Hit Man

by Lawrence Block

“And away they go.”

  “Right.”

  “And you don’t know where, and you don’t know if they’ll be back.”

  “Right.”

  “When did this happen, Keller?”

  “About a month ago. Maybe a little longer, maybe six weeks.”

  “You never said anything.”

  “No.”

  “I went on about how you should pet him and kiss her, whatever I said, and you didn’t say anything.”

  “I would have gotten around to it sooner or later.”

  They were both silent for a long moment. Then she asked him what he was going to do. About what, he asked.

  “About what? About your dog and your girlfriend.”

  “I thought that’s what you meant,” he said, “but you could have been talking about Moncrieff and Strang. But it’s the same answer all around. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  What it came down to was this. He had a choice to make. It was his decision as to which contract he would fulfill and which he would cancel.

  And how did you decide something like that? Two people wanted his services, and only one could have them. If he were a painting, the answer would be obvious. You’d have an auction, and whoever was willing to make the highest bid would have something pretty to hang over the couch. But you couldn’t have bids in the present instance because the price had already been fixed, and both parties independently had agreed to it. Each had paid half in advance, and when the job was done one of them would pay the additional 50 percent and the other would be technically entitled to a refund, but in no position to claim it.

  So in that sense the contract was potentially more lucrative than usual, paying one and a half times the standard rate. It came out the same no matter how you did it. Kill Moncrieff, and Strang would pay the rest of the money. Kill Strang, and Moncrieff would pay it.

  Which would it be?

  Moncrieff, he thought, had called first. The old man had made a deal with him, and a guarantee of exclusivity was implicit in such an arrangement. When you hired somebody to kill someone, you didn’t require assurance that he wouldn’t hire on to kill you as well. That went without saying.

  So their initial commitment was to Moncrieff, and any arrangements made with Strang ought to be null and void. Money from Strang wasn’t really a retainer, it came more under the heading of windfall profits, and needn’t weigh in the balance. You could even argue that taking Strang’s advance payment was a perfectly legitimate tactical move, designed to lull the quarry into a feeling of false security, thus making him easier to get to.

  On the other hand. . .

  On the other hand, if Moncrieff had just kept his damned mouth shut, Strang wouldn’t have been forewarned, and consequently forearmed. It was Moncrieff, running his mouth about his plans to do the fat man in, that had induced Strang to call somebody, who called somebody else, who wound up talking to the old man in White Plains.

  And it was Moncrieff’s blabbing that had made Strang such an elusive target. Otherwise it would have been easy to get to the fat man, and by now Keller would have long since completed the assignment. Instead of sitting all by himself in a motel on the outskirts of Cincinnati, he could be sitting all by himself in an apartment on First Avenue.

  Moncrieff, loose of lip, had sunk his own ship. Moncrieff, unable to keep a secret, had sabotaged the very contract he had been so quick to arrange. Couldn’t you argue that his actions, with their unfortunate results, had served to nullify the contract? In which case the old man was more than justified in retaining his deposit while accepting a counterproposal from another interested party.

  Which meant that the thing to do was regard the fat man as the bona fide client and Moncrieff (fat or lean, tall or short, Keller didn’t know which) as the proper quarry.

  On the other hand . . .

  * * *

  Moncrieff had a penthouse apartment atop a high-rise not far from Riverfront Stadium. The Reds were in town for a home stand, and Keller bought a ticket and an inexpensive pair of field glasses and went to watch them. His seat was out in right field, remote enough that he wasn’t the only one with binoculars. Near him sat a father and son, both of whom had brought gloves in the hope of catching a foul ball. Neither pitcher had his stuff, and both teams hit a lot of long balls, but the kid and his father only got excited when somebody hit a long foul to right.

  Keller wondered about that. If what they wanted was a baseball, wouldn’t they be better off buying one at a sporting goods store? If they wanted the thrill of the chase, well, they could get the clerk to throw it up in the air, and the kid could catch it when it came down.

