Hit List

Four

“Room One forty-seven,” he told Dot. “My original room. I moved out in the morning, and that night a man and woman checked in.”

“They checked in but they never checked out,” she said. “Where were you staying, Keller? The Roach Motel?”

They were in the kitchen of the big house on Taunton Place. There was a pitcher of iced tea on the table between them, and Dot helped herself to a second glass. Keller’s was still more than half full.

He said, “I got the hell out of there. I was driving to the airport, and don’t ask me why, but I turned around and got on I-71 and drove straight to Cincinnati.” He frowned. “Well, Cincinnati Airport. It’s actually across the river in Kentucky.”

“I’ll be glad you told me that,” she said, “one of these nights when it comes up on Jeopardy! You didn’t want to fly out of Louisville?”

“I figured it would probably be all right, but what if it wasn’t? I didn’t really know what to think. All I knew was I took care of Hirschhorn and a couple of hours later somebody took care of the people in my old room.”

“Took good care of them, it sounds like. And if they realized their mistake, maybe they’re waiting at the airport.”

“That was my thinking. Plus the drive to Cincinnati would give me time to think things out, and maybe listen to the news.”

“And make sure that wasn’t you in the body bag after all. Just a little surrealism, Keller. Don’t look so confused.”

“I’ve been confused a lot,” he said.

“Ever since you got off the plane in Louisville, I seem to recall your saying.”

“Ever since then. Here’s how it evidently went down, Dot. I did Hirschhorn around nine and went straight to the motel, and-“

“First you called me.”

“Called you en route, and then went back to my room-“

“Your new room.”

“My new room, and I was in bed by midnight, and around the time I was putting in ear plugs, somebody was killing the lovely couple in One forty-seven. What’s the first thought comes to mind?”

“The client.”

“Right, the client.”

“Tying off loose ends. You did it, and now we make sure you don’t talk.”

“Right.”

“Except we know you won’t talk. That’s why we hire somebody like you. You won’t get caught, and if you do you won’t say anything, because what the hell would you say? You don’t know who the client is.”

“Or what he had against Hirschhorn, or anything about him.”

“They could have decided that killing you was cheaper than paying the balance due,” she said, “but that’s ridiculous. They paid half in front, remember? If they were that eager to save money, they could have saved the whole fee and done Hirschhorn themselves.”

“Dot,” he said, “how would they even know the job was done?”

“Because the man was dead. Oh, you mean the time element.”

“The body could have been discovered anytime after I did the job. I watched the late news on the chance that I might hear something, but there was nothing to hear.”

“Just because it didn’t make the news-“

“Doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Exactly what I thought. But that’s not what happened. I found out later the body wasn’t discovered until morning. I don’t know how worried Mrs. Hirschhorn may have been when her husband didn’t come home, and I don’t know if she called anybody, but what I do know is nobody went out to the garage until it was time to drive the kids to school.”

She drank some iced tea. “So the people in One forty-seven died hours before anybody knew Hirschhorn was dead.”

“Well, I knew, and you knew because I told you. But you’re the only person I told, and I have a feeling you didn’t spread it around.”

“I figured it was our little secret.”

“Besides not knowing I’d done what I was brought in to do,” he said, “how would they know where to find me?”

“Unless they followed you there from Windy Hill.”

“Winding Acres.”

“Whatever.”

“Nobody followed me,” he said. “And if they had they’d have followed me to the new room, not the old one. I didn’t go anywhere near One forty-seven.”

“The people in One forty-seven. A man and a woman?”

“A man and a woman. The room had two beds, they all do, but they were only using one of them.”

“Let me take a wild guess. Married, but not to each other?”

He nodded. “Guy at the Louisville paper told me the cops are talking to the dead woman’s husband. Who denies all knowledge, but right now they like him for it.”

“All you have to do is call up and they tell you all that?”

“If you’re polite and well-spoken,” he said, “and if they somehow get the impression you’re a researcher at Inside Edition.”

“Oh.”

“I told him it sounded pretty open and shut, and he said that’s how it looked up close. He’s going to update me if there’s a big break in the case.”

“How’s he going to do that? You didn’t leave him a number.”

“Sure I did.”

“Not yours, I hope.”

“Inside Edition’s. ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘I can never remember the number here.’ And I looked it up and read it off. I could have just made something up. He’s never going to call. The husband did it, and what does Inside Edition care?”

“If he strikes out there,” she said, “he can always try Hard Copy. The husband did it, huh? That’s your best guess?”

“Or his wife, or somebody one of them hired. Or he was two-timing somebody else, or she was. There were empty bottles and full ashtrays all over the room, they’d been drinking and smoking since they checked in…”

“In a nonsmoking room? The bastards. And on top of that they were committing adultery?” She shook her head. “Triple sinners, it sounds like to me. Well, they deserved to die, and may God have mercy on their souls.”

