Hit Man

“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 cha

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 ru

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 fu

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 fu

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 di

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 bu