Hit Man

by Lawrence Block

  “Maybe a small one.”

  Garrity led the way to the den, poured drinks for both of them. “You should have come earlier,” he said. “In time for dinner. I hope you know you don’t need an invitation. There’ll always be a place for you at our table.”

  “Well,” Keller said.

  “I know you can’t talk about it,” Garrity said, “but I hope your project here in town is shaping up nicely.”

  “Slow but sure,” Keller said.

  “Some things can’t be hurried,” Garrity allowed, and sipped brandy, and winced. If Keller hadn’t been looking for it, he might have missed the shadow that crossed his host’s face.

  Gently he said, “Is the pain bad, Wally?”

  “How’s that, Mike?”

  Keller put his glass on the table. “I spoke to Dr. Jacklin,” he said. “I know what you’re going through.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Garrity said, “was supposed to keep his mouth shut.”

  “Well, he thought it was all right to talk to me,” Keller said. “He thought I was Dr. Edward Fishman from the Mayo Clinic.”

  “Calling for a consultation.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I did go to Mayo,” Garrity said, “but they didn’t need to call Harold Jacklin to double-check their results. They just confirmed his diagnosis and told me not to buy any long-playing records.” He looked to one side. “They said they couldn’t say for sure how much time I had left, but that the pain would be manageable for a while. And then it wouldn’t.”

  “I see.”

  “And I’d have all my faculties for a while,” he said. “And then I wouldn’t.”

  Keller didn’t say anything.

  “Well, hell,” Garrity said. “A man wants to take the bull by the horns, doesn’t he? I decided I’d go out for a walk with a shotgun and have a little hunting accident. Or I’d be cleaning a handgun here at my desk and have it go off. But it turned out I just couldn’t tolerate the idea of killing myself. Don’t know why, can’t explain it, but that seems to be the way I’m made.”

  He picked up his glass and looked at the brandy. “Funny how we hang on to life,” he said. “Something else Sam Johnson said, said there wasn’t a week of his life he’d voluntarily live through again. I’ve had more good times than bad, Mike, and even the bad times haven’t been that godawful, but I think I know what he was getting at. I wouldn’t want to repeat any of it, but that doesn’t mean there’s a minute of it I’d have been willing to miss. I don’t want to miss whatever’s coming next, either, and I don’t guess Dr. Johnson did either. That’s what keeps us going, isn’t it? Wanting to find out what’s around the next bend in the river.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I thought that would make the end easier to face,” he said. “Not knowing when it was coming, or how or where. And I recalled that years ago a fellow told me to let him know if I ever needed to have somebody killed. ‘You just let me know,’ he said, and I laughed, and that was the last said on the subject. A month or so ago I looked up his number and called him, and he gave me another number to call.”

  “And you put out a contract.”

  “Is that the expression? Then that’s what I did.”

  “Suicide by proxy,” Keller said.

  “And I guess you’re holding my proxy,” Garrity said, and drank some brandy. “You know, the thought flashed across my mind that first night, talking with you after you pulled my grandson out of the pool. I got this little glimmer, but I told myself I was being ridiculous. A hired killer doesn’t turn up and save somebody’s life.”

  “It’s out of character,” Keller agreed.

  “Besides, what would you be doing at the party in the first place? Wouldn’t you stay out of sight and wait until you could get me alone?”

  “If I’d been thinking straight,” Keller said. “I told myself it wouldn’t hurt to have a look around. And this joker from the hotel bar assured me I had nothing to worry about. ‘Half the town’ll be at Wally’s tonight,’ he said.”

  “Half the town was. You wouldn’t have tried anything that night, would you?”

  “God, no.”

  “I remember thinking, I hope he’s not here. I hope it’s not tonight. Because I was enjoying the party and I didn’t want to miss anything. But you were there, and a good thing, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Saved the boy from drowning. According to the Chinese, you save somebody’s life, you’re responsible for him for the rest of your life. Because you’ve interfered with the natural order of things. That make sense to you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Or me either. You can’t beat them for whipping up a meal or laundering a shirt, but they’ve got some queer ideas on other subjects. Of course they’d probably say the same for some of my notions.”

  “Probably.”

  Garrity looked at his glass. “You called my doctor,” he said. “Must have been to confirm a suspicion you already had. What tipped you off? Is it starting to show in my face, or the way I move around?”

  Keller shook his head. “I couldn’t find anybody else with a motive,” he said, “or a grudge against you. You were the only one left. And then I remembered seeing you wince once or twice, and try to hide it. I barely noticed it at the time, but then I started to think about it.”

  “I thought it would be easier than doing it myself,” Garrity said. “I thought I’d just let a professional take me by surprise. I’d be like an old bull elk on a hillside, never expecting the bullet that takes him out in his prime.”

  “It makes sense.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Because the elk didn’t arrange for the hunter to be there. Far as the elk knows, he’s all alone there. He’s not wondering every damn day if today’s the day. He’s not bracing himself, trying to sense the crosshairs centering on his shoulder.”

  “I never thought of that.”