She was reaching for her iced tea but drew her hand back as the door chime sounded. “Now who could that be?” she wondered aloud, and went to find out. He had a brief moment of panic, sure he ought to do something, unable to think what it was. He was still working on it when she came back brandishing a package.

“FedEx,” she said, and gave the parcel a shake. It didn’t make a sound. She pulled the strip to open it and drew out banded packets of currency. She slipped the wrapper off one of them and riffled the bills. “I hate to admit it,” she said, “but I’m starting to get used to the way the new bills look. Not the twenties, they still look like play money to me, but the fifties and hundreds are beginning to look just fine. You buy any stamps in Louisville?”

“A few.”

“Well,” she said, counting out stacks of bills, making piles on the table. “Now you can go buy some more.”

“I guess the customer’s satisfied.”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“You just gave them the address and they put the cash in the mail?”

“No, I told them I work for Inside Edition. It’s not the mail, anyway. It’s Federal Express.”

“Whatever.”

“There’s a cutoff man between me and the client, Keller. This particular one is a guy in-well, it doesn’t matter where, but it’s not Louisville and it’s not New York. We’ve done business for years, even before I was part of the picture.”

She gestured toward the ceiling, and Keller understood the reference to the old man, who’d never come down from the second floor in the final years of his life. You’d think he was up there still, the way they referred to him.

“So he knows where to send the money,” she said, “and the client knows how to get it to him. No business of ours how much of it stays with him, as long as we get our price. And the client doesn’t know anything about you, or me either.” She patted the piles of money. “All he knows is we do good work. Well, a happy customer is our best advertisement, and I’d say this one’s happy. How did you do it, Keller? How’d you manage natural causes?”

“I didn’t, not exactly. It was suicide.”

“Well, that’s close enough, isn’t it? It’s not as though they had their hearts set on a lingering illness.” She drained her glass, put it down on the table. “Let’s hear it. How’d you do it?”

“When he got out of the car,” he said, “I got him in a choke hold.”

“It’s good you’re not a cop, Keller. These days that comes under the heading of police brutality.”

“I kept the pressure on until he went limp. And it would have been the most natural thing to finish the job, you know? Cut off his air a little longer. Or just break his neck.”

“Whatever.”

“And I could have left him looking like he had a heart attack and hurt himself when he fell down. Something like that. But I figured any coroner who looked twice would see it didn’t happen that way, and then it looks staged, which is probably worse from the client’s point of view than a straightforward homicide.”

“I suppose.”

“So I put him behind the wheel,” he said, “and I got out the gun they gave me-“

“The twenty-two auto, first choice of professionals from coast to coast.”

“And overseas as well, for all I know. I wrapped his hand around it and stuck the business end in his mouth.”

“And squeezed off a round.”

“No,” he said, “because who knows how far the sound is going to carry?”

“ ‘Hark, I hear the cannon’s roar.’ “

“And suppose one bullet doesn’t do it? It’s a small calibre, it’s not going to splatter his brains all over the roof liner.”

“And I guess it’s a pretty severe case of suicide if the guy has to shoot himself twice. Although you could argue that it shows determination.”

“I stayed with what I’d worked up while I was waiting for him to come home. I had a length of garden hose already cut, and I taped one end to the exhaust pipe and stuck the other end in the car window.”

“And started the engine.”

“I had to do that to get the window down. Anyway, I left him there, in a closed garage with the engine running.”

“And got the hell out.”

“Not right away,” he said. “Suppose somebody heard him drive in? They might come out to check. Or suppose he came to before the carbon monoxide level built up enough to keep him under?”

“Or suppose the engine stalled.”

“Also a possibility. I waited by the side of the car, and then I started to worry about how much exhaust I was breathing myself.”

“ ‘Two Men Gassed in Suicide Pact.’ “

“So I let myself out the side door and stood there for ten minutes. I don’t know what I would have done if I heard the engine cut out.”

“Gone in and fixed it.”

“Which is fine if it stalled, but suppose he came to and turned it off himself? And I rush in, and he’s sitting there with a gun in his hand?”

“You left him the gun?”

“Left it in his hand, and his hand in his lap. Like he was ready to shoot himself if the gas didn’t work, or if he got up the nerve.”

“Cute.”

“Well, they gave me the gun. I had to do something with it.”

“Chekhov,” she said.

“Check off what?”

She rolled her eyes. “Anton Chekhov, Keller. The Russian writer. I’ll bet you anything he’s got his picture on a stamp.”

“I know who he is,” he said. “I just misheard you, because I didn’t know we were having a literary discussion. He was a physician as well as a writer, and he wrote plays and short stories. What about him?”

“He said if you show a gun in Act One, you’d better have it go off before the final curtain.” She frowned. “At least I think it was Chekhov. Maybe it was somebody else.”

