She rang the doorbell, and Keller heard it chime. Then nothing, and then footsteps. He flipped the Bible open and held it in his left hand as if he were reading it, so that it obscured the lower portion of his face. His right hand clutched the pry bar, holding it out of sight at his side.
The door opened, and Marlin Taggert, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a pair of camo cargo pants, took a look at the two of them. “Oh, Christ,” he said.
“The very subject I wanted to raise with you,” Dot said. “I hope you’re having a divine day, Mr. Taggert.”
“I don’t need this,” he said. “No disrespect, lady, but I got no use for you or the Jesus shit you’re peddling, so if you’ll just take it somewhere else—”
But that was all he said, because by then Keller had driven the rounded end of the pry bar into the pit of his stomach.
The reaction was heartening. Taggert gasped, clutched at his middle, took an involuntary step backward, stumbled, caught his balance. Keller rushed in after him, with Dot right behind, drawing the door shut after her. Taggert retreated, picked up a glass ashtray, hurled it at Keller. It sailed wide, and Keller went after him, and Taggert yanked a lamp off a table and flung it.
“Son of a bitch,” Taggert bellowed, and charged Keller, swinging a wild right hand. Keller ducked under the blow, swung the pry bar like a sickle, and heard the bone snap when he connected with Taggert’s leg. The man let out a roar and crumpled to the floor, and Keller had the pry bar high overhead and just caught himself in time; he was that close to smashing the man’s skull and rendering him forever silent.
Taggert had an arm raised to ward off a blow. Keller feinted with the pry bar, then swung it in an easy arc that caught the man high on the left temple. Taggert’s eyes rolled up in his head and he pitched over onto his side.
Dot said, “Oh, hell.”
What? Had he struck too hard a blow after all? He looked up and saw the old dog waddling across the carpet toward them. Keller walked toward it, still holding the pry bar, and with a visible effort the dog raised its head to look up at him.
Keller put down the bar, took hold of the dog’s collar, put it in another room, and closed the door.
“For a second there,” Dot said, “I thought it was about to attack. But it was just waiting for Queen Elizabeth to take it for a walk.”
He checked Taggert, found him unconscious but breathing. He rolled him over, secured his hands behind his back with a few loops of the wire he’d bought, and used some more of the wire to bind his ankles together.
He straightened up, handed the pry bar to Dot. “Watch him,” he said, and went looking for the kitchen.
A door from the kitchen led into the attached garage. Keller found a button to raise the garage door, parked his car alongside the Cadillac, and lowered the door. He wasn’t gone long, and Taggert was still out when he returned to the living room. The lamp was back on its table, he noticed, and so was the glass ashtray.
Dot shrugged. “What can I say, Keller? I’m neat. And this mope’s still out. What do we do, throw water on him?”
“We can give him a minute or two.”
“You know, I thought you were exaggerating about the hair in his ears. If he doesn’t come to on his own, I’ll find a tweezers and start ripping out ear hair. That should bring him around.”
“This is simpler,” he said, and poked his toe gently into Taggert’s shin. He found the spot where he’d struck with the pry bar, and the pain cut right through. Taggert yelped and opened his eyes.
He said, “Jesus, my leg. I think you broke it.”
“So?”
“‘So?’ So you broke my fucking leg. Who the hell are you people? If this is some religious cult, you got a hell of a way of recruiting, is all I can say. If it’s a robbery, you’re out of luck. I don’t keep any money in the house.”
“That’s a good policy.”
“Huh? Look, wiseass, how’d you pick my house? You got any idea who I am?”
“Marlin Taggert,” Keller said. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Huh?”
“To tell me who I am,” Keller said.
“How the hell do I know who you are? Wait a minute. Do I know you?”
“That was my question.”
“Jesus,” he said. “You’re the guy.”
“I guess you remember.”
“You look different.”
“Well, I’ve been through a lot.”
“Look,” Taggert said, “I’m sorry that didn’t go the way it was supposed to.”
