rnor of Mississippi was assassinated yesterday, at Miami
Beach," Wolf said.

"Ah," Malone said. He thought about it for a second. "Frankly," he
said, "this does not strike me as an irreparable loss to the nation.
Not even to Mississippi."

"You express my views precisely," Wolf said.

"How about the killer?" Malone said. "I gather they haven't got him
yet, or Burris wouldn't be on his way down."

"No," Wolf said. "The killer would be on his way here instead. They
haven't got him, Malone. It seems Governor Flarion was walking along
Collins Avenue when somebody fired at him, using a high-powered rifle
with, I guess, a scope sight."

"Professional," Malone commented.

"It looks like it," Wolf said. "Nobody even heard the sniper's shot;
the governor just fell over, right there in the street. And by the
time his bodyguards found out what had happened, it was impossible
even to be sure just which way he was facing when the shot had been
fired."

"And, as I remember Collins Avenue--" Malone started.

"Right," Wolf said. "Out where Governor Flarion was taking his stroll,
there's an awful lot of it to search. The boys are trying to find
somebody who might have seen a man acting suspicious in any of the
nearby buildings, or heard a shot, or seen anybody at all lurking or
loitering anywhere remotely close to the scene."

"Lovely," Malone said. "Sounds like a nice complicated job."

"You don't know the half of it," Wolf said. "There's also the Miami
Beach Chamber of Commerce. According to them, Flarion died of a heart
attack, and not even in Miami Beach. The bullet and the body are
supposed to be written off as just coincidences, to keep the fair name
of Miami Beach unsullied."

"All I can say," Malone offered, "is good luck. This is the saddest
day in American history since the assassination of Huey P. Long."

"Agreed," Wolf said. "Want me to tell Burris you called?"

"Right," Malone said. He flicked off.

Now, he asked himself, how did the assassination of Governor Nemours
P. Flarion fit in with anything? Granted, good old Nemours P. had been
a horrible mistake, a paranoid, self-centered, would-be dictator whose
talents as a rabble-rouser and a fearmonger had somehow managed to get
him elected to a governorship. Certainly nobody felt particularly
unhappy about his death. But he wouldn't fit into the pattern. Malone
reminded himself that that was one more thing he had to find out when
he got the chance.

The tr