“Well, it didn’t go off,” he said, “but at least I found a use for it. He had it in his hand with his finger on the trigger, and he had a round in the chamber, and if they happen to look they’ll find traces of gun oil on his lips.”

“Now that’s a nice touch.”

“It’s great,” he agreed, “as long as there’s a body to examine, but what if he wakes up? He realizes he’s got a gun in his hand, and he looks up, and there I am.” He shrugged. “As jumpy as I was, I didn’t have a lot of trouble imagining it that way. But it didn’t happen.”

“You checked him and he was nice and dead.”

“I didn’t check. I gave him ten minutes with the engine running, and I figured that was enough. The engine wasn’t going to stall and he wasn’t going to wake up.”

“And he evidently didn’t,” she said, motioning at the money. “And everybody’s happy.” She cocked her head. “Wouldn’t there be marks on his neck from the choke hold?”

“Maybe. Would they even notice? He’s in a car, he’s got a hose hooked up, he’s holding a gun, his bloodstream’s bubbling over with carbon monoxide…”

“If I found marks on his neck, Keller, I’d just figure he tried to hang himself earlier.”

“Or choke himself to death with his own hands.”

“Is that possible?”

“Maybe for an advanced student of the martial arts.”

“Ninja roulette,” she said.

He said, “That guy I talked to, thought he was talking to Inside Edition? I asked if there were any other colorful murders in town.”

“Something worthy of national coverage.”

“He told me more than I needed to know about some cocaine dealer who got gunned down a few days before I got to town, and about some poor sonofabitch who killed his terminally ill wife, called it in to 911, then shot himself before the cops could get there.”

“Never a dull moment in Louisville.”

“He didn’t even mention Hirschhorn. So I guess it’s going in the books as a suicide.”

“Fine with me,” she said, “and the client’s happy, and we got paid, so I’m happy. And the business at the Super Duper wasn’t an attempt on your life…”

“The Super 8.”

“Whatever. It was a couple of cheaters suffering divine retribution.”

“Or bad luck.”

“Aren’t they the same thing? But here’s my question. Everybody else is happy. Why not you, Keller?”

“I’m happy enough.”

“Yeah, I’ve never seen anybody happier. What did it, the pictures of the kids? And the dog?”

He shook his head. “Once it’s done,” he said, “what’s the difference? It just gets in your way while you’re doing it, but when it’s over, well, dead is dead.”

“Right.”

“One reason I didn’t shoot was I didn’t want them walking in on a mess, but it’s the same shock either way, isn’t it? And don’t people blame themselves when there’s a suicide? ‘How could he have felt that bad and not let on?’ “

“And so on.”

“But none of that’s important. The important thing is to get it done and get away clean.”

“And you did, and that’s why you’re so happy.”

“You know what it is, Dot? I knew something was wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I sensed something. I had a feeling. When I get off the plane, when I can’t read the first sign, when I go through a song and dance with the moron who meets me. And later on some drunk turns up at my door and I grab the gun and I’m ready to start blasting away through the door. And it’s just some poor slob who can’t find the right room. He staggers off and never comes back, and I have to lie down and wait for my heart to quit doing the tango.”

“And then the bikers.”

“And then the bikers, and toilet paper in my ears, and the kids with the basketball. Everything was out of synch, and it felt worse than that, it felt dangerous.”

“Like you were in danger?”

“Uh-huh. But I wasn’t. It was the room.”

“The room?”

“Room One forty-seven. Something bad was scheduled to take place there. And I sensed it.”

She gave him a look.

“Dot, I know how it sounds.”

“You don’t,” she said. “Or you wouldn’t have said it.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say it to anybody but you. Remember that girl I was seeing a while ago?”

“As far as I know, you haven’t been seeing anybody since Andria.”

“That’s the one.”

“The dog walker, the one with all the earrings.”

“She used to talk about karma,” he said, “and energy, and vibrations, and things like that. I didn’t always understand what she was saying.”

“Thank God for that.”

“But I think sometimes a person senses things.”

“And you sensed something was wrong.”

“And that something was going to happen.”

“Keller, something always happens.”

“Something violent.”

“When you take a business trip,” she said, “something violent is par for the course.”

“You know what I mean, Dot.”

“You had a premonition.”

“I guess that’s what it was.”

“You checked into a room and just got the feeling that somebody was going to get killed there.”

“Not exactly, because the room felt fine to me.”

“So?”

He looked away for a moment. “I went over all this in my mind,” he said. “Last night, and again coming up here on the train today. And it made sense, but now it’s not coming out right.”

“That’s what they call a reality check, Keller. Keep going.”

“I sensed something bad coming,” he said, “and I was somehow drawn to the place where it was going to happen.”

“Like a moth to a flame.”

