Lawrence Block - Hit Man

Keller’s eyes went to the closed bathroom door. Jesus, he thought. Time to get the hell out. Take the knife, pick up the FedEx envelope, and-

The bathroom door opened. “Harry?” she said. “What on earth is-”

And she saw Keller. Looked right at him, saw his face.

Any second now she’d scream.

“It’s his heart,” Keller cried. “Come here, you’ve got to help me.”

She didn’t get it, but there was Harry on the floor, and here was this nice-looking fellow in a suit, moving toward her, saying things about CPR and ambulance services, speaking reassuringly in a low and level voice. She didn’t quite get it, but she didn’t scream, either, and in no time at all Keller was close enough to get a hand on her.

She wasn’t part of the deal, but she was there, and she couldn’t have stayed in the bathroom where she belonged, oh no, not her, the silly bitch, she had to go and open the door, and she’d seen his face, and that was that.

The boning knife, washed clean of blood, wiped clean of prints, went into a storm drain a mile or two from the hotel. The FedEx mailer, torn in half and in half again, went into a trash can at the airport. The Tempo went back to Hertz, and Keller, paying cash, went on American to Chicago. He had a long late lunch at a surprisingly good restaurant in O’Hare Airport, then bought a ticket on a United flight that would put him down at La Guardia well after rush-hour traffic had subsided. He killed time in a cocktail lounge with a window from which you could watch takeoffs and landings. Keller did that for a while, sipping an Australian lager, and then he shifted his attention to the television set, where Oprah Winfrey was talking with six dwarfs. The volume was set inaudibly low, which was probably just as well. Now and then the camera panned the audience, which seemed to contain a disproportionate number of small people. Keller watched, fascinated, and refused to make any Snow White jokes, not even to himself.

He wondered if it was a mistake to go back to New York the same day. What would Andria think?

Well, he’d told her his business might not take him long. Besides, what difference did it make what she thought?

He had another Australian lager and watched some more planes take off. On the plane he drank coffee and ate the two little packets of peanuts. Back at La Guardia he stopped at the first phone and called White Plains.

“That was fast,” Dot said.

“Piece of cake,” he told her.

He caught a cab, told the driver to take the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, and coached him on how to find it. At his apartment, he rang the bell a couple of times before using his key. Nelson and Andria were out. Perhaps they’d been out all day, he thought. Perhaps he’d gone to St. Louis and killed two people while the girl and his dog had been engaged in a single endless walk.

He made himself a sandwich and turned on the television set. Channel hopping, he wound up transfixed by an offering of sports collectibles on one of the home shopping channels. Balls, bats, helmets, caps, shirts, all of them autographed by athletes and accompanied by certificates of authenticity, the certificates themselves suitable for framing. Cubic zirconium for guys, he thought.

“When you hear the words blue chip, ” the host was saying, “what are you thinking? I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. I’m thinking Mickey Mantle.”

Keller wasn’t sure what he thought of when he heard the words blue chip, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t Mickey Mantle. He was working on that one when Nelson came bounding into the room, with Andria behind him.

“When I heard the TV,” she said, “my first thought was I must have left it on, but I never even turned it on in the first place, so how could that be? And then I thought maybe there was a break-in, but why would a burglar turn on the television set? They don’t watch them, they steal them.”

“I should have called from the airport,” Keller said. “I didn’t think of it.”

“What happened? Was your flight canceled?”

“No, I made the trip,” he said. “But the business hardly took me any time at all.”

“Wow,” she said. “Well, Nelson and I had our usual outstanding time. He’s such a pleasure to walk.”

“He’s well behaved,” Keller agreed.

“It’s not just that. He’s enthusiastic.”

“I know what you mean.”

“He feels so good about everything,” she said, “that you feel good being with him. And he really takes an interest. I took him along when I went to water the plants and feed the fish at this apartment on Park Avenue. The people are in Sardinia. Have you ever been there?”

“No.”

“Neither have I, but I’d like to go sometime. Wouldn’t you?”

“I never thought about it.”

“Anyway, you should have seen Nelson staring at the aquarium, watching the fish swim back and forth. If you ever want to get one, I’d help you set it up. But I would recommend that you stick with freshwater. Those saltwater tanks are a real headache to maintain.”

“I’ll remember that.”

She bent over to pet the dog, then straightened up. She said, “Can I ask you something? Is it all right if I stay here tonight?”

“Of course. I more or less figured you would.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure, and it’s a little late to make other arrangements. But I thought you might want to be alone after your trip and-”

“I wasn’t gone that long.”

“You’re sure it’s all right?”

“Absolutely.”

They watched television together, drinking cups of hot chocolate that Andria made. When the program ended Keller took Nelson for a late walk. “Do you really want a fish tank?” he asked the dog. “If I can have a television set, I suppose you ought to be able to have a fish tank. But would you watch it after the first week or so? Or would you get bored with it?”

That was the thing about dogs, he thought. They didn’t get bored the way people did.

After a couple of blocks he found himself talking to Nelson about what had happened in St. Louis. “They didn’t say anything about a woman,” he said. “I bet she wasn’t registered. I don’t think she was his wife, so I guess she wasn’t officially there. That’s why he sent her to the bathroom before he opened the door, and why he didn’t want to open the door in the first place. If she’d stayed in the bathroom another minute-”

But suppose she had? She’d have been screaming her head off before Keller was out of the hotel, and she’d have been able to give a certain amount of information to the police. How the killer had gained access to the room, for a starter.

Just as well things had gone the way they did, he decided. But it still rankled. They hadn’t said anything at all about a woman.

There was only one bathroom. Andria used it first. Keller heard the shower running, then nothing until she emerged wearing a generally shapeless garment of pink flannel that covered her from her neck to her ankles. Her toenails were painted, Keller noticed, each a different color.

Keller showered and put on a robe. Andria was on the sofa, reading a magazine. They said goodnight and he clucked to Nelson, and the dog followed him into the bedroom. When he closed the door the dog made that sound again.

He shucked the robe, got into bed, patted the bed at his side. Nelson stayed where he was, right in front of the door, and he repeated that sound in his throat, making it the least bit more insistent this time.

“You want to go out?”

Nelson wagged his tail, which Keller had to figure for a yes. He opened the door and the dog went into the other room. He closed the door and got back into bed, trying to decide if he was jealous. It struck him that he might not only be jealous of the girl, because Nelson wanted to be with her instead of with him, but he might as easily be jealous of the dog, because he got to sleep with Andria and Keller didn’t.