Hit Man

“That’s how he keeps getting your phone number,” Keller said.



“I beg your pardon?”



“He doesn’t need a confederate at the phone company. If he knows his way around computers, he can hack his way into the phone company system and get unlisted numbers that way.”



“It’s possible to do that?”



“So they tell me.”



“Well, I’m hopelessly old-fashioned,” she said. “I still do all my writing on a typewriter. But it’s an electric typewriter, at least.” He had the name, the address, the car, and a precise description. Did he need anything else? He couldn’t think of anything.



“This probably won’t take long,” he said.



He found Tyler Boulevard, found Five Mile Road, found Loud amp; Clear Software. The company occupied a squat concrete-block building with its own little parking lot. There were ten or a dozen cars in the lot, many of them Japanese, two of them white. No white Subaru squareback, no plate number to match the one Cressida Wallace had given him.



If Stephen Lauderheim wasn’t working today, maybe he was stalking. Keller drove back into town and got directions to Fairview Avenue. He found it in a pleasant neighborhood of prewar houses and big shade trees. Driving slowly past number 411, he looked around unsuccessfully for a white Subaru, then circled the block and parked just down the street from Cressida Wallace’s house. It was a sprawling structure, three stories tall, with overgrown shrubbery obscuring the lower half of the first-floor windows. A light burned in a window on the third floor, and Keller decided that was where Cressida was, typing up happy and instructive tales of woodland creatures on her electric typewriter.



He had lunch and drove back to Loud amp; Clear. No white Subaru. He hung around for a while, found his way to Fairview Avenue again. No white Subaru, and no light on the third floor. He returned to his motel.



That night there was a movie he wanted to see on HBO, but the channel wasn’t available on his motel TV. He was irritated, and thought about moving to another motel a few hundred yards down the road, where the signboard promised HBO, as well as waterbeds in selected units. He decided that was ridiculous, and that he was mature enough to postpone gratification in this area, even as he had to postpone the gratification of dispatching Stephen Lauderheim and getting the hell out of Muscatine.



He leafed through the phone book, looking for Lauderheim. There was no listing, which didn’t surprise him. He tried Cressida Wallace, knowing she wouldn’t be listed. There were several Wallaces, but none on Fairview and none named Cressida.



There were Kellers, one of them with the initial J, another with the initials JD. Either one could be John.



He did that sometimes. Looked up his name in the phone books of strange cities, as if he might actually find himself there. Not another person with the same name, that happened often enough, his was not an uncommon name. But find himself, his actual self, living an altogether different life in some other city.



It was just a thought, really. He wasn’t schizophrenic, he knew it couldn’t happen. He wondered, though, what that psychotherapist would have made of it. He’d had his problems with his therapist, especially toward the end, but give the devil his due; the man had guided him to some useful insights. Looking for himself in Muscatine, Iowa -Dr. Breen would have had a field day with that one.



He went out to the pay phone, fed in a slew of quarters, and called his apartment in New York. Andria answered.



“I should be home tomorrow or the next day,” he said, “but it’s hard to tell.”



“It’s a shame they never let you know exactly how long you’ll be.”



“Well, it’s the nature of the business.”



“And it must be very gratifying,” she said. “Flying in, straightening everything out, turning chaos into order.”



He’d told her initially that he was a corporate expediter, sent in to put things right when the local boys were stymied. Then one night it became clear that she knew what he did, and could live with it as long as he didn’t do it to her. But now you’d think she’d forgotten the whole thing.



“Well, take all the time you want,” she said. “Nelson and I are having a great old time.”



“You know what I did?” he said abruptly. “I looked up my name in the local phone book.”



“Did you find it?”



“No. But what do you figure it means?”



“Let me think about that,” she said. “Okay?”



“Sure,” he said. “Take all the time you want.”



The next morning Keller had breakfast at the diner, swung past the house on Fairview Avenue, then drove out to the software company. This time the white Subaru was parked in the lot, and the license plate had the right letters and numbers on it. Keller parked where he could keep an eye on it and waited.



At noon, several men and women left the building and walked to their cars and drove off. None fit Stephen Lauderheim’s description, and none got into the white Subaru.



At twelve-thirty, two men emerged from the building and walked along together, deep in conversation. Both wore khaki trousers and faded denim shirts and running shoes, but in other respects they looked completely different. One was short and pudgy, with dark hair combed flat across his skull. The other, well, the other just had to be Lauderheim. He fit Cressida Wallace’s description to a T.



They walked together to Lauderheim’s Subaru. Keller followed them to an Italian restaurant, one of a national chain. Then he drove back to Loud amp; Clear and parked in his old spot.



At a quarter to two, the Subaru returned and both men went back into the building. Keller drove off and found a supermarket, where he purchased a one-pound box of granulated sugar and a funnel. At a hardware store on the same small shopping plaza he bought a large screwdriver, a hammer, and a six-foot extension cord. He drove back to Loud amp; Clear and went to work.



