Hit Parade

“ Coffeyville.”



“Whatever. What did you come up with, Keller?”



“Well,” he said, and drew a breath. “One, I’m ready to stop doing this. The business is different, with the airline security and people living behind stockade fences. And I’m different. I’m older, and I’ve been doing this for too many years.”



“Okay.”



“Two, I can’t retire. I need the money, and I don’t have any other way to earn what I need to live on.”



“I hope there’s a three, Keller, because one and two don’t leave you much room to swing.”



“What I had to do,” he said, “was figure out how much money I need.”



“To retire on.”



He nodded. “The figure I came up with,” he said, “is a million dollars.”



“A nice round sum.”



“That’s more than I had when I was thinking about retirement the last time. I think this is a more realistic figure. Invested right, I could probably get a return of around fifty thousand dollars a year.”



“And you can live on that?”



“I don’t want that much,” he said. “I’m not thinking in terms of around-the-world cruises and expensive restaurants. I don’t spend a lot on clothes, and when I buy something I wear it until it’s worn out.”



“Or even longer.”



“If I had a million in cash,” he said, “plus what I could get for the apartment, which is probably another half million.”



“Where would you move?”



“I don’t know. Someplace warm, I suppose.”



“Sundowner Estates?”



“Too expensive. And I wouldn’t care to be walled in, and I don’t play golf.”



“You might, just to have something to do.”



He shook his head. “Some of those guys loved golf,” he said, “but others, you had the feeling they had to keep selling themselves on the idea, telling one another how crazy they were about the game. ‘What time?’”



“How’s that?”



“It’s the punch line of a joke. It’s not important. No, I wouldn’t want to live there. But there are these little towns in New Mexico north of Albuquerque, up in the high desert, and you could buy a shack there or just pick up a mobile home and find a place to park it.”



“And you think you could stand it? Out in the boonies like that?”



“I don’t know. The thing is, say I netted half a million from the apartment, plus the million I saved. Say five percent, comes to seventy-five thousand a year, and yes, I could live fine on that.”



“And your apartment’s worth half a million?”



“Something like that.”



“So all you need is a million dollars, Keller. Now I’d lend it to you myself, but I’m a little short this month. What are you going to do, sell your stamps?”



“They’re not worth anything like that. I don’t know what I’ve spent on the collection, but it certainly doesn’t come to a million dollars, and you can’t get back what you put into them, anyway.”



“I thought they were supposed to be a good investment.”



“They’re better than spending the money on caviar and champagne,” he said, “because you get something back when you sell them, but dealers have to make a profit, too, and if you get half your money back you’re doing well. Anyway, I wouldn’t want to sell them.”



“You want to keep them. And keep on collecting?”



“If I had seventy-five thousand a year coming in,” he said, “and if I lived in some little town in the desert, I could afford to spend ten or fifteen thousand a year on stamps.”



“I bet northern New Mexico ’s full of people doing just that.”



“Maybe not,” he said, “but I don’t see why I couldn’t do it.”



“You could be the first, Keller. Now all you need is a million dollars.”



“That’s what I was thinking.”



“Okay, I’ll bite. How’re you going to get it?”



“Well,” he said, “that pretty much answers itself, doesn’t it? I mean, there’s only one thing I know how to do.”



19



“I think I get it,” Dot said. “You can’t do this anymore, so you’ve got to do it with a vengeance. You have to depopulate half the country in order to get out of the business of killing people.”



“When you put it that way…”



“Well, there’s a certain irony operating, wouldn’t you say? But there’s a certain logic there, too. You want to grab every high-ticket job that comes along, so that you can salt away enough cash to get out of the business once and for all. You know what it reminds me of?”



“What?”



“Cops,” she said. “Their pensions are based on what they make the last year they work, so they grab all the overtime they can get their hands on, and then when they retire they can live in style. Usually we sit back and pick and choose, and you take time off between jobs, but that’s not what you want to do now, is it? You want to do a job, come home, catch your breath, then turn around and do another one.”



“Right.”



“Until you can cash in at an even million.”



“That’s the idea.”



“Or maybe a few dollars more, to allow for inflation.”



“Maybe.”



“A little more iced tea, Keller?”