“Oh, I think it went exactly the way it was supposed to.”
“You’re probably upset that you didn’t get paid, and that’s something that can be taken care of. All you had to do was get in touch. I mean, there’s no need for violence.”
This was taking too long. Keller kicked him hard in the leg, and Taggert screamed.
“Cut the crap,” Keller said. “You set me up and left me hanging.”
“All I ever did,” Taggert said, “was what I got paid to do. Pick up this guy, take him here, take him there, show him this, tell him that. I was doing my job.”
“I realize that.”
“There was nothing personal to it. Jesus, you ought to be able to understand that. What the hell were you doing in Iowa? You weren’t there on a relief mission for the Red Fucking Cross. You went there to do a job, and if I didn’t keep telling you ‘Not today, not today,’ you’d have iced that poor schmuck we saw pruning his roses.”
“Watering his lawn.”
“Who gives a shit? One word from me and you’d have killed him without even knowing his name.”
“Gregory Dowling.”
“So you know his name. I guess that changes everything. You’d have killed him without it being personal, is what I’m saying here, and I did what I did, and that wasn’t personal, either.”
“I understand that.”
“So what do you want from me? Money? I got twenty thousand dollars in my safe. You want it, you can take it.”
“I thought you didn’t keep any money in the house.”
“And I thought you were the strong-arm division of the Little Sisters of the Poor. You want money?”
Keller shook his head. “We’re both professionals,” he said, “and I’ve got nothing against you. Like you said, you were just doing a job.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“Information.”
“Information?”
“I want to know who you did the job for.”
“Jesus,” Taggert said. “Why don’t you ask me something easy, like where’s Jimmy Hoffa? You want to know who put the hit on Longford, you’re pissing on the wrong tree. Nobody’s gonna tell me shit like that.”
“I don’t care who ordered the hit.”
“You don’t? Who are you after, the shooter?”
“No,” Keller said. “He was just doing his job.”
“Like you and me.”
“Just like us. Except we’re alive, and I have the feeling the shooter’s not.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Oh, you’d know, Keller thought. But since he didn’t care either way, he didn’t bother to push the point. He said, “I don’t care about the shooter, or about the person who commissioned the job. And I’ll stop caring about you as soon as you give me somebody else to care about.”
“Like who?”
“Call me Al,” Dot said.
“Huh?”
“The man who made the call to hire me,” Keller said. “The man who gave you your orders. Your boss.”
“Forget it.”
Keller touched the man’s shin with his foot, pressed just enough to get the message across. “You’re going to tell me,” he said. “It’s just a question of when.”
“So we’ll see who’s got the most patience,” Taggert said.
You had to admire the man’s nerve. “You really want the other leg broken? And everything else that comes after that?”
“Once I give you what you want, I’m dead.”
“And if you don’t—”
“If I don’t I’m dead anyway? Maybe, maybe not. Way I see it, if you’re up for killing me, you’ll do it whether I talk or not. In fact as long as I don’t talk, you’ll keep me alive hoping you can open me up. But once I turn rat and sell the boss out, I’m a dead man walking.”
“Not walking,” Keller said.
“Not on this leg, you’re right about that. Point is, either you kill me or he does. Either way it’s the same ending. So I think maybe I’ll see how long I can hold out.”
“There’s only one problem with that.”
“Oh?”
“Sooner or later,” Keller said, “your wife’s going to come home. She was dressed for a day on the town, so maybe she’ll go shopping, maybe have lunch with a girlfriend. If we’re gone by the time she gets back, she’ll be fine. If we’re still here, we’ll have to deal with her.”
“You’d hurt an innocent woman?”
“It wouldn’t hurt her much. She’d get what the dog got.”
“Jesus Christ, what did you do with the dog?”
Keller brandished the pry bar, made a chopping motion with it. “Hated to do it,” he said, “but I couldn’t take the chance he’d bite somebody.”
