All the Flowers Are Dying by Lawrence Block

mustache with thumb and forefinger.
    His shoes aren’t dirty, but they could use polishing. Is there a bootblack within fifty miles? He rather doubts it. But when he picked up the ice cream at the Circle K (and he’d bought two pints, not one, and ate them both) he’d also picked up a flat tin of Kiwi black shoe polish.
    Some motel amenities include a disposable cloth for polishing your shoes, provided less for the guest’s convenience than to save the hotel’s towels. This Days Inn has been remiss, and it’s their loss. He uses a wash-cloth to apply the polish, a hand towel to buff it to a high sheen.
    Before he leaves, he uses another towel to wipe surfaces he may have touched. It’s not his habit to touch things unnecessarily, and there’s not going to be anyone dusting his room for prints, but this is the sort of thing he does routinely, and why not? He’s got plenty of time, and it’s never a mistake to take precautions. Better safe than sorry.
    He boots up his computer a final time, logs on, checks his e-mail. Vis its the several Usenet newsgroups to which he subscribes, reads a few entries. There’s been a flurry of activity in a thread dealing with the impending execution of Preston Applewhite, and he catches up on the new posts. He finds a few provocative observations, tucked in among the usual predictable cries of outrage from the diehard foes of capital punishment, balanced by the cheers of death penalty fans whose only regret is that the proceedings won’t be televised
.
    Pay-per-view, he thinks. Just a matter of time.
    He logs off, finishes packing, leaves the motel by the rear door. No need to check out, as they took an imprint of his credit card. Nor is there any need to return the plastic key card. He’s read that a lot of information is automatically coded into the card, that one could in theory use it to reconstruct a guest’s entrances and exits. He’s not sure this is actually true, and even if it were, he knows the cards are automatically recycled, their coded data erased forever when they’re reprogrammed for another guest and another room. But why leave anything to chance? He’ll bring the key along and discard it in another state.
     
     
    It’s twenty minutes past ten when he pulls up at the penitentiary gate- house, where the guard recognizes him and welcomes him with a grim smile. He parks in what has become his usual spot, checks himself in the mirror, smoothes his mustache, and walks to the entrance. The sun is high in a virtually cloudless sky, and there’s no breeze. It’s going to be a hot day.
    But not inside, where climate controls keep the air cool and dry year-round. He passes through the metal detector, shows his ID to men who already know him by sight, and is escorted to the little room where witnesses sit to view the application of society’s ultimate sanction.
    He’s ushered into the room at ten-forty-five, a full hour and a quarter before the proceedings are scheduled to begin, and there are already half a dozen people present, four men and two women. One man a few years his junior, wearing a shirt and tie but no jacket, makes conversational overtures. He’s sure the man is a journalist, and he doesn’t want to talk to him, or indeed to anyone. He dismisses the man with a shake of his head.
    There is, he’s surprised to note, a refreshment table laid out for the spectators, with a coffee urn and a pitcher of iced tea, along with a plate of doughnuts and another of corn and bran muffins. He doesn’t want to eat anything, the whole idea is faintly distasteful, but does help himself to a cup of coffee
.
    And takes a chair. There are no bad seats; the viewing gallery is long and narrow, with every chair adjacent to the big plate-glass window. He’s struck immediately by how close they are to what they’re going to watch. But for the intervening glass, they’d be able to smell the breath of the attending physician, and the fear of his unfortunate patient.
    The