Hit Man

4 Dogs Walked, Plants Watered

“N ow here’s mysituation,” Keller said. “Ordinarily I have plenty of free time. I take Nelson for a minimum of two long walks a day, and sometimes when the weather’s nice we’ll be out all afternoon. It’s a pleasure for me, and he’s tireless, literally tireless. He’s an Australian cattle dog, and the breed was developed to drive herds of cattle vast distances. You could probably walk him to Yonkers and back and he’d still be raring to go.”

“I’ve never been to Yonkers,” the girl said.

Neither had Keller, but he had passed through it often enough on the way to and from White Plains. There was no need to mention this.

“The thing is,” he went on, “I sometimes have to travel on business, and I don’t get much in the way of advance warning. I get a phone call, and two hours later I’m on a plane halfway across the country, and I may not get back for two weeks. Last time I boarded Nelson, and I don’t want to do that again.”

“No.”

“Aside from the fact that the kennels expect you to make reservations a week in advance,” he said, “I think it’s rotten for the dog. Last time, well, he was different when I picked him up. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was days before he was his old self again.”

“I know what you mean.”

“So I’d like to be able call you,” he said, “when I find out I have to travel. You could come in every day and feed him and give him fresh water and take him for a walk twice a day. That’s the kind of thing you could do, right?”

“It’s what I do,” she said. “I have regular clients who don’t have the time to give their pets enough attention, and I have other clients who hire me just when they go out of town, and I’ll come to their houses and take care of their pets and their houseplants.”

“But in the meantime,” Keller said, “I thought you and Nelson ought to get to know each other, because who knows how he’ll react if I just disappear one day and a few hours later you turn up and enter the apartment? He’s pretty territorial.”

“But if Nelson and I already knew each other-”

“That’s what I was getting at,” he said. “Suppose you were to walk him, I don’t know, twice a week? He’s not stupid, he’d get the idea right away. Then, by the time I had to leave town, you’d already be an old friend. He wouldn’t go nuts when you tried to enter the apartment or resist when you tried to lead him out of it. Does that make sense to you? And what would be a fair price?”

They worked it out. She would walk Nelson for a full hour twice a week, on Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons, and for this Keller would pay her fifty dollars a week. Then, when Keller was out of town, she would get fifty dollars a day, in return for which she would see to Nelson’s food and water and walk him twice daily.

“Why don’t we start now?” she suggested. “How about it, Nelson? Want to go for a walk?” The dog recognized the word but looked uncertain. “Walk, walk, walk!” she said, and his tail set to wagging.

When they were out the door Keller began to worry. Suppose she never brought the dog back? Then what?

Dogs Walked, Plants Watered,the notice had read.Responsible Young Woman Will Provide Quality Care for Your Flora and Fauna. Call Andria.

The notice had appeared on the community bulletin board at the neighborhood Gristede’s, where Keller bought Grape-Nuts for himself and Milk-Bone for Nelson. There had been a phone number, and he had copied it down and dialed it, and now his dog was in the care and custody of this allegedly responsible young woman, and all he really knew about her was that she didn’t know how to spell her own name. Suppose she let Nelson off the leash? Suppose she sold him to vivisectionists? Suppose she fell in love with him and never brought him back?

Keller went into the bathroom and stared hard at himself in the mirror. “Grow up,” he said sternly.

An hour and ten minutes after they’d left, Nelson and Andria returned. “He’s a pleasure to walk,” she said. “No, don’t pay me for today. It would be like paying an actor for an audition. You can start paying me on Tuesday. Incidentally, it’s only fair to tell you that the payment you suggested is higher than my usual rates.”

“That’s all right.”

“You’re sure? Well, thanks, because I can use it. I’ll see you Tuesday morning.”

She showed up Tuesday morning, and again Friday afternoon. When she brought Nelson back on Friday she asked Keller if he wanted a full report.

“On what?” he wondered.

“On our walk,” she said. “On what he did. You know.”

“Did he bite anyone? Did he come up with a really good recipe for chili?”

“Some owners want you to give them a tree-by-tree report.”

“Hey, call me irresponsible,” Keller said, “but I figure there are things we’re not meant to know.”

