Hit Man

by Lawrence Block

  “Well,” he said. “Goodnight, Yvonne.”

  She seemed for a moment to be surprised at being left unkissed, but she got over it quickly. “Yes, good-night,” she said, reaching for his hand, giving it a comradely squeeze. “Goodnight, John.”

  Goodnight forever, he thought, walking downtown on Second Avenue. He wouldn’t call her again, nor would she expect his call. All they had in common was a disdain for Northern European cooking, and that wasn’t much of a foundation for a relationship. The chemistry just wasn’t there. She was attractive, but there was no connection between them, no spark.

  That happened a lot, actually.

  Halfway home, he stopped in a First Avenue bar. He’d had a little wine with dinner, and he wanted a clear head in the morning, so he didn’t stay long, just nursed a beer and listened to the jukebox and looked at himself in the backbar mirror.

  What a lonesome son of a bitch you are, he told his reflection.

  Time to go home, when you started having thoughts like that. But he didn’t want to get home until Andria had turned in for the night, and who knew what kind of hours she kept? He stayed where he was and sipped his beer, and he made another stop along the way for a cup of coffee.

  When he did get home the apartment was dark. Andria was on the sofa, either asleep or faking it. Nelson, curled into a ball at her feet, got up, shook himself, and trotted silently to Keller’s side. Keller went on into the bedroom, Nelson following. When Keller closed the bedroom door, the dog made an uncharacteristic sound deep in his throat. Keller didn’t know what the sound meant, but he figured it had something to do with the door being closed, and Andria being on the other side of it.

  He got into bed. The dog stood in front of the closed door, as if waiting for it to open. “Here, boy,” Keller said. The dog turned to look at him. “Here, Nelson,” he said, and the dog jumped onto the bed, turned around in a circle the ritualistic three times, and lay down in his usual spot. It seemed to Keller as though he didn’t have his heart in it, but he was asleep in no time. So, eventually, was Keller.

  When he woke up the dog was missing. So was Andria, and so was the leash. Keller was shaved and dressed and out the door before they returned. He got a cab to La Guardia and was there in plenty of time for his flight to St. Louis.

  He rented a Ford Tempo from Hertz and let the girl trace the route to the Sheraton on the map. “It’s the turn right after the mall,” she said helpfully. He took the exit for the mall and found a parking place, taking careful note of where it was so he could find it again. Once, a couple of years ago, he had parked a rental car at a mall in suburban Detroit without paying attention to where he’d parked it or what it looked like. For all he knew it was still there.

  He walked through the mall, looking for a sporting goods store with a selection of hunting knives. There was probably one to be found; they had everything else, including several jewelry stores to catch anyone who hadn’t gotten her fill of cubic zirconium on television. But he came to a Hoffritz store first and the kitchen knives caught his eye. He picked out a boning knife with a five-inch blade.

  He could have brought his own knife, but that would have meant checking a bag, and he never did that if he could help it. Easy enough to buy what you needed at the scene. The hardest part was convincing the clerk he didn’t want the rest of the set, and ignoring the sales pitch assuring him the knife wouldn’t need sharpening for years. He was only going to use it once, for God’s sake.

  * * *

  He found the Ford, found the Sheraton, found a parking place, and left his overnight bag in the trunk. It would have been nice if the knife had come with a sheath, but kitchen knives rarely do, so he’d been moved to improvise, lifting a cardboard mailing envelope from a Federal Express drop box at the mall entrance. He walked into the hotel lobby with the mailer under his arm and the knife snug inside it.

  That gave him an idea.

  He checked the slip of paper in his wallet. St. Louis, Sheraton, Rm. 314.

  “Man’s a union official,” the old man in White Plains had told him. “Some people are afraid he might tell what he knows.”

  Just recently some people at a funded drug rehabilitation project in the Bronx had been afraid their accountant might tell what she knew, so they paid a pair of teenagers $150 to kill her. The two of them picked her up leaving the office, walked down the street behind her, and after a two-block stroll the sixteen-year-old shot her in the head. Within twenty-four hours they were in custody, and two days later so was the genius who hired them.

  Keller figured you got what you paid for.

  He went over to the house phone and dialed 314. It rang almost long enough to convince him the room was empty. Then a man picked up and said, “Yeah?”

  “FedEx,” Keller said.

  “Huh?”

  “Federal Express. Got a delivery for you.”

  “That’s crazy,” the man said.

  “Room 314, right? I’ll be right up.”

  The man protested that he wasn’t expecting anything, but Keller hung up on him in mid-sentence and got the elevator to the third floor. The halls were empty. He found room 314 and knocked briskly on the door. “FedEx,” he sang out. “Delivery.”

  Some muffled sounds came through the door. Then silence, and he was about to knock again when the man said, “What the hell is this?”

  “Parcel for you,” he said. “Federal Express.”

  “Can’t be,” the man said. “You got the wrong room.”

  “Room 314. That’s what it says, on the package and on the door.”

  “Well, there’s a mistake. Nobody knows I’m here.” That’s what you think, thought Keller. “Who’s it addressed to?”

