Hit Man

by Lawrence Block

  “Would you buy a dress like that?”

  “Not in a million years. I’d look like a sack of potatoes in something cut like that.”

  “I mean any dress. Over the phone, without trying it on.”

  “I buy from catalogs all the time, Keller. It amounts to the same thing. If it doesn’t look right you can always send it back.”

  “Do you ever do that? Send stuff back?”

  “Sure.”

  “He doesn’t know, does he, Dot? About Denver?”

  “No.”

  He nodded, hesitated, then leaned forward. “Dot,” he said, “can you keep a secret?”

  She listened while he told her the whole thing, from Bascomb’s first appearance in the coffee shop to the most recent phone call, relaying the good wishes of the man who never inhaled. When he was done he got up and poured himself more coffee. He came back and sat down and Dot said, “You know what gets me? ‘Dot, can you keep a secret?’ Can I keep a secret?”

  “Well, I—”

  “If I can’t,” she said, “then we’re all in big trouble. Keller, I’ve been keeping your secrets just about as long as you’ve had secrets to keep. And you’re asking me—”

  “I wasn’t exactly asking you. What do they call it when you don’t really expect an answer?”

  “Prayer,” she said.

  “Rhetorical,” he said. “It was a rhetorical question. For God’s sake, I know you can keep a secret.”

  “That’s why you kept this one from me,” she said. “For lo these many months.”

  “Well, I figured this was different.”

  “Because it was a state secret.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Hush-hush, your eyes only, need-to-know basis. Matters of national security.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And what if I turned out to be a Commie rat?”

  “Dot—”

  “So how come I all of a sudden got a top-secret clearance? Or is it need-to-know? In other words, if I hadn’t brought up Denver. . . ”

  “No,” he said. “I was planning on telling you anyway.”

  “Sooner or later, you mean.”

  “Sooner. When I called yesterday and said I wanted to wait until today to come up, I was buying a little time to think it over.”

  “And?”

  “And I decided I wanted to run the whole thing by you, and see what you think.”

  “What I think.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, you know what that tells me, Keller? It tells me what you think.”

  “And?”

  “And I think it’s about the same thing that I think.”

  “Spell it out, okay?”

  “C-O-N,” she said. “J-O-B. Total B-U-L-L-S-H—am I getting through?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “He must be pretty slick,” she said, “to have a guy like you jumping through hoops. But I can see how it would work. First place, you want to believe it. ‘Young man, your country has need of you.’ Next thing you know, you’re knocking off strangers for chump change.”

  “Expense money. It never covered the expenses, except the first time.”

  “The patent lawyer, caught in his own mousetrap. What do you figure he did to piss Bascomb off?”

  “No idea.”

  “And the old fart in the wheelchair. It’s a good thing you iced the son of a bitch, Keller, or our children and our children’s children would grow up speaking Russian.”

  “Don’t rub it in.”

  “I’m just making you pay for that rhetorical question. All said and done, do you think there’s a chance in a million Bascomb’s on the level?”

  He made himself think it over, but the answer wasn’t going to change. “No,” he said.

  “What was the tip-off? The approval from on high?”

  “I guess so. You know, I got a hell of a rush.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I mean, the man at the top. The big guy.”

  “Chomping doughnuts and thinking of you.”

  “But then you think about it afterward, and there’s just no way. Even if he said something like that, would Bascomb pass it on? And then when I started to look at the whole picture. . . ”

  “Tilt.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well,” she said. “What kind of a line have we got on Bascomb? We don’t know his name or his address or how to get hold of him. What does that leave us?”

  “Damn little.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. We don’t need a whole hell of a lot, Keller. And we do know something.”

  “What?”

  “We know three people he wanted killed,” she said. “That’s a start.”

  Keller, dressed in a suit and tie and sporting a red carnation in his buttonhole, sat in what he supposed you would call the den of a sprawling ranch house in Glen Burnie, Maryland. He had the TV on with the sound off, and he was beginning to think that was the best way to watch it. The silence lent a welcome air of mystery to everything, even the commercials.

  He perked up at the sound of a car in the driveway, and, as soon as he heard a key in the lock, he triggered the remote to shut off the TV altogether. Then he sat and waited patiently while Paul Ernest Farrar hung his topcoat in the hall closet, carried a sack of groceries to the kitchen, and moved through the rooms of his house.

  When he finally got to the den, Keller said, “Well, hello, Bascomb. Nice place you got here.” Keller, leading a scoundrel’s life, had ended the lives of others in a great variety of ways. As far as he knew, though, he had never actually frightened anyone to death. For a moment, however, it looked as though Bascomb (né Farrar) might be the first. The man turned white as Wonder Bread, took an involuntary step backward, and clasped a hand to his chest. Keller hoped he wasn’t going to need CPR.

  “Easy,” he said. “Grab a seat, why don’t you?

  Sorry to startle you, but it seemed the best way. No names, no pack drill, right?”

  “What do you think you’re doing in my house?”

