Hit Man

5 Keller's Karma

I n White Plains,Keller sat in the kitchen with Dot for twenty minutes. The TV was on, tuned to one of the home shopping channels. “I watch all the time,” Dot said. “I never buy anything. What do I want with cubic zirconium?”

“Why do you watch?”

“That’s what I ask myself, Keller. I haven’t come up with the answer yet, but I think I know one of the things I like most about it. It’s continuous.”

“Continuous?”

“Uninterrupted. They never break the flow and go to a commercial.”

“But the whole thing’s a commercial,” Keller said.

“That’s different,” she said.

A buzzer sounded. Dot picked up the intercom, listened a moment, then nodded significantly at Keller.

He went upstairs, and he was with the old man for ten or fifteen minutes. On his way out he stopped in the kitchen and got himself a glass of water. He stood at the sink and took his time drinking it. Dot was shaking her head at the television set. “It’s all jewelry,” she said. “Who buys all this jewelry? What do they want with it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Can I ask you something?”

“Ask away.”

“Is he all right?”

“Why?”

“I just wondered.”

“Did you hear something?”

“No, nothing like that. He seems tired, that’s all.”

“Everybody’s tired,” she said. “Life’s a lot of work and it tires people out. But he’s fine.”

Keller took a train to Grand Central, a cab to his apartment. Nelson met him at the door with the leash in his mouth. Keller laughed, fastened the leash to the dog’s collar. He had calls to make, a trip to schedule, but that could wait. Right now he was going to take his dog for a walk.

He headed over to the river. Nelson liked it there, but then Nelson seemed to like it everywhere. He certainly had a boundless enthusiasm for long walks. He never ran out of gas. You could exhaust yourself walking him, and he’d be ready to go again ten minutes later.

Of course you had to keep in mind that he had twice as many legs as a human being. Keller figured that had to make a difference.

“I’m going to have to take a trip,” he told Nelson. “Not too long, I don’t think, but that’s the thing, you never really know. Sometimes I’ll fly out in the morning and be back the same night, and other times it’ll stretch to a week. But you don’t have to worry. As soon as we get back to the house I’ll call Andria.”

The dog’s ears pricked up at the girl’s name. Keller had seen charts ranking the various breeds in intelligence, but not lately. He wasn’t sure where the Australian cattle dog stood, but he figured it had to be pretty close to the top. Nelson didn’t miss much.

“She’s due to walk you tomorrow anyway,” Keller said. “I could probably just stick a letter of instructions next to your leash, but why leave anything to chance? As soon as we get home I’ll beep her.”

Because Andria ’s living situation was still as tenuous as her career, the only number Keller had for her was that of the beeper she carried on her rounds. He called it as soon as he got home and punched in his number, and the girl called him back fifteen minutes later. “Hi,” she said. “How’s my favorite Australian cattle dog?”

“He’s fine,” Keller said, “but he’s going to need company. I have to go out of town tomorrow morning.”

“For how long, do you happen to know?”

“Hard to say. It might be a day, it might be a week. Is that a problem?”

She was quick to assure him that it wasn’t. “In fact,” she said, “the timing’s perfect. I’ve been staying with these friends of mine, and it’s not working out. I told them I’d be out of there tomorrow and I was wondering where I’d go next. Isn’t it amazing the way we’re always given guidance as to what to do next?”

“Amazing,” he agreed.

“But that’s assuming it’s all right with you if I stay there while you’re gone. I’ve done it before, but maybe you’d rather I don’t this time.”

“No, that’s fine,” Keller said. “It’s more company for Nelson, so why should I object? You’re not messy, you keep the place neat.”

“I’m housebroken, all right. Same as Nelson.” She laughed, then broke it off and said, “I really appreciate this, Mr. Keller. These friends I’ve been staying with, they’re not getting along too well, and I’m kind of stuck in the middle. She’s turned into this jealous monster, and he figures maybe he ought to give her something to be jealous about, and last night I just about walked the legs off a longhaired dachshund because I didn’t want to be in their space. So it’ll be a pleasure to get out of there tomorrow morning.”

“Listen,” he said, impulsively. “Why wait? Come over here tonight.”

“But you’re not leaving until tomorrow.”

“So what? I’ve got a late evening tonight and I’ll be out first thing in the morning, so we won’t get in each other’s way. And you’ll be out of your friends’ place that much sooner.”

“Gee,” she said, “that would be great.”

When he got off the phone Keller went into the kitchen and made himself a cup of coffee. Why, he wondered, had he made the offer? It was certainly uncharacteristic behavior on his part. What did he care if she had to spend one more night suffering the dirty looks of the wife and the wandering hands of the husband?

