Hit Man

by Lawrence Block

  Which, of course, was where Keller came in, and why he was sitting in an Avis car across the street from the fat man’s estate. And was it right to call it that? Where did you draw the line between a house and an estate? What was the yardstick, size or value? He thought about it, and decided it was probably some sort of combination of the two. A brownstone on East Sixty-sixth Street was just a house, not an estate, even if it was worth five or ten times as much as the fat man’s spread. On the other hand, a double-wide trailer could sit on fifteen or twenty acres of land without making the cut as an estate.

  He was pondering the point when his wristwatch beeped, reminding him the security patrol was due in five minutes or so. He turned the key in the ignition, took a last wistful look at the fat man’s house (or estate) across the road, and pulled away from the curb.

  In his motel room, Keller put on the television set and worked his way around the dial without leaving his chair. Lately, he’d noticed, most of the decent motels had remote controls for their TV sets. For a while there you’d get the remote bolted to the top of the bedside table, but that was only handy if you happened to be sitting up in bed watching. Otherwise it was a pain in the neck. If you had to get up and walk over to the bed to change the channel or mute the commercial, you might as well just walk over to the set.

  It was to prevent theft, of course. A free-floating remote could float right into a guest’s suitcase, never to be seen again. Table lamps were bolted down in the same fashion, and television sets, too. But that was pretty much okay. You didn’t mind being unable to move the lamp around, or the TV. The remote was something else again. You might as well bolt down the towels.

  He turned off the set. It might be easy to change channels now, but it was harder than ever to find anything he wanted to see. He picked up a magazine, thumbed through it. This was his fourth night at this particular motel, and he still hadn’t figured out a good way to kill the fat man. There had to be a way, there was always a way, but he hadn’t found it yet.

  Suppose he had a house like the fat man’s. Generally he fantasized about houses he could afford to buy, lives he could imagine himself living. He had enough money salted away so that he could buy an unassuming house somewhere and pay cash for it, but he couldn’t even scrape up the down payment for a spread like the fat man’s. (Could you call it that—a spread? And what exactly was a spread? How did it compare to an estate? Was the distinction geographical, with estates in the Northeast and spreads south and west?)

  Still, say he had the money, not just to swing the deal but to cover the upkeep as well. Say he won the lottery, say he could afford the gardener and a live-in maid and whatever else you had to have. Would he enjoy it, walking from room to room, admiring the paintings on the walls, luxuriating in the depth of the carpets? Would he like strolling in the garden, listening to the birds, smelling the flowers?

  Nelson might like it, he thought. Romping on a lawn like that.

  He sat there for a moment, shaking his head. Then he switched chairs and reached for the phone.

  He called his own number in New York, got his machine. “You. Have. Six. Messages,” it told him, and played them for him. The first five turned out to be wordless hangups. The sixth was a voice he knew.

  “Hey there, E.T. Call home.”

  * * *

  He made the call from a pay phone a quarter-mile down the highway. Dot answered, and her voice brightened when she recognized his.

  “There you are,” she said. “I called and called.”

  “There was only the one message.”

  “I didn’t want to leave one. I figured I’d tell What’s-her-name.”

  “Andria.”

  “Right, and she’d pass the word to you when you called in. But she never picked up. She must be walking that dog of yours to the Bronx and back.”

  “I guess.”

  “So I left a message, and here we are, chatting away like old friends. I don’t suppose you did what you went there to do.”

  “It’s not as quick and easy as it might be,” he said. “It’s taking time.”

  “Other words, our friend’s still got a pulse.”

  “Or else he’s learned to walk around without one.”

  “Well,” she said, “I’m glad to hear it. You know what I think you should do, Keller? I think you should check out of that motel and get on a plane.”

  “And come home?”

  “Got it in one, Keller, but then you were always quick.”

  “The client canceled?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then—”

  “Fly home,” she said, “and then catch a train to White Plains, and I’ll pour you a nice glass of iced tea. And I’ll explain all.”

  It wasn’t iced tea, it was lemonade. He sat in a wicker chair on the wraparound porch of the big house on Taunton Place sipping a big glass of it. Dot, wearing a blue and white housedress and a pair of white flip-flops, perched on the wooden railing.

  “I just got those the day before yesterday,” she said, pointing. “Wind chimes. I was watching QVC and they caught me in a weak moment.”

  “It could have been a Pocket Fisherman.”

  “It might as well be,” she said, “for all the breeze we’ve been getting. But how do you like this for coincidence, Keller? There you are, off doing a job in Cincinnati, and we get a call, another client with a job just down your street.”

  “Down my street?”

  “Or up your alley. I think it’s a Briticism, down your street, but we’re in America, so the hell with it. It’s up your alley.”

  “If you say so.”

  “And you’ll never guess where this second caller lives.”

  “Cincinnati,” he said.

  “Give the man a cigar.”

