Hit Man

“There was supposed to be something else.”

“That’s in the glove box, too. Locked, of course, but the one key fits the ignition and the glove box. And the doors and the trunk, too. And if you turn the key upside down it’ll still fit, ’cause there’s no up and down to it. You really got to hand it to those Japs.”

“What’ll they think of next?”

“Well, it may not seem like much,” the man said, “but all the time you waste making sure you got the right key, then making sure you got it right side up.”

“It adds up.”

“It does,” the man said. “Now, you got a full tank of gas. It takes regular, but what’s in there’s enough to take you upwards of four hundred miles.”

“How’re the tires? Never mind. Just a joke.”

“And a good one,” the man said. “ ‘How’re the tires?’ I like that.”

The car was where it was supposed to be, and the glove box held the car’s registration and a semiautomatic pistol, a.22-caliber Horstma

After a shower, he sat down and put his feet up on the coffee table. It was all arranged, and that made it simpler, but sometimes he liked it better the other way, when all he had was a name and address and no one on hand to smooth the way for him. This was simple, all right, but who knew what traces were being left? Who knew what kind of history the gun had, or what the string bean with theNOSCAASI sign would say if the police picked him up and shook him?

All the more reason to do it quickly. He watched enough of an old movie on cable to ready him for sleep, then slept until he woke up. When he went out to the car he had his bag with him. He expected to return to the room, but if he didn’t he’d be leaving nothing behind, not even a fingerprint.

He stopped at De

That was Thursday. Friday morning the phone rang while he was shaving. He let it ring. It rang again just as he was ready to leave. He didn’t answer it this time, either, but went around wiping surfaces a second time with a hand towel. Then he went out to the car.

At two that afternoon he followed Rolando Vasquez into the men’s room of the Saguaro Lanes bowling alley and shot him three times in the head. The little gun didn’t make much noise, not even in the confines of the tiled lavatory. Earlier he had fashioned an improvised suppressor by wrapping the barrel of the gun with a space-age insulating material that muffled most of the gun’s report without adding much in the way of weight or bulk. If you could do that, he thought, you ought to be able to shut up Al Bernstein.

He left Vasquez propped in a stall, left the gun in a storm drain half a mile away, left the car in the long-term lot at the airport.

Flying home, he wondered why they had needed him in the first place. They’d supplied the car and the gun and the finger man. Why not do it all themselves? Did they really need to bring him all the way from New York to step on the mouse?

“You said to think about my name,” he told Breen. “The significance of it. But I don’t see how it could have any significance. It’s not as if I chose it myself.”

“Let me suggest something,” Breen said. “There is a metaphysical principle which holds that we choose everything about our lives, that in fact we select the very parents we are born to, that everything which happens in our lives is a manifestation of our will. Thus there are no accidents, no coincidences.”

“I don’t know if I believe that.”

“You don’t have to. We’ll just take it for the moment as a postulate. So, assuming that you chose the name Peter Stone, what does your choice tell us?”

Keller, stretched full length upon the couch, was not enjoying this. “Well, a peter’s a penis,” he said reluctantly. “A stone peter would be an erection, wouldn’t it?”

“Would it?”

“So I suppose a guy who decides to call himself Peter Stone would have something to prove. Anxiety about his virility. Is that what you want me to say?”

“I want you to say whatever you wish,” Breen said. “Are you anxious about your virility?”

“I never thought I was,” Keller said. “Of course it’s hard to say how much anxiety I might have had back before I was born, around the time I was picking my parents and deciding what name they should choose for me. At that age I probably had a certain amount of difficulty maintaining an erection, so I guess I had a lot to be anxious about.”

“And now?”

“I don’t have a performance problem, if that’s the question. I’m not the way I was in my teens, ready to go three or four times a night, but then who in his right mind would want to? I can generally get the job done.”

“You get the job done.”

“Right.”

“You perform.”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“What do you think?”

“Don’t do that,” Keller said. “Don’t answer a question with a question. If I ask a question and you don’t want to respond, just leave it alone. But don’t turn it back on me. It’s irritating.”

Breen said, “You perform, you get the job done. But what do you feel, Mr. Peter Stone?”

“Feel?”

“It is unquestionably true thatpeter is a colloquialism for the penis, but it has an earlier meaning. Do you recall Christ’s words to the first Peter? ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I shall build my church.’ Because Petermeans rock. Our Lord was making a pun. So your first name means rock and your last name is Stone. What does that give us? Rock and stone. Hard, unyielding, obdurate. Insensitive. Unfeeling.”

“Stop,” Keller said.

“In the dream, when you kill the mice, what do you feel?”

“Nothing. I just want to get the job done.”

“Do you feel their pain? Do you feel pride in your accomplishment, satisfaction in a job well done? Do you feel a thrill, a sexual pleasure, in their death?”

“Nothing,” Keller said. “I feel nothing. Could we stop for a moment?”

“What do you feel right now?”

“Just a little sick to my stomach, that’s all.”

“Do you want to use the bathroom? Shall I get you a glass of water?”

“No, I’m all right. It’s better when I sit up. It’ll pass. It’s passing already.”

Sitting at his window, watching not marathoners but cars streaming over the Queensboro Bridge, Keller thought about names. What was particularly a

Thing is, he wasn’t stupid. Cold, unyielding, insensitive, but not stupid. If you wanted to play the name game, you didn’t have to limit yourself to the alias he had selected. You could have plenty of fun with the name he’d borne all his life.

His full name was John Paul Keller, but no one called him anything but Keller, and few people even knew his first or middle names. His apartment lease and most of the cards in his wallet showed his names as J. P. Keller. Just Plain Keller was what people called him, men and women alike. (“The upstairs den, Keller. He’s expecting you.” “Oh, Keller, don’t ever change.” “I don’t know how to say this, Keller, but I’m just not getting my needs met in this relationship.”)

Keller. In German it meantcellar, ortavern. But the hell with that, you didn’t need to know what it meant in a foreign language. Just change a vowel. Keller = Killer.