Lawrence Block - Hit Man

“Both,” she said. “I originally spelled it with an E , like everybody else in the world, but people tended to give it the European pronunciation, uhn-DRAY-uh, and I hate that. This way they mostly say it right, ANN-dree-uh, although now I get the occasional person who says uhn-DRY-uh, which doesn’t even sound like a name. I’d probably be better off changing my name altogether.”

“That seems extreme.”

“Do you think so? I’ve changed it every year or so since I was sixteen. I’m forever running possible names through my mind. What do you think of Hastings?”

“Distinctive.”

“Right, but is it the direction I want to go? That’s what I can’t decide. I’ve also been giving some consideration to Jane, and you can’t even compare the two, can you?”

“Apples and oranges,” Keller said.

“When the time comes,” Andria said, “I’ll know what to do.”

One morning Keller left the house with Nelson a few minutes after nine and didn’t get home until almost one. He was unhooking Nelson’s leash when the phone rang. Dot said, “Keller, I miss you, I haven’t seen you in ages. I wish you’d come see me sometime.”

“One of these days,” he said.

He filled Nelson’s water dish, then went out and caught a cab to Grand Central and a train to White Plains. There was no car waiting for him, so he found a taxi to take him to the old Victorian house on Taunton Place. Dot was on the porch, wearing a floral print housedress and sipping a tall glass of iced tea. “He’s upstairs,” she said, “but he’s got somebody with him. Sit down, pour some iced tea for yourself. It’s a hot one, isn’t it?”

“It’s not that bad,” he said, taking a chair, pouring from the Thermos jug into a glass with Wilma Flintstone depicted on its side. “I think Nelson likes the heat.”

“A few months ago you were saying he liked the cold.”

“I think he likes weather,” Keller said. “He’d probably like an earthquake, if we had one.” He thought about it. “I might be wrong about that,” he conceded. “I don’t think he’d feel very secure in an earthquake.”

“Neither would I, Keller. Am I ever going to meet Nelson the Wonder Dog? Why don’t you bring him out here sometime?”

“Someday.” He turned her glass so that he could see the picture on it. “Pebbles,” he said. A buzzer sounded, one long and two short. “What was it Fred used to say? It’s driving me crazy. I can hear him saying it but I can’t remember what it was.”

“Yabba dabba do?”

“Yabba dabba do, that’s it. There was a song, ‘Aba Daba Honeymoon,’ but I don’t suppose it had anything to do with Fred Flintstone.”

Dot gave him a look. “That buzzer means he’s ready for you,” she said. “No rush, you can finish your tea. Or take it with you.”

“Yabba dabba do,” Keller said.

Someone drove him to the station and twenty minutes later he was on the train to New York. As soon as he got home he called Andria. He started to dial the number that had appeared on her notice at Gristede’s, then remembered what she’d told him the previous Tuesday or the Friday before, whenever it was. She had moved and didn’t have a new phone yet. Meanwhile she had a beeper.

“And I’ll keep it even after I have a phone,” she said, “because I’m out walking dogs all the time, so how could you reach me if you needed me on short notice?”

He called her beeper number and punched in his own number at the signal. She called back within five minutes.

“I figure a few days,” he told her. “But it could run a week, maybe longer.”

“No problem,” she assured him. “I have the key. The elevator attendant knows it’s all right to let me up, and Nelson thinks I’m his madcap aunt. If you run out of dog food I’ll buy more. What else is there?”

“I don’t know. Do you think I should leave the TV on for him?”

“Is that what you ordinarily do when you leave him alone?”

The truth of the matter was that he didn’t leave Nelson alone much. More often than not lately he either took the dog along or stayed home himself. Nelson had unquestionably changed his life. He walked more than he ever used to, and he also stayed in more.

“I guess I won’t leave it on,” he said. “He never takes any real interest in what I’m watching.”

“He’s a pretty cultured guy,” she said. “Have you tried him on Masterpiece Theater?”

Keller flew to Omaha, where the target was an executive of a telemarketing firm. The man’s name was Dinsmore, and he lived with his wife and children in a nicely landscaped suburban house. He would have been a cinch to take out, but someone local had tried and missed, and the man thus knew what to expect and had changed his routine accordingly. His house had a high-tech security system, and a private security guard was posted out front from dusk to dawn. Police cruisers, marked and unmarked, drove past the house at all hours.

He had hired a personal bodyguard, too, who called for him in the morning, stayed at his side all through the day, and saw him to his door in the evening. The bodyguard was a wildly overdeveloped young man with a mane of ragged yellow hair. He looked like a professional wrestler stuffed into a business suit.

Short of leasing a plane and dive-bombing the house, Keller couldn’t see an easy way to do it. Security was tight at the business premises, where access was limited to persons with photo ID badges. Even if you got past the guards, the blond bodyguard spent the whole day in a chair outside of Dinsmore’s office, riffling the pages of Iron Man magazine.

The right move, he thought, was to go home. Come back in six weeks. By then the bodyguard would have walked off the job in steroid-inspired rage, or Dinsmore, chafing at his hulking presence, would have fired him. Failing that, the two would have relaxed their guard. The cops would be less attentive as well.

Keller would look for an opening, and it wouldn’t take long to find one.

But he couldn’t do that. Whoever wanted the man dead wasn’t willing to wait.

“Time’s what’s short,” his contact explained. “Soldiers, firepower, that’s easy. You want a few guys in cars, somebody blocks the streets, somebody rams his car, no problem.”

Wonderful. Omaha, meet Delta Force. Not too long ago Keller had imagined himself as a tight-lipped loner in the Old West, riding into town to kill a man he’d never met. Now he was Lee Marvin, leading a ragged band of losers on a commando raid.

“We’ll see,” he said. “I’ll think of something.”

The fourth night there he went for a walk. It was a nice night and he’d driven downtown, where a man on foot didn’t arouse suspicions. But there was something wrong, and he’d been walking for fifteen minutes before he figured out what it was.

He missed the dog.

For years, Keller had been alone. He’d grown used to it, finding his own way, keeping his own counsel. Ever since childhood he’d been solitary and secretive by nature, and his line of work made these traits professional requirements.

Once, in a shop in SoHo, he’d seen a British World War II poster. It showed a man winking, his mouth a thin line. The caption read, “What I know I keep to myself,” evidently the English equivalent of “Loose lips sink ships.” Keller had thought about the poster for hours and returned the following day to price it. The price had been reasonable enough, but he’d realized during the negotiations that the sight of that canny face, winking forever across the room at him, would soon become oppressive. The man on the poster, advising privacy, would himself constitute an invasion of it. How could you kiss a girl with that face looking on? How could you pick your nose?