Hit Parade

So was the presence of the big guy in the backseat.



Keller was already getting into the car when he saw him. He froze, and felt a hand on his shoulder, urging him forward.



If you get in, he thought, you’re defenseless. But wasn’t he defenseless already? He was about as unarmed as you could be, unarmed enough to pass through airport security, with not even a nail clipper at his command. Action scenarios ran unbidden through his mind-his elbows swinging, his legs kicking out-but they were somehow unconvincing, and all he did was stand there.



The big guy chuckled, which wasn’t what he much wanted to hear, and the short guy-he was too wide and muscular to be thought of as the little guy-told him there was nothing to worry about. “There’s a gentleman wants to meet you,” he said. “That’s all.”



His tone was reassuring, but Keller wasn’t reassured. But he got in, and the short guy closed the door and walked around the car and got behind the wheel. He fastened his seat belt and suggested that Keller do the same.



And give himself even less maneuverability? “I never use it,” he said. “Claustrophobia.”



Which was nonsense, he always used a seat belt. And it didn’t work anyway, because the guy told him it was the law in Detroit, and all he needed was a fucking traffic ticket, so buckle the belt, will you?



So he did.



They drove to a house somewhere in the suburbs. They hadn’t blindfolded him, so he could have paid attention to the route, but what good was that going to do? He didn’t really know the area, and even if he did, geography wasn’t likely to be a big factor here.



He’d flown out because somebody was paying him to kill a man, and now it was beginning to look as though he was the one who was going to get killed. That was one of the risks in his business. He didn’t dwell on it, he rarely gave it any thought whatsoever, but there was no getting around the fact that it was always a possibility. He sat in his seat, the seat belt snug around him, and figured there were two possibilities-either they intended to kill him or they didn’t. If they didn’t, he had nothing to worry about. If they did, there were two possibilities-either he’d be able to do something about it or he wouldn’t, and he’d only find that out when the time came.



So he relaxed. The big Lincoln provided a smooth ride, so there was no turbulence, and no pain-in-the-ass pilot to apologize for it. Neither the driver nor the man in the backseat said a word, and Keller matched their silence with silence of his own.



They got off the beltway and into a suburb, and after several left and right turns wound up on a tree-shaded dead-end street-the DEAD END sign gave him a turn-full of large homes on large lots. The driver pulled into a semicircular driveway and braked at the entrance of an oversize center hall Colonial.



This time the big guy from the backseat opened the door for him. The driver went on ahead and unlocked the front door. The two of them escorted him through a large living room with a fire in the fireplace, down a broad hallway, and into what he supposed was a den. It held an enormous TV set, on which a tennis match was being played with the sound off. There were bookshelves artfully equipped with sets of leather-bound books, decorative ceramics that looked vaguely pre-Columbian, a couple of leather chairs, and, in one of the chairs, a man with a broad face, pockmarked cheeks, hair like gray Brillo, thin lips, abundant eyebrows, and an expression that, like everyone else’s since he’d left New York, Keller found hard to read.



But it was a familiar face, somehow. He’d never met this man, so where had he seen his face?



Oh, right.



“I don’t suppose your name is Bogart,” the man said.



Keller agreed that it wasn’t.



“Well, I don’t necessarily have to know your name,” the man said. “My guess is you already know mine.”



“I believe so, yes.”



“Prove it.”



Prove it? “I believe you’re Mr. Horvath,” he said.



“Len Horvath,” the man said. “You recognize me, or you just make a good guess?”



“I, uh, recognized you.”



“Wha’d they do, send you a picture?” Keller nodded. “And then someone was gonna meet you at the airport, point me out?”



“I think so. The arrangements got a little vague after I was to meet up with the man with the sign.”



“Bogart,” said the driver, who was stationed at Keller’s right, with the big man on his other side. Keller couldn’t see the driver’s face, but the sneer in his voice was unmistakable.



“Not a name I would have picked,” Keller said.



“I always liked Bogart,” Horvath said. “But I wouldn’t want to be looking for a sign with his name on it, or holding one, either. You were supposed to kill me.”



Keller didn’t say anything.



“Awww, relax,” Horvath said. “You think I’ve got a beef with you? You took a job, for Chrissake. You couldn’t help who hired you. You even know who hired you?”



“They never tell me.”



“Well, I can tell you. A little prick named Kevin Dealey hired you. Guess what happened to him.”



Keller had a pretty good idea.



“The point is,” Horvath told him, “you don’t have a client anymore. So the job’s canceled. You’re no longer required to kill me.”



“Good,” Keller said.