  He frowned. “So there’s two jobs in the same metropolitan area,” he said. “That would be a reason to do them both in one trip, assuming it was possible. Save airfare, I suppose, if that matters. Save finding a room and settling in. Instead I’m back here with neither job done, which doesn’t make sense. So there’s more to it.”

  “Give the man a cigar and light it for him.”

  “Puff puff,” Keller said. “The jobs are connected somehow, and I’d better know all about it up front or I might step on my own whatsit.”

  “And we wouldn’t want anything to happen to your whatsit.”

  “Right. What’s the connection? Same client for both jobs?”

  She shook her head.

  “Different clients. Same target? Did the fat man manage to piss off two different people to the point where they both called us within days of each other?”

  “Be something, wouldn’t it?”

  “Well, pissing people off is like anything else,” he said. “Certain people have a knack for it. But that’s not it.”

  “No.”

  “Different targets.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Different targets, different clients. Same time, same place, but everything else is different. So? Help me out on this, Dot. I’m not getting anywhere.”

  “Keller,” she said, “you’re doing fine.”

  “Four people, all of them different. The fat man and the guy who hired us to hit him, and target number two and client number two, and. . . ”

  “Is day beginning to break? Is light beginning to dawn?”

  “The fat man wants to hire us,” he said. “To kill our original client.”

  “Give the man an exploding cigar.”

  “A hires us to kill B, and B hires us to kill A.”

  “That’s a little algebraic for me, but it makes the point.”

  “The contracts couldn’t have come direct,” he said. “They were brokered, right? Because the fat man’s not a wise guy. He could be a little mobbed up, the way some businessmen are, but he wouldn’t know to call here.”

  “He came through somebody,” Dot agreed.

  “And so did the other guy. Different brokers, of course.” />
  “Of course.”

  “And they both called here.” He raised his eyes significantly to the ceiling. “And what did he do, Dot? Say yes to both of them?”

  “That’s what he did.”

  “Why, for God’s sake? We’ve already got a client, we can’t take an assignment to kill him, especially from somebody we’ve already agreed to take out.”

  “The ethics of the situation bother you, Keller?”

  “This is good,” he said, brandishing the lemonade. “This from a mix or what?”

  “Homemade. Real lemons, real sugar.”

  “Makes a difference,” he said. “Ethics? What do I know about ethics? It’s just no way to do business, that’s all. What’s the broker going to think?”

  “Which broker?”

  “The one whose client gets killed. What’s he going to say?”

  “What would you have done, Keller? If you were him, and you got the second call days after the first one.”

  He thought about it. “I’d say I haven’t got anybody available at the moment, but I should have a good man in about two weeks, when he gets back from Aruba.”

  “Aruba?”

  “Wherever. Then, after the fat man’s toast and I’ve been back a week, say, you call back and ask if the contract’s still open. And he says something like, ‘No, the client changed his mind.’ Even if he guesses who popped his guy, it’s all straight and clean and businesslike. Or don’t you agree?”

  “No,” she said. “I agree completely.”

  “But that’s not what he did,” he said, “and I’m surprised. What was his thinking? He afraid of arousing suspicions, something like that?”

  She just looked at him. He met her gaze, and read something in her face, and he got it.

  “Oh, no,” he said.

  “I thought he was getting better,” she said. “I’m not saying there wasn’t a little denial operating, Keller. A little wishing-will-make-it-so.”

  “Understandable.”

  “He had that time when he gave you the wrong room number, but that worked out all right in the end.”

  “For us,” Keller said. “Not for the guy who was in the room.”

  “There’s that,” she allowed. “Then he went into that funk and kept turning down everybody who called. I was thinking maybe a doctor could get him on Prozac.”

  “I don’t know about Prozac. In this line of work . . .”

  “Yeah, I was wondering about that. Depressed is no good, but is mellow any better? It could be counterproductive.”

  “It could be disastrous.”

  “That too,” she said. “And you can’t get him to go to a doctor anyway, so what difference does it make? He’s in a funk, maybe it’s like the weather. A low-pressure front moves in, and it’s all you can do to sit on the porch with an iced tea. Then it blows over, and we get some of that good Canadian air, and it’s like old times again.”

  “Old times.”

  “And yesterday he was on the phone, and then he buzzed me and I took him a cup of coffee. ‘Call Keller,’ he told me. ‘I’ve got some work for him in Cincinnati.’ ”

  “Déjá vu.”

  “You said it, Keller. Déjá vu like never before.”

  Her explanation was elaborate—what the old man said, what she thought he meant, what he really meant, di dah di dah di dah. What it boiled down to was that the original client, one Barry Moncrieff, had been elated that his problems with the fat man were soon to be over, and he’d confided as much to at least one person who couldn’t keep a secret. Word reached the fat man, whose name was Arthur Strang.

  While Moncrieff may have forgotten that loose lips sink ships, Strang evidently remembered that the best defense was a good offense. He made a couple of phone calls, and eventually the phone rang in the house on Taunton Place, and the old man took the call and took the contract.

