THE tableau seemed gruesomely familiar: the flags and fustian, the candidate prowing through crowds attended by hard-eyed men not quite in control, the people reaching out to touch him. Then, abruptly, the little black gun exploding like a birthday-party favor—pap pap pap pap pap in a smudge of gunsmoke. The candidate would capsize backward, the cameras would catch a wild, stricken frieze as his young wife knelt over him, staining her suit with his blood, and the bodyguards, an instant too late, would wrestle down some strange little drifter with a pistol welded...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
