Lawrence Block - Hit List

“I’d call him with a contract for a hit man.”

“Right.”

“And not just any hit man. I presume we’re talking about you.”

“Right.”

“So I give him your name and your address and a reasonably flattering photograph of you, while you sit home in front of the TV and listen for footsteps. Do I have to explain why that’s a bad idea?”

“No.”

“I’ve been working on this for a while,” she said, “so why don’t I lay it out for you? What I do, I call Roger and leave word, and he picks up the message and calls back on some hi-tech untraceable line, and I run down a contract I want to give him. I give him the name and address, and he mulls it over and turns it down.”

“And?”

“And I give it to somebody else.”

“Me? No, that wouldn’t make sense. Who would you give it to?”

“Some other pro. What I’d probably do is call another contractor and let him find somebody. Not that there are a hell of a lot of people left to be found, but whoever he picked wouldn’t have to be all that slick. Once he was on the case, I’d call Roger and tell him not to worry, that I managed to get somebody else. You beginning to get the picture?”

“I think so.”

“You stake out the mark’s house and wait for the two of them to show up. One of them’ll be a guy looking to do what he was hired to do. The other’ll be Roger.”

“How do I know which is which?”

“You could just kill ’em both,” she said, “and let God sort ’em out, like it says on the T-shirt. But I don’t think so. What you’d do is wait for one of them to take out the mark. Whoever does that, the other one is Roger.”

Keller was nodding. “And once the hit’s been made,” he said, “he’ll be ready to take out the hitter. So I follow the hitter and keep an eye out for Roger.”

“When he’s ready to make his move,” she said, “that’s when you make yours. If you can nail him before he does his thing, so much the better. If not, well, you tried. Either way, Roger’s off the board.”

“With a stake through his heart.” He frowned. “I’d want to get him in time. Be a shame to let some innocent guy get killed for nothing.”

“Innocent’s a stretch, since he’d have just finished taking out the mark. But I know what you mean.”

“The mark,” Keller said. “I hadn’t even thought of him. He was sort of hypothetical, because you don’t really have a job for Roger, or for Mr. Second Choice, either. That’s just a trap, but a trap has to have bait in it, doesn’t it?”

“It does if you expect to catch anything.”

“So who’s the bait? If it’s not me, who is it? Do you just pick some poor mope at random?”

“That’d be a way to do it. Keller, you look unhappy.”

“The bait probably gets killed, right?”

“Since the bait wouldn’t have any reason to suspect a thing, and since there’d be not one but two world-class hit men on the case, I’d have to say the bait’s chances are less than average.”

“Chances of surviving, you mean.”

“Right. On the other hand, if you want to look on the bright side, the bait’s chances of getting killed are not at all bad.”

“See,” he said, “that’s the part I don’t like. Throwing darts at a phone book.”

“Keller, you don’t throw darts at a phone book. You throw darts at a map.”

“How would that work?”

“It wouldn’t, unless you were looking for a place to go. You throw a dart and it lands on Wichita Falls, Texas, and you go there. Eat at a nice little Mexican restaurant, buy some stamps for your collection. Maybe get some real estate lady to show you houses.”

“Dot…”

“But if what you’re looking for is a person, you don’t use darts. You take a phone book and flip it open at random and jab with your finger.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“You said darts.”

“I know, but-“

“Never mind, Keller. I knew what you meant. I’m stalling, see, because this is the part I don’t like.”

“That’s my point,” he said. “Playing God, choosing somebody at random…”

“Not at random.”

He looked at her. “ ‘Flip it open at random,’ you just said. What do you mean, Dot? It’s all karma? Written in the stars? Whatever seemingly random choices we make, they’re all in tune with the purposeful design of the Universe?”

“I suppose that makes as much sense as anything else,” she said, “which isn’t saying much for it. Keller, I already picked somebody.”

He considered this. After a moment he said, “Not at random.”

“Not at random, no. No darts, no phone books.”

“Some guy you know?”

“No and no.”

“Huh?”

“Nobody I know,” she said, “and not a guy.”

“A woman?”

“What are you, a sexist?”

“No, but-“

“Chivalry is dead, Keller. A woman has as much right to get killed as anybody else. You’ve had jobs where the mark was a woman. You went and did what you were supposed to do.”

“Well, sure.”

“It’s an equal-opportunity world,” she said. “I’ve even heard of women hit men, except I suppose the term would be hit women, but I don’t like the way that sounds. Female hit persons?”

“You hear stories,” he said, “but I don’t know if there really are any. Outside of the movies.”

“Then it’s a waste of time figuring out what to call them.”

He said, “No and no, you said. Not a guy and what? Not someone you know?”

“Right.”

“If it’s not someone you know,” he said, “then how come it’s not random?”

“Give it a minute, Keller. It’ll come to you.”

“It’s someone I know.”

“What did I tell you? It came to you.”

“Some woman I know…”

She sighed, reached for the pitcher of iced tea, filled both their glasses. “Keller,” she said, “maybe it’s this business with Roger, the stress of it, or maybe you’ve just been doing this for a long time. But lately you’ve been running risks and leaving loose ends.”

“I have?”

“I didn’t want to say anything,” she said, “because your life is your life.”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Be specific, will you? What risks? What loose ends?”

She extended a forefinger and touched the tip of his thumb.

“My thumb’s a loose end? What am I supposed to do, cut it off?”

“I don’t see that your thumb’s the problem,” she said. “You lived with it all your life, and it was fine and so were you, and then some dame tells you it’s a murderer’s thumb and you go rushing off to another dame and she tells you you’re a Gemini with your temperature rising and your moon over Miami.”

“Cancer rising,” he said, “and my moon is in Taurus. The moon is exalted in Taurus.”

“And they probably don’t have to worry about hurricanes there, either. Keller, she told you all that crap, and you told her what you do for a living.”

“I didn’t exactly tell her.”

“She knew just by looking at your thumb.”

“And my chart. And I guess she more or less intuited it.” He sat up straight. “She’s the one you picked? Louise?”

“Keller-“

“Because they’re going to have a hard time finding her. She moved, and she must have left the area altogether, because her phone’s been disconnected. I suppose it’s possible she left a forwarding address, and there are other ways to track a person, but you wanted to bait the trap here in New York, didn’t you? If so, you can forget about Louise Carpenter.”

She didn’t say anything. He looked across the table at her and it dawned on him.

“No forwarding address,” he said.

“No.”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?”