  “The crossword puzzle, originally. Then when the light failed I had the TV on, and it’s a lot better when you don’t know what they’re saying. Makes it more of an exercise for the imagination.” He leaned back in his chair. “I’d have joined you for breakfast,” he said, “but who knows if you even go out for it? Who’s to say you don’t have your oat bran muffin and decaf at the pine table in the kitchen? So I figured I’d come here.”

  “You’re not supposed to get in touch with me at all,” Farrar said sternly. “Under any circumstances.”

  “Give it up,” Keller said. “It’s not working.”

  Farrar didn’t seem to hear him. “Since you’re here,” he said, “of course we’ll talk. And there happens to be something I need to talk to you about, as a matter of fact. Just let me get my notes.”

  He slipped past Keller and was reaching into one of the desk drawers when Keller took him by the shoulders and turned him around. “Sit down,” he said, “before you embarrass yourself. I already found the gun and took the bullets out. Wouldn’t you feel silly, pulling the trigger and all it does is go click?”

  “I wasn’t reaching for a gun.”

  “Maybe you wanted this, then,” Keller said, dipping into his breast pocket. “A passport in the name of Roger Keith Bascomb, issued by authority of the government of British Honduras. You know something? I looked on the map, and I couldn’t find British Honduras.”

  “It’s Belize now.”

  “But they kept the old name for the passports?” He whistled soundlessly. “I found the firm’s literature in the same drawer with the passport. An outfit in the Caymans, and they offer what they call fantasy passports. To protect yourself, in case you’re abducted by terrorists who don’t like Americans. Would you believe it—the same folks offer other kinds of fake ID as well. Send them a check and a photo and they’ll set you up as an agent of the National Security Resource. Wouldn’t that be handy?”
/>   “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Keller sighed. “All right,” he said. “Then I’ll tell you. Your name isn’t Roger Bascomb, it’s Paul Farrar. You’re not a government agent, you’re some kind of paper-pusher in the Social Security Administration.”

  “That’s just a cover.”

  “You used to be married,” Keller went on, “until your wife left you for another man. His name was Howard Ramsgate.”

  “Well,” Farrar said.

  “That was six years ago. So much for the heat of the moment.”

  “I wanted to find the right way to do it.”

  “You found me,” Keller said, “and got me to do it for you. And it worked, and if you’d left it like that you’d have been in the clear. But instead you sent me to Florida to kill an old man in a wheelchair.”

  “Louis Drucker,” Farrar said.

  “Your uncle, your mother’s brother. He didn’t have any children of his own, and who do you think he left his money to?”

  “What kind of a life did Uncle Lou have? Crippled, immobile, living on painkillers. . . ”

  “I guess we did him a favor,” Keller said. “The woman in Colorado used to live two doors down the street from you. I don’t know what she did to get on your list. Maybe she jilted you or insulted you, or maybe her dog pooped on your lawn. But what’s the difference? The point is you used me. You got me to chase around the country killing people.”

  “Isn’t that what you do?”

  “Right,” Keller said, “and that’s the part I don’t understand. I don’t know how you knew to call a certain number in White Plains, but you did, and that got me on the train with a flower in my lapel. Why the charade? Why not just pay the money and let out the contract?”

  “I couldn’t afford it.”

  Keller nodded. “I thought that might be it. Theft of services, that’s what we’re looking at here. You had me do all this for nickels and dimes.”

  “Look,” Farrar said, “I want to apologize.”

  “You do?”

  “I do, I honestly do. The first time, with that bastard Ramsgate, well, it was the only way to do it. The other two times I could have afforded to pay you a suitable sum, but we’d already established a relationship. You were working, you know, out of patriotism, and it seemed safer and simpler to leave it at that.”

  “Safer.”

  “And simpler.”

  “And cheaper,” Keller said. “At the time, but where are you in the long run?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Keller said, “what do you figure happens now?”

  “You’re not going to kill me.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “You’d have done it,” Farrar said. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation. You want something, and I think I know what it is.”

  “A pat on the back,” Keller said, “from the man who never inhaled.”

  “Money,” Farrar said. “You want what’s rightfully yours, the money you would have been paid if I hadn’t misrepresented myself. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “It’s close.”

  “Close?”

  “What I want,” Keller said, “is that and a little more. If I were the IRS, I’d call the difference penalties and interest.”

  “How much?”

  Keller named a figure, one large enough to make Farrar blink. He said it seemed high, and they kicked it around, and Keller found himself reducing the sum by a third.

  “I can raise most of that,” Farrar told him. “Not overnight. I’ll have to sell some securities. I can have some cash by the end of the week, or the beginning of next week at the latest.”

  “That’s good,” Keller said.

  “And I’ll have some more work for you.”

  “More work?”

  “That woman in Colorado,” Farrar said. “You wondered what I had against her. There was something, a remark she made once, but that’s not the point. I found a way to make myself a secondary beneficiary in an individual’s government insurance policy. It’s too complicated to explain but it ought to work like a charm.”