  Who indeed? “Can’t make it out.”

  “Who’s it from, then?”

  “Can’t make that out, either,” Keller said. “That whole line’s screwed up, sender’s name and recipient’s name, but it says room 314 at the Sheraton, so that’s got to be you, right?”

  “Ridiculous,” the man said. “It’s not for me and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Well, suppose you sign for it,” Keller suggested, “and you take a look what’s in it, and if it’s really not for you you can drop it at the desk later, or call us and we’ll pick it up.”

  “Just leave it outside the door, will you?”

  “Can’t,” Keller said. “It needs a signature.”

  “Then take it back, because I don’t want it.”

  “You want to refuse it?”

  “Very good,” the man said. “You’re a quick study, aren’t you? Yes, by God, I want to refuse it.”

  “Fine with me,” Keller said. “But I still need a signature. You just check where it says ‘Refused’ and sign by the X.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” the man said, “is that the only way I’m going to get rid of you?”

  He unfastened the chain, turned the knob, and opened the door a crack. “Let me show you where to sign,” Keller said, displaying the envelope, and the door opened a little more to show a tall, balding man, heavyset, and unclothed but for a hotel towel wrapped around his middle. He reached out for the envelope, and Keller pushed into the room, boning knife in hand, and drove the blade in beneath the lower ribs, angling upward toward the heart.

  The man fell backward and lay sprawled out on the carpet at the foot of the unmade king-size bed. The room was a mess, Keller noted, with an open bottle of scotch on the dresser and an unfinished drink on each of the bedside tables. There were clothes tossed here and there, his clothes, her clothes—

  Her clothes?

  Keller’s eyes went to the closed bathroom door. Jesus, he thought. Time to get the hell out. Take the knife, pick up the FedEx envelope, and—

  The bathroom door opened. “Harry?” she said. “What on earth is—”

  And she saw Keller. Looked right at him, saw his face.

  Any second now she’d scream.

  “It’s his heart,” Keller cried. “
Come here, you’ve got to help me.”

  She didn’t get it, but there was Harry on the floor, and here was this nice-looking fellow in a suit, moving toward her, saying things about CPR and ambulance services, speaking reassuringly in a low and level voice. She didn’t quite get it, but she didn’t scream, either, and in no time at all Keller was close enough to get a hand on her.

  She wasn’t part of the deal, but she was there, and she couldn’t have stayed in the bathroom where she belonged, oh no, not her, the silly bitch, she had to go and open the door, and she’d seen his face, and that was that.

  The boning knife, washed clean of blood, wiped clean of prints, went into a storm drain a mile or two from the hotel. The FedEx mailer, torn in half and in half again, went into a trash can at the airport. The Tempo went back to Hertz, and Keller, paying cash, went on American to Chicago. He had a long late lunch at a surprisingly good restaurant in O’Hare Airport, then bought a ticket on a United flight that would put him down at La Guardia well after rush-hour traffic had subsided. He killed time in a cocktail lounge with a window from which you could watch takeoffs and landings. Keller did that for a while, sipping an Australian lager, and then he shifted his attention to the television set, where Oprah Winfrey was talking with six dwarfs. The volume was set inaudibly low, which was probably just as well. Now and then the camera panned the audience, which seemed to contain a disproportionate number of small people. Keller watched, fascinated, and refused to make any Snow White jokes, not even to himself.

  He wondered if it was a mistake to go back to New York the same day. What would Andria think?

  Well, he’d told her his business might not take him long. Besides, what difference did it make what she thought?

  * * *

  He had another Australian lager and watched some more planes take off. On the plane he drank coffee and ate the two little packets of peanuts. Back at La Guardia he stopped at the first phone and called White Plains.

  “That was fast,” Dot said.

  “Piece of cake,” he told her.

  He caught a cab, told the driver to take the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, and coached him on how to find it. At his apartment, he rang the bell a couple of times before using his key. Nelson and Andria were out. Perhaps they’d been out all day, he thought. Perhaps he’d gone to St. Louis and killed two people while the girl and his dog had been engaged in a single endless walk.

  He made himself a sandwich and turned on the television set. Channel hopping, he wound up transfixed by an offering of sports collectibles on one of the home shopping channels. Balls, bats, helmets, caps, shirts, all of them autographed by athletes and accompanied by certificates of authenticity, the certificates themselves suitable for framing. Cubic zirconium for guys, he thought.

  “When you hear the words blue chip,” the host was saying, “what are you thinking? I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking Mickey Mantle.”

  Keller wasn’t sure what he thought of when he heard the words blue chip, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t Mickey Mantle. He was working on that one when Nelson came bounding into the room, with Andria behind him.

  “When I heard the TV,” she said, “my first thought was I must have left it on, but I never even turned it on in the first place, so how could that be? And then I thought maybe there was a break-in, but why would a burglar turn on the television set? They don’t watch them, they steal them.”

  “I should have called from the airport,” Keller said. “I didn’t think of it.”

  “What happened? Was your flight canceled?”

  “No, I made the trip,” he said. “But the business hardly took me any time at all.”