  During breaks in the action, Keller trained the binoculars on a window of what he was pretty sure was Moncrieff ’s apartment. He found himself wondering whether Moncrieff was a baseball fan, and if he took advantage of his location and watched the ball games from his window. You’d need a lot more magnification than Keller was carrying, but if Moncrieff could afford the penthouse he could swing a powerful telescope as well. If he got the kind of gizmo that let you count the rings of Saturn, you ought to be able to tell whether the pitcher’s curveball was breaking.

  Made about as much sense as taking a glove to the game, he decided. If a man like Moncrieff wanted to watch a game, he could afford a box seat behind the Reds’ dugout. Of course these days he might prefer to stay home and watch the game on television if not through a telescope, because he might figure it was safer.

  And, as far as Keller could tell, Barry Moncrieff wasn’t taking a lot of risks. If he hadn’t guessed that the fat man might retaliate and put out a contract of his own, then he looked to be a naturally cautious man. He lived in a secure building, and he rarely left it. When he did, he never seemed to go anywhere alone.

  Keller, unable to pick a target on the basis of an ethical distinction, had opted for pragmatism. His line of work, after all, was different from crapshooting. You didn’t get a bonus for making your point the hard way. So, if you had to take out one of two men, why not pick the man who was easier to kill?

  By the time he left the ballpark, with the Reds having lost to the Phillies in extra innings after leaving the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, he’d spent three full days on the question. What he’d managed to determine was that neither man was easy to kill. They both lived in fortresses, one high up in the air, the other way out in the sticks. Neither one would be impossible to hit—nobody was impossible to hit—but neither would be easy.

  He’d managed to get a look at Moncrieff, managed to be in the lobby showing a misaddressed package to a concierge who was as puzzled as Keller was pretending to be, when Moncrieff entered, flanked by two young men with big shoulders and bulges under their jackets. Moncrieff was fiftyish and balding, with a downturned mouth and jowls like a basset hound.

  He was fat, too. Keller might have thought of him as the fat man if he hadn’t already assigned that label to Arthur Strang. Moncrieff wasn’t fat the way Strang was fat—few people were—but that still left him a long way from being a borderline anorexic. Keller guessed he was seventy-five to a hundred pounds lighter than Strang. Strang waddled, while Moncrieff strutted like a pigeon.

  Back in his motel, Keller found himself watching a newscast and looking at highlights from the game he’d just watched. He turned off the set, picked up the binoculars, and wondered why he’d bothered to buy them, and what he was going to do with them now. He caught himself thinking that Andria might enjoy using them to watch birds in Central Park. He told himself to stop that, and he went and took a shower.

  Neither one would be the least bit easy to kill, he thought, but he could already see a couple of approaches to either man. The degree of difficulty, as an Olympic diver would say, was about the same. So, as far as he could tell, was the degree of risk.

  A thought struck him. Maybe one of them deserved it.

  “Arthur Strang,” the woman said. “You know, he was fat when I met him. I think he was born fat. Bu
t he was nothing like he is now. He was just, you know, heavy.”

  Her name was Marie, and she was a tall woman with unconvincing red hair. Early thirties, Keller figured. Big lips, big eyes. Nice shape to her, too, but Keller’s opinion, since she brought it up, was she could stand to lose five pounds. Not that he was going to mention it.

  “When I met him he was heavy,” she said, “but he wore these well-tailored Italian suits, and he looked okay, you know? Of course, naked, forget it.”

  “It’s forgotten.”

  “Huh?” She looked confused, but a sip of her drink put her at ease. “Before we were married,” she said, “he actually lost weight, believe it or not. Then we jumped over the broomstick together and he started eating with both hands. That’s just an expression.”

  “He only ate with one hand?”

