Hit Man

“Did somebody make them take the sign down?”

Joel shook his head. “After about a year,” he said, “they sold out, and the new owners took the sign down.”

“They didn’t like the implications?”

“Not hardly. See, they’re Indians. Place is decent, though, and you don’t have to go through the lobby. In fact you’re already registered and paid in advance for a week. I figured you’d like that. Here’s your room key, and here’s a set of car keys. They belong to that Toyota over there, third from the end. Paper for it’s in the glove box, along with a little twenty-two automatic. If you prefer something heavier, just say so.”

Keller assured him it would be fine. “Why don’t you get settled,” Joel said, “and get yourself something to eat if you’re hungry. The Sizzler across the street on the left isn’t bad. I’ll pick you up in say two hours and we’ll sneak a peek at the fellow you came out here to see.”

Joel picked him up on schedule and they rode downtown and parked in a metered lot. They sat in the lobby of Ruthven’s office building. After twenty minutes Joel said, “Getting off the elevator. Glen plaid suit, horn-rimmed glasses, carrying the aluminum briefcase. Looks space age, I guess, but I’d go for genuine leather every time, myself.”

Keller took a good look. Ruthven was tall and slender, with a sharp nose and a pointed chin. Keller said, “Are you positive that’s him?”

“Shit, yes, I’m positive. Why?”

“Just making sure.”

Joel ran him back to the All-American and gave him a map of Tulsa with different locations marked on it-the All-American Inn, Ruthven’s house, Ruthven’s office, and a southside restaurant Joel said was outstanding. He also gave Keller a slip of paper with a phone number on it. “Anything you want,” he said. “You want a girl, you want to get in a card game, you want to see a cockfight, just call that number and I’ll take care of it. You ever been to a cockfight?”

“Never.”

“You want to?”

Keller thought about it. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“Well, if you change your mind, just let me know. Or anything else you want.” Joel hesitated. “I got to say I’ve got a lot of respect for you,” he said, averting his eyes from Keller’s as he said it. “I don’t guess I could do what you do. I haven’t got the sand for it.”

Keller went to his room and stretched out on the bed. Sand, he thought. What the hell did sand have to do with anything?

He thought about Ruthven, coming off the elevator, long and lean, and realized why he’d been bothered by the man’s appearance. He wasn’t what Keller had expected. He didn’t look anything like Harry in 314.

Did Ruthven know he was a target? Driving around in the Toyota, keeping an eye on the man, Keller decided that he did. There was a certain wariness about him. The way to handle that, Keller decided, was to let him get over it. A few days of peace and quiet and Ruthven could revert to his usual way of thinking. He’d decide that Harry and his girlfriend had been killed by a jealous husband, and he’d drop his guard and stick his neck out, and Keller could get the job done and go home.

The gun seemed all right. The third afternoon he drove out into the country, popped a full clip into the gun, and emptied the clip at aCATTLE CROSSING sign. None of his shots hit the mark, but he didn’t figure that was the gun’s fault. He was fifteen yards away, for God’s sake, and the sign was no more than ten inches across. Keller wasn’t a particularly good shot, but he arranged his life so he didn’t have to be. If you walked up behind a guy and put the gun muzzle to the back of his neck, all you had to do was pull the trigger. You didn’t have to be a marksman. All you needed was-

What? Karma? Sand?

He reloaded and made a real effort this time, and two shots actually hit the sign. Remarkable what a man could do when he put his mind to it.

The hard part was finding a way to pass the time. He went to a movie, walked through a mall, and watched a lot of television. He had Joel’s number but never called it. He didn’t want female companionship, nor did he feel like playing cards or watching a cockfight.

He kept fighting off the urge to call New York.

On one of the home shopping channels, one woman said earnestly to another, “Now there’s one thing we both know, and that’s that you just can’t have too many earrings.” Keller couldn’t get the line out of his head. Was it literally true? Suppose you had a thousand pairs, or ten thousand. Suppose you had a million pairs. Wouldn’t that constitute a surplus?

The woman in 314 hadn’t been wearing earrings, but there had been a pair on the bedside table. How many other pairs had she had at home?

Finally one morning he got up at daybreak and showered and shaved. He packed his bag and wiped the motel room free of prints. He had done this routinely every time he left the place, so that it would never be necessary for him to return to it, but this morning he sensed that it was time to wind things up. He drove to Ruthven’s house and parked around the corner at the curb. He went through the driveway and yard of a house on the side street, scaled a four-foot Cyclone fence, and jimmied a window in order to get into Ruthven’s garage. The car inside the garage was unlocked, and he got into the back seat and waited patiently.

