Hit Man

“Amazing,” he agreed.



“But that’s assuming it’s all right with you if I stay there while you’re gone. I’ve done it before, but maybe you’d rather I don’t this time.”



“No, that’s fine,” Keller said. “It’s more company for Nelson, so why should I object? You’re not messy, you keep the place neat.”



“I’m housebroken, all right. Same as Nelson.” She laughed, then broke it off and said, “I really appreciate this, Mr. Keller. These friends I’ve been staying with, they’re not getting along too well, and I’m kind of stuck in the middle. She’s turned into this jealous monster, and he figures maybe he ought to give her something to be jealous about, and last night I just about walked the legs off a longhaired dachshund because I didn’t want to be in their space. So it’ll be a pleasure to get out of there tomorrow morning.”



“Listen,” he said, impulsively. “Why wait? Come over here tonight.”



“But you’re not leaving until tomorrow.”



“So what? I’ve got a late evening tonight and I’ll be out first thing in the morning, so we won’t get in each other’s way. And you’ll be out of your friends’ place that much sooner.”



“Gee,” she said, “that would be great.”



When he got off the phone Keller went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee. Why, he wondered, had he made the offer? It was certainly uncharacteristic behavior on his part. What did he care if she had to spend one more night suffering the dirty looks of the wife and the wandering hands of the husband?



And he’d even improvised to justify her acceptance of the offer, inventing a late evening and claiming an early flight. He hadn’t booked the flight yet, and he had no plans for the evening.



Time to book the flight. Time to make plans for the evening.



The flight was booked with a single phone call, the evening planned almost as easily. Keller was dressing for it when Andria arrived, wearing striped bib overalls and bearing a forest-green backpack. Nelson made a fuss over her, and she shucked the backpack and knelt down to reciprocate.



“Well,” Keller said. “You’ll probably be asleep when I get home, and I’ll probably leave before you wake up, so I’ll say goodbye now. You know Nelson’s routine, of course, and you know where everything is.”



“I really appreciate this,” Andria said.



Keller took a cab to the restaurant where he’d arranged to meet a woman named Yvonne, whom he’d dated three or four times since making her acquaintance at a Learning Annex class, “Deciphering the Mysteries of Baltic Cuisine.” The true mystery, they’d both decided, was how anyone had the temerity to call it a cuisine. He’d since taken her to several restaurants, none of them Baltic. Tonight’s choice was Italian, and they spent a good deal of time telling each other how happy they were to be eating in an Italian restaurant rather than, say, a Latvian one.



Afterward they went to a movie, and after that they took a cab to Yvonne’s apartment, some eighteen blocks north of Keller’s. As she fitted her key in the lock, she turned toward him. They had already reached the goodnight kiss stage, and Keller saw that Yvonne was ready to be kissed, but at the same time he sensed that she didn’t really want to be kissed, nor did he really want to kiss her. They’d both had garlic, so it wasn’t a reluctance to offend or be offended. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he decided to honor it.



“Well,” he said. “Goodnight, Yvonne.”



She seemed for a moment to be surprised at being left unkissed, but she got over it quickly. “Yes, good-night,” she said, reaching for his hand, giving it a comradely squeeze. “Goodnight, John.”



Goodnight forever, he thought, walking downtown on Second Avenue. He wouldn’t call her again, nor would she expect his call. All they had in common was a disdain for Northern European cooking, and that wasn’t much of a foundation for a relationship. The chemistry just wasn’t there. She was attractive, but there was no connection between them, no spark.



That happened a lot, actually.



Halfway home, he stopped in a First Avenue bar. He’d had a little wine with dinner, and he wanted a clear head in the morning, so he didn’t stay long, just nursed a beer and listened to the jukebox and looked at himself in the backbar mirror.



What a lonesome son of a bitch you are, he told his reflection.



Time to go home, when you started having thoughts like that. But he didn’t want to get home until Andria had turned in for the night, and who knew what kind of hours she kept? He stayed where he was and sipped his beer, and he made another stop along the way for a cup of coffee.



When he did get home the apartment was dark. Andria was on the sofa, either asleep or faking it. Nelson, curled into a ball at her feet, got up, shook himself, and trotted silently to Keller’s side. Keller went on into the bedroom, Nelson following. When Keller closed the bedroom door, the dog made an uncharacteristic sound deep in his throat. Keller didn’t know what the sound meant, but he figured it had something to do with the door being closed, and Andria being on the other side of it.



He got into bed. The dog stood in front of the closed door, as if waiting for it to open. “Here, boy,” Keller said. The dog turned to look at him. “Here, Nelson,” he said, and the dog jumped onto the bed, turned around in a circle the ritualistic three times, and lay down in his usual spot. It seemed to Keller as though he didn’t have his heart in it, but he was asleep in no time. So, eventually, was Keller.



