Lawrence Block - Hit Man

“That’s good,” Keller said.

“And I’ll have some more work for you.”

“More work?”

“That woman in Colorado,” Farrar said. “You wondered what I had against her. There was something, a remark she made once, but that’s not the point. I found a way to make myself a secondary beneficiary in an individual’s government insurance policy. It’s too complicated to explain but it ought to work like a charm.”

“That’s pretty slick,” Keller said, getting to his feet. “I’ll tell you, Farrar, I’m prepared to wait a week or so for the money, especially with the prospect of future work. But I’d like some cash tonight as a binder. You must have some money around the house.”

“Let me see what I’ve got in the safe,” Farrar said.

“Twenty-two thousand dollars,” Keller said, slipping a rubber band around the bills and tucking them away. “That’s what, fifty-five hundred dollars a pop?”

“You’ll get the balance next week,” Farrar assured him. “Or a substantial portion of it, at the very least.”

“Great.”

“Anyway, where do you get fifty-five hundred? There were three of them, and three into twenty-two is seven and a third. That makes it”-he frowned, calculating-“seven thousand, three hundred thirty-three dollars a head.”

“Is that right?”

“And thirty-three cents,” Farrar said.

Keller scratched his head. “Am I counting wrong? I make it four people.”

“Who’s the fourth?”

“You are,” Keller told him.

“If I’d wanted to wait,” he told Dot the next day, “I think he probably would have handed over a decent chunk of cash. But there was no way I was going to let him see the sun come up.”

“Because who knows what the little shit is going to do next.”

“That’s it,” Keller said. “He’s an amateur and a nut case, and he already fooled me once.”

“And once is enough.”

“Once is plenty,” Keller agreed. “He had it all worked out, you know. He’d manipulate Social Security records and get me to kill total strangers so that he could collect their benefits. Total strangers!”

“You generally kill total strangers, Keller.”

“They’re strangers to me,” he said, “but not to the client. Anyway, I decided to take a bird in the hand, and the bird comes to twenty-two thousand. I guess that’s better than nothing.”

“It was,” Dot said, “last time I checked. And none of it was work, anyway. You did it for love.”

“Love?”

“Love of country. You’re a patriot, Keller. After all, it’s the thought that counts.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so. And I like the flower, Keller. I wouldn’t think you’d be the type to wear one, but I have to say you can carry it off. It looks good. Adds a certain something.”

“Panache,” he said. “What else?”

“R etiring? You, Keller?” Dot looked at him, frowned, shook her head. “Shy, maybe. But retiring? I don’t think so.”

“I’m thinking about it,” he said.

“You’re a city boy, Keller. What are you going to do, scoot off to Roseburg, Oregon? Buy yourself a little cabin of clay and wattles made?”

“Wattles?”

“Never mind.”

“It was a nice enough town,” he said. “ Roseburg. But you’re right, I’m a New Yorker. I’d stay right here.”

“But you’d be retired.”

He nodded. “I ran the numbers,” he said. “I can afford it. I’ve squirreled some money away over the years, and my rent’s reasonable. And I was never one to live high, Dot.”

“You’ve had expenses, though. All the earrings you bought for that girl.”

“ Andria.”

“I remember her name, Keller. I didn’t want to say it because I thought it might be a sore point.”

He shook his head. “She walked into my life,” he said, “and she walked my dog, and she walked out.”

“And took your dog along with her.”

“Well, he pretty much walked in himself,” he said, “so it figured he would walk out one day. For a while I missed both of them, and now I don’t miss either of them, so I’d have to say I came out of it okay.”

“Sounds like it.”

“And I never spent serious money on earrings. What do earrings have to do with anything, anyway?”

“Beats me. More tea, Keller?”

He nodded and she filled both their cups. They were in a Chinese restaurant in White Plains, half a mile from the big old house on Taunton Place where she lived with the old man. Keller had suggested they meet for lunch, and she’d suggested this place, and the meal had been about what he’d expected. The food looked Chinese enough, but it tasted suburban.

“He’s been slipping,” he said. “He has his good days and his bad days.”

“Not too many good days lately,” Dot said.

“I know. And we’ve talked about it, how sooner or later we have to do something. And I got to thinking, and it seems to me all I have to do is retire.”

“Throw in the towel,” Dot said. “Cash in your chips. Walk away from the table.”

“Something like that.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“You’re a young man, Keller. What are you going to do with the rest of your life?”

“The same as I do now,” he said, “but without leaving town on a job eight or ten times a year. Except for those little interruptions, you could say I’ve been retired for years. I go to the movies, I read a book, I work out at the gym, I take a long walk, I see a play, I have the occasional beer, I meet the occasional lady… ”

“Who takes your occasional dog for an occasional walk.”

He gave her a look. “Point is,” he said, “I keep on doing what I’ve been doing all along, except I don’t take contracts anymore.”

“Because you’re retired.”

“Right. What’s wrong with that?”

She thought about it. “It almost works,” she said.

“Almost? Why almost?”

“These things you do,” she said, “aren’t things you do.”

“Huh?”

“What they are, they’re things you keep busy with while you’re waiting for the phone to ring. They’re things you do between jobs. But if there weren’t any jobs, if you finally got used to the idea that the phone wasn’t going to ring, all that other stuff would have to be your whole life. And there’s not enough there, Keller. You’d go nuts.”

“You really think so?”

“Absolutely.”

“I sort of see what you mean,” he admitted. “The work is an interruption, and I’m usually irritated when the phone rings. But if it stopped ringing altogether… ”

“Right.”

“Well, hell , ” he said. “People retire all the time, some of them men who loved their work and put in sixty-hour weeks. What have they got that I don’t?”

She answered without hesitation. “A hobby,” she said.

“A hobby?”

“Something to be completely wrapped up in,” she said, “and it doesn’t much matter what it is. Whether you’re scuba diving or fly-fishing or playing golf or making things out of macramé.” She frowned. “Do you make stuff out of macramé?”

“I don’t.”

“I mean, what exactly is macramé, do you happen to know? It’s not like papier-máche, is it?”

“You’re asking the wrong person, Dot.”

“Or is it that crap you make by tying knots? You’re right about me asking the wrong person, because whatever the hell macramé is, it’s not your hobby. If it was you could make a cabin out of it, along with the clay and the wattles.”

“We’re back to wattles,” he said, “and I still don’t know what they are. The hell with them. If I had some sort of a hobby-”