Lawrence Block - Hit Parade

Santa Barbara had been almost anticlimactically simple. A flight to L.A., a flight home from San Francisco, and a quick and easy assignment between the two. He got home ready for another job, and the time crawled by, and nothing came along. Until now, finally, here he was in Detroit.

He hadn’t checked a bag, so he hoisted his carry-on and walked straight to where the drivers were waiting and scanned the signs for one bearing the name BOGART. He didn’t know why they’d picked that name, which could only invite unnecessary conversational overtures from strangers, twisted-lip imitations: “Play it again, Sam. You played it for her, now you can play it for me.” But that was their choice, Bogart, and there’d been no time to talk them out of it, let alone to rent a car and drive to Detroit.

Time, Dot had told him, was of the essence. So here he was, fresh off a bumpy flight, and looking for a sign with BOGART on it. He found it right off the bat, and when his eyes moved from the sign to the man who was holding it, the man was looking right back at him, with an expression on his face that Keller found hard to read.

He was a short, stocky guy, who looked as though he spent a lot of time at the gym, lifting heavy objects. He said, “Mr. Bogart? Right this way, sir.”

Was the guy sneering at him? Keller wasn’t quite sure how you defined a sneer, whether it tended to be facial or verbal, but he generally knew it when he encountered it, and this time he wasn’t sure. Often, he’d found, people didn’t know what to say to a person like him. The nature of his work put them off balance, and made them nervous, and sometimes they adopted a pose of cockiness to mask the nervousness.

But this didn’t quite feel like that, either.

Well, what difference did it make? He followed the guy out of the terminal and across a few lanes of traffic to short-term parking and past a row of cars until they reached a late-model Lincoln with an Ontario plate. The guy triggered a remote to unlock the doors and then opened and held the passenger-side door for Keller, which was unexpected.

So was the presence of the big guy in the backseat.

Keller was already getting into the car when he saw him. He froze, and felt a hand on his shoulder, urging him forward.

If you get in, he thought, you’re defenseless. But wasn’t he defenseless already? He was about as unarmed as you could be, unarmed enough to pass through airport security, with not even a nail clipper at his command. Action scenarios ran unbidden through his mind-his elbows swinging, his legs kicking out-but they were somehow unconvincing, and all he did was stand there.

The big guy chuckled, which wasn’t what he much wanted to hear, and the short guy-he was too wide and muscular to be thought of as the little guy-told him there was nothing to worry about. “There’s a gentleman wants to meet you,” he said. “That’s all.”

His tone was reassuring, but Keller wasn’t reassured. But he got in, and the short guy closed the door and walked around the car and got behind the wheel. He fastened his seat belt and suggested that Keller do the same.

And give himself even less maneuverability? “I never use it,” he said. “Claustrophobia.”

Which was nonsense, he always used a seat belt. And it didn’t work anyway, because the guy told him it was the law in Detroit, and all he needed was a fucking traffic ticket, so buckle the belt, will you?

So he did.

They droveto a house somewhere in the suburbs. They hadn’t blindfolded him, so he could have paid attention to the route, but what good was that going to do? He didn’t really know the area, and even if he did, geography wasn’t likely to be a big factor here.

He’d flown out because somebody was paying him to kill a man, and now it was beginning to look as though he was the one who was going to get killed. That was one of the risks in his business. He didn’t dwell on it, he rarely gave it any thought whatsoever, but there was no getting around the fact that it was always a possibility. He sat in his seat, the seat belt snug around him, and figured there were two possibilities-either they intended to kill him or they didn’t. If they didn’t, he had nothing to worry about. If they did, there were two possibilities-either he’d be able to do something about it or he wouldn’t, and he’d only find that out when the time came.

So he relaxed. The big Lincoln provided a smooth ride, so there was no turbulence, and no pain-in-the-ass pilot to apologize for it. Neither the driver nor the man in the backseat said a word, and Keller matched their silence with silence of his own.

They got off the beltway and into a suburb, and after several left and right turns wound up on a tree-shaded dead-end street-the DEAD END sign gave him a turn-full of large homes on large lots. The driver pulled into a semicircular driveway and braked at the entrance of an oversize center hall Colonial.

This time the big guy from the backseat opened the door for him. The driver went on ahead and unlocked the front door. The two of them escorted him through a large living room with a fire in the fireplace, down a broad hallway, and into what he supposed was a den. It held an enormous TV set, on which a tennis match was being played with the sound off. There were bookshelves artfully equipped with sets of leather-bound books, decorative ceramics that looked vaguely pre-Columbian, a couple of leather chairs, and, in one of the chairs, a man with a broad face, pockmarked cheeks, hair like gray Brillo, thin lips, abundant eyebrows, and an expression that, like everyone else’s since he’d left New York, Keller found hard to read.

But it was a familiar face, somehow. He’d never met this man, so where had he seen his face?

Oh, right.

“I don’t suppose your name is Bogart,” the man said.

Keller agreed that it wasn’t.

“Well, I don’t necessarily have to know your name,” the man said. “My guess is you already know mine.”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Prove it.”

Prove it? “I believe you’re Mr. Horvath,” he said.

“Len Horvath,” the man said. “You recognize me, or you just make a good guess?”

“I, uh, recognized you.”

“Wha’d they do, send you a picture?” Keller nodded. “And then someone was gonna meet you at the airport, point me out?”

“I think so. The arrangements got a little vague after I was to meet up with the man with the sign.”

“Bogart,” said the driver, who was stationed at Keller’s right, with the big man on his other side. Keller couldn’t see the driver’s face, but the sneer in his voice was unmistakable.

“Not a name I would have picked,” Keller said.

“I always liked Bogart,” Horvath said. “But I wouldn’t want to be looking for a sign with his name on it, or holding one, either. You were supposed to kill me.”

Keller didn’t say anything.

“Awww, relax,” Horvath said. “You think I’ve got a beef with you? You took a job, for Chrissake. You couldn’t help who hired you. You even know who hired you?”

“They never tell me.”

“Well, I can tell you. A little prick named Kevin Dealey hired you. Guess what happened to him.”

Keller had a pretty good idea.

“The point is,” Horvath told him, “you don’t have a client anymore. So the job’s canceled. You’re no longer required to kill me.”

“Good,” Keller said.

Somehow that struck Horvath funny, and the men flanking Keller joined in the laughter. When it died down Horvath said, “He talked a little, Kevin Dealey did, before we fixed it so he couldn’t. Told us what flight you’d be on and all about the Bogart bullshit. First thought I had, Phil and Norman here meet you at the airport, turn you around, and send you back to New York. Hi there, Mr. Bogart, services no longer required, have a nice return flight, blah blah blah . Put you on the plane, wave goodbye, and you go back to your quotidian life.”