Hit Parade

“You’re always taking me by surprise,” she said. “Some surprises are better than others. I’m surprised you didn’t go to Albuquerque, but I have to tell you I’m just as glad.”



“You are?”



“I was worried about you,” she said. “All that business about your stamp collection. I kept thinking of different ways it could go wrong.”



“So did I.”



“But when you left here the other day you were bound and determined to go. What changed your mind?”



“Nothing.”



“Huh?”



“I went.”



“You looked it over and decided to pull the plug on it?”



He held up a hand. “I went there,” he said, “and I did the job, and I came back.”



“You did the job?”



“Sure.”



“But-”



“I figured it would take a week,” he said, “or maybe as much as two. And then, I don’t know, I decided to take the bull by the horns.”



“Do you suppose anybody ever did that? Literally took hold of a bull by the horns?”



“Probably. Anything you can think of, somebody tried it.”



“Well, I guess you’re right about that.”



“I drove over there, I parked in his driveway, and I rang his bell.”



“The day before yesterday,” she said, “you were sitting in my kitchen.”



“I flew out yesterday morning, and it was around dinner when I went to his house. I’d already eaten, I stopped at a Denny’s. They gave me more food than I could finish.”



“So you took a doggie bag to share with Heggler.”



“Heggman, and no, it was this Breakfast Anytime special, and I didn’t want a doggie bag full of eggs and pancakes. I rang the bell and the thought occurred to me that I’d probably be dead within the hour.”



“But you rang the bell anyway.”



“And he opened the door. He looked disappointed to see me.”



“You must get that a lot, Keller.”



“He thought I was one of his wife’s lawyers. He was saying something about a prenup.”



“If he had one,” Dot said, “and if it was a good one, it’d do for a motive.”



“I hit him.”



“You hit him?”



“I didn’t plan it,” he said. “I didn’t plan any of it. Dot, I had three different motel rooms reserved and I checked into all of them, so I could move around and keep out of sight. And then I went straight to the guy’s house and rang his bell, and without even stopping to close the door I made a fist and hit him in the pit of the stomach.”



“And?”



He looked away. “He folded, and I kicked him, and then, well, I got hold of him and broke his neck.”



“Just like that.”



“He was dead, and there were no fingerprints to wipe off because I hadn’t been there long enough to touch anything. I didn’t even have to touch the doorknob because the door still wasn’t shut, so I walked through it, and as I did I heard a voice from upstairs. ‘ Warren? Is everything all right?’”



“His wife? No, you already said she was divorcing him.”



“It was a woman’s voice, though.”



“Maybe she was the reason his wife was divorcing him.”



“Who knows? I kept going. I got in the car and drove straight to the airport.”



“And nobody saw you?”



“I don’t think so. If anybody got the plate number, well, I rented it under another name. I turned the car in, and I got a flight to L.A. and a red-eye home.”



“And here you are.”



“Here I am,” he agreed. “I stopped at my apartment to shower and shave and change clothes, and then I walked over to Grand Central and caught a train. I was going to call.”



“You did call, remember?”



“I mean I was going to call from my apartment and fill you in over the phone. But I decided to come out instead.”



“And here you are. Damn, I keep saying that, don’t I? I’m evidently having trouble taking it all in. Remember that baseball player?”



“Floyd Turnbull.”



“You followed him around for an entire season.”



“It wasn’t that long.”



“The hell it wasn’t. You stopped along the way to kill other people, but you took your sweet time with Turnbull.”



“Well.”



“This time,” she said, “with both of us spooked, and every reason in the world to play it safe, you were in and out in nothing flat. I was afraid you were being set up.”



“So was I.”



“If you managed to kill him, there’d be somebody waiting to kill you.”



“That’s why I booked all those motel rooms.”



“Come on in,” she said. “Sit down. I’ll pour us each a glass of iced tea. Or would you rather have a cup of coffee?”



“I hate the red-eye,” he said. “I thought about getting a room at an airport hotel near LAX and getting a night’s sleep before flying home. But I realized I wasn’t going to sleep anyway, and if I was going to be awake I might as well be on my way home. I did some thinking on the plane.”



“And?”



“I decided we’d picked the wrong job to worry about. We had a client who’d stayed completely out of sight. We didn’t know where he lived, let alone who he is. He wouldn’t have to kill me to stay in the clear, because he’d been completely in the clear all along.”



“He could kill you to avoid having to pay you,” she said, “but he’s in the clear in that respect, too. We never discussed money. He just sent some, and if he figures that’s payment in full, what am I going to do about it? It’s not as though I could send him a bill.”