After a couple of weeks he gave her a key. “Because there’s no reason for me to stick around just to let you in,” he said. “If I’m not going to be here I’ll leave the money in an envelope on the desk.” A week later he forced himself to leave the apartment half an hour before she was due to arrive. When he printed her name in block capitals on the envelope it looked strange to him, and the next time he saw her he raised the subject. “The notice you posted had your name spelled with anI, ” he said. “Is that how you spell it or was it a misprint?”

“Both,” she said. “I originally spelled it with anE, 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 onMasterpiece 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 ofIron 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?

The sentiment, though, stayed with him. On the train to and from White Plains, on a flight to some distant city where his services were required, on the flight home with his mission accomplished, the Englishman’s motto would sound in his mind like a mantra. What he knew he kept to himself.

In therapy he’d felt conflicted. The process wouldn’t work unless he was willing to open up. But how could he tell a West Side psychologist what he wouldn’t let slip to a stranger on a train, or a woman in bed? He’d wound up talking mostly of dreams and childhood memories, hoping all the while that what Dr. Jerrold Breen knew he’d keep to himself. In the end, of course, Breen had taken his knowledge to the grave, leaving Keller to resume his lifelong habit of silence.

But he’d broken that habit with Nelson.

Perhaps the best thing about dogs, it seemed to Keller, was that you could talk to them. They made much better listeners than human beings did. You didn’t have to worry that you were boring them, or that they’d heard a particular story before, or that they’d think less of you for what you were revealing about yourself. You could tell them anything, secure in the knowledge that the matter would end right there. They wouldn’t pass it on to somebody else, nor would they throw it back in your face in the course of an argument.

Which was not to say that they didn’t listen. It was quite clear to Keller that Nelson listened. When you talked to him you didn’t have the feeling that you were talking to a wall, or to a gerbil or a goldfish. Nelson didn’t necessarily understand what you told him, but he damn well listened.

And Keller told him everything. The longings that had begun to stir during therapy-to open up, to divulge old secrets, to reveal oneself to oneself-now found full expression on the long walks he took with Nelson and the long evenings they spent at home.

“I never set out to do this for a living,” he told Nelson one afternoon in the park. “And for a while, you know, it was just something I’d done a couple of times. It wasn’t who I was.

“Except it got so itwas who I was, and I didn’t realize it. How I found out, see, I’d meet somebody who’d heard of me, and he’d show something that would surprise me, whether it was fear or respect, whatever it was. He’d be reacting to a killer, and that would puzzle me, because I didn’t know that’s what I was.

“I remember in high school how they did all this career counseling, showing you how to figure out what you wanted to do in life and then take steps in that direction. I think I told you how those years were sort of a blur for me. I went through them like somebody with a light concussion, I saw everything through a veil. But when they got on this career stuff I just didn’t have a clue. There was this test, questions like would you rather pull weeds or sell cabbages or teach needlepoint, and I couldn’t finish the test. Every question was utterly baffling.

“And then I woke up one day and realized I had a career, and it consisted of taking people out. I never had any interest in it or any aptitude for it, but it turns out you don’t need any. All you need is to be able to do it. I did it once because somebody told me to, and I did it a second time because somebody told me to, and before I knew it it was what I did. Then, once I’d defined myself, I started to learn the technical aspects. Guns, other tools, unarmed techniques. How to get around people. Stuff you ought to know.

“The thing is, there’s not all that much you have to know. It’s not like the careers they told you about in high school. You don’t prepare for it. Maybe there are things that happen to you along the way that prepare you for it, but that’s not something you choose.

“What do you think? Do you want to split a hot-dog? Or should we head on home?”

Back from his solitary walk, Keller looked at the phone and wished there was a way he could call Nelson. He’d avoided getting an answering machine, seeing great potential for disaster in such a device, but it would be useful now. He could call up and talk, and Nelson would be able to hear him.

And, if he really opened up and spoke his mind, it would all be there on the tape, where anybody could retrieve it. No, he decided, it was just as well he didn’t have a machine.