And he’d even improvised to justify her acceptance of the offer, inventing a late evening and claiming an early flight. He hadn’t booked the flight yet, and he had no plans for the evening.

Time to book the flight. Time to make plans for the evening.

The flight was booked with a single phone call, the evening planned almost as easily. Keller was dressing for it when Andria arrived, wearing striped bib overalls and bearing a forest-green backpack. Nelson made a fuss over her, and she shucked the backpack and knelt down to reciprocate.

“Well,” Keller said. “You’ll probably be asleep when I get home, and I’ll probably leave before you wake up, so I’ll say goodbye now. You know Nelson’s routine, of course, and you know where everything is.”

“I really appreciate this,” Andria said.

Keller took a cab to the restaurant where he’d arranged to meet a woman named Yvonne, whom he’d dated three or four times since making her acquaintance at a Learning Annex class, “Deciphering the Mysteries of Baltic Cuisine.” The true mystery, they’d both decided, was how anyone had the temerity to call it a cuisine. He’d since taken her to several restaurants, none of them Baltic. Tonight’s choice was Italian, and they spent a good deal of time telling each other how happy they were to be eating in an Italian restaurant rather than, say, a Latvian one.

Afterward they went to a movie, and after that they took a cab to Yvonne’s apartment, some eighteen blocks north of Keller’s. As she fitted her key in the lock, she turned toward him. They had already reached the goodnight kiss stage, and Keller saw that Yvonne was ready to be kissed, but at the same time he sensed that she didn’t really want to be kissed, nor did he really want to kiss her. They’d both had garlic, so it wasn’t a reluctance to offend or be offended. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he decided to honor it.

“Well,” he said. “Goodnight, Yvonne.”

She seemed for a moment to be surprised at being left unkissed, but she got over it quickly. “Yes, good-night,” she said, reaching for his hand, giving it a comradely squeeze. “Goodnight, John.”

Goodnight forever, he thought, walking downtown on Second Avenue. He wouldn’t call her again, nor would she expect his call. All they had in common was a disdain for Northern European cooking, and that wasn’t much of a foundation for a relationship. The chemistry just wasn’t there. She was attractive, but there was no connection between them, no spark.

That happened a lot, actually.

Halfway home, he stopped in a First Avenue bar. He’d had a little wine with dinner, and he wanted a clear head in the morning, so he didn’t stay long, just nursed a beer and listened to the jukebox and looked at himself in the backbar mirror.

What a lonesome son of a bitch you are, he told his reflection.

Time to go home, when you started having thoughts like that. But he didn’t want to get home until Andria had turned in for the night, and who knew what kind of hours she kept? He stayed where he was and sipped his beer, and he made another stop along the way for a cup of coffee.

When he did get home the apartment was dark. Andria was on the sofa, either asleep or faking it. Nelson, curled into a ball at her feet, got up, shook himself, and trotted silently to Keller’s side. Keller went on into the bedroom, Nelson following. When Keller closed the bedroom door, the dog made an uncharacteristic sound deep in his throat. Keller didn’t know what the sound meant, but he figured it had something to do with the door being closed, and Andria being on the other side of it.

He got into bed. The dog stood in front of the closed door, as if waiting for it to open. “Here, boy,” Keller said. The dog turned to look at him. “Here, Nelson,” he said, and the dog jumped onto the bed, turned around in a circle the ritualistic three times, and lay down in his usual spot. It seemed to Keller as though he didn’t have his heart in it, but he was asleep in no time. So, eventually, was Keller.

When he woke up the dog was missing. So was Andria, and so was the leash. Keller was shaved and dressed and out the door before they returned. He got a cab to La Guardia and was there in plenty of time for his flight to St. Louis.

He rented a Ford Tempo from Hertz and let the girl trace the route to the Sheraton on the map. “It’s the turn right after the mall,” she said helpfully. He took the exit for the mall and found a parking place, taking careful note of where it was so he could find it again. Once, a couple of years ago, he had parked a rental car at a mall in suburban Detroit without paying attention to where he’d parked it or what it looked like. For all he knew it was still there.

He walked through the mall, looking for a sporting goods store with a selection of hunting knives. There was probably one to be found; they had everything else, including several jewelry stores to catch anyone who hadn’t gotten her fill of cubic zirconium on television. But he came to a Hoffritz store first and the kitchen knives caught his eye. He picked out a boning knife with a five-inch blade.

