Hit Parade
Keller didn’t know what to make of it. She’d seemed relieved to see him, so what was the gun for? To shoot him? Or was she expecting somebody else, against whom she felt the need to defend herself?
And should he take a step toward her and swat the gun out of her hand? That would probably work, but if it didn’t…
“I guess you saw the ad,” she said.
The ad? What ad?
“‘Paul Niebauer, Please Get in Touch.’ On the front page of the New York Times, one of those tiny ads at the very bottom of the page. I always wondered if anybody read those ads. But you didn’t, I can see by the look on your face. How did you know to come here?”
How indeed? “I just had a feeling,” he said.
“Well, I’m glad you did. I didn’t know how else to reach you, because I didn’t want to go through the usual channels. And it was important that I see you.”
“The gun,” he said.
She looked at him.
“You’re holding a gun,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, and looked at her hand, as if surprised to discover a gun in it. “That’s for you,” she said, and before he could react she handed the thing to him. He didn’t want it, but neither did he want her to have it. So he took it, noting that it was a.38, and a loaded one at that.
“What’s this for?” he asked.
She didn’t exactly answer. “It belongs to my husband,” she said. “It’s registered. He has a permit to keep it on the premises, and that’s what he does. He keeps it in the drawer of his bedside table. For burglars, he says.”
“I don’t really think it would be useful to me,” he said. “Since it’s registered to your husband, it would lead right back to you, which is the last thing we’d want, and-”
“You don’t understand.”
“Oh.”
“This isn’t for Fluffy.”
“It’s not?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t really care about Fluffy. Killing Fluffy won’t bring Rilke back. And it’s not so bad with Rilke gone, anyway. He was a beautiful dog, but he was really pretty stupid, and it was a pain in the ass having to walk him twice a day.”
“Oh.”
“So the gun has nothing to do with Fluffy,” she explained. “The gun’s for you to use when you kill my husband.”
“Damnedest thing I ever heard of,” Dot said. “And that covers a lot of ground. Well, she’d said her husband was running around on her. So she wants you to kill him?”
“With his own gun.”
“Suicide?”
“Murder-suicide.”
“Where does the murder come in?”
“I’m supposed to stage it,” he said, “so that it looks as though he shot the woman he was having an affair with, then turned the gun on himself.”
“The woman he’s having the affair with.”
“Right.”
“Don’t tell me, Keller.”
“Okay.”
“Keller, that’s an expression. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to know. But I have a feeling I know already. Am I right, Keller?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s her, isn’t it? Myra Tannenbaum.”
“Just Tannen.”
“Whatever. They both fly you in from the Windy City to kill a dog, and now neither one really gives a hoot in hell about the dog, and each one wants you to kill the other. How much did this one give you?”
“Forty-two thousand dollars.”
“Forty-two thousand dollars? How did she happen to arrive at that particular number, do you happen to know?”
“It’s what she got for her jewelry.”
“She sold her jewelry so she could get her husband killed? I suppose it’s jewelry her husband gave her in the first place, don’t you think? Keller, this is beginning to have a definite ‘Gift of the Magi’ quality to it.”
“She was going to give me the jewelry,” he said, “since it was actually worth quite a bit more than she got for it, but she figured I’d rather have the cash.”
“Amazing. She actually got something right. Didn’t you tell me Myra Tannen’s husband was having the affair with Evelyn?”
“That’s what she told me, but it may have been a lie.”
“Oh.”
“Or maybe each of them is having an affair with the other’s husband. It’s hard to say for sure.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t know what to do, Dot.”
“Keller, neither of us has known what to do from the jump. I assume you took the money.”
“And the gun.”
“And now you still don’t know what to do.”
“As far as I can see, there’s only one thing I can do.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well, in that case, I guess you’ll just have to go ahead and do it.”
Myra Tannen lived in a brownstone, which meant there was no doorman to deal with. There was a lock, but Evelyn had provided a key, and at two-thirty the following afternoon, Keller tried it in the lock. It turned easily, and he walked in and climbed four flights of stairs. There were two apartments on the top floor, and he found the right door and rang the bell.
He waited, and rang a second time, and followed it up with a knock. Finally he heard footsteps, and then the sound of the cover of the peephole being drawn back. “I can’t see anything,” Myra Tannen said.
He wasn’t surprised; he’d covered the peephole with his palm. “It’s me,” he said. “The man you sat next to in the park.”
“Oh?”
“I’d better come in.”
There was a pause. “I’m not alone,” she said at length.