“You think he’ll pay anything more?”



“I can’t imagine why he would,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean he won’t. If he does, fine. If not, that’s fine, too.”



“The reason I was worried,” he went on, “is that I got stirred up on the last job.”



“Bingham.”



He nodded. “And I couldn’t stop thinking about my stamp collection. I guess I realized I was going to die someday. I mean, everybody does, right?”



“So they tell me.”



“And I knew that, and I thought I was used to the idea, but then I got haunted by the idea of my stamps being left behind. What would happen to them? I don’t have kids to worry about, or relatives, but it suddenly seemed very important to make arrangements for my stamp collection. And once I’d made arrangements, once we’d had that conversation-”



“And what a conversation it was.”



“-I had this sense that it was all taken care of, and now all that was left was for me to go out and meet my fate.”



“That’s why you wouldn’t let me pull the plug on the job.”



“If it was fate, what good would it do? Instead of going to Albuquerque I’d stay home, and when I went down to the corner for the paper an air conditioner would fall out of somebody’s window and kill me. That poor bastard Heggman, I don’t think he ever had a clue. He must have been dead before he could figure out what was happening to him.”



“You’re sure it was him?”



“He was at the right address,” he said, “and he looked just like his picture. But I wondered myself. Waiting for my flight, I kept thinking I should have asked him his name. And then of course I kept expecting the plane to crash.”



“Which one? The flight to Los Angeles or the red-eye?”



“Both of them. But the flights were fine. The cab ride in from JFK, the driver was a maniac, cutting everybody off, driving way too fast. But he got away with it.”



She nodded slowly, took a long look at him. “You must be exhausted,” she said.



“Sort of.”



“I’ll run you back to the station, and you go home and get some sleep. And maybe we should both think about packing it in.”



He shook his head.



“No?”



“No,” he said. “Because we don’t have enough money, not really. And even if we did, even if my end came to a million dollars, it still wouldn’t be enough.”



“How do you figure that?”



“I’ll go home,” he said, “and for the next week I’ll barely leave the house. I’ll sleep a lot and watch a lot of TV. And for a month or more I’ll go to movies and work out at the gym and work on my stamps, and it’ll be just the way it would be if I were retired, and I’ll enjoy it. And then sometime in the second month I’ll start feeling as though there’s something I ought to be doing.”



“I think I get the picture.”



“And then one of us will call the other, and it’ll turn out that there’s a job out there if I want it. And I’ll go like this-”



He pressed his wrists together.



“‘What time?’”



“There you go.”



“And you’ll go off to do the job,” she said, “thinking all the while that you’re really too old for this, and that you wish you could retire.”



“That sounds about right.”



She thought about it. “Well, okay, Keller,” she said. “I guess I can stand it as long as you can.”



KELLER AND THE RABBITS



51



Keller, idling at a stoplight, reached over to turn on the radio. A woman’s voice, warm and slightly theatrical, said: “A Rabbit Odyssey, by Cameron Markwood. Read by Gloria Sweet.”



The light turned green. He crossed the intersection, then reached to dial in another station. But nothing happened when he turned the dial, and he realized it wasn’t the radio, it was the CD player, and he was listening to an audiobook. About rabbits, evidently.



That was the thing about rental cars. You got a different make and model every time, and by the time you figured out things like cruise control and the best position for the seat back, it was time to turn the car in. Evidently the last person to rent this one had figured out how to use the CD player, but hadn’t remembered to retrieve his CD.



So Keller got to listen to a story about rabbits. He was going to turn it off, but he had to concentrate on the traffic and on an upcoming left turn, and by the time things settled down and straightened out, he’d managed to get interested in the story.



It was, he decided, a fable, in that the rabbits not only had conversations but also expressed philosophical sentiments that seemed a stretch for something that hopped around and ate carrots. It was an allegory, with the rabbits meant to represent humans. But at the same time they were rabbits, and he found himself caught up in the story, concerned about their survival. When one of them was caught in a snare, he got really worried, and didn’t fully relax until the other rabbits managed to do some artful gnawing and liberate the little guy.



He was supposed to take a right at Rumsey Road, and damn near missed it. But he made his turn, while a rabbit named Williwaw analyzed the failure of the lettuce crop in terms of supply-side economics. That was kind of interesting, he thought, but there were a couple of boys out with guns, and Williwaw had better put a lid on it and get hopping or he was going to wind up in the stew pot…