“Aw, God,” Taggert said. “Poor old Sulky? He never bit anybody in his life. He could barely bite his dinner. Why’d you go and do a thing like that?”
“I didn’t feel I had any choice.”
“Yeah, the poor old guy might have licked your face. Slobbered all over you. He’s got arthritis, he can barely walk, most of his teeth are gone—”
“It sounds like I did him a favor.”
“Sometimes I think I’m a hard case,” Taggert said, “and then I run into a son of a bitch like you. My kids loved that fucking dog. He’s been part of the family longer’n they’ve been alive. How am I gonna explain to them that their buddy Sulky’s dead?”
“Make up some story about Doggie Heaven,” Dot suggested. “Kids buy that crap all the time.”
“Jesus, you’re colder’n he is.”
“And speaking of the kids,” Keller said, “if you’re still holding out when they come home—”
“You’d do that?”
“I’d rather not, but if we’re still here when they turn up, you want to tell me what choice I’d have?”
He looked at Keller, looked at Dot, looked down at his own broken leg. “It hurts like a bastard,” he said.
“Sorry about that.”
“Yeah, I can tell. Okay, you win. Between you and him, either one of you would kill me, but he wouldn’t come after my family.”
“What’s his name?”
“Benjamin Wheeler. And you never heard of him. That’s his fucking secret, nobody ever heard of him.”
“Call me Ben,” Dot said.
“How’s that?”
“Never mind,” Keller said. “Keep talking. His address, his schedule, everything you can think of.”
38
“That’s a nice computer his kids have,” Dot said, “and a real fast broadband connection. You go to Google Image and type in ‘Benjamin Wheeler’ and you get a ton of hits. You make it ‘Benjamin Wheeler Portland’ and it narrows it down.” She was holding three sheets of paper, and she showed one to Taggert. He nodded, and nodded again at each of the other two sheets.
Keller took one of the sheets he’d nodded at and looked at a color photo of three men standing next to a horse. A fourth man, the jockey, was on top of the horse, and one of the men was holding a trophy, to be presented to the horse, the jockey, or the owner. Keller couldn’t tell which, nor did he know which of the men was Wheeler — although he was ready to rule out the jockey.
He looked at the other photos, and there was only one man who appeared in all three. In one he was with two women, posing for the camera, while the third shot showed him and another man in conversation. In each of the pictures Wheeler was the dominant figure, taller than anyone else, except for the horse. He dressed in expensive suits conservatively cut, and wore them with the ease of a retired athlete. His dark hair was well barbered, his face deeply tanned, and he wore a mustache.
“‘Financier, sportsman, and philanthropist,’” Keller read aloud.
“A hell of a guy,” Dot said. “On all these committees for civic betterment. Patron of local cultural events. That one woman there is an opera star, and there was a pretty good shot of him shaking hands with the new mayor, but I thought three was plenty.”
“You could have a hundred pictures,” Taggert said, “and that’s as close as you’re gonna get to him, because you can’t just pick up a Bible and go ring his doorbell. He’s got a house that’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a castle, up on a hill with an electric fence around the whole property. You got to go through a gate to get close to the house, and the guy on the gate confirms by intercom before he lets anyone in. If you got over the fence, you’d have the dogs to contend with, and you couldn’t deal with them the way you did with poor Sulky. Man, I can’t believe you killed my dog.”
“Then don’t.”
“They’re Rhodesian ridgebacks, a boy and a girl, and if you took a swat at one of them, he’d take your hand off at the wrist, while his sister was having your balls for dinner. Get past ’em somehow and make it into the house and he’s got four guys on staff, and they’ve all got guns and know how to use ’em. When he leaves the house, two of them go with him, one to drive and one to ride shotgun. The other two stick around and guard the house.”
“All those precautions,” Keller said. “I guess a lot of people must have tried to kill him over the years.”