  “No, silly! ‘Jumped over the broomstick.’ We had a regular wedding in a church. Anyway, I don’t think Arthur would have been too good at jumping over anything, not even if you laid the broomstick flat on the floor. I was married to him for three years, and I’ll bet he put on twenty or thirty pounds a year. Then we broke up three years ago, and have you seen him lately? He’s as big as a house.”

  As big as a double-wide, maybe, Keller thought. But nowhere near as big as an estate.

  “You know, Kevin,” she said, laying a hand on Keller’s arm, “it’s awful smoky in here. They passed a law against it but people smoke anyway, and what are you going to do, arrest them?”

  “Maybe we should get some air,” he suggested, and she beamed at the notion.

  Back at her place, she said, “He had preferences, Kevin.”

  Keller nodded encouragingly, wondering if he’d ever been called Kevin before. He sort of liked the way she said it.

  “As a matter of fact,” she said darkly, “he was sexually aberrant.”

  “Really?”

  “He wanted me to do things,” she said, rubbing his leg. “You wouldn’t believe the things he wanted.”

  “Oh?”

  She told him. “I thought it was disgusting,” she said, “but he insisted, and it was part of what broke us up. But do you want to know something weird?”

  “Sure.”

  “After the divorce,” she said, “I sort of became more broad-minded on the subject. You might find this hard to believe, Kevin, but I’m pretty kinky.”

  “No kidding.”

  “In fact, what I just told you about Arthur? The really disgusting thing? Well, I have to admit it no longer disgusts me. In fact. . . ”

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, Kevin,” she said.

  She was kinky, all right, and spirited, and afterward he decided he’d been wrong about the five pounds. She was fine just the way she was.

  “I was wondering,” he said on his way out the door. “Your ex-husband? How did he feel about dogs?”

  “Oh, Kevin,” she said. “And here I thought I was the kinky one. You’re too much. Dogs?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I’ll bet you didn’t. Kevin, honey, if you don’t get out of here this minute I may not let you go at all. Dogs!”

  “Just as pets,” he said. “Does he, you know, like dogs? Or hate them?”

  “As far as I know,” Marie said, “Arthur Strang has no opinion one way or the other about dogs. The subject never came up.”

  Laurel Moncrieff, the second of three women with whom Barry had jumped over the broomstick, had nothing to report on the ups and downs of her ex-husband’s weight, or what he did or didn’t like to do when the shades were drawn. She’d worked as Moncrieff’s secretary, won him away from his first wife, and made sure he had a male secretary afterward.

  “Then the son of a bitch joined a gym,” she said, “and he wound up leaving me for his personal trainer. He wadded me up and threw me away like a used Kleenex.”

  She didn’t look like the sort of person you’d blow your nose on. She was a slender, dark-haired woman, and she had been no harder to get acquainted with than Marie Strang, and about as easy to wind up in the hay with. She hadn’t disclosed any interesting aberrations, her own or her ex-husband’s, but Keller found himself with no cause to complain.

  “Ah, Kevin,” she said.

  Maybe it was the name, he thought. Maybe he should use it more often, maybe it brought him luck.

  “Living alone the way you do,” he said. “You ever think about getting a dog?”

  “I’m away too much,” she said. “It’d be no good for me and no good for the dog.”

  “That’s true for a lot of people,” he said, “but they’re used to having one around the house and they don’t want to give it up.”

  “Whatever works,” she said. “I never got used to it, and you know what they say. You don’t miss what you never had.”

  “I guess your ex didn’t have a dog.”

  “Not until I left and he married the bitch with the magic fingers.”

  “She had a dog?”

  “She was a dog, honey. She had a face like a Rottweiler. But she’s out of the picture now, and she hasn’t been replaced. Serves her right, if you ask me.”

  “So you don’t know how Barry Moncrieff felt about dogs.”

  “Of the canine variety, you mean? I don’t think he cared much one way or the other. Hey, how’d we get on this silly subject, anyhow? Why don’t you lie down and kiss me, Kevin, honey?”

