Hit Man

“Then the son of a bitch joined a gym,” she said, “and he wound up leaving me for his personal trainer. He wadded me up and threw me away like a used Kleenex.”

She didn’t look like the sort of person you’d blow your nose on. She was a slender, dark-haired woman, and she had been no harder to get acquainted with than Marie Strang, and about as easy to wind up in the hay with. She hadn’t disclosed any interesting aberrations, her own or her ex-husband’s, but Keller found himself with no cause to complain.

“Ah, Kevin,” she said.

Maybe it was the name, he thought. Maybe he should use it more often, maybe it brought him luck.

“Living alone the way you do,” he said. “You ever think about getting a dog?”

“I’m away too much,” she said. “It’d be no good for me and no good for the dog.”

“That’s true for a lot of people,” he said, “but they’re used to having one around the house and they don’t want to give it up.”

“Whatever works,” she said. “I never got used to it, and you know what they say. You don’t miss what you never had.”

“I guess your ex didn’t have a dog.”

“Not until I left and he married the bitch with the magic fingers.”

“She had a dog?”

“Shewas a dog, honey. She had a face like a Rottweiler. But she’s out of the picture now, and she hasn’t been replaced. Serves her right, if you ask me.”

“So you don’t know how Barry Moncrieff felt about dogs.”

“Of the canine variety, you mean? I don’t think he cared much one way or the other. Hey, how’d we get on this silly subject, anyhow? Why don’t you lie down and kiss me, Kevin, honey?”

They both gave money to local charities. Strang tended to support the arts, while Moncrieff donated to fight diseases and feed the homeless. They both had a reputation for ruthlessness in business. Both were childless, and presently unmarried. Neither one had a dog, or had ever had a dog, as far as he could determine. Neither had any strong prodog or antidog feelings. It would have been helpful to discover that Strang was a heavy contributor to the ASPCA and the Anti-Vivisection League, or that Moncrieff liked to go to a basement in Kentucky and watch a couple of pit bulls fight to the death, betting substantial sums on the outcome.

But he came across nothing of the sort, and the more he thought about it the less legitimate a criterion it seemed to him. Why should a matter of life and death hinge upon how a man felt about dogs? And who was Keller to care anyway? It was not as if he were a dog owner himself. Not anymore.

“Neither one’s Albert Schweitzer,” he told Dot, “and neither one’s Hitler. They both fall somewhere in between, so making a decision on moral grounds is impossible. I’ll tell you, this is murder.”

“It’s not,” she said. “That’s the whole trouble, Keller. You’re in Cinci

“I know.”

“Moral decisions. This is the wrong business for moral decisions.”

“You’re right,” he said. “And who am I to be making that kind of decision, anyway?”

“Spare me the humility,” she said. “Listen, I’m as crazy as you are. I had this idea, call both brokers, have them get in touch with their clients. Explain that due to the exigencies of this particular situation, di dah di dah di dah, we need full payment in advance.”

“You think they’d go for it?”

“If one of them went for it,” she said, “that’d make the decision, wouldn’t it? Knock him off and the other guy’s left alive to pay in full, a satisfied customer.”

“That’s brilliant,” he said, and thought a moment. “Except…”

“Ah, you spotted it, didn’t you? The guy who cooperates, the guy who goes the extra mile to be a really good client, he’s the one who gets rewarded by getting killed. I like ironic as much as the next person, Keller, but I decided that’s a little too much for me.”

“Besides,” he said, “with our luck they’d both pay.”

“And we’d be back where we started. Keller?”

“What?”

“All said and done, there’s only one answer. You got a quarter?”

“Probably. Why?”

“Toss it,” she said. “Heads or tails.”

Heads.

Keller picked up the quarter he’d tossed, dropped it into the slot. He dialed a number, and while it rang he wondered at the wisdom of making such a decision on the basis of a coin toss. It seemed awfully arbitrary to him, but then again maybe it was the way of the world. Maybe somewhere up above the clouds there was an old man with a beard making life-and-death decisions in the very same way, tossing coins, shrugging, and passing out train wrecks and heart attacks.

“Let me talk to Mr. Strang,” he told the person who answered. “Just tell him it’s in reference to a recent contract.”

There was a long pause, and Keller dug out another quarter in case the phone needed feeding. Then Strang came on the line. It seemed to Keller that he recognized the voice even though he had never heard it before. The voice was resonant, like an opera singer’s, though hardly musical.

“I don’t know who you are,” Strang said without preamble, “and I don’t discuss business over the phone with people I don’t know.”

Fat, Keller thought. The man sounded fat.

“Very wise,” Keller told him. “Well, we’ve got business to discuss, and I agree it shouldn’t be over the phone. We ought to meet, but nobody should see us together, or even know we’re having the meeting.” He listened for a moment. “You’re the client,” he said. “I was hoping you could suggest a time and a place.” He listened some more. “Good,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

“But it seems irregular,” Strang said, with a whine in his voice that you would never have heard from Pavarotti. “I don’t see the need for this, I really don’t.”

“You will,” Keller told him. “I can promise you that.”

He broke the co

He weighed the coin in his palm-it didn’t weigh very much-and he gave it a toss, caught it, slapped it down on the back of his hand.

Tails.

He reached for the phone.

“This time it’s iced tea,” Dot said. “Last time I promised you iced tea and gave you lemonade.”

“It was good lemonade.”

“Well, this is good iced tea, as far as that goes. Made with real tea.”

“And real ice, I’ll bet.”

“You put the tea bags in a jar of cold water,” she said, “and set the jar in the sun, and forget about them for a few hours. Then you put the jar in the fridge.”

“You don’t boil the water at all?”

“No, you don’t have to. For years I thought you did but it turns out I was wrong. But I lost track of what I was getting at. Iced tea. Oh, right. This time you called and said, ‘I’m on my way. Get ready to break out the lemonade.’ So you were expecting lemonade this time, and here I’m giving you iced tea. Get it, Keller? Each time you get the opposite of what you expect.”

“As long as it’s just a question of iced tea or lemonade,” he said, “I think I can ride with it.”

“Well, you’ve always adjusted quickly to new realities,” she said. “It’s one of your strengths.” She cocked her head and looked up at the ceiling. “Speaking of which. You were upstairs, you talked to him. What do you think?”

“He seemed all right.”

“His old self?”

“Hardly that. But he listened to what I had to say and told me I’d done well. I think he was covering. I think he was clueless as to where I’d been, and he was covering.”

“He does that a lot lately.”

“It’s got a real tea flavor, you know? And you don’t boil the water at all?”

“Not unless you’re in a hurry. Keller?”

He looked up from his glass of tea. She was sitting on the porch railing, her legs crossed, one flip-flop dangling from her toe.