Hit Man

by Lawrence Block

  He was a soldier.

  Time passed, and Keller got used to the idea that he would never hear from Bascomb again. Then one afternoon he was standing on line at the half-price ticket booth in Times Square when someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” a fellow said, handing him an envelope. “Think you dropped this.”

  Keller started to say he hadn’t, then stopped when he recognized the man. Bascomb! Before he could say anything the man was gone, disappearing into the crowd.

  Just a plain white envelope, the flap glued down and taped shut. Nothing written on it. From the heft of it, you’d put two stamps on it before putting it in the mail. But there were no stamps, and Bascomb had not entrusted it to the mails.

  Keller put it in his pocket. When he got to the front of the line he bought a ticket to that night’s performance of a fifties musical. He thought of buying two tickets and hiding one in a hollowed-out pumpkin. Then, when the curtain went up at eight o’clock, Bascomb would be in the seat beside him.

  He went home and opened the envelope. There was a name, along with an address in Pompano Beach, Florida. There were two Polaroid shots, one of a man and woman, the other of the same man, alone this time, sitting down. There were nine hundred-dollar bills, used and out of sequence, and two fifties.

  Keller looked at the photos. They’d evidently been taken several years apart. The fellow looked older in the photo that showed him unaccompanied, and was that a wheelchair he was sitting in? Keller thought it might be.

  Poor bastard, Keller started to think, and then caught himself. The guy had no pity coming. The son of a bitch was a traitor.

  The thousand in cash fell a ways short of covering Keller’s expenses. He had to pay full coach fare on the flight to West Palm Beach, had to rent a car, had to stay three nights in a hotel room before he could get the job done and another night afterward, before he could catch a morning flight home. The five hundred dollars he’d received as expenses for the Howard Ramsgate incident had paid for the Metroliner and his room and a good dinner, with a couple of dollars left over. But he had to dip into his own pocket to get the job done in Pompano Beach.

  Not that it really mattered. What did he care about a few dollars one way or the other?

  He might have cut corners by getting in and out faster, but the operation turned out to be a tricky one. The traitor—his name was Drucker, Louis Drucker, but it was simpler for Keller to think of him as “the traitor”—lived in a beachfront condo on Briny Avenue, right in the middle of Pompano Beach. The residents, predictably enough, had a median age well into the golden years, and the traitor was by no means the only one there with wheels on his chair. There were others who got around with aluminum walkers, while the more athletic codgers strutted around with canes.

  This was the first time Keller’s work had taken him to such a venue, so he didn’t know if security was as much of a priority at every senior citizens’ residence, but this one was harder to sneak into than the Pentagon. There was an attendant posted in the lobby at all hours, and there was closed-circuit surveillance of the elevators and stairwells.

  The traitor left the building twice a day, morning and evening, for a turn along the beach. He was always accompanied by a woman half his age who pushed his chair on the hard-packed sand, then read a Spanish magazine and smoked a cigarette or two while he took the sun.

  Keller considered and rejected elaborate schemes for getting into the building. They’d work, but then what? The woman lived in the traitor’s apartment, so he’d have to take her out, too. He had no compunctions about this, recognizing that civilian casualties were inevitable in modern warfare, and who was to say she was an entirely unwitting pawn? No, if the only way to nullify the traitor led through her, Keller would take her out without a second thought.

  But a double homicide made for a high-profile incident, and why draw unnecessary attention? With an aged and infirm quarry, it was so much simpler to make it look like natural causes.

  Could he lure the woman off the premises? Could he gain access during her absence? And could he get out unobtrusively, his work completed, before she got back?

  He was working it out, fumbling with a plan, when Fate dropped it all in his lap. It was mid-morning, with the sun climbing the eastern sky, and he’d dutifully dogged their footsteps (well, her footsteps, since the traitor’s feet never touched the ground) a mile or so up the beach. Now the traitor sat in his chair facing the ocean, his head back, his eyes closed, his leathery skin soaking up the rays. A few yards away the woman lay on her side on a beach towel, smoking a cigarette, reading a magazine.

  She put out the cigarette, burying it in the sand. And, moments later, the magazine slipped from her fingers as she dozed off.

  Keller gave her a minute. He looked left, then right. There was nobody close by, and he was willing to take his chances with those who were fifty yards or more from the scene. Even if they were looking right at him, they’d never realize what was happening right before their eyes. Especially given the age of most of those eyes.

  He came up behind the traitor, clapped a hand over his treacherous mouth, used the thumb and forefinger of his other hand to pinch the man’s nostrils closed, and kept his air shut off while he counted, slowly, to a number that seemed high enough.

  When he let go, the traitor’s hand fell to one side. Keller propped it up and left him looking as though asleep, basking like a lizard in the warm embrace of the sun.

  “Where’ve you been, Keller? I’ve been calling you for days.”

  “I was out of town,” he said.

  “Out of town?”

  “Florida, actually.”

  “Florida? Disney World, by any chance? Do I get to shake the hand that shook the hand of Mickey Mouse?”

  “I just wanted a little sun and sand,” he said. “I went to the Gulf Coast. Sanibel Island.”