At noon the following day he was in his rented car when Dinsmore and his bodyguard drove downtown and parked in front of a restaurant in the Old Market district. Keller waited outside for a few minutes, then found a parking space and went in after them. The hostess seated Keller just two tables away from Dinsmore. Keller ordered shrimp scampi and watched Dinsmore and the wrestler each put away an enormous steak.

A couple of hours later he called Dot in White Plains. “Guy’s forty pounds overweight and here I just saw him tuck into a porterhouse the size of a manhole cover,” he said. “Put half a shaker of salt on it first. How much of a rush are these people in? Because they shouldn’t have to wait too long before a stroke or a coronary closes the account.”

“There’s no cause like a natural cause,” Dot said. “But you know what they say about time, Keller.”

“It’s of the essence?”

“Yabba dabba do,” Dot said.

The next day Dinsmore and his bodyguard had the same table at the same restaurant. This time a third man accompanied them. He looked to be a business associate of Dinsmore’s. Keller couldn’t overhear the conversation, he was seated a little farther away this time, but he could see that Dinsmore and the third man were doing the talking, while the bodyguard divided his attention between the food on his plate and the other diners in the room. Keller had brought a newspaper along and managed to have his eyes on it when the bodyguard glanced his way.

At one point Dinsmore got to his feet, and Keller’s pulse quickened. Before he could react, the bodyguard was also standing, and both men walked off to the men’s room. Keller stayed where he was and ate his spaghetti carbonara.

He was watching out of the corner of his eye when the two men returned to their table. The bodyguard took a moment to scan the room, while Dinsmore sat down at once and shook some more salt onto his half-eaten steak.

Almost without thinking, Keller reached out and let his hand close around his own salt cellar. It was made of glass, and fit his fist like a roll of nickels. If he were to hit someone now, the salt cellar would lend considerable authority to the blow.

Damn thing was lethal.

That night Keller had a couple of drinks after dinner. He still felt them when he got back to his motel. He walked around the block to sober up, and when he got back to his room he picked up the phone and called Nelson.

He wasn’t drunk enough to expect the dog to answer. But it seemed to him that this was a way to make a minimal sort of contact. The phone would ring. The dog would hear it ring. While he could not be expected to recognize it as his master’s voice, Keller would have reached out and touched him, as they said in the phone company ads.

No, of course it didn’t make sense. Dialing the number, he knew it didn’t make sense. But it wouldn’t cost anything, and there wouldn’t be a record of the call, so what harm could it do?

The line was busy.

His first reaction-and it was extremely brief, just momentary-was one of jealous paranoia. The dog was on the phone with someone else, and they were talking about Keller.

The thought came and went in an instant, leaving Keller to shake his head in wonder at the mysteries of his own mind. A flood of other explanations came to him, each of them far more probable than that first thought.

Nelson could have lurched into the end table on which the phone sat, knocking it off the hook. Andria, using the phone before or after their walk, could have replaced the receiver incorrectly. Or, most probably, the long-distance circuits were overloaded, and any call to New York would be rewarded with a busy signal.

A few minutes later he tried again and got a busy signal again.

He walked back and forth, fighting the impulse to call the operator and have her check the line. Eventually he picked up the phone and tried the number a third time, and this time it rang. He let it ring four times, and as it rang he imagined the dog’s reaction-the ears pricking up, the alert gleam in the eyes.

“Good boy, Nelson,” he said aloud. “I’ll be home soon.”

The next day, Friday, he spent the morning in his motel room. Around eleven he called the restaurant in the Old Market. Dinsmore had arrived at the restaurant at 12:30 on both of his previous visits. Keller booked a table for one at 12:15.

He arrived on time and ordered a cranberry juice spritzer. He looked across at Dinsmore’s table, now set for two. If this went well, he thought, he could be home in time to take Nelson for a walk before bedtime.

At 12:30, Dinsmore’s table remained empty. Ten minutes later a pair of businesswomen were seated at it. Keller ate his food without tasting it, drank a cup of coffee, paid the check, and left.

Saturday he went to a movie. Sunday he went to another movie and walked around the Old Market district. Sunday night he sat in his room and looked at the phone. He had already called home twice, letting the phone ring, trying to tell himself he was establishing some kind of psychic contact with his dog. He hadn’t had anything to drink and he knew what he was doing didn’t make any sense, but he’d gone ahead and done it anyhow.