“No, I’m fine.”



“Would you rather have coffee? I could make coffee.”



“No thanks.”



“You sure?”



“Positive.”



“You took a lot of time in Scottsdale. Did he really look just like the man in Monopoly?”



“In the photo. Less so in real life.”



“He didn’t give you any trouble?”



He shook his head. “By the time he had a clue what was happening, it was pretty much over.”



“He wasn’t on his guard at all, then.”



“No. I wonder why he got on somebody’s list.”



“An impatient heir would be my guess. Did it bother you much, Keller? Before, during, or after?”



He thought about it, shook his head.



“And then you took your time getting out of there.”



“I thought it made sense to hang around a few days. One more day and I could have gone to the funeral.”



“So you left the day they buried him?”



“Except they didn’t,” he said. “He had the same kind of funeral as Mr. Lattimore.”



“Am I supposed to know who that is?”



“He had a house I could have bought. He was cremated, and after a nondenominational service his ashes were placed in the water hazard.”



“Just a five-iron shot from his front door.”



“Well,” Keller said. “Anyway, yes, I took my time getting home.”



“All those museums.”



“I had to think it all through,” he said. “Figuring out what I want to do with the rest of my life.”



“Of which today is the first day, if I remember correctly. Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You’re done feeding rescue workers at Ground Zero, and you’re done going to museums for dead outlaws, and you’re ready to get out there and kill one for the Gipper. Is that about it?”



“It’s close enough.”



“Because I’ve been turning down jobs left and right, Keller, and what I want to do is get on the horn and spread the word that we’re ready to do business. We’re not holding any two-for-one sales, but we’re very much in the game. Am I clear on that?” She got to her feet. “Which reminds me. Don’t go away.”



She came back with a pair of envelopes and dropped one on the table in front of him. “They paid up right away, and it took you so long to get home I was beginning to think of it as my money. What’s this?”



“Something I picked up on the way home.”



She opened the package, took the little black clay pot in her hands. “That’s really nice,” she said. “What is it, Indian?”



“From a pueblo in New Mexico.”



“And it’s for me?”



“I got the urge to buy it,” he said, “and then afterward I wondered what I was going to do with it. And I thought maybe you’d like it.”



“It would look nice on the mantel,” she said. “Or it would be handy to keep paper clips in. But it’ll have to be one or the other, because there’s no point in keeping paper clips on the mantel. You said you got it in New Mexico? In the town you’re figuring to wind up in?”



He shook his head. “It was a pueblo. I think you have to be an Indian.”



“Well, they do nice work. I’m very pleased to have it.”



“Glad you like it.”



“What’s not to like? It’s beautiful. And I think you’ll like this,” she said, brandishing the second envelope. “But maybe not. I told you I got a strange telephone call.”



“This was a while ago.”



“Right.”



“And you didn’t want to talk about it over the phone.”



“Partly because it was the phone, and partly because I didn’t know what to say about it.”



“Oh.”



She leaned back in her chair. “This guy called,” she said, “and it wasn’t a voice I recognized, and the only name he gave me was Al.”



“Al.”



“‘Al who?’ I said. ‘Just Al,’ he said.”



“Just Al.”



“He said he wanted to send me something,” she said, “and wanted to know where to send it.”



“What did he want to send you?”



“My question precisely. Something on account, he said.”



“On account?”



“On account of what, is what I wanted to know. On account of it’s Tuesday? Just something on account, he said, and where would I like him to send it.”



“He wanted to find out your address.”



“My first thought,” she said, “and I wanted to tell him to shit in his hat. I’m not telling you my address, I said, and he said he already knew it, but maybe I’d rather receive the parcel at another location. What parcel? I asked him. The parcel I’m going to send you, he said.”



“On account.”



“Right. At this point I was confused.”



“I can understand why.”



“I told him to let me think about it, and he said he’d call in a day or two. And that’s where it stood when I spoke to you that time.”



“When you said you had a weird conversation. You weren’t kidding.”



“He called back in a couple of days,” she went on, “and by then I had just about decided I wouldn’t hear from him again, which would have been fine with me, but there he was on the other end of the phone. ‘It’s Al,’ he said.”



“And?”