WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

member of some other sect that took great pains to cloak the female figure in

garments that would not lead a man into temptation.

He and Einstein continued their walk through the park. Later, they went to the

beach, where the retriever seemed astounded by the endless vistas of rolling sea

and by the breakers foaming on the sand. He repeatedly stopped to stare out at

the ocean for a minute or two at a time, and he frolicked happily in the surf.

Later still, back at the house, Travis tried to interest Einstein in the books

that had caused such excitement last evening, hoping this time to be able to

figure out what the dog expected to find in them. Einstein sniffed without

interest at the volumes Travis brought to him—and yawned.

Throughout the afternoon, the memory of Nora Devon returned to Travis with

surprising frequency and vividness. She did not require alluring clothes to

capture a man’s interest. That face and those green-flecked gray eyes were

enough.

3

After only a few hours of deep sleep, Vincent Nasco took an early-morning flight

to Acapulco, Mexico. He checked into a huge bayfront hotel, a gleaming but

soulless high-rise where everything was glass, concrete, and terrazzo. After he

had changed into ventilated white Top-Siders, white cotton pants, and a

pale-blue Ban-Lon shirt, he went looking for Dr. Lawton Haines.

Haines was vacationing in Acapulco. He was thirty-nine years old, five-eleven,

one hundred and sixty pounds, with unruly dark brown hair, and he was purported

to look like Al Pacino, except that he had a red birthmark the size of a

half-dollar on his forehead. He came to Acapulco at least twice a year, always

stayed at the elegant Hotel Las Brisas on the headland at the eastern end of the

bay, and frequently enjoyed long lunches at a restaurant adjacent to the Hotel

Caleta, which he favored for its margaritas and its view of Playa de Caleta.

By twelve-twenty in the afternoon, Vince was seated in a rattan chair with

comfortable yellow and green cushions at a table by the windows in that same

restaurant. He’d spotted Haines on entering. The doctor was at another window

table, three away from Vince, half-screened by a potted palm. Haines was eating

shrimp and drinking margaritas with a stunning blonde. She was wearing white

slacks and a gaily striped tube-top, and half the men in the place were staring

at her.

As far as Vince was concerned, Haines looked more like Dustin Hoffman than like

Pacino. He had those bold features of Hoffman’s, including the nose. Otherwise,

he was exactly as he’d been described. The guy was wearing pink Cotton trousers

and a pale-yellow shirt and white sandals, which seemed, to Vince, to be taking

tropical resort attire to an extreme.

Vince finished a lunch of albondiga soup, seafood enchiladas in salsa verde, and

a nonalcoholic margarita, and paid the check by the time Haines and the blonde

were ready to leave.

The blonde drove a red Porsche. Vince followed in a rental Ford, which had too

many miles on it, rattled with the exuberance of percussion instruments in a

mariachi band, and had fragrant moldy carpet.

At Las Brisas, the blonde dropped Haines in the parking lot, though not until

they stood beside her car for at least five minutes, holding each other’s asses

and soul-kissing in broad daylight.

Vince was dismayed. He expected Haines to have a stronger sense of propriety.

After all, the man had a doctorate. If educated people did not uphold

traditional standards of conduct, who would? Weren’t they teaching manners and

deportment in the universities these days? No wonder the world got ruder and

cruder every year.

The blonde departed in her Porsche, and Haines left the lot in a white Mercedes

560 SL sports coupe. It sure wasn’t a rental, and Vince wondered where the

doctor had gotten it.

Haines checked his car with the valet at another hotel, as did Vince. He tailed

the doctor through the lobby, out to the beach, where at first they seemed

embarked on an uneventful stroll along the shore. But Haines settled down beside

a gorgeous Mexican girl in a string bikini. She was dark, superbly proportioned,

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