“I know.”
“But…”
“We’ve got a real problem here,” he said, “and it’s going to get a lot worse if you don’t open the door.”
30
It was almost three when he picked up the phone. He wasn’t sure how good an idea it was to use the Tannen telephone. The police, checking the phone records, would know the precise time the call was made. Of course it would in all likelihood be just one of many calls made from the Tannen apartment to the Augenblick household across the street, and in any event all it could do was tie the two sets of people together, and what difference could that make to him?
Evelyn Augenblick answered on the first ring.
“Paul,” he said. “Across the street.”
“Oh, God.”
“I think you should come over here.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s all taken care of,” he said, “but there are some things I really need your input on.”
“Oh.”
“You don’t have to look at anything, if you don’t want to.”
“It’s done?”
“It’s done.”
“And they’re both…”
“Yes, both of them.”
“Oh, good,” she said. “I’ll be right over. But you’ve got the key.”
“Ring the bell,” he said. “I’ll buzz you in.”
It didn’t take her long. Time passed slowly in the Tannen apartment, but it was only ten minutes before the bell sounded. He poked the buzzer to unlock the door downstairs, and waited for her in the hallway while she climbed four flights of stairs. She was breathing hard from the effort, and the sight of her husband and her friend did nothing to calm her down.
“Oh, this is perfect,” she said. “ Myra ’s in her nightgown, sprawled on her back, with two bulletholes in her chest. And George-he’s barefoot, and wearing his pants but no shirt. The gun’s still in his hand. What did you do, stick the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger? That’s wonderful, it blew the whole back of his head off.”
“Well, not quite, but-”
“But close enough. God, you really did it. They’re both gone, I’ll never have to look at either one of them again. And this is the way I get to remember them, and that’s just perfect. You’re a genius for thinking of this, getting me to see them like this. But…”
“But what?”
“Well, I’m not complaining, but why did you want me to come over here?”
“I thought it might be exciting.”
“It is, but-”
“I thought maybe you could take off all your clothes.”
Her jaw dropped. “My God,” she said, “and here I thought I was kinky. Paul, I never even thought you were interested.”
“Well, I am now.”
“So it’s exciting for you, too. And you want me to take my clothes off? Well, why not?”
She made a rather elaborate striptease of it, which was a waste of time as far as he was concerned, but it didn’t take her too long. When she was naked he picked up her husband’s gun, muffled it with the same throw pillow he’d used earlier, and shot her twice in the chest. Then he put the gun back in her husband’s hand and got out of there.
It was hard to believe that they charged two dollars for a Good Humor. Keller wasn’t positive, but it seemed to him he could remember paying fifteen or twenty cents for one. Of course that had been many years ago, and everything had been cheaper way back when, and cost more nowadays.
But you really noticed it when it involved something you hadn’t bought in years, and a Good Humor, ice cream on a stick, was not something he’d often felt a longing for. Now, though, walking in the park, he’d seen a vendor, and the urge for a chocolate-coated ice cream bar, with a firm chocolate center and assorted gook embedded in the chocolate coating, was well nigh irresistible. He’d paid the two dollars-he probably would have paid ten dollars just then, if he’d had to-and went over to sit on a bench and enjoy his Good Humor.
If only.
Because he couldn’t really characterize his own humor as particularly good, or even neutral. He was, in fact, in a fairly dismal mood, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. There were things he liked about his work, but its immediate aftermath had never been one of them; whatever feeling of satisfaction came from a job well done was mitigated by the bad feeling brought about by the job’s nature. He’d just killed three people, and two of them had been his clients. That wasn’t the way things were supposed to go.
But what choice had he had? Both of the women had met him and seen his face, and one of them had tracked him to his apartment. He could leave them alive, but then he’d have to relocate to Chicago; it just wouldn’t be safe to stay in New York, where there’d be all too great a chance of running into one or the other of them.
Even if he didn’t, sooner or later one or the other would talk. They were amateurs, and if he did just what he was supposed to do originally-send Fluffy to that great dog run in the sky-either Evelyn or Myra would have an extra drink one night and delight in telling her friends how she’d managed to solve a problem in a sensible Sopranos-style way.
And of course if he executed the extra commission from one of them by killing the other, well, sooner or later the cops would talk to the survivor, who would hold out for about five minutes before spilling everything she knew. He’d have to kill Myra, because she’d followed him home and thus knew more than Evelyn, and that’s what he’d done, thinking he might be able to leave it at that, but with George dead the cops would go straight to Evelyn, and…