Joe Haldeman - Work Done for Hire

Sure, son. Why don’t you just put down the gun and sit over there while we check it out… you don’t mind handcuffs, do you?

For some time I sat there and looked at the weapon. Then I carefully filled its box magazine with five fresh rounds, then pulled the bolt back and slipped a sixth one into the chamber.

Four rounds for the car and driver, and then two for the grinning schmuck with the camera. Chest and head. Take a picture of this , motherfucker.

Iwas just about done with waiting, quarter to eleven, when the little phone buzzed. I pushed the button and didn’t say anything.

“Do you have a pencil?” the woman said.

“No. Second.” I found a ballpoint in my bag, and a folded-over piece of paper. “Okay.”

“You have to be in Washington, DC, in four days. You have a room reserved under the name ‘Grant Harrison’ from the third of July until the fifth, in the JW Marriott Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest.” She paused. “Do you have that?”

“I have it.” I repeated it back to her.

“Your confirmation for the room, and a wallet with Grant Harrison identification, are in the glove compartment of your car. You will have to drive there, of course, so your luggage won’t be searched.”

I didn’t bother to write that down. “I’m not doing anything for you until I know that Kit is safe.”

There was a long pause. “Nothing?”

“Of course not. If you’ve killed her I have no reason to follow your orders.”

“Oh. She is not dead.” There was some line noise and a beep. “I’ve sent you a photograph of her. The picture includes the first page of this morning’s New York Times .

“She still has all her fingers. But take note of the man standing next to her. If you call the authorities… we will give her to him.

“She will be killed. Repeat that to me.”

“She will be killed.”

“Keep that in mind. She will be killed, slowly, badly, and you will be to blame.” The phone went dead, and then buzzed.

I clicked it for “Recents” and found a call with the current time, supposedly from “411.” I opened it and found a photograph.

It was Kit, seated, gagged, wearing only frilly blue underwear. Which I had never seen.

A white rope thicker than clothesline was wound around her. Shoulders, chest, waist, legs. Her wrists were tied together in her lap, with what looked like telephone cord. Low coffee table in front of her, with a metal ashtray in the shape of a bird, filled to overflowing with cigarette butts. A corner of a window behind her showed a pine forest.

A tall thin man wearing a black mask hooded over his head stood next to her. In one hand he held a newspaper and in the other, a long-bladed fileting knife.

That was theater, of course. She was at the mercy of anyone, dramatic weapon or no. If not this theatrical knife-wielder, then the fat guy with the camera, or his black driver. The woman with the honey voice, the person who killed Blackstone, the man who’d just talked on the phone. And maybe some to whom I had not yet been introduced.

The background of the photo didn’t reveal much. There were probably a million rooms just like it in motels and vacation cabins: fake log paneling, furniture that was worn blond Ikea or the like, many years old. I couldn’t read the date on the Times , but the headline was current, “West Virginia Coal Miners’ Strike Near Resolution.”

I couldn’t read Kit’s expression, either. Wide-eyed, I supposed with fright, looking away from the camera, down at the table. The bandana pulled tight between her teeth, that must hurt. Her mouth would be dry. The dead-tobacco smell from the cigarette butts, rank and penetrating.

The man’s eyes were visible, somewhat shaded by the hood. Windows of the soul, supposedly, though it’s hard to read eyes with no other features. Safe to assume they were cruel. Cruel pulp-fiction eyes under a hangman’s hood.

Would the long slender blade reach his heart if I thrust up under the sternum? That’s what the master sergeant claimed in Basic Training. Maybe I would play it safe and just cut his throat. Shoot him a few times first.

Kit didn’t have any blue underwear. White or nothing, usually nothing. She had been stripped and redressed.

An interesting word, “redress.” Could anything really pay us back for all this?

The phone by the bed rang, and I snatched it up. It was just the office, asking if I planned to stay another day. I said no, and assured her I’d be out by eleven.

“Where you headed?” she chirped. I told her Washington, DC.

“Gonna be a madhouse, Fourth of July coming up.”

I tried to laugh. “Guess I can handle it.”

She might wind up on page three of the Times herself. He seemed like such a nice boy. I saw that long box but didn’t think nothing of it.

That room in the photo could be a block away, or it could be almost anywhere with pine trees. Underneath the note I had copied from them, I did some calculation: They hit me over the head and took Kit around 11:00 last night, 2300. Almost twelve hours later, they sent me the photo.

If they were driving, they might have gone six or seven hundred miles. But they didn’t have to drive if they had access to civil aviation. I called the desk, and the woman said there was a landing strip two miles down the road. Yes, she had heard several planes take off tonight.

In that time, a plane could get them anywhere in the hemisphere. Someplace with a New York Times , but no other constraints.

I went out and opened the glove compartment and took out a cheap plastic wallet. Illinois driver’s license, library card, and Exxon and Visa credit cards for “Grant Harrison,” the names of two presidents. One gave us Black Friday and the other was a nonstop talker who died of pneumonia after a month in office. From eating cherries in cold milk, which I never believed. I wouldn’t have voted for either one of them.

Not much packing up to do. I put our bathroom gear back in her pink suitcase and the rifle back into its box. Went to the office and paid with a C-note, which caused the clerk to purse her lips. I knew there was something fishy when he didn’t use a credit card.

I asked whether I could use her desk computer for a minute, though, and she decided I was probably not that dangerous. She wanted to go off to the little girls’ room anyhow, she said; would I watch things?

Sure. The main thing I wanted to watch was the picture of Kit, bound and gagged. It took me a minute to transfer it to her machine. She didn’t have Photoshop or anything, but I was able to enlarge portions of the picture.

What I mainly wanted to study was a small wall calendar that was nailed to the paneling at the edge of the picture, next to the window.

It was a freebie calendar from an Ace Hardware; I recognized the logo but couldn’t read any of the lettering. Maybe the words under the logo were the name of the town.

I pushed the enlargement in and out. The first line looked like two words: four letter-blobs, an apostrophe, and another blob. Probably an “s.” Then six blobs. The first one narrower; might be an “i.”

The second line was five blobs, slightly larger. The name of a state? I called up a list of states, and there were only three with five letters: Texas, Maine, and Idaho.

A CIA genius or Jeopardy! winner might rattle it off instantly: a place name that was “somebody’s” “something,” in one of those three states. I Googled around and found a gazetteer that would search for place names with missing letters.

Texas and Idaho came up blank, but I scored on Maine: Swan’s Island. It was a little pinpoint in the ocean, south of Mount Desert Island. Population 350.