He reached for the phone, started to dial a different number, then caught himself and left the room. He made the call from a pay phone, dialing Andria ’s beeper number, punching in the pay phone number after the tone sounded. He didn’t know if it would work, didn’t know if her beeper would receive more than a seven-number signal, didn’t know if she’d be inclined to return a long-distance call. And she might be walking a dog, Nelson or some other client’s, and did he really want to stand next to this phone for an hour waiting for her to call back? He couldn’t call from his room, because then her call would have to come through the switchboard, and she wouldn’t know whom to ask for. Even if she guessed it was him, the name Keller would mean nothing to the motel switchboard, and it was a name he didn’t want anyone in Omaha to hear, anyway. So-

The phone rang almost immediately. He grabbed it and said hello, and she said, “Mr. Keller?”

“ Andria,” he said, and then couldn’t think what to say next. He asked about the dog and she assured him that the dog was fine.

“But I think he misses you,” she said. “He’ll be glad when you’re home.”

“So will I,” Keller said. “That’s why I called. I had hoped to be back the day before yesterday, but things are taking longer than I thought. I’ll be a few more days, maybe longer.”

“No problem.”

“Well, just so you know,” he said. “Listen, I appreciate your calling me back. I may call again if this drags on. I’ll reimburse you for the call.”

“You’re already paying for this one,” she said. “I’m calling from your apartment. I hope that’s all right?”

“Of course,” he said. “But-”

“See, I was here when the beeper went off, and I figured who else would be calling me from out of town? So I figured it would be all right to use your phone, since it was probably you I’d be calling.”

“Sure.”

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I’ve been spending a lot of time here. It’s nice and quiet, and Nelson seems to like the company. His ears pricked up just now when I said his name. I think he knows who I’m talking to. Do you want to say hello to him?”

“Well-”

Feeling like an idiot, he said hello to the dog and told him he was a good boy and that he’d see him soon. “He got all excited,” Andria assured him. “He didn’t bark, he hardly ever barks-”

“It’s the dingo in him.”

“-but he did a lot of panting and pawing the floor. He misses you. We’re doing fine here, me and Nelson, but he’ll be glad to see you.”

Keller got to the restaurant at 12:15 Monday. The hostess recognized him and led him directly to the same table he’d had Friday. He looked over at Dinsmore’s table and saw that it was set for four, and that there was aRESERVED card on it.

At 12:30, two men in suits were seated at Dinsmore’s table. Keller didn’t recognize either of them, and began to despair of his entire plan. Then Dinsmore arrived, accompanied by the wrestler.

Keller watched them while he ate his meal. Three men, drinking their drinks and wolfing their steaks, talking heartily, gesturing volubly. While the fourth man, the bodyguard, sat like a coiled spring.

Too many people, Keller thought. Give it another day.

The next day he arrived at the same time and the hostess led him to the table he’d reserved. Dinsmore’s table had two places set, and aRESERVED sign in place. Keller got to his feet and went to the men’s room, where he locked himself in a stall.

A few minutes later he left the men’s room and threaded his way through the maze of tables, passing close to the Dinsmore table on his way, bumping into it, reaching out to steady himself.

As far as he could tell, nobody paid him any attention.

He returned to his own table, sat down, waited. At 12:30 Dinsmore’s table was still unoccupied. What would he do if they gave it to somebody else? He couldn’t try to undo what he’d just done, could he? He didn’t see how, not with people sitting at the table.

Risky plan, he thought. Too many ways it could go wrong. If he’d been able to talk it through with Nelson first-

Get a grip on yourself, he told himself.

He was doing just that when Dinsmore and the wrestler turned up, the executive in a testy mood, the bodyguard looking sullen and bored. There was a bad moment when the hostess seemed uncertain where to seat them, but then she worked it out and led them to their usual table.

Keller longed to get out of there. He’d been picking at his veal ever since it had been placed in front of him. It tasted flat, but he figured anything would just then. Could he just put some money on the table and get the hell out? Or did he have to sit there and wait?