  “That’s pretty slick,” Keller said, getting to his feet. “I’ll tell you, Farrar, I’m prepared to wait a week or so for the money, especially with the prospect of future work. But I’d like some cash tonight as a binder. You must have some money around the house.”

  “Let me see what I’ve got in the safe,” Farrar said.

  “Twenty-two thousand dollars,” Keller said, slipping a rubber band around the bills and tucking them away. “That’s what, fifty-five hundred dollars a pop?”

  “You’ll get the balance next week,” Farrar assured him. “Or a substantial portion of it, at the very least.”

  “Great.”

  “Anyway, where do you get fifty-five hundred? There were three of them, and three into twenty-two is seven and a third. That makes it”—he frowned, calculating—“seven thousand, three hundred thirty-three dollars a head.”

  “Is that right?”

  “And thirty-three cents,” Farrar said.

  Keller scratched his head. “Am I counting wrong? I make it four people.”

  “Who’s the fourth?”

  “You are,” Keller told him.

  “If I’d wanted to wait,” he told Dot the next day, “I think he probably would have handed over a decent chunk of cash. But there was no way I was going to let him see the sun come up.”

  “Because who knows what the little shit is going to do next.”

  “That’s it,” Keller said. “He’s an amateur and a nut case, and he already fooled me once.”

  “And once is enough.”

  “Once is plenty,” Keller agreed. “He had it all worked out, you know. He’d manipulate Social Security records and get me to kill total strangers so that he could collect their benefits. Total strangers!”

  “You generally kill total strangers, Keller.”

  “They’re strangers to me,” he said, “but not to the client. Anyway, I decided to take a bird in the hand, and the bird comes to twenty-two thousand. I guess that’s better than nothing.”

  “It was,” Dot said, “last time I checked. And none of it was work, anyway. You did it for love.”

  “Love?”

  “Love of country. You’re a patriot, Keller. After all, it’s the thought that counts.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I say so. And I like the flower, Keller. I wouldn’t think you’d be the type to wear one, but I have to say you can carry it off. It looks good. Adds a certain something.”

  “Panache,” he said. “What else?”

  10

  Keller in Retirement

  “Retiring? You, Keller?” Dot looked at him, frowned, shook her head. “Shy, maybe. But retiring? I don’t think so.”

  “I’m thinking about it,” he said.

  “You’re a city boy, Keller. What are you going to do, scoot off to Roseburg, Oregon? Buy yourself a little cabin of clay and wattles made?”

  “Wattles?”

  “Never mind.”

  “It was a nice enough town,” he said. “Roseburg. But you’re right, I’m a New Yorker. I’d stay right here.”

  “But you’d be retired.”

  He nodded. “I ran the numbers,” he said. “I can afford it. I’ve squirreled some money away over the years, and my rent’s reasonable. And I was never one to live high, Dot.”

  “You’ve had expenses, though. All the earrings you bought for that girl.”

  “Andria.”

  “I remember her name, Keller. I didn’t want to say it because I thought it might be a sore point.”

  He shook his head. “She walked into my life,” he said, “and she walked my dog, and she walked out.”

  “And took your dog along with her.”

  “Well, he pretty much walked in himself,” he said, “so it figured he would walk out one day. For a while I missed both of them, and now I don’t miss eithe
r of them, so I’d have to say I came out of it okay.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “And I never spent serious money on earrings. What do earrings have to do with anything, anyway?”

  “Beats me. More tea, Keller?”

  He nodded and she filled both their cups. They were in a Chinese restaurant in White Plains, half a mile from the big old house on Taunton Place where she lived with the old man. Keller had suggested they meet for lunch, and she’d suggested this place, and the meal had been about what he’d expected. The food looked Chinese enough, but it tasted suburban.

  “He’s been slipping,” he said. “He has his good days and his bad days.”

  “Not too many good days lately,” Dot said.

  “I know. And we’ve talked about it, how sooner or later we have to do something. And I got to thinking, and it seems to me all I have to do is retire.”

  “Throw in the towel,” Dot said. “Cash in your chips. Walk away from the table.”

  “Something like that.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “You’re a young man, Keller. What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”

  “The same as I do now,” he said, “but without leaving town on a job eight or ten times a year. Except for those little interruptions, you could say I’ve been retired for years. I go to the movies, I read a book, I work out at the gym, I take a long walk, I see a play, I have the occasional beer, I meet the occasional lady. . . ”

  “Who takes your occasional dog for an occasional walk.”

  He gave her a look. “Point is,” he said, “I keep on doing what I’ve been doing all along, except I don’t take contracts anymore.”

  “Because you’re retired.”

  “Right. What’s wrong with that?”

  She thought about it. “It almost works,” she said.

  “Almost? Why almost?”

  “These things you do,” she said, “aren’t things you do.”

  “Huh?”

  “What they are, they’re things you keep busy with while you’re waiting for the phone to ring. They’re things you do between jobs. But if there weren’t any jobs, if you finally got used to the idea that the phone wasn’t going to ring, all that other stuff would have to be your whole life. And there’s not enough there, Keller. You’d go nuts.”