Eventually the garage door opened, and when that happened Keller scrunched down so that he couldn’t be seen. Ruthven opened the car door and got behind the wheel.

Keller sat up slowly. Ruthven was fumbling with the key, having a hard time getting it into the ignition. But was it really Ruthven?

Jesus, get a grip. Who else could it be?

Keller stuck the gun in his ear and emptied the clip.

“These are beautiful,” Andria said. “You didn’t have to bring me anything.”

“I know that.”

“But I’m glad you did. I love them.”

“I didn’t know what to get you,” Keller said, “because I don’t know what you already have. But I figured you can never have too many earrings.”

“That is absolutely true,” Andria said, “and not many men realize it.”

Keller tried not to smirk.

“Ever since you left,” she said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said. That you would like it if I stayed here. But what I have to know is if you still feel that way, or if it was just, you know, how you felt that morning.”

“I’d like you to stay.”

“Well, I’d like it, too. I like being around your energy. I like your dog and I like your apartment and I like you.”

“I missed you,” Keller said.

“I missed you, too. But I liked being here while you were gone, living in your space and taking care of your dog. I have a confession to make. I slept in your bed.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake. Where else would you sleep?”

“On the couch.”

Keller gave her a look. She colored, and he said, “While I was away I thought about your toes.”

“My toes?”

“All different colors.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I had trouble deciding which color to go with, and it came to me that when God couldn’t decide on a color, he created the rainbow.”

“Rainbow toes,” Keller said. “I think I’ll take them one by one into my mouth, those pink little rainbow toes. What do you think about that?”

“Oh,” she said.

Later he said, “Suppose someone got killed by mistake.”

“How could that happen?”

“Say an area code turns into a room number. Human error, computer error, anything at all. Mistakes happen.”

“No they don’t.”

“They don’t?”

“People make mistakes,” she said, “but there’s no such thing as a mistake.”

“How’s that?”

“You could make a mistake,” she said. “You could be swinging a dumbbell and it could sail out of the window. That would be a case of you making a mistake.”

“I’ll say.”

“And somebody looking for an address on the next block could get out of a cab here instead, and here comes a dumbbell. The person made a mistake.”

“His last one, too.”

“In this lifetime,” she agreed. “So you’ve both made a mistake, but if you look at the big picture, there was no mistake. The person got hit by a dumbbell and died.”

“No mistake?”

“No mistake, because it was meant to happen.”

“But if it wasn’t meant to happen-”

“Then it wouldn’t.”

“And if it happened it was meant to.”

“Right.”

“Karma?”

“Karma.”

“Little pink toes,” Keller said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

6 Keller in Shining Armor

W hen the phonerang, Keller was finishing up theTimes crossword puzzle. It looked as though this was going to be one of those days when he was able to fill in all the squares. That happened more often than not, but once or twice a week he’d come a cropper. A Brazilian tree in four letters would intersect with an Old World marsupial in five, and he’d be stumped. It didn’t make his day when he filled in the puzzle or spoil it when he didn’t, but it was something he noticed.

He put down his pencil and picked up the phone, and Dot said, “Keller, I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“I’ll be right over,” he said, and broke the connection. She was right, he thought, she hadn’t seen him in ages, and it was about time he paid a visit to White Plains. The old man hadn’t given him work in months, and you could get rusty, just sitting around with nothing better to do than crossword puzzles.

There was still plenty of money. Keller lived well-a good apartment on First Avenue with a view of the Queensboro Bridge, nice clothes, decent restaurants. But no one had ever taken him for a drunken sailor, and in fact he tended to squirrel money away, stuffing it in safe deposit boxes, opening savings accounts under other names. If a rainy day came along, he had an umbrella at hand.

Still, just because you had Blue Cross didn’t mean you couldn’t wait to get sick.

“Good boy,” he told Nelson, reaching to scratch the dog behind the ears. “You wait right here. Guard the house, huh?”

He had the door open when the phone rang again. Let it ring? No, better answer it.

Dot again. “Keller,” she said, “did you hang up on me?”

“I thought you were done.”

“Why would you think that? I said hello, not goodbye.”

“You didn’t say hello. You said you hadn’t seen me in ages.”

“That’s closer to hello than goodbye. Well, let it go. The important thing is I caught you before you left the house.”

“Just,” he said. “I had one foot out the door.”

“I’d have called back right away,” she said, “but I had a hell of a time getting quarters. You ask for change of a dollar around here, people look at you like you’ve got a hidden agenda.”