  “Wow,” she said. “Well, Nelson and I had our usual outstanding time. He’s such a pleasure to walk.”

  “He’s well behaved,” Keller agreed.

  “It’s not just that. He’s enthusiastic.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “He feels so good about everything,” she said, “that you feel good being with him. And he really takes an interest. I took him along when I went to water the plants and feed the fish at this apartment on Park Avenue. The people are in Sardinia. Have you ever been there?”

  “No.”

  “Neither have I, but I’d like to go sometime. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I never thought about it.”

  “Anyway, you should have seen Nelson staring at the aquarium, watching the fish swim back and forth. If you ever want to get one, I’d help you set it up. But I would recommend that you stick with freshwater. Those saltwater tanks are a real headache to maintain.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  She bent over to pet the dog, then straightened up. She said, “Can I ask you something? Is it all right if I stay here tonight?”

  “Of course. I more or less figured you would.”

  “Well, I wasn’t sure, and it’s a little late to make other arrangements. But I thought you might want to be alone after your trip and—”

  “I wasn’t gone that long.”

  “You’re sure it’s all right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  They watched television together, drinking cups of hot chocolate that Andria made. When the program ended Keller took Nelson for a late walk. “Do you really want a fish tank?” he asked the dog. “If I can have a television set, I suppose you ought to be able to have a fish tank. But would you watch it after the first week or so? Or would you get bored with it?”

  That was the thing about dogs, he thought. They didn’t get bored the way people did.

  After a couple of blocks he found himself talking to Nelson about what had happened in St. Louis. “They didn’t say anything about a woman,” he said. “I bet she wasn’t registered. I don’t think she was his wife, so I guess she wasn’t officially there. That’s why he sent her to the bathroom before he opened the door, and why he didn’t want to open the door in the first place. If she’d stayed in the bathroom another minute—”

  But suppose she had? She’d have been screaming her head off before Keller was out of the hotel, and she’d have been able to give a certain amount of information to the police. How the killer had gained access to the room, for a starter.

  Just as well things had gone the way they did, he decided. But it still rankled. They hadn’t said anything at all about a woman.

  There was only one bathroom. Andria used it first. Keller heard the shower running, then nothing until she emerged wearing a generally shapeless garment of pink flannel that covered her from her neck to her ankles. Her toenails were painted, Keller noticed, each a different color.

  Keller showered and put on a robe. Andria was on the sofa, reading a magazine. They said goodnight and he clucked to Nelson, and the dog followed him into the bedroom. When he closed the door the dog made that sound again.

  He shucked the robe, got into bed, patted the bed at his side. Nelson stayed where he was, right in front of the door, and he repeated that sound in his throat, making it the least bit more insistent this time.

  “You want to go out?”

  Nelson wagged his tail, which Keller had to figure for a yes. He opened the door and the dog went into the other room. He closed the door and got back into bed, trying to decide if he was jealous. It struck him that he might not only be jealous of the girl, because Nelson wanted to be with her instead of with him, but he might as easily be jealous of the dog, because he got to sleep with Andria and Keller didn’t.

  Little pink toes, each with the nail painted a different color. . .

  He was still sorting it out when the door opened and the dog trotted in. “He wants to be with you,” Andria said, and she drew the door shut before Keller could frame a response.

  But did he? The animal didn’t seem to know what he wanted. He sprang onto Keller’s bed, turned around once, twice, and then leaped onto the floor and went over to the door. He made that noise again, but this time it sounded plaintive.

  Keller got up and opened the door
. Nelson moved into the doorway, half in and half out of the room. Keller leaned into the doorway himself and said, “I think the closed door bothers him. Suppose I leave it open?”

  “Sure.”

  He left the door ajar and went back to bed. Nelson seized the opportunity and went on into the living room. Moments later he was back in the bedroom. Moments after that he was on his way to the living room. Why, Keller wondered, was the dog behaving like an expectant father in a maternity ward waiting room? What was all this back-and-forth business about?

  Keller closed his eyes, feeling as far from sleep as he was from Sardinia. Why, he wondered, did Andria want to go there? For the sardines? Then she could stop at Corsica for a corset, and head on to Elba for the macaroni. And Malta for the falcons, and Crete for the cretins, and—

  He was just getting drifty when the dog came back.

  “Nelson,” he said, “what the hell’s the matter with you? Huh?” He reached down and scratched the dog behind an ear. “You’re a good boy,” he said. “Oh yes, you’re a good boy, but you’re nuts.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  He sat up in bed. It was Andria, of course, and the door was open; she had knocked to get his attention. “He just can’t decide who he wants to be with,” she said. “Maybe I should just pack my things and go.”

  “No,” he said. He didn’t want her to go. “No, don’t go,” he said.

  “Then maybe I should stay.”

  She came on into the room. She had turned on a lamp in the living room before she came in, but the back lighting was not revealing. The pink flannel thing was opaque, and Keller couldn’t tell anything about her body. Then, in a single motion, she drew the garment over her head and cast it aside, and now he could tell everything about her body.