Hit Man

“I wasn’t exactly asking you. What do they call it when you don’t really expect an answer?”

“Prayer,” she said.

“Rhetorical,” he said. “It was a rhetorical question. For God’s sake, I know you can keep a secret.”

“That’s why you kept this one from me,” she said. “For lo these many months.”

“Well, I figured this was different.”

“Because it was a state secret.”

“That’s right.”

“Hush-hush, your eyes only, need-to-know basis. Matters of national security.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And what if I turned out to be a Commie rat?”

“Dot-”

“So how come I all of a sudden got a top-secret clearance? Or is it need-to-know? In other words, if I hadn’t brought up Denver… ”

“No,” he said. “I was pla

“Sooner or later, you mean.”

“Sooner. When I called yesterday and said I wanted to wait until today to come up, I was buying a little time to think it over.”

“And?”

“And I decided I wanted to run the whole thing by you, and see what you think.”

“What I think.”

“Right.”

“Well, you know what that tells me, Keller? It tells me whatyou think.”

“And?”

“And I think it’s about the same thing that I think.”

“Spell it out, okay?”

“C-O-N,” she said. “J-O-B. Total B-U-L-L-S-H-am I getting through?”

“Loud and clear.”

“He must be pretty slick,” she said, “to have a guy like you jumping through hoops. But I can see how it would work. First place, you want to believe it. ‘Young man, your country has need of you.’ Next thing you know, you’re knocking off strangers for chump change.”

“Expense money. It never covered the expenses, except the first time.”

“The patent lawyer, caught in his own mousetrap. What do you figure he did to piss Bascomb off?”

“No idea.”

“And the old fart in the wheelchair. It’s a good thing you iced the son of a bitch, Keller, or our children and our children’s children would grow up speaking Russian.”

“Don’t rub it in.”

“I’m just making you pay for that rhetorical question. All said and done, do you think there’s a chance in a million Bascomb’s on the level?”

He made himself think it over, but the answer wasn’t going to change. “No,” he said.

“What was the tip-off? The approval from on high?”

“I guess so. You know, I got a hell of a rush.”

“I can imagine.”

“I mean, the man at the top. The big guy.”

“Chomping doughnuts and thinking of you.”

“But then you think about it afterward, and there’s just no way. Even if he said something like that, would Bascomb pass it on? And then when I started to look at the whole picture… ”

“Tilt.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well,” she said. “What kind of a line have we got on Bascomb? We don’t know his name or his address or how to get hold of him. What does that leave us?”

“Damn little.”

“Oh, I don’t know. We don’t need a whole hell of a lot, Keller. And we do know something.”

“What?”

“We know three people he wanted killed,” she said. “That’s a start.”

Keller, dressed in a suit and tie and sporting a red carnation in his buttonhole, sat in what he supposed you would call the den of a sprawling ranch house in Glen Burnie, Maryland. He had the TV on with the sound off, and he was begi

He perked up at the sound of a car in the driveway, and, as soon as he heard a key in the lock, he triggered the remote to shut off the TV altogether. Then he sat and waited patiently while Paul Ernest Farrar hung his topcoat in the hall closet, carried a sack of groceries to the kitchen, and moved through the rooms of his house.

When he finally got to the den, Keller said, “Well, hello, Bascomb. Nice place you got here.” Keller, leading a scoundrel’s life, had ended the lives of others in a great variety of ways. As far as he knew, though, he had never actually frightened anyone to death. For a moment, however, it looked as though Bascomb (né Farrar) might be the first. The man turned white as Wonder Bread, took an involuntary step backward, and clasped a hand to his chest. Keller hoped he wasn’t going to need CPR.

“Easy,” he said. “Grab a seat, why don’t you?

Sorry to startle you, but it seemed the best way. No names, no pack drill, right?”

“What do you think you’re doing in my house?”

“The crossword puzzle, originally. Then when the light failed I had the TV on, and it’s a lot better when you don’t know what they’re saying. Makes it more of an exercise for the imagination.” He leaned back in his chair. “I’d have joined you for breakfast,” he said, “but who knows if you even go out for it? Who’s to say you don’t have your oat bran muffin and decaf at the pine table in the kitchen? So I figured I’d come here.”

“You’re not supposed to get in touch with me at all,” Farrar said sternly. “Under any circumstances.”

“Give it up,” Keller said. “It’s not working.”

Farrar didn’t seem to hear him. “Since you’re here,” he said, “of course we’ll talk. And there happens to be something I need to talk to you about, as a matter of fact. Just let me get my notes.”

He slipped past Keller and was reaching into one of the desk drawers when Keller took him by the shoulders and turned him around. “Sit down,” he said, “before you embarrass yourself. I already found the gun and took the bullets out. Wouldn’t you feel silly, pulling the trigger and all it does is goclick?”

“I wasn’t reaching for a gun.”

“Maybe you wanted this, then,” Keller said, dipping into his breast pocket. “A passport in the name of Roger Keith Bascomb, issued by authority of the government of British Honduras. You know something? I looked on the map, and I couldn’tfind British Honduras.”

“It’s Belize now.”

“But they kept the old name for the passports?” He whistled soundlessly. “I found the firm’s literature in the same drawer with the passport. An outfit in the Caymans, and they offer what they call fantasy passports. To protect yourself, in case you’re abducted by terrorists who don’t like Americans. Would you believe it-the same folks offer other kinds of fake ID as well. Send them a check and a photo and they’ll set you up as an agent of the National Security Resource. Wouldn’t that be handy?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Keller sighed. “All right,” he said. “Then I’ll tell you. Your name isn’t Roger Bascomb, it’s Paul Farrar. You’re not a government agent, you’re some kind of paper-pusher in the Social Security Administration.”

“That’s just a cover.”

“You used to be married,” Keller went on, “until your wife left you for another man. His name was Howard Ramsgate.”

“Well,” Farrar said.

“That was six years ago. So much for the heat of the moment.”

“I wanted to find the right way to do it.”

“You found me,” Keller said, “and got me to do it for you. And it worked, and if you’d left it like that you’d have been in the clear. But instead you sent me to Florida to kill an old man in a wheelchair.”

“Louis Drucker,” Farrar said.

“Your uncle, your mother’s brother. He didn’t have any children of his own, and who do you think he left his money to?”

“What kind of a life did Uncle Lou have? Crippled, immobile, living on painkillers… ”

“I guess we did him a favor,” Keller said. “The woman in Colorado used to live two doors down the street from you. I don’t know what she did to get on your list. Maybe she jilted you or insulted you, or maybe her dog pooped on your lawn. But what’s the difference? The point is you used me. You got me to chase around the country killing people.”

“Isn’t that what you do?”

“Right,” Keller said, “and that’s the part I don’t understand. I don’t know how you knew to call a certain number in White Plains, but you did, and that got me on the train with a flower in my lapel. Why the charade? Why not just pay the money and let out the contract?”