He could have brought his own knife, but that would have meant checking a bag, and he never did that if he could help it. Easy enough to buy what you needed at the scene. The hardest part was convincing the clerk he didn’t want the rest of the set, and ignoring the sales pitch assuring him the knife wouldn’t need sharpening for years. He was only going to use it once, for God’s sake.

He found the Ford, found the Sheraton, found a parking place, and left his overnight bag in the trunk. It would have been nice if the knife had come with a sheath, but kitchen knives rarely do, so he’d been moved to improvise, lifting a cardboard mailing envelope from a Federal Express drop box at the mall entrance. He walked into the hotel lobby with the mailer under his arm and the knife snug inside it.

That gave him an idea.

He checked the slip of paper in his wallet.St. Louis, Sheraton, Rm. 314.

“Man’s a union official,” the old man in White Plains had told him. “Some people are afraid he might tell what he knows.”

Just recently some people at a funded drug rehabilitation project in the Bronx had been afraid their accountant might tell what she knew, so they paid a pair of teenagers $150 to kill her. The two of them picked her up leaving the office, walked down the street behind her, and after a two-block stroll the sixteen-year-old shot her in the head. Within twenty-four hours they were in custody, and two days later so was the genius who hired them.

Keller figured you got what you paid for.

He went over to the house phone and dialed 314. It rang almost long enough to convince him the room was empty. Then a man picked up and said, “Yeah?”

“FedEx,” Keller said.

“Huh?”

“Federal Express. Got a delivery for you.”

“That’s crazy,” the man said.

“Room 314, right? I’ll be right up.”

The man protested that he wasn’t expecting anything, but Keller hung up on him in mid-sentence and got the elevator to the third floor. The halls were empty. He found room 314 and knocked briskly on the door. “FedEx,” he sang out. “Delivery.”

Some muffled sounds came through the door. Then silence, and he was about to knock again when the man said, “What the hell is this?”

“Parcel for you,” he said. “Federal Express.”

“Can’t be,” the man said. “You got the wrong room.”

“Room 314. That’s what it says, on the package and on the door.”

“Well, there’s a mistake. Nobody knows I’m here.” That’s what you think, thought Keller. “Who’s it addressed to?”

Who indeed? “Can’t make it out.”

“Who’s it from, then?”

“Can’t make that out, either,” Keller said. “That whole line’s screwed up, sender’s name and recipient’s name, but it says room 314 at the Sheraton, so that’s got to be you, right?”

“Ridiculous,” the man said. “It’s not for me and that’s all there is to it.”

“Well, suppose you sign for it,” Keller suggested, “and you take a look what’s in it, and if it’s really not for you you can drop it at the desk later, or call us and we’ll pick it up.”

“Just leave it outside the door, will you?”

“Can’t,” Keller said. “It needs a signature.”

“Then take it back, because I don’t want it.”

“You want to refuse it?”

“Very good,” the man said. “You’re a quick study, aren’t you? Yes, by God, I want to refuse it.”

“Fine with me,” Keller said. “But I still need a signature. You just check where it says ‘Refused’ and sign by theX. ”

“For Christ’ssake, ” the man said, “is that the only way I’m going to get rid of you?”

He unfastened the chain, turned the knob, and opened the door a crack. “Let me show you where to sign,” Keller said, displaying the envelope, and the door opened a little more to show a tall, balding man, heavyset, and unclothed but for a hotel towel wrapped around his middle. He reached out for the envelope, and Keller pushed into the room, boning knife in hand, and drove the blade in beneath the lower ribs, angling upward toward the heart.

The man fell backward and lay sprawled out on the carpet at the foot of the unmade king-size bed. The room was a mess, Keller noted, with an open bottle of scotch on the dresser and an unfinished drink on each of the bedside tables. There were clothes tossed here and there, his clothes, her clothes-

Her clothes?

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 wordsblue 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 wordsblue 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.

Little pink toes, each with the nail painted a different color…

He was still sorting it out when the door opened and the dog trotted in. “He wants to be with you,” Andria said, and she drew the door shut before Keller could frame a response.

But did he? The animal didn’t seem to know what he wanted. He sprang onto Keller’s bed, turned around once, twice, and then leaped onto the floor and went over to the door. He made that noise again, but this time it sounded plaintive.

Keller got up and opened the door. Nelson moved into the doorway, half in and half out of the room. Keller leaned into the doorway himself and said, “I think the closed door bothers him. Suppose I leave it open?”

“Sure.”

