Lawrence Block - Hit Parade

“I gave them a hundred dollars.”

“Well, that’ll pay for fifty Good Humors, won’t it? How does it feel, having a born killer in your apartment?”

“He’s very sweet and gentle,” he said. “Jumps up on me, licks my face.”

“Oh, God.”

“Don’t worry, Dot. I know what I have to do.”

“What you have to do,” she said, “is go straight to the SPCA, or even the YMCA, as long as it’s not some chickenhearted outfit like IBARF. Some organization that you can count on to put Fluffy down in a humane manner, and to do it as soon as possible. Right?”

“Well,” he said, “not exactly.”

“What a nice dog,”the young woman said.

The animal, Keller had come to realize, was an absolute babe magnet. In the mile or so he’d walked from his apartment to the park, this was the third woman to make a fuss over Fluffy. This one said the same thing the others had said: that the dog certainly looked tough and capable, but that he really was just a big baby, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?

Keller wanted to urge her to get down on all fours and bark. Then she’d find out just what kind of a big old softie Fluffy was.

He’d waited until twilight, hoping to avoid as many dogs and dog walkers as possible, but there were still some to be found, and Fluffy was remarkably good at spotting them. Whenever he caught sight of one, or caught the scent, his ears perked up and he strained at the leash. But Keller kept a good tight hold on it and kept leading the dog to the park’s less-traveled paths.

It would have been easy to follow Dot’s advice, to pay another hundred dollars and palm the dog off on the SPCA or some similar institution. But suppose they got their signals crossed and let someone adopt Fluffy, the way the damned fools at IBARF had let him? Suppose, one way or another, something went wrong and Fluffy got a chance to kill more dogs?

This wasn’t something to delegate. This was something he had to do for himself. That was the only way to be sure it got done, and got done properly. Besides, it was something he’d hired on to do long ago. He’d been paid, and it was time to do the work.

He thought about Nelson. It was impossible, walking in the park with a dog on a leash, not to think about Nelson. But Nelson was gone. In all the time since Nelson’s departure, it had never seriously occurred to him to get another dog. And, if it ever did, this wasn’t the dog he’d get.

He patted his pocket. There was a small-caliber gun in it, an automatic, unregistered, and never fired since it came into his possession several years ago. He’d kept it, because you never knew when you might need a gun, and now he had a use for it.

“This way, Fluffy,” he said. “That’s a good boy.”

Keller, his handsin his pockets, watched a dark-skinned black man with his shirt off drive for the basket. His shaved head gleamed, and the muscles of his upper back, the traps and lats, bulged as if steroidally enhanced. Another man, wearing a T-shirt but otherwise of the same shade and physique, leapt to block the shot, and the two bodies met in midair. It was a little like ballet, Keller thought, and a little like combat, and the ball kissed off the backboard and dropped through the hoop.

There was no net, just a bare hoop. The playground was at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Third Street, in Greenwich Village, and Keller was one of a handful of spectators standing outside the high chain-link fence, watching idly as ten men, half wearing T-shirts, half bare-chested, played a fiercely competitive game of half-court basketball.

If this were a game at the Garden, the last play would have sent someone to the free-throw line. But there was no ref here to call fouls, and order was maintained in a simpler fashion; anyone who fouled too frequently was thrown out of the game. It was, Keller felt, an interesting libertarian solution, and he thought it might be worth a try outside the basketball court, but had a feeling it would be tough to make it work.

Keller watched a few more plays, feeling his spirits sink as he did, yet finding it oddly difficult to tear himself away. He’d had a tooth drilled and filled a few blocks away, by a dentist who had himself played varsity basketball years ago at the University of Kentucky, and had been walking around waiting for the Novocain to wear off so he could grab some lunch, and the basketball game had caught his eye, and here he was. Watching, and being brought down in the process, because basketball always depressed him.

His mouth wasn’t numb anymore. He crossed the street, walked two blocks east, turned right on Sullivan Street, left on Bleecker. He considered and rejected restaurants as he walked, knowing he wanted something spicy. If basketball depressed him, highly seasoned food put him right again. He thought it odd, didn’t understand it, but knew it worked.

The restaurant he foundwas Indian, and Keller made sure the waiter got the message. “You tone things down for Westerners,” he told the man. “I only look like an American of European ancestry. Inside, I am a man from Sri Lanka.”

“You want spicy,” the waiter said.

“I want very spicy,” Keller said. “And then some.”

The little man beamed. “You wish to sweat.”

“I wish to suffer.”

“Leave it to me,” the little man said.

The meal was almost too hot to eat. Nominally a lamb curry, its ingredients might have been anything. Lamb, beef, dog, duck. Tofu, shoe leather, balsa wood. Papier-mâché? Plaster of Paris? The searing heat of the cayenne obscured everything else. Keller, forcing himself to finish every bite, loved and hated every minute of it. By the time he was done he was drenched in perspiration, and felt as if he’d just gone ten rounds with a worthy opponent. He felt, too, a sense of accomplishment, and an abiding sense of peace with the world.

Something made him call home to check his answering machine. Two hours later he was on the front porch of the big old house on Taunton Place, sipping a glass of iced tea. Three days after that he was in Indiana.

At the Avis deskat Indy International, Keller turned in the Chevy he’d driven from New York. At the Hertz counter, he picked up the keys to the Ford he’d reserved. He carried his bag to the car, left it in short-term parking, and went back into the airport, remembering to take his bag with him. There was a fellow waiting at baggage claim, wearing the green and gold John Deere cap they’d said he’d be wearing.

“Oh, there you are,” the fellow said, when Keller approached him. “The bags are just starting to come down.”

Keller brandished his carry-on, said he hadn’t checked anything.

“Then I guess you didn’t bring a nail clipper,” the man said, “or a Swiss Army knife. Never mind a bazooka.”

Keller had a Swiss Army knife in his carry-on and a nail clipper in his pocket, attached to his key ring. Since he hadn’t flown anywhere, he’d had no problem. As for the other, well, he had never minded a bazooka in his life, and saw no reason to start now.

“Now let’s get you squared away,” the man said. He was around forty, and lean, except for an incongruous potbelly, as if he’d swallowed a small watermelon. “Quick orientation, drive you around, show you where he lives. We’ll take my car, and when we’re done you can drop me off and keep it.”

The airport was at the southwest corner of Indianapolis, and the man (who’d flipped the John Deere cap into the backseat of his Hyundai squareback, alongside Keller’s carry-on) drove to Carmel, an upscale suburb north of the I-465 beltway. He made a few efforts at conversation, which Keller let wither on the vine, whereupon he gave up and switched on the radio. He kept it tuned to an all-talk station, and right now two opinionated fellows were arguing about the outsourcing of jobs.