“Why? Mr. Wheeler’s respected throughout the state, he calls the mayor and the governor by their first names. As far as I know, there’s never been a single attempt on his life.”
“No kidding. Where do you keep your guns?”
“My guns?”
“You know.” He pointed his finger, wiggled his thumb. “Bang! Your guns.”
There was a locked gun rack in the den, and the key was where Taggert had said it would be — and, Keller thought, right where any kid would look for it. Keller took the shotgun and slipped a few shells in his pocket. He left the rifle in the rack. He could fire a rifle but wasn’t that confident of his ability to hit anything with it. With a shotgun, all you had to do was get close enough to the target. A clay pigeon might present a certain challenge, but a human being standing still would be pretty hard to miss.
“They’re for hunting,” Taggert said, “and if I’ve gone out three times in the last ten years it’s a lot. Hell, if I was a hunter, you think my dog’d be a corgi? I still can’t believe you killed my dog.”
“You said that before. You must have handguns.”
“Just the one, in the bedside table. For emergencies.”
It was a revolver, a.38 Ivor Johnson, immobilized with a cylinder lock. Keller had a vision of an intruder surprising the Taggerts in their sleep, and Taggert yanking the gun out and rushing to the den for the key. Handy.
“It’s hard to believe you’re a pro,” Taggert said. “Taking my guns? You didn’t bring your own?”
“You offered me a choice of guns in Des Moines,” Keller reminded him. “So I’ve come to think of you as my regular supplier.”
“You took the revolver. Were you even planning on using it?”
“No,” Keller said, “but it came in handy later on.”
“You could have an AK-47 and you wouldn’t have a chance with Mr. Wheeler. You know what I would do in your position?”
“Tell me.”
“Put the guns back, let yourselves out, and go home. Mr. Wheeler won’t send anybody after you because he’ll never know you were here. He’s sure not about to hear it from me.”
“You can tell him you broke your leg tripping over your dog.”
“Jesus,” Taggert said. “I can’t believe you killed the poor damn dog.”
&n
bsp; “Let’s be clear on this,” Keller said. “Packing up and going home, that’s not on the table. So what you’ve got to do is come up with a way for us to get to him.”
“Mr. Wheeler, you mean.”
“Right.”
“You want to use my gun, and you want me to work out how you’re gonna do it.”
“That’s your best shot.”
“It’s my best shot? How the hell do you figure that?”
“It’s pretty simple,” Keller told him. “That’s the only way you stand a chance of coming out of this alive. Say we go up against Wheeler and we wind up dead.”
“Which you will.”
“If we do, so do you. He’ll know how we got to him. We’ll tell him if he asks, and he’ll figure it out if we don’t. How long do you figure he’d let you live, and how far could you run with a broken leg?”
“And if I help you, and you get lucky? Then you turn around and kill me.”
“Not if you help us. Why kill you?”
“Shit, why kill Mr. Wheeler, for all you’re going to get out of it? Why would you kill me? Because you’re some kind of a psychopath, is all I can think of. Look what you went and did to Sulky.”
“Jesus,” Dot said.
“I still can’t believe it,” Taggert said. “I can’t believe you killed a poor old dog like that.”
“I can’t fucking stand any more of this,” Dot said, and went over to the door Keller had closed earlier. She opened it and made clucking noises, and Taggert turned his head in time to see the old dog waddle into the room.
“My God,” he said.
“It’s Sulky,” Dot announced, “back from the dead, and I bet you can’t believe that, either.”
39
“If you didn’t have to go and break my leg,” Taggert said, “this part would be a whole lot easier.”
Keller couldn’t argue the point. Getting the man from the living room floor to the back seat of his Cadillac took a lot of work on everybody’s part. Keller had snipped the wire from around his ankles, which made it a little easier, but security concerns had led him to leave Taggert’s wrists tied together behind his back. The whole process, through the kitchen and into the garage, was difficult to negotiate, and Taggert inevitably bumped into something here and there, and yelped with pain.
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