BAD TWIN - CHAPTER 1

Excerpted from BAD TWIN by Gary Troup. Copyright © 2006 Gary Troup. All rights reserved. Available wherever books are sold. 1    “Maybe later. I’d really like to hit some serves. Little rusty.”    “Sure, sure. Have a good hit.”    With that, the clerk gestured beyond the little pro shop to the tennis courts. And Paul Artisan, whom no one knew from Adam, and who had a 9 mm pistol nestled in his tennis bag, went out to find his quarry.    He had no doubt she’d be there. The papers from her own lawsuit confirmed she was a member of this club; one of her lies was that she could no longer use the facilities for which she’d already paid. She had a doubles game at 10 a.m. Ryan the teaching pro had in all innocence confirmed that when Artisan told him he wanted to schedule his lesson so he could say hello to her, as she was a friend of a friend. Didn’t people realize how easy they were to find, how readily they could get nailed?    The tennis courts were arranged in a double row, with low wooden bleachers in between. Artisan strolled down the middle aisle, glancing left and right. There was a fair bit of suburban tennis going on; it wasn’t pretty. Bandy old men with giant racquets, slicing and dicing and making bad calls. Matronly foursomes sending lob after lob into the humid Jersey sky. As at every club, a macho guy in too-tight shorts, trying to play like he’d seen on television.    Sally Handler’s court was the last one on the left. Very casually, Artisan sat down on the bleachers that faced it. The women briefly looked up at him. Idle curiosity: a new man at the club. Then they went back to their game. Artisan put his tennis bag on the bench beside him; he partly opened the zipper to the compartment that held the gun.    For a couple minutes he watched them play, and he felt almost bad about what he was about to do. They seemed like nice ladies. They made little jokes between points. There was something sweet and heartbreaking about the little pleated skirts encircling tummies that were no longer flat; about the pastel bloomers stretching around soft thighs struggling to run; about the wristbands on plump arms trying so hard to be strong. They were just regular people of a certain age wanting to enjoy their lives. How had one of them turned out to be a would-be criminal? Was her ex-husband a total deadbeat? Was one of her kids in trouble or sick? Had she just messed up with her own investments, put herself in jeopardy of losing the modest privileges and comforts she’d forgotten how to live without? It was sad, but sympathy was a different thing from justice.    Finally it was Sally Handler’s turn to serve. Artisan took his cell phone from his pocket. click to continue