  When Dot pointed out the complications—i.e., that their new client was already slated for execution, with the fee paid by the man who had just become their new target—it became evident that the old man had forgotten the original deal entirely.

  “He didn’t know you were in Cincinnati,” she explained. “Didn’t have a clue he’d sent you there or anywhere else. For all he knew you were out walking the dog, assuming he remembered you had a dog.”

  “But when you told him. . . ”

  “He didn’t see the problem. I kept explaining it to him, until it hit me what I was doing. I was trying to blow out a light bulb.”

  “Puff puff,” Keller said.

  “You said it. He just wasn’t going to get it. ‘Keller’s a good boy,’ he said. ‘You leave it to Keller. Keller will know what to do.’ ”

  “He said that, huh?”

  “His very words. You look the least bit lost, Keller. Don’t tell me he was wrong.”

  He thought for a moment. “The fat man knows there’s a contract out on him,” he said. “Well, that figures. It would explain why he was so hard to get close to.”

  “If you’d managed,” Dot pointed out, “I’d shrug and say what’s done is done, and let it go at that. But, fortunately or unfortunately, you checked your machine in time.”

  “Fortunately or unfortunately.”

  “Right, and don’t ask me which is which. Easiest thing, you say the word and I call both of the middlemen and tell them we’re out. Our foremost operative broke his leg in a skiing accident and you’d better call somebody else. What’s the matter?”

  “Skiing? This time of year?”

  “In Chile, Keller. Use your imagination. Anyway, we’re out of it.”

  “Maybe that’s best.”

  “Not from a dollars-and-cents standpoint. No money for you, and refunds for both clients, who’ll either look elsewhere or be reduced to shooting each other. I hate to give money back once it’s been paid.”

  “What did they do, pay half in front?”

  “Uh-huh. Usual system.”

  He frowned, trying to work it out. “Go home,” she said. “Pet Andria and give Nelson a kiss, or is it the other way around? Sleep on it and let me know what you decide.”

  He took the train to Grand Central and walked home, rode up in the elevator, used his key in the lock. The apartment was dark and quiet, just as he’d left it. Nelson’s dish was in a corner of the kitchen. Keller looked at it and felt like a Gold Star Mother, keeping her son’s room exactly as he had left it. He knew he ought to put the dish away or chuck it out altogether, but he didn’t have the heart.

  He unpacked and showered, then went around the corner for a beer and a burger. He took a walk afterward, but it wasn’t much fun. He went back to the apartment and called the airlines. Then he packed again and caught a cab to JFK.

  He phoned White Plains while he waited for them to call his flight. “On my way,” he told Dot.

  “You continue to surprise me, Keller,” she said. “I thought for sure you’d stay the night.”

  “No reason to.”

  There was a pause. Then she said, “Keller? Is something wrong?”

  “Andria left,” he said, surprising himself. He hadn’t intended to say anything. Eventually, sure, but not just yet.

  “That’s too bad,” Dot said. “I thought the two of you were happy.”

  “So did I.”

  “Oh.”

  “She has to find herself,” Keller said.

  “You know, I’ve heard people say that, and I never know what the hell they’re talking about. How would you lose yourself in the first place? And how would you know where to look for yourself?”

  “I wondered that myself.”

  “Of course she’s awfully young, Keller.”

  “Right.”

  “Too young for you, some would say.”

  “Some would.”

  “Still, you probably miss her. Not to mention Nelson.”

  “I miss them both,” he said.

  “I mean you both must miss her,” Dot said. “Wait a minute. What did you just say?”<
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  “They just called my flight,” he said, and broke the connection.

  Cincinnati’s airport was across the river in Kentucky. Keller had turned in his Avis car that morning, and thought it might seem strange if he went back to the same counter for another one. He went to Budget instead, and got a Honda.

  “It’s a Japanese car,” the clerk told him, “but it’s actually produced right here in the US of A.”

  “That’s a load off my mind,” Keller told him.

  He checked into a motel half a mile from the previous one and called in from a restaurant pay phone. He had a batch of questions, things he needed to know about Barry Moncrieff, the fellow who was at once Client #1 and Assignment #2. Dot, instead of answering, asked him a question of her own.

  “What do you mean, you miss them both? Where’s the dog?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She ran off with your dog? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “They went off together,” he said. “Nobody was running.”

  “Fine, she walked off with your dog. I guess she figured she needed him to help her go look for herself. What did she do, skip town while you were in Cincinnati?”

  “Earlier,” he said. “And she didn’t skip town. We talked about it, and she said she thought it would be best if she took Nelson with her.”

  “And you agreed?”

  “More or less.”

  “ ‘More or less’? What does that mean?”

  “I’ve often wondered myself. She said I don’t really have time for him, and I travel a lot, and. . . I don’t know.”

  “But he was your dog long before you even met her. You hired her to walk him when you were out of town.”

  “Right.”

  “And one thing led to another, and she wound up living there. And the next thing you know she’s telling you it’s best if the dog goes with her.”

  “Right.”