“I picked the motel, Dot. I looked at the map, I said here’s where I am, here’s where he lives, here’s the airport, here’s the interstate, and there ought to be a motel right here. And I drove right to it and there it was and I asked for a ground-floor room in the rear. I asked for it!”

“ ‘Give me the death room,’ you said. ‘I’m a man. I can take it.’ “

“And I panicked when the drunk came knocking, because I knew I was in a dangerous place, even if I didn’t know I knew it. That’s why I grabbed the gun, that’s why I reacted the way I did.”

“But it was only a drunk.”

“It was a warning.”

“A warning?”

He drew a breath. “Maybe it was just a drunk looking for Ralph,” he said, “and maybe it was someone sent to get my attention.”

“Sent,” she said.

“I know it sounds crazy.”

“Sent, like an angel?”

“Dot, I’m not sure I even believe in angels.”

“How can you not believe in them? They’re on television where everybody can see them. My favorite’s the young one with the bad Irish accent. Though she’s probably not as young as she looks. She’s probably a thousand years old.”

“Dot…”

“Or whatever that comes to in dog years. You don’t believe in angels? What about the bikers partying upstairs? Angels from Hell, Keller. Pure and simple.”

“Simple,” he said, “but probably not pure. But that’s the whole thing, that’s why they were there.”

“So that you would change your room.”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

“And you changed your room first thing in the morning.”

“To one in front,” he said. “On the second floor.”

“Out of harm’s way. And later on who came along but two people out of a bad country song, and what room did they get?” She hummed the opening bars of the Dragnet theme. “Dum-de-dum-dum. Dum-de-dum-dum-dah! One forty-seven! The death room!”

“All I know,” he said doggedly, “is a couple of hours later they were dead.”

“While you lived to bear witness.”

“I guess it really does sound weird, doesn’t it?”

“Weirder than weird.”

“It made sense on the train.”

“Well, that’s trains for you.”

“What you said earlier, about a reality check?”

“You want my take on it?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay,” she said. “Now you have to bear in mind that I don’t know squat about karma or angels or any of that Twilight Zone stuff. You got a bad feeling when the pickup at the airport came off a little raggedy-ass, and then the guy they sent to meet you turned out to be a turkey. And seeing the family photo didn’t help, either.”

“I already said all that.”

“Then the drunk knocked on your door, and you were edgy to begin with, and you reacted the way you did. And your own reaction made you edgier than ever.”

“Exactly how it was.”

“But all he was,” she said, “was a drunk knocking on doors. He probably knocked on every door he came to until he found Ralph. You don’t need angel’s wings to do that.”

“Go on.”

“The noisy party upstairs? Bikers aren’t exactly famous for their silent vigils. A motel’s dumb enough to rent to people like that, they’re going to have some loud parties. Somebody’s got to be downstairs from them, and this time it was you, and as soon as you could you got your room changed.”

“But if I hadn’t-“

“If you hadn’t,” she said, patiently but firmly, “then the loving couple would have wound up in some other room when they decided they couldn’t keep their hands off each other another minute. Not One forty-seven but, oh, I don’t know. Say Two oh eight.”

“But then when the husband turned up-“

“He’d have gone to Two oh eight, Keller, because that’s where they were. He was looking for them, not whatever damn fool happened to be in One forty-seven. He followed them to their room and wreaked his horrible revenge, and it had nothing to do with what room they were in and even less to do with you.”

“Oh,” he said.

“That’s your take on it? ‘Oh?’ “

“I had this whole elaborate theory,” he said, “and it was all crap, wasn’t it?”

“It was certainly out there on the crap side of the spectrum.”

“But you thought it was a coincidence. That was your first thought.”

“No, my first thought was it couldn’t be a coincidence. That it was the client, or somebody the client sent.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“No, because the client’s satisfied, and he couldn’t have found you even if he wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean it had to be angels. What it means is it really was a coincidence after all.”

“Oh.”

“And it was a coincidence for everybody in the motel, Keller, not just you. They were all there while the couple in One forty-seven was getting killed.”

“But they hadn’t just checked out of the room.”

“So? That means they had an even narrower escape. They might have checked into One forty-seven. But you couldn’t do that, because you’d already checked out of it.”

He wasn’t sure he followed that, but he let it go. “I guess it was a coincidence,” he said.

“Don’t sound so disappointed.”

“But I sensed something. I knew something was going to happen.”

“And it did,” she said. “To Mr. Hirschhorn, may he rest in peace. Go home, Keller. Those stamps you bought? Go paste them in your album. What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?”

“You don’t paste them,” he said. “You use hinges.”

“I stand corrected.”

“Or mounts, sometimes you use mounts.”

“Whatever.”

“Anyway,” he said, “I already mounted them. Last night. I was up until three in the morning.”

“Well, isn’t that a coincidence? You’re all done mounting your stamps, and you coincidentally just came into some money.” She beamed at him. “That means you can go buy some more.”