Fifteen minutes after his arrival, Dinsmore cried out, clutched his throat, and pitched forward onto the table. Half an hour after that, Keller turned in his rental car at the airport and booked his flight home.

In the cab from the airport, Keller had to fight the impulse to have the driver stop so he could pick up something for Nelson. He’d changed planes in St. Louis, and he’d spent most of his time between flights in the gift shop, trying to find something for the dog. But what would Nelson do with a snow shaker or a souvenir coffee mug? What did he want with a Cardinals cap, or a sweatshirt with a representation of the Gateway Arch?

“You hardly touched that,” the waitress in Omaha had said of his veal. “Do you want a doggie bag?”

He’d been stuck for an answer. “Sorry,” he said at length. “I’m a little rattled. That poor man…” he’d added, with a gesture toward the table where Dinsmore had been sitting.

“Oh, I’m sure he’ll be all right,” she said. “He’s probably sitting up in his hospital bed right now, joking with his nurses.”

Keller didn’t think so.

“Hey, Mist’ Keller,” the elevator operator said. “Ain’t seen you in a while, sir.”

“It’s good to be back.”

“That dog be glad to see you,” the man said. “That Nelson, he’s a real good dog.”

He was also out, a fact the attendant had neglected to mention. Keller unlocked the door and entered the apartment, calling the dog’s name and getting no response. He unpacked, and decided to delay his shower until the dog was back and the girl had gone for the day.

He could have had several showers. It was fully forty minutes from the time he sat down in front of the television set until he heard Andria ’s key in the lock. As soon as the door was open Nelson came flying across the room, leaping up to greet Keller, tail wagging furiously.

Keller felt wonderful. A wave of contentment passed through him, and he got down on his knees to play with his dog.

“I’m sorry you had to come home to an empty house,” Andria said. “If we’d known you were coming-”

“That’s all right.”

“Well, I’d better be going. You must be exhausted, you’ll want to get to bed.”

“Not for a few hours,” he said, “but I’ll want a shower. There’s something about spending a whole day in airports and on planes-”

“I know what you mean,” she said. “Well, Nelson, what’s today? Tuesday? I guess I won’t be seeing you until Friday.” She petted the dog, then looked across at Keller. “You still want me to give him his regular walk on Friday, don’t you?”

“Definitely.”

“Good, because I’ll be looking forward to it. He’s my favorite client.” She gave the dog another pat. “And thanks for paying me, and for the bonus. It’s great of you. I mean, if I wind up having to get a hotel room, I can afford it.”

“A hotel room?”

She lowered her eyes. “I wasn’t going to mention this,” she said, “but it’d give me a bad conscience not to. I don’t know how you’re going to feel about this, but I’ll just go ahead and blurt it out, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’ve sort of been staying here,” she said.

“You’ve sort of… ”

“Sort of been living here. See, the place I was staying, it didn’t work out, and there’s one or two people I could call, but I thought, well, Nelson and I get along so good, and I could really spend lots of time with him if I just, like-”

“Stayed here.”

“Right,” she said. “So that’s what I did. I didn’t sleep in your bed, Mr. Keller-”

“Why not?”

“Well, I figured you might not like that. And the couch is comfortable, it really is.”

She’d tried to keep her impact on his apartment minimal, she told him, stripping her bedding from the couch each morning and stowing it in the closet. And it wasn’t as though she were hanging out there all the time, because when she wasn’t walking Nelson she had other clients to attend to.

“Dogs to walk,” he said. “Plants to water.”

“And cats and fish to feed, and birds. There’s this couple on Sixty-fifth Street with seventeen birds, and there’s something about birds in cages. I get this urge to open the cages and open the windows and let them all fly away. But I wouldn’t, partly because it would make the people really crazy, and partly because it would be terrible for the birds. I don’t think they’d last long out there.”

“Not in this town,” Keller said.

“Just the other day one of them got out of his cage,” she said, “and I just about lost it. The windows were closed so he wasn’t going anywhere, but he was swooping and diving and I couldn’t think how to get him back in his cage.”

“What did you do?”

“What I did,” she said, “is I centered all my energy in my heart chakra, and I sent this great burst of calming heart energy to the bird, and he calmed right down. Then I just held the cage door open and he flew back in.”