Somehow that struck Horvath funny, and the men flanking Keller joined in the laughter. When it died down Horvath said, “He talked a little, Kevin Dealey did, before we fixed it so he couldn’t. Told us what flight you’d be on and all about the Bogart bullshit. First thought I had, Phil and Norman here meet you at the airport, turn you around, and send you back to New York. Hi there, Mr. Bogart, services no longer required, have a nice return flight, blah blah blah. Put you on the plane, wave goodbye, and you go back to your quotidian life.”



Keller’s face must have shown something, because Horvath grinned at him. “Quotidian. Means ordinary, everyday. I read books. Not all the ones you see, but plenty. You a reader yourself?”



“Some.”



“Yeah? What else do you do? When you’re not flying off to Detroit.”



Keller told him.



“Stamps,” Horvath said. “I had a collection when I was a kid. I don’t know what the hell ever happened to it. That’s a great pastime, collecting stamps.”



They talked a little about stamps, and Keller was beginning to believe they weren’t going to kill him. You were planning on killing a man, would you start telling him about the stamps you collected as a kid?



“Where was I?” Horvath said and answered his own question. “Oh, right, meet you at the airport, turn you around and send you home. Thing is, why would you believe Phil and Normie? But if you meet the putative victim in his own house, that makes it clear-cut. So now I’ll shake your hand, because for all I know the day may come when I have to hire you myself, and I got no hard feelings against you, and hope you don’t resent me for keeping you from completing your job. You get paid something in front?”



“Half.”



“That’s what Dealey said, but he was never the kind of fellow whose word you could take to the bank. Well, that’s all you get, but the bright side is you get to keep it without having to earn it. You can buy yourself some stamps.”



22



“You say that all the time,” Keller said.



“I do?”



“‘You can buy yourself some stamps.’ When you hand me my share, or when you let me know the money’s arrived. ‘Here you go, Keller-buy yourself some stamps.’”



“It does have a familiar ring to it,” Dot allowed. “I didn’t realize I said it all the time.”



“Well, a lot of the time.”



“Because I’d hate to be a bore, you know? There’s not all that many people I talk to besides you, and if I’m tossing the same catchphrases at you all the damn time-”



“Actually, it’s nice,” he said. “And it’ll echo in my mind when I’m looking over a price list and trying to decide whether to order something. I hear your voice in my head, telling me I can buy myself some stamps, and it gives me permission to be extravagant.”



“The roles we play in each other’s lives,” Dot said, “and we’re not even aware of it. Who says there’s no divine order to the universe?”



“Not me,” said Keller.



They were in White Plains, sitting across the kitchen table in Dot’s big old house on Taunton Place. She’d made coffee for him and was herself sipping her usual glass of iced tea.



“Well,” she said. “Must have been scary.”



“What I was afraid of,” he said, “was that there was a way out of it but that I couldn’t see it. So if I got killed, on top of being dead it’d be my own fault.”



“I think I see what you mean.”



“But it turned out I was worried about nothing, because all he wanted to do was let me know the game had changed. Between the time we got the contract and the time I got off the plane, our client stopped having a pulse.”



“And here you are,” she said. “And I’ve evidently said this before, but I’ll say it again, Keller. Now you can buy yourself some stamps.”



“But not as many as I’d like.”



“Oh?”



“It’s nice we got half the money,” he said, “but it would have been nice to get the other half. Even if I had to earn it.”



“Half a loaf may be better than none,” she agreed, “but it’s not as good as the whole enchilada. Are you hurting for dough?”



“I wouldn’t say hurting. But I was sort of counting on the money.”



“I know the feeling. I flat hate it when we’re supposed to get money and then we don’t.”



“Plus I wanted the work. You go too long between jobs and you start to lose your edge. And it’s been a while. Maybe if I’d worked more recently I’d have reacted quicker to Phil and Norman.”



“Which would have been the worst thing to do, because you might have gotten yourself killed, when you weren’t in any real danger in the first place.”



He frowned, thinking it over, then shrugged. “Maybe. It’s all pretty hypothetical. What’s that you say sometimes about my grandmother’s tea cart?”



“Huh? Oh, I know what you mean. ‘If your grandmother had wheels she’d be a tea cart, but she’d still be your grandmother.’”



“That’s it.”



“Is that something else I say all the time?”



“No, just once in a while.”



“Christ, I’m glad I don’t have to listen to myself. I’d bore myself to tears. I wish I had work for you, Keller, but all I can do is sit back like a good spider and see what flies into the web. The jobs have to come to us.”



“Maybe.”



She gave him a look.



“On the trip to Detroit,” he said, “I flew first-class. They were sold out in coach, and that was the flight I wanted, especially since we’d arranged for them to be meeting it. So I spent the extra money.”