in card offered a brief message of good luck and success. Read between the block-printed lines: no hard feelings, Charlotte (and no handwriting or fingerprints to analyze).
    For her part she wore a stylish white suit. Its neatly ironed creases told him, too: no hard feelings, Champ. Oh, she had the potential to be a pleaser! To be another Queen of My Heart and Carson’s delight. It was there. Carson claimed there wasn’t enough of it. She showed too much inclination for the conservative, the correct, the cautious. In short, she had no genius for casting herself down into the dark well o submission.
    From the bag he carried he drew a package containing one of Suzi’s junk-food favorites: Sno-Balls, concoctions of sweet cream surrounded by chocolate cake covered with a rubbery icing permeated with shredded coconut. The additive list was longer than that of natural ingredients. He opened the package and gave her the pink one. He noticed with great satisfaction that she wolfed it down despite mother’s commands for ladylike nibbling.
    He asked her to play her penny whistle. That brought a brief twinge of discomfort to her poreless face. Her braid rolled against her back as she shook her head.
    “It won’t hurt you to try for the last time, Suzi,” Dr. Charlotte said. “Mr. Gray won’t be coming back again. Please. He did spend so much time with you.”
    So Suzi put the mouthpiece to her talentless though shapely young lips and tried the tune with which the two of 1 them had struggled so: “This Land Is Your Land.” As always, she went flat here and there. Her only true talent was j to disappoint. He sent the child off to girlish goings-on, 1 toasted futures with her mother. He nearly persuaded her to take sorbet from his spoon and a cookie from his hand. I “Sometimes they put themself in danger to take bread at my hand.” Champ remembered Thomas Wyatt’s words with a cunning curl of lower lip. Charge her wavering to the Pinot Chardonnay grape from the Zone de la Marne that had loosened stronger resolves than hers and undermined generations of pious virgins.
    When the time was right he rose from the small table and moved toward her, smiling, a telling quip on his lips.
    Somehow she knew. Instinct. How do mosquitoes know where the skin is thin?
    “Chuck! I need you. Now!” She rose, too, chair toppling. She turned expectantly toward the door to the first-level stairs.
    He moved swiftly to cut her off from the other room exit.
    “Chuck! Now!”
    She rushed to the door, checking the lock knob, fearing she had forgotten to clear it. Finding it unlocked, she jerked the door open.
    It hadn’t been easy to prop Mr. Shoulders up against the