  “Neither did I,” said Garrity. “Or I never would have called that fellow in the first place. Mike, what the hell are you doing here tonight? Don’t tell me you came over to kill me.”

  “I came to tell you I can’t.”

  “Because we’ve come to know each other.” Keller nodded.

  “I grew up on a farm,” Garrity said. “One of those vanishing family farms you hear about, and of course it’s vanished, and I say good riddance. But we raised our own beef and pork, you know, and we kept a milk cow and a flock of laying hens. And we never named the animals we were going to wind up eating. The milk cow had a name, but not the bull calf she dropped. The breeder sow’s name was Elsie, but we never named her piglets.”

  “Makes sense,” Keller said.

  “I guess it doesn’t take a Chinaman to see how you can’t kill me once you’ve hauled Timmy out of the drink. Let alone after you’ve sat at my table and smoked my cigars. Reminds me, you care for a cigar?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Well, where do we go from here, Mike? I have to say I’m relieved. I feel like I’ve been bracing myself for a bullet for weeks now. All of a sudden I’ve got a new lease on life. I’d say this calls for a drink except we’re already having one, and you’ve scarcely touched yours.”

  “There is one thing,” Keller said.

  * * *

  He left the den while Garrity made his phone call. Timothy was in the living room, puzzling over a chessboard. Keller played a game with him and lost badly. “Can’t win ’em all,” he said, and tipped over his king.

  “I was going to checkmate you,” the boy said. “In a few more moves.”

  “I could see it coming,” Keller told him.

  He went back to the den. Garrity was selecting a cigar from his humidor. “Sit down,” he said. “I’m fixing to smoke one of these things. If you won’t kill me, maybe it will.”

  “You never know.”

  “I made the call, Mike, and it’s all taken care of. Be a while before the word filters up and down the chain of command, but sooner
or later they’ll call you up and tell you the client changed his mind. He paid in full and called off the job.”

  They talked some, then sat a while in silence. At length Keller said he ought to get going. “I should be at my hotel,” he said, “in case they call.”

  “Be a couple of days, won’t it?”

  “Probably,” he said, “but you never know. If everyone involved makes a phone call right away, the word could get to me in a couple of hours.”

  “Calling you off, telling you to come home. Be glad to get home, I bet.”

  “It’s nice here,” he said, “but yes, I’ll be glad to get home.”

  “Wherever it is, they say there’s no place like it.” Garrity leaned back, then allowed himself to wince at the pain that came over him. “If it never hurts worse than this,” he said, “then I can stand it. But of course it will get worse. And I’ll decide I can stand that, and then it’ll get worse again.”

  There was nothing to say to that.

  “I guess I’ll know when it’s time to do something,” Garrity said. “And who knows? Maybe my heart’ll cut out on me out of the blue. Or I’ll get hit by a bus, or I don’t know what. Struck by lightning?”

  “It could happen.”

  “Anything can happen,” Garrity agreed. He got to his feet. “Mike,” he said, “I guess we won’t be seeing any more of each other, and I have to say I’m a little bit sorry about that. I’ve truly enjoyed our time together.”

  “So have I, Wally.”

  “I wondered, you know, what he’d be like. The man they’d send to do this kind of work. I don’t know what I expected, but you’re not it.”

  He stuck out his hand, and Keller gripped it. “Take care,” Garrity said. “Be well, Mike.”

  Back at his hotel, Keller took a hot bath and got a good night’s sleep. In the morning he went out for breakfast, and when he got back there was a message at the desk for him: Mr. Soderholm—please call your office.

  He called from a pay phone, even though it didn’t matter, and he was careful not to overreact when Dot told him to come home, the mission was aborted.

  “You told me I had all the time in the world,” he said. “If I’d known the guy was in such a rush—”

  “Keller,” she said, “it’s a good thing you waited. What he did, he changed his mind.”

  “He changed his mind?”

  “It used to be a woman’s prerogative,” Dot said, “but now we’ve got equality between the sexes, so that means anyone can do it. It works out fine because we’re getting paid in full. So kick the dust of Texas off your feet and come on home.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said, “but I may hang out here for a few more days.”

  “Oh?”

  “Or even a week,” he said. “It’s a pretty nice town.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re itching to move there, Keller. We’ve been through this before.”

  “Nothing like that,” he said, “but there’s this girl I met.”

  “Oh, Keller.”

  “Well, she’s nice,” he said. “And if I’m off the job there’s no reason not to have a date or two with her, is there?”

  “As long as you don’t decide to move in.”

  “She’s not that nice,” he said, and Dot laughed and told him not to change.

  He hung up and drove around and found a movie he’d been meaning to see. The next morning he packed and checked out of his hotel.

  He drove across town and got a room on the motel strip, paying cash for four nights in advance and registering as J. D. Smith from Los Angeles.

  There was no girl he’d met, no girl he wanted to meet. But it wasn’t time to go home yet.

  He had unfinished business, and four days should give him time to do it. Time for Wallace Garrity to get used to the idea of not feeling those imaginary crosshairs on his shoulder blades.

  But not so much time that the pain would be too much to bear.