“No kidding?”

She nodded. “I should have thought of it right away,” she said, “but when you panic you tend to overlook the obvious.”

“That’s the truth,” he said. “Let me ask you something. Do you have a place to stay tonight?”

“Well, not yet.”

“Not yet?”

“Well, I didn’t know you were coming home tonight. But I know some people I can call, and-”

“You’re welcome to stay here,” he said.

“Oh, I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Well, you’re home. It wasn’t really right for me to stay here when you were out of town-”

“It was fine. It meant more company for the dog.”

“Anyway, you’re home now. The last thing you need is a houseguest.”

“One night won’t hurt.”

“Well,” she said, “it is a little late to start looking for a place to stay.”

“You’ll stay here.”

“But just for the one night.”

“Right.”

“I appreciate this,” she said. “I really do.”

Keller, freshly showered, stood at the sink and contemplated shaving. But whoever heard of shaving before you went to bed? You shaved in the morning, not at night.

Unless, of course, you expected to have your cheek pressed against something other than your pillow.

Cut it out, he told himself.

He got into bed and turned out the light, and Nelson sprang onto the bed beside him, turned around the compulsory three times, and lay down.

Keller slept. When he awoke the next morning, Andria was gone. The only trace of her presence was a note assuring him that she’d come walk the dog at her usual time on Friday. Keller shaved, walked the dog, and rode the train to White Plains.

It was another hot day, and this time Dot was on the porch with a pitcher of lemonade. She said, “Keller, you missed your calling. You’re a great diagnostician. You gave the man a little time and he died of natural causes.”

“These things happen.”

“They do,” she agreed. “I understand he fell in his food. Probably never get the stains out of his tie.”

“It was a nice tie,” Keller said.

“They said it was cardiac arrest,” Dot said, “and I’ll bet they’re right, because it’s a hell of a rare case when a man dies and his heart goes on beating. How’d you do it, Keller?”

“I centered all my energy in my heart chakra,” he said, “and I sent this bolt of heart energy at him, and it was just more than his heart could handle.”

She gave him a look. “If I had to guess,” she said, “I’d have to say potassium cyanide.”

“Good guess.”

“How?”

“Switched salt shakers with him. The one I gave him had cyanide crystals mixed in with the top layer of salt. He used a lot of salt.”

“They say it’s bad for you. Wouldn’t he taste the cyanide?”

“The amount of salt he used, I don’t think he could taste the meat. I’m not sure how much taste cyanide has. Anyway, by the time it occurs to you that you don’t like the way it tastes-”

“You’re facedown in the lasagna. Cyanide’s not traceless, is it? Won’t it show up in an autopsy?”

“Only if you look for it.”

“And if they look in the salt cellar?”

“When Dinsmore had his attack,” he said, “a few people hurried over to see if they could help.”

“Decent of them. You don’t suppose one of them picked up the salt cellar?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“And got rid of it somewhere between the restaurant and the airport?”

“That wouldn’t surprise me either.”

He went upstairs to make his report. When he came downstairs again Dot said, “Keller, I’m going to start worrying about you. I think you’re going soft.”

“Oh?”

“There was only one reason to pick up the salt cellar.”

“So they wouldn’t find the cyanide,” he said.

She shook her head. “If they ever start looking for cyanide, they’ll find it on the uneaten food. No, you figured they wouldn’t find it, and somebody else would use that salt and get poisoned accidentally.”

“No point in drawing heat for no reason,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

“No sense in killing people for free, either.”

“Oh, I couldn’t agree with you more, Keller,” she said, “but I still say you’re going soft. Centering in your heart choker and all.”

“Chakra,” he said.

“I stand corrected. What’s it mean, anyway?”

“I have no idea.”

“You will soon enough, now that you’re centered there. Keller, you’re turning human. Getting that dog was just the start of it. Next thing you know you’ll be saving the whales. You’ll be taking in strays, Keller. You watch.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. But on the train back to the city he found himself thinking about what she had said. Was there any truth to it?

He didn’t think so, but he wasn’t absolutely sure. He’d have to talk it over with Nelson.