  “Did you bring me a seashell, Keller?”

  “A seashell?”

  “The shelling is supposed to be spectacular there,” Dot said. “The island sticks out into the Gulf instead of stretching out parallel to the land, the way they’re supposed to.” “ ‘The way they’re supposed to’?”

  “Well, the way they usually do. So the tides bring in shells by the carload and people come from all over the world to walk the beach and pick them up. But why am I telling you all this? You’re the one who just got back from the damn place. You didn’t bring me a shell, did you?”

  “You have to get up early in the morning for the serious shelling,” Keller said, wondering if it was true. “The shellers are out there at the crack of dawn, like locusts on a field of barley.”

  “Barley, huh?”

  “Amber waves of grain,” he said. “Anyway, what do I care about shells? I just wanted a break.”

  “You missed some work.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “It couldn’t wait, and who knew where you were or when you’d be back? You should really call in when you leave town.”

  “I didn’t think of it.”

  “Well, why would you? You never leave town.

  When’s the last time you had a vacation?”

  “I’m on vacation most of my life,” he said. “Right here in New York.”

  “Then I guess it was about time you went away for something besides work. I suppose you had company.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Good for you, Keller. It’s just as well I couldn’t reach you. But next time . . .”

  “Next time I’ll keep you posted,” he said. “Better than that, next time I’ll bring home a seashell.”

  This time he didn’t try to track the story in the papers. Even if Pompano Beach had a newspaper of its own, you couldn’t expect to find it at the UN newsstand. They’d have the Miami Herald there, but somehow he didn’t figure the Herald ran a story every time an old fellow drifted off in the sunshine. If they did, there’d be no room left in the paper for hurricanes and carjackings.

  Besides, why did
he want to read about it? He had carried out his mission and the traitor was dead. That was all he had to know.

  It was almost two months before Bascomb got in touch again. This time there was no face-to-face contact, however fleeting.

  Instead, Keller got a phone call. The voice was presumably Bascomb’s, but he couldn’t have sworn to it. The call was brief, and the voice never rose much above a low murmur.

  “Stay home tomorrow,” the voice said. “There’ll be something delivered to you.”

  And in fact the FedEx guy came around the following morning, bringing a flat cardboard envelope that held a photograph, an index card with a name and address printed on it, and a sheaf of used hundreds.

  There were ten of the bills, a thousand dollars again, although the address this time was in Aurora, Colorado, which involved quite a few more air miles than Pompano Beach. That rankled at first, but when he thought about it he decided there was something to be said for the low payment. If you lost money every time you did this sort of thing, it underscored your commitment to your role as a patriot. You never had to question your motives, because it was clear you weren’t in it for the money.

  He squared up the bills and put them in his wallet, then took a good long look at the photo of the latest traitor.

  And the phone rang.

  Dot said, “Keller, I’m lonesome and there’s nothing on TV but Sally Jessy Raphae ël. Come on out here and keep me company.”

  Keller took a train out to White Plains and another one back to New York. He packed a bag, called an airline, and took a cab to JFK. That night his plane landed in Seattle, where he was met by a lean young man in a double-breasted brown suit. The fellow wore a hat, too, a fedora that gave him a sort of retro look.

  The young man—Jason, his name was—dropped Keller at a hotel. In the morning they met in the lobby, and Jason drove him around and pointed out various points of interest, including the Kingdome and the Space Needle and the home and office of the man Keller was supposed to kill. And, barely visible in the distance, the snow-capped peak of Mount Rainier.

  They ate lunch at a good downtown restaurant, and Jason put away an astonishing amount of food. Keller wondered where he put it. There wasn’t a spare ounce on him.

  The waitress was refilling the coffee when Jason said, “Well, I was starting to wonder if we missed him today. Just coming through the door? Gray suit, blue tie? Big red face on him? That’s Cully Wilcox.”

  He looked just like his photo. It never hurt, though, to have somebody ID the guy in the flesh.

  “He’s a big man in this town,” Jason said, his lips barely moving. “Harder they fall, right?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Isn’t that the expression? ‘The bigger they are, the harder they fall’?”

  “Oh, right,” Keller said.

  “I guess you don’t feel like talking right now,” Jason said. “I guess you got things to think about, details to work out.”

  “I guess so,” Keller said.

  “This may take a while,” he told Dot. “The subject is locally prominent.”

  “Locally prominent, is he?”

  “So they tell me. That means more security on the way in and more heat on the way out.”

  “Always the way when it’s somebody big.”

  “On the other hand, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.”

  “Whatever that means,” she said. “Well, take your time, Keller. Smell the flowers. Just don’t let the grass grow under your feet.”

  Hell of a thing, Keller thought.

  He muted the TV just in time to stop a cute young couple from advising him that Certs was two, two, two mints in one. He closed his eyes and adapted the dialogue to his own circumstances. “Keller is a contract killer.” “No, Keller is a traitor killer.” “He’s two, two, two killers in one. . . ”

  It was tough enough, he thought, to lead one life at a time. It was a lot trickier when they overlapped. He couldn’t stall the old man, couldn’t put off the trip to Seattle while he did his Uncle Sam’s business in Colorado. But how long could he delay the mission? How urgent was it?