  And, sometime in those four days, Keller would give him a gift. If he could, he’d make it look natural—a heart attack, say, or an accident. In any event it would be swift and without warning, and as close as he could make it to painless.

  And it would be unexpected. Garrity would never see it coming.

  Keller frowned, trying to figure out how he would manage it. It would be a lot trickier than the task that had drawn him to town originally, but he’d brought it on himself. Getting involved, fishing the boy out of the pool. He’d interfered with the natural order of things. He was under an obligation.

  It was the least he could do.

  9

  Keller's Last Refuge

  Keller, reaching for a red carnation, paused to finger one of the green ones. Kelly green it was, and vivid. Maybe it was an autumnal phenomenon, he thought. The leaves turned red and gold, the flowers turned green.

  “It’s dyed,” said the florist, reading his mind. “They started dyeing them for St. Patrick’s Day, and that’s when I sell the most of them, but they caught on in a small way year-round. Would you like to wear one?”

  Would he? Keller found himself weighing the move, then reminded himself it wasn’t an option. “No,” he said. “It has to be red.”

  “I quite agree,” the little man said, selecting one of the blood-red blooms. “I’m a traditionalist myself. Green flowers. Why, how could the bees tell the blooms from the foliage?”

  Keller said it was a good question.

  “And here’s another. Shall we lay it across the buttonhole and pin it to the lapel, or shall we insert it into the buttonhole?”

  It was a poser, all right. Keller asked the man for his recommendation.

  “It’s controversial,” the florist said. “But I look at it this way. Why have a buttonhole if you’re not going to use it?”

  Keller, suit pressed and shoes shined and a red carnation in his lapel, boarded the Metroliner at Penn Station. He’d picked up a copy of GQ at a newsstand in the station, and he made it last all the way to Washington. Now and then his eyes strayed from the page to his boutonniere.

  It would have been nice to know where the magazine stood on the buttonhole issue, but they had nothing to say on the subject. According to the florist, who admittedly had a small stake in the matter, Keller had nothing to worry about.

  “Not every man can wear a flower,” the man had told him. “On one it will look frivolous, on another foppish. But with you—”

  “It looks okay?”

  “More than okay,” the man said. “You wear it with a certain flair. Or dare I say panache?”

  Panache, Keller thought.

  Panache had not been the object. Keller was just following directions. Wear a particular flower, board a particular train, stand in front of the B. Dalton bookstore in Union Station with a particular magazine until the client—a particular man himself, from the sound of it—took the opportunity to make contact.

  It struck Keller as a pretty Mickey Mouse way to do things, and in the old days the old man would have shot it down. But the old man wasn’t himself these days, and something like this, with props and recognition signals, was the least of it.

  “Wear the flower,” Dot had told him in the kitchen of the big old house in White Plains. “Wear the flower, carry the magazine—”

  “Tote the barge, lift the bale. . . ”

  “—and do the job, Keller. At least he’s not turning everything down. What’s wrong with a flower, anyway? Don’t tell me you’ve got Thoreau on the brain.”

  “Thoreau?”

  “He said to beware of enterprises that require new clothes. He never said a thing about carnations.”

  At ten past noon Keller was at his post, wearing the flower, brandishing the magazine. He stood there like a tin soldier for half an hour, then left his post to find a men’s room. He returned feeling like a deserter, but took a minute to scan the area, looking for someone who was looking for him. He didn’t find anybody, so he planted himself where he’d been standing earlier and just went on
standing there.

  At a quarter after one he went to a fast-food counter for a hamburger. At ten minutes of two he found a phone and called White Plains. Dot answered, and before he could get out a full sentence she told him to come home.

  “Job’s been canceled,” she said. “The guy phoned up and called it off. But you must have been halfway to D.C. by then.”

  “I’ve been standing around since noon,” Keller said. “I hate just standing around.”

  “Everybody does, Keller. At least you’ll make a couple of dollars. It should have been half in advance . . .”

  “Should have been?”

  “He wanted to meet you first and find out if you thought the job was doable. Then he’d pay the first half, with the balance due and payable upon execution.”

  Execution was the word for it. He said, “But he aborted before he met me. Doesn’t he like panache?”

  “Panache?”

  “The flower. Maybe he didn’t like the way I was wearing it.”

  “Keller,” she said, “he never even saw you. He called here around ten-thirty. You were still on the train. Anyway, how many ways are there to wear a flower?”

  “Don’t get me started,” he said. “If he didn’t pay anything in advance—”

  “He paid. But not half.”

  “What did he pay?”

  “It’s not a fortune. He sent us a thousand dollars. Your end of that’s nothing to retire on, but all you had to do besides stand around was sit around, and there are people in this world who work harder and get less for it.”

  “And I’ll bet it makes them happy,” he said, “to hear how much better off they are than the poor bastards starving in Somalia.”

  “Poor Keller. What are you going to do now?”

  “Get on a train and come home.”

  “Keller,” she said, “you’re in our nation’s capital. Go to the Smithsonian. Take a citizen’s tour of the White House. Slow down and smell the flowers.”