Lawrence Block - Hit List

“No, forget that. Here.”

“Here?”

“Not here,” he said, gesturing. “Not right here in White Plains. In New York. And not for business.”

She looked at him sharply. “What’s that leave, Keller? For pleasure?”

“Dot, for God’s sake.”

“Well, what else is there?”

“Personal reasons.”

“Oh, right,” she said, relaxing. “Don’t take it personally, Keller, but sometimes I forget you have a personal life.”

“There’s this woman I was seeing,” he said.

“Dresses in black.”

“That’s the one.”

“Wants to keep it superficial, won’t have dinner with you or let you buy her anything.”

“Right.”

“And you wanted to kill her?”

“I didn’t exactly want to,” he said, “but I almost did.”

“No kidding,” Dot said. “What did she do to piss you off, if you don’t mind my asking? Was she sleeping with somebody else?”

“No,” he said, and then thought about it. “Or maybe she was, for all I know. I never gave it much thought.”

“I guess you’re not the jealous type. So it must have been something serious, like eating crackers in bed.”

“I wasn’t angry.”

“If I just sit here quietly,” Dot said, “you’ll explain.”

When he’d finished, Dot took the empty pitcher inside and came back with a full one. “This weather,” she said, “I drink gallons of this stuff. You suppose it’s possible to drink too much iced tea?”

“No idea.”

“I guess everything’s bad for you if you take in enough of it.”

“I guess.”

“Keller,” she said, “the woman’s a loose end. Getting the impulse to tie her off doesn’t make you a homicidal maniac.”

“I never said-“

“I know what you never said. You think you’re frustrated because you keep going out on jobs and fate won’t let you pull the trigger. And maybe you are, but that’s not why the hair stood up on the back of your neck when your girlfriend said what she did.”

“It was more that I got a tingling in my hands.”

“Thanks for clearing that up, Keller. I repeat, she’s a loose end. You’d have had the same impulse if you’d just come back from depopulating Kosovo. And it wouldn’t have just been a passing thought, either. You’d have closed the sale.”

“She didn’t do anything, Dot.”

“And you’d have made sure she never did.”

He thought about it. “Maybe,” he acknowledged. “But I didn’t, and I never heard anything from her. By now she’s probably been in and out of half a dozen other superficial relationships. Odds are she never even thinks of me.”

“You’re probably right,” Dot said. “Let’s hope so.”

Six weeks later, Keller got a phone call, made another trip to White Plains. He was back in his apartment around one in the afternoon, and two hours later he was at JFK, waiting to board a TWA flight to St. Louis.

During the flight, Keller read the SkyMall catalog. There were articles he wanted to buy, and he knew he wouldn’t have given them a second thought under other circumstances. This happened all the time when he flew, and once he was on the ground the urge to order the supervalue luggage or the handy Pocket Planner vanished forever, or at least until his next flight. Maybe it was the altitude, he thought. Maybe it undercut your sales resistance.

No one was supposed to meet him at the airport, and no one did. Keller took a slip of paper from his wallet. He’d already committed the name and address to memory, but he read them again, just to be certain. Then he went outside and got a cab.

The target was a man named Elwood Murray. He lived in Florissant, a suburb north of the city, and had an office on Olive, halfway between City Hall and the city’s trademark arch.

Keller had the cab drop him at a lunch counter a block from Murray ’s office. A sign in the window said the daily special was Three-Alarm Chili, and that sounded good to Keller. If it was as good as it sounded, he could come back for more. There was no rush on this one, Dot had told him. He could take his time.

But instead he went directly to Murray ’s office building. It was six stories tall and a few years past its prime. Murray ’s name was listed on the board in the lobby: Murray, Elwood, #604. The self-service elevator was one of the slowest Keller had encountered, and he found himself urging it upward. If he’d known it was going to be this slow he’d have taken the stairs.

Murray had his name painted on the frosted glass of his office door, along with some initials that didn’t mean anything to Keller. There was a light on, and Keller turned the knob, opened the door. A man a few years older than Keller sat behind a big oak desk. He was in shirtsleeves, and his suit jacket was hanging from a peg on the side wall.

“Elwood Murray?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll just need a minute of your time,” Keller said, and closed the door. That would keep them from being observed by anyone passing in the hall, but the act was enough to alert Murray, and one look at Murray ’s face was enough to put Keller in motion. Murray moved first, his hand darting into the desk’s center drawer, and Keller threw himself forward, hurling himself against Murray ’s desk and shoving it all the way to the wall, pinning Murray and his chair, jamming the drawer shut on his hand.

Murray couldn’t open the drawer, couldn’t get his hand out, couldn’t move. Keller could move, though, and did, and got his hands on the man.

“Oh, good,” Dot said. “You got the message.”

“What message?”

“On your machine. You didn’t get it? Then why are you calling?”

“ Mission accomplished,” he said.

There was a pause. Then she said, “I suppose that means what I think it means.”

“There aren’t too many different things it could mean,” he said. “Remember the errand you asked me to run this morning? Well, I ran it.”

“You’re not still in New York, then.”

“No, of course not. I’m in… well, I can see the Arch from here.”

“And I don’t suppose it’s the McDonald’s across the street, is it? And you already did what you went there to do.”

“Or I wouldn’t be calling. Dot, what the hell’s the matter?”

“They called it off,” she said.

“They…”

“Called it off. Changed their minds. Canceled the contract.”

“Oh.”

“But you didn’t know that.”

“How would I know?”

“You wouldn’t, not unless you happened to check your machine, and why would you do that? Well, what’s your plan now, Keller?”

“I thought I’d come home.”

“You’re not going to visit some stamp dealers? Spend a few days, find a nice Mexican restaurant?”

“Not this time.”

“Probably just as well,” she said. “Come home, come see me, and we’ll get this sorted out.”

“On the way out,” he said, “I had the urge to buy a Pocket Planner. Coming home, it was a set of college courses on video. The country’s best lecturers, the ad said.”

“Would you watch them?”

“Of course not,” Keller said. “Any more than I’d use the Pocket Planner. What do I want to plan? It’s funny how it works. You stow your carry-on in the overhead compartment, you make sure your seat belt’s securely fastened, and you start wanting things you never wanted before. They have these in-flight phones, and you can call and order this stuff at no charge.” He frowned. “No charge for the phone call, that is.”

“What did you buy?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I never do, but I always think about it.”

“Keller…”

“Why’d they call it off?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “because I don’t know why they called it on in the first place. Who was he, anyway?”