The Subaru had a hatch over the gas cap. You needed a key to unlock it. He braced the screwdriver against the lock and struck it one sharp blow with the hammer, and the hatch popped. He removed the gas cap, inserted the funnel, poured in the sugar, replaced the cap, closed the hatch and wedged it shut, and went back to his own car and got behind the wheel.



Employees began to trickle out of Loud amp; Clear shortly after five. By six o’clock, only three cars remained in the lot. At six-twenty, Lauderheim’s lunch companion came out, got into a brown Buick Century, and drove off. That left two cars, one of them the white Subaru, and they were both still there at seven.



Keller sat behind the wheel, deferring gratification. His breakfast had been light, two doughnuts and a cup of coffee, and he’d missed lunch. He was going to grab something to eat while he was in the supermarket, but it had slipped his mind. Now he was missing dinner.



Hunger made him irritable. Two cars in the lot, probably two people inside, say three at the most. They’d already stayed two hours past quitting time, and might stay until morning for all he knew. Maybe Lauderheim was waiting until the office was empty so that he could make an undisturbed phone call to Cressida.



Suppose he just went in there and did them both? Element of surprise, they’d never know what hit them. Two for the price of one, do it and let’s get the hell out of here. Cops would just figure a disgruntled employee went berserk. That sort of thing happened everywhere these days, not just in post offices.



Maturity, he told himself. Maturity, deferred gratification. Above all, professionalism.



By seven-thirty he was ready to rethink his commitment to professionalism. He no longer felt hungry, but was seething with anger, all of it focused on Stephen Lauderheim.



The son of a bitch.



Why in the hell would he stalk some poor woman who spent her life in an attic writing about kitty cats and bunny rabbits? Kidnapping her dog, for God’s sake, and then torturing it and killing it, and playing her a tape of the animal’s death throes. Killing, Keller thought, was almost too good for the son of a bitch. Ought to stick that funnel in his mouth and pour oven cleaner down his throat.



Speak of the devil.



There he was, Stephen Fucking Lauderheim, holding the door open for a nerdy fellow wearing a lab coat and a wispy mustache. Not heading for the same car, please God? No, separate cars, with Lauderheim pausing after unlocking the Subaru to exchange a final pleasantry with the nerd in the lab coat.



Good he hadn’t counted on waylaying him in the parking lot.



The nerd drove off first. Keller sat, glaring at the Subaru, until Lauderheim started it up, pulled out of the parking lot, and headed back toward town.



Keller gave him a two-block lead, then took off after him.



* * *



Just the other side of Four Mile Road, Keller pulled up right behind the disabled Subaru. Lauderheim already had the hood up and was frowning at the engine.



Keller got out of the car and trotted over to him.



“Heard the sound you were making,” he said. “I think I know what’s wrong.”



“It’s got to be the engine,” Lauderheim said, “but I don’t understand it. It never did anything like this before.”



“I can fix it.”



“Seriously? You mean it?”



“You got a tire iron?”



“Yeah, I suppose so,” Lauderheim said, and went around to open the rear of the squareback. He found the tire iron, extended it to Keller, then drew it back. “There’s nothing wrong with the tires,” he said.



“No kidding,” Keller said. “Give me the tire iron, will you?”



“Sure, but-”



“Say, don’t I know you? You’re Steve Lauderheim, aren’t you?”



“That’s right. Have we met?”



Keller looked at him, at the cute little chin dimple, at the big white teeth. Of course he was Lauderheim, who else could he be? But a professional made sure. Besides, it wasn’t too long ago that he’d failed to make sure, and he wasn’t eager to let that happen again.



“Cressida says hello,” Keller said.



“Huh?”



Keller buried the tire iron in his solar plexus.



The results were encouraging. Lauderheim let out an awful sound, clapped both hands to his middle, and fell to his knees. Keller grabbed him by the front of his shirt, dragged him along the gravel until the Subaru screened the two of them from view. Then he raised the tire iron high overhead and brought it down on Lauderheim’s head.



The man sprawled on the ground, still conscious, moaning softly. A few more blows to finish it?



No. Stick to the script. Keller drew the extension cord from his pocket, unwound a two-foot length of it, and looped it around Lauderheim’s throat. He straddled the man, pinning him to the ground with a knee in the middle of his back, and choked the life out of him.



The Mississippi, legendary Father of Waters, swallowed the tire iron, the hammer, the screwdriver, the funnel. The empty box of sugar floated off on the current.



From a pay phone, Keller called his client. “Toxic Shock,” he said, feeling like an idiot. No answer. He hung up.



He went back to his motel room, packed, carried his bag to the car. He didn’t have to check out. He’d paid a week in advance, and when his week was up they’d take the room back.