Lawrence Block - Hit Man

“By this time I think I already knew that the story she told me about my father was, well, a story. I don’t believe she knew who my father was. I think she got drunk and went with somebody, or maybe there were several different men. What difference does it make? She moved to another town, she told people she was married, that her husband was in the service or that he was dead, whatever she told them.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“How do I feel about it?” Keller shook his head. “If I slammed my hand in a cab door, you’d ask me how I felt about it.”

“And you’d be stuck for an answer,” Breen said. “Here’s a question for you. Who was your father?”

“I just told you-”

“But someone fathered you. Whether or not you knew him, whether or not your mother knew who he was, there was a particular man who planted the seed that grew into you. Unless you believe yourself to be the second coming of Christ.”

“No,” Keller said. “That’s one delusion I’ve been spared.”

“So tell me who he was, this man who spawned you. Not on the basis of what you were told or what you’ve managed to figure out. I’m not asking this question of the part of you that thinks and reasons. I’m asking that part of you that simply knows. Who was your father? What was your father?”

“He was a soldier,” Keller said.

Keller, walking uptown on Second Avenue, found himself standing in front of a pet shop, watching a couple of puppies cavorting in the window.

He went inside. One whole wall was given over to stacked cages of puppies and kittens. Keller felt his spirits sinking as he looked into the cages. Waves of sadness rocked him.

He turned away and looked at the other pets. Birds in cages, gerbils and snakes in dry aquariums, tanks of tropical fish. He was all right with them. It was the puppies that he couldn’t bear to look at.

He left the store. The next day he went to an animal shelter and walked past cages of dogs waiting to be adopted. This time the sadness was overwhelming, and he felt it physically as pressure against his chest. Something must have shown on his face, because the young woman in charge asked him if he was all right.

“Just a dizzy spell,” he said.

In the office she told him that they could probably accommodate him if he was especially interested in a particular breed. They could keep his name on file, and when a specimen of that breed became available-

“I don’t think I can have a pet,” he said. “I travel too much. I can’t handle the responsibility.” The woman didn’t respond, and Keller’s words echoed in her silence. “But I want to make a donation,” he said. “I want to support the work you do.”

He got out his wallet, pulled bills from it, handed them to her without counting them. “An anonymous donation,” he said. “I don’t want a receipt. I’m sorry for taking your time. I’m sorry I can’t adopt a dog. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

She was saying something, but he didn’t listen. He hurried out of there.

“ ‘I want to support the work you do.’ That’s what I told her, and then I rushed out of there because I didn’t want her thanking me. Or asking me questions.”

“What would she ask?”

“I don’t know,” Keller said. He rolled over on the couch, facing away from Breen, facing the wall. “ ‘I want to support your work.’ But I don’t even know what their work is. They find homes for some animals, and what do they do with the others? Put them to sleep?”

“Perhaps.”

“What do I want to support? The placement or the killing?”

“You tell me.”

“I tell you too much as it is,” Keller said.

“Or not enough.”

Keller didn’t say anything.

“Why did it sadden you to see the dogs in their cages?”

“I felt their sadness.”

“One feels only one’s own sadness. Why is it sad to you, a dog in a cage? Are you in a cage?”

“No.”

“Your dog, Soldier. Tell me about him.”

“All right,” Keller said. “I guess I could do that.”

A session or two later, Breen said, “You have never been married.”

“No.”

“I was married.”

“Oh?”

“For eight years. She was my receptionist, she booked my appointments, showed clients to the waiting room until I was ready for them. Now I have no receptionist. A machine answers the phone. I check the machine between appointments, and take and return calls at that time. If I had had a machine in the first place I’d have been spared a lot of agony.”

“It wasn’t a good marriage?”

Breen didn’t seem to have heard the question. “I wanted children. She had three abortions in eight years and never told me. Never said a word. Then one day she threw it in my face. I’d been to a doctor, I’d had tests, and all indications were that I was fertile, with a high sperm count and extremely motile sperm. So I wanted her to see a doctor. ‘You fool, I’ve killed three of your babies already, why don’t you leave me alone?’ I told her I wanted a divorce. She said it would cost me.”

“And?”

“We were married eight years. We’ve been divorced for nine. Every month I write an alimony check and put it in the mail. If it was up to me I’d rather burn the money.”

Breen fell silent. After a moment Keller said, “Why are you telling me all this?”

“No reason.”

“Is it supposed to relate to something in my psyche? Am I supposed to make a connection, clap my hand to my forehead, say, ‘Of course, of course! I’ve been so blind!’ ”

“You confide in me,” Breen said. “It seems only fitting that I confide in you.”

A couple of days later Dot called. Keller took a train to White Plains, where Louis met him at the station and drove him to the house on Taunton Place. Later Louis drove him back to the train station and he returned to the city. He timed his call to Breen so that he got the man’s machine. “This is Peter Stone,” he said. “I’m flying to San Diego on business. I’ll have to miss my next appointment, and possibly the one after that. I’ll try to let you know.”

Was there anything else to tell Breen? He couldn’t think of anything. He hung up, packed a bag, and rode Amtrak to Philadelphia.

No one met his train. The man in White Plains had shown him a photograph and given him a slip of paper with a name and address on it. The man in question managed an adult bookstore a few blocks from Independence Hall. There was a tavern across the street, a perfect vantage point, but one look inside made it clear to Keller that he couldn’t spend time there without calling attention to himself, not unless he first got rid of his tie and jacket and spent twenty minutes rolling around in the gutter.

Down the street Keller found a diner, and if he sat at the far end he could keep an eye on the bookstore’s mirrored front windows. He had a cup of coffee, then walked across the street to the bookstore, where there were two men on duty. One was a dark and sad-eyed youth from India or Pakistan, the other the jowly, slightly exophthalmic fellow in the photo Keller had seen in White Plains.

Keller walked past a whole wall of videocassettes and leafed through a display of magazines. He had been there for about fifteen minutes when the kid said he was going for his dinner. The older man said, “Oh, it’s that time already, huh? Okay, but make sure you’re back by seven for a change, will you?”

Keller looked at his watch. It was six o’clock. The only other customers were closeted in video booths in the back. Still, the kid had had a look at him, and what was the big hurry, anyway?

He grabbed a couple of magazines at random and paid for them. The jowly man bagged them and sealed the bag with a strip of tape. Keller stowed his purchase in his carry-on and went to find himself a hotel room.