When he woke up the dog was missing. So was Andria, and so was the leash. Keller was shaved and dressed and out the door before they returned. He got a cab to La Guardia and was there in plenty of time for his flight to St. Louis.



He rented a Ford Tempo from Hertz and let the girl trace the route to the Sheraton on the map. “It’s the turn right after the mall,” she said helpfully. He took the exit for the mall and found a parking place, taking careful note of where it was so he could find it again. Once, a couple of years ago, he had parked a rental car at a mall in suburban Detroit without paying attention to where he’d parked it or what it looked like. For all he knew it was still there.



He walked through the mall, looking for a sporting goods store with a selection of hunting knives. There was probably one to be found; they had everything else, including several jewelry stores to catch anyone who hadn’t gotten her fill of cubic zirconium on television. But he came to a Hoffritz store first and the kitchen knives caught his eye. He picked out a boning knife with a five-inch blade.



He could have brought his own knife, but that would have meant checking a bag, and he never did that if he could help it. Easy enough to buy what you needed at the scene. The hardest part was convincing the clerk he didn’t want the rest of the set, and ignoring the sales pitch assuring him the knife wouldn’t need sharpening for years. He was only going to use it once, for God’s sake.



* * *



He found the Ford, found the Sheraton, found a parking place, and left his overnight bag in the trunk. It would have been nice if the knife had come with a sheath, but kitchen knives rarely do, so he’d been moved to improvise, lifting a cardboard mailing envelope from a Federal Express drop box at the mall entrance. He walked into the hotel lobby with the mailer under his arm and the knife snug inside it.



That gave him an idea.



He checked the slip of paper in his wallet.St. Louis, Sheraton, Rm. 314.



“Man’s a union official,” the old man in White Plains had told him. “Some people are afraid he might tell what he knows.”



Just recently some people at a funded drug rehabilitation project in the Bronx had been afraid their accountant might tell what she knew, so they paid a pair of teenagers $150 to kill her. The two of them picked her up leaving the office, walked down the street behind her, and after a two-block stroll the sixteen-year-old shot her in the head. Within twenty-four hours they were in custody, and two days later so was the genius who hired them.



Keller figured you got what you paid for.



He went over to the house phone and dialed 314. It rang almost long enough to convince him the room was empty. Then a man picked up and said, “Yeah?”



“FedEx,” Keller said.



“Huh?”



“Federal Express. Got a delivery for you.”



“That’s crazy,” the man said.



“Room 314, right? I’ll be right up.”



The man protested that he wasn’t expecting anything, but Keller hung up on him in mid-sentence and got the elevator to the third floor. The halls were empty. He found room 314 and knocked briskly on the door. “FedEx,” he sang out. “Delivery.”



Some muffled sounds came through the door. Then silence, and he was about to knock again when the man said, “What the hell is this?”



“Parcel for you,” he said. “Federal Express.”



“Can’t be,” the man said. “You got the wrong room.”



“Room 314. That’s what it says, on the package and on the door.”



“Well, there’s a mistake. Nobody knows I’m here.” That’s what you think, thought Keller. “Who’s it addressed to?”



Who indeed? “Can’t make it out.”



“Who’s it from, then?”



“Can’t make that out, either,” Keller said. “That whole line’s screwed up, sender’s name and recipient’s name, but it says room 314 at the Sheraton, so that’s got to be you, right?”



“Ridiculous,” the man said. “It’s not for me and that’s all there is to it.”



“Well, suppose you sign for it,” Keller suggested, “and you take a look what’s in it, and if it’s really not for you you can drop it at the desk later, or call us and we’ll pick it up.”



“Just leave it outside the door, will you?”



“Can’t,” Keller said. “It needs a signature.”



“Then take it back, because I don’t want it.”



“You want to refuse it?”



“Very good,” the man said. “You’re a quick study, aren’t you? Yes, by God, I want to refuse it.”



“Fine with me,” Keller said. “But I still need a signature. You just check where it says ‘Refused’ and sign by theX. ”



“For Christ’ssake, ” the man said, “is that the only way I’m going to get rid of you?”



He unfastened the chain, turned the knob, and opened the door a crack. “Let me show you where to sign,” Keller said, displaying the envelope, and the door opened a little more to show a tall, balding man, heavyset, and unclothed but for a hotel towel wrapped around his middle. He reached out for the envelope, and Keller pushed into the room, boning knife in hand, and drove the blade in beneath the lower ribs, angling upward toward the heart.



The man fell backward and lay sprawled out on the carpet at the foot of the unmade king-size bed. The room was a mess, Keller noted, with an open bottle of scotch on the dresser and an unfinished drink on each of the bedside tables. There were clothes tossed here and there, his clothes, her clothes-