Lawrence Block - The Best American Mystery Stories 1999

“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 go click? ”

“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 the authority of the government of British Honduras. You know something? I looked on the map, and I couldn’t find 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?”

“I couldn’t afford it.”

Keller nodded. “I thought that might be it. Theft of services, that’s what we’re looking at here. You had me do all this for nickels and dimes.”

“Look,” Farrar said, “I want to apologize.”

“You do?”

“I do, I honestly do. The first time, with that bastard Ramsgate, well, it was the only way to do it. The other two times I could have afforded to pay you a suitable sum, but we’d already established a relationship. You were working, you know, out of patriotism, and it seemed safer and simpler to leave it at that.”

“Safer.”

“And simpler.”

“And cheaper,” Keller said. “At the time, but where are you in the long run?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” Keller said, “what do you figure happens now?”

“You’re not going to kill me.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“You’d have done it,” Farrar said. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation. You want something, and I think I know what it is.”

“A pat on the back,” Keller said, “from the man who never inhaled.”

“Money,” Farrar said. “You want what’s rightfully yours, the money you would have been paid if I hadn’t misrepresented myself. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“It’s close.”

“Close?”

“What I want,” Keller said, “is that and a little more. If I were the IRS, I would call the difference penalties and interest.”

“How much?”

Keller named a figure, one large enough to make Farrar blink. He said it seemed high, and they kicked it around, and Keller found himself reducing the sum by a third.

“I can raise most of that,” Farrar told him. “Not overnight. I’ll have to sell some securities. I can have some cash by the end of the week, or the beginning of next week at the latest.”

“That’s good,” Keller said.

“And I’ll have some more work for you.”

“More work?”

“That woman in Colorado,” Farrar said. “You wondered what I had against her. There was something, a remark she made once, but that’s not the point. I found a way to make myself a secondary beneficiary on an individual’s government insurance policy. It’s too complicated to explain, but it ought to work like a charm.”

“That’s pretty slick,” Keller said, getting to his feet. “I’ll tell you, Farrar, I’m prepared to wait a week or so for the money, especially with the prospect of future work. But I’d like some cash tonight as a binder. You must have some money around the house.”

“Let me see what I’ve got in the safe,” Farrar said.

“Twenty-two thousand dollars,” Keller said, slipping a rubber band around the bills and tucking them away. “That’s what, fifty-five hundred dollars a pop?”

“You’ll get the balance next week,” Farrar assured him. “Or a substantial portion of it, at the very least.”

“Great.”

“Anyway, where do you get fifty-five hundred? There were three of them, and three into twenty-two is seven and a third. That makes it” — he frowned, calculating — “seven thousand, three hundred thirty-three dollars a head.”

“Is that right?”

“And thirty-three cents,” Farrar said.

Keller scratched his head. “Am I counting wrong? I make it four people.”

“Who’s the fourth?”

“You are,” Keller told him.

“If I’d wanted to wait,” he told Dot the next day, “I think he probably would have handed over a decent chunk of cash. But there was no way I was going to let him see the sun come up.”

“Because who knows what the little shit was going to do next.”

“That’s it,” Keller said. “He’s an amateur and a nut case, and he already fooled me once.”

“And once is enough.”

“Once is plenty,” Keller agreed. “He had it all worked out, you know. He’d manipulate Social Security records and get me to kill total strangers so that he could collect their benefits. Total strangers!”