  They both gave money to local charities. Strang tended to support the arts, while Moncrieff donated to fight diseases and feed the homeless. They both had a reputation for ruthlessness in business. Both were childless, and presently unmarried. Neither one had a dog, or had ever had a dog, as far as he could determine. Neither had any strong prodog or antidog feelings. It would have been helpful to discover that Strang was a heavy contributor to the ASPCA and the Anti-Vivisection League, or that Moncrieff liked to go to a basement in Kentucky and watch a couple of pit bulls fight to the death, betting substantial sums on the outcome.

  But he came across nothing of the sort, and the more he thought about it the less legitimate a criterion it seemed to him. Why should a matter of life and death hinge upon how a man felt about dogs? And who was Keller to care anyway? It was not as if he were a dog owner himself. Not anymore.

  “Neither one’s Albert Schweitzer,” he told Dot, “and neither one’s Hitler. They both fall somewhere in between, so making a decision on moral grounds is impossible. I’ll tell you, this is murder.”

  “It’s not,” she said. “That’s the whole trouble, Keller. You’re in Cincinnati and the clock’s running.”

  “I know.”

  “Moral decisions. This is the wrong business for moral decisions.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “And who am I to be making that kind of decision, anyway?”

  “Spare me the humility,” she said. “Listen, I’m as crazy as you are. I had this idea, call both brokers, have them get in touch with their clients. Explain that due to the exigencies of this particular situation, di dah di dah di dah, we need full payment in advance.”

  “You think they’d go for it?”

  “If one of them went for it,” she said, “that’d make the decision, wouldn’t it? Knock him off and the other guy’s left alive to pay in full, a satisfied customer.”

  “That’s brilliant,” he said, and thought a moment. “Except . . .”

  “Ah, you spotted it, didn’t you? The guy who cooperates, the guy who goes the extra mile to be a really good client, he’s the one who gets rewarded by getting killed. I like ironic as much as the next person, Keller, but I decided that’s a little too much for me.”

  “Besides,” he said, “with our luck they’d both pay.”

  “And we’d be back where we started. Keller?”

  “What?”

  “All said and done, there’s only one answer. You got a quarter?”

  “Probably. Why?”

  “Toss it,” she said. “Heads or tails.”

  H
eads.

  Keller picked up the quarter he’d tossed, dropped it into the slot. He dialed a number, and while it rang he wondered at the wisdom of making such a decision on the basis of a coin toss. It seemed awfully arbitrary to him, but then again maybe it was the way of the world. Maybe somewhere up above the clouds there was an old man with a beard making life-and-death decisions in the very same way, tossing coins, shrugging, and passing out train wrecks and heart attacks.

  “Let me talk to Mr. Strang,” he told the person who answered. “Just tell him it’s in reference to a recent contract.”

  There was a long pause, and Keller dug out another quarter in case the phone needed feeding. Then Strang came on the line. It seemed to Keller that he recognized the voice even though he had never heard it before. The voice was resonant, like an opera singer’s, though hardly musical.

  “I don’t know who you are,” Strang said without preamble, “and I don’t discuss business over the phone with people I don’t know.”

  Fat, Keller thought. The man sounded fat.

  “Very wise,” Keller told him. “Well, we’ve got business to discuss, and I agree it shouldn’t be over the phone. We ought to meet, but nobody should see us together, or even know we’re having the meeting.” He listened for a moment. “You’re the client,” he said. “I was hoping you could suggest a time and a place.” He listened some more. “Good,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

  “But it seems irregular,” Strang said, with a whine in his voice that you would never have heard from Pavarotti. “I don’t see the need for this, I really don’t.”

  “You will,” Keller told him. “I can promise you that.”

  He broke the connection, then opened his hand and looked at the quarter he was holding. He thought for a moment—about the old man in White Plains, and then about the old man up in the sky. The one with the long white beard, the one who tossed coins of his own and ran the universe accordingly. He thought about the turns in his own life, and the way people could walk in and out of it.