  He couldn’t call Bascomb to ask him. So he had to assume a high degree of urgency.

  Which meant he had to find a way to do two, two, two jobs in one.

  Just what he needed.

  It was a Saturday morning, a week and a half after he’d flown to Seattle, when Keller flew home. This time he had to change planes in Chicago, and it was late by the time he got to his apartment. He’d already called White Plains the night before to tell them the job was done. He unpacked his bag, shucked his clothes, took a hot shower, and fell into bed.

  The following afternoon the phone rang.

  “No names, no pack drill,” said Bascomb. “I just wanted to say Well done.”

  “Oh,” Keller said.

  “Not our usual thing,” Bascomb went on, “but even a seasoned professional can use the occasional pat on the back. You’ve done fine work, and you ought to know it’s appreciated.”

  “That’s nice to hear,” Keller admitted.

  “And I’m not just speaking for myself. Your efforts are appreciated on a much higher level.”

  “Really?”

  “On the highest level, actually.”

  “The highest level?”

  “No names, no pack drill,” Bascomb said again, “but let’s just say you’ve earned the profound gratitude of a man who never inhaled.”

  He called White Plains and told Dot he was bushed. “I’ll come out tomorrow around lunchtime,” he said. “How’s that?”

  “Oh, goody,” she said. “I’ll make sandwiches, Keller. We’ll have a picnic.”

  He got off the phone and couldn’t think what to do with himself. On a whim he took the subway to the Bronx and spent a few hours at the zoo. He hadn’t been to a zoo in years, long enough for him to have forgotten that they always made him sad.

  It still worked that way, and he couldn’t say why. It’s not that it bothered him to see animals caged. From what he understood, they led a better life in captivity than they did in the wild. They lived longer and stayed healthier. They didn’t have to spend half their time trying to get enough food and the other half trying to keep from being food for somebody else. It was tempting to look at them and conclude that they were bored, but he didn’t believe it. They didn’t look bored to him.

  He left unaccountably sad as always and returned to Manhattan. He ate at a new Afghan restaurant and went to a movie. It was a western, but not the sort of Hollywood classic he would have preferred. Even after the movie was over, you couldn’t really tell which ones were the good guys.

  Next day Keller caught an early train to White Plains and spent forty minutes upstairs with the old man. When he came downstairs Dot told him there was fresh coffee made, or iced tea.

  He went for the coffee. She already had a tall glass of iced tea poured for herself. They sat at the kitchen table and she asked him how it had gone in Seattle. He said it went okay.

  “And how’d you like Seattle, Keller? From what I hear it’s everybody’s city du jour these days. Used to be San Francisco and now it’s Seattle.”

  “It was fine,” he said.

  “Get the urge to move there?”

  He had found himself wondering what it might be like, living in one of those converted industrial buildings around Pioneer Square, say, and shopping for groceries at Pike Market, and judging the quality of the weather by the relative visibility of Mount Rainier. But he never went anywhere without having thoughts along those lines. That didn’t mean he was ready to pull up stakes and move.

  “Not really,” he said.

  “I understand it’s a great place for a cup of coffee.”

  “They’re serious about their coffee,” he allowed. “Maybe too serious. Wine snobs are bad enough, but when all it is is coffee. . . ”

  “How’s that coffee, by the way?”

  “It’s fine.”

 
“I bet it can’t hold a candle to the stuff in Seattle,” she said. “But the weather’s lousy there. Rains all the time, the way I hear it.”

  “There’s a lot of rain,” he said. “But it’s gentle. It doesn’t bowl you over.”

  “It rains but it never pours?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I guess the rain got to you, huh?”

  “How’s that?”

  “Rain, day after day. And all that coffee snobbery. You couldn’t stand it.”

  Huh? “It didn’t bother me,” he said.

  “No?”

  “Not really. Why?”

  “Well, I was wondering,” she said, looking at him over the brim of her glass. “I was wondering what the hell you were doing in Denver.”

  The TV was on with the sound off, tuned to one of the home shopping channels. A woman with unconvincing red hair was modeling a dress. Keller thought it looked dowdy, but the number in the lower right corner kept advancing, indicating that viewers were calling in a steady stream to order the item.

  “Of course I could probably guess what you were doing in Denver,” Dot was saying, “and I could probably come up with the name of the person you were doing it to. I got somebody to send me a couple of issues of the Denver Post, and what did I find but a story about a woman in someplace called Aurora who came to a bad end, and I swear the whole thing had your fingerprints all over it. Don’t look so alarmed, Keller. Not your actual fingerprints. I was speaking figuratively.”

  “Figuratively,” he said.

  “It did look like your work,” she said, “and the timing was right. I’d say it might have lacked a little of your usual subtlety, but I figure that’s because you were in a big hurry to get back to Seattle.” He pointed at the television set. He said, “Do you believe how many of those dresses they’ve sold?”

  “Tons.”