He left the door ajar and went back to bed. Nelson seized the opportunity and went on into the living room. Moments later he was back in the bedroom. Moments after that he was on his way to the living room. Why, Keller wondered, was the dog behaving like an expectant father in a maternity ward waiting room? What was all this back-and-forth business about?

Keller closed his eyes, feeling as far from sleep as he was from Sardinia. Why, he wondered, did Andria want to go there? For the sardines? Then she could stop at Corsica for a corset, and head on to Elba for the macaroni. And Malta for the falcons, and Crete for the cretins, and-

He was just getting drifty when the dog came back.

“Nelson,” he said, “what the hell’s the matter with you? Huh?” He reached down and scratched the dog behind an ear. “You’re a good boy,” he said. “Oh yes, you’re a good boy, but you’re nuts.”

There was a knock on the door.

He sat up in bed. It was Andria, of course, and the door was open; she had knocked to get his attention. “He just can’t decide who he wants to be with,” she said. “Maybe I should just pack my things and go.”

“No,” he said. He didn’t want her to go. “No, don’t go,” he said.

“Then maybe I should stay.”

She came on into the room. She had turned on a lamp in the living room before she came in, but the back lighting was not revealing. The pink flannel thing was opaque, and Keller couldn’t tell anything about her body. Then, in a single motion, she drew the garment over her head and cast it aside, and now he could tell everything about her body.

“I have a feeling this is a big mistake,” she said, “but I don’t care. I just don’t care. Do you know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean,” Keller said.

Afterward he said, “Now I suppose you’ll think I put the dog up to it. I wish I could take the credit, but I swear it was all his idea. He was like that donkey in the logic problem, unable to decide between the two bales of hay. Where did he go, I wonder?”

She didn’t say anything, and he looked closely and saw that she was crying. Jesus, had he said something to upset her?

He said, “ Andria? Is something wrong?”

She sat up and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. “I’m just scared,” she said.

“Of what?”

“Of you.”

“Of me?”

“Just tell me you’re not going to hurt me,” she said. “Could you do that?”

“Why would I hurt you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, why would you say something like that?”

“Oh, God,” she said. She put a hand to her mouth and chewed on a knuckle. Her fingernails weren’t polished, just her toenails. Interesting. She said, “When I’m in a relationship I have to be completely honest.”

“Huh?”

“Not that this is a relationship, I mean we just went to bed together once, but I felt we really related, don’t you think?”

Keller wondered what she was getting at.

“So I have to be honest. See, I know what you do.”

“You know what I do?”

“On those trips.”

That was ridiculous. How could she know anything?

“Tell me,” he said.

“I’m afraid to say it.” God, maybe she did know.

“Go ahead,” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“You-”

“Go ahead.”

“You’re an assassin.”

Ooops.

He said, “What makes you think that?”

“I don’t think it,” she said. “I sort of know it. And I don’t know how I know it. I guess I knew it the day I met you. Something about your energy, I guess. It’s kind of intangible, but it’s there.”

“Oh.”

“I sense things about people. Please don’t hurt me.”

“I’ll never hurt you, Andria.”

“I know you mean that,” she said. “I hope it turns out to be true.”

He thought for a moment. “If you think that about me,” he said, “or know it, whatever you want to call it, and if you were afraid I might… hurt you-”

“Then why did I come into the bedroom?”

“Right. Why did you?”

She looked right into his eyes. “I couldn’t help myself,” she said.

He felt this sensation in the middle of his chest, as if there had been a steel band around his heart and it had just cracked and fallen away. He reached for her and drew her down.

On the floor at the side of the bed, Nelson slept like a lamb.

In the morning they walked Nelson together. Keller bought the paper and picked up a quart of milk. Back at the apartment, he made a pot of coffee while she put breakfast on the table.

He said, “Look, I’m not good at this, but there are some things I ought to say. The first is that you have nothing to fear from me. My work is one thing and my life is something else. I have no reason to hurt you, and even if I had a reason I wouldn’t do it.”

“I know that.”

“Oh?”

“I was afraid last night. I’m not afraid now.”

“Oh,” he said. “Well, the other thing I want to say is that I know you don’t have a place to stay right now, and as far as I’m concerned you can stay here as long as you want. In fact I’d like it if you stayed here. You can even sleep on the couch if you want, assuming that Nelson will allow it. I’m not sure he will, though.”

She considered her reply, and the phone rang. He made a face and answered it.

It was Dot. “Young man,” she said, in an old lady’s quavering voice, “I think you had better pay a call on your kindly old Aunt Dorothy.”

“I just did,” he reminded her. “Just because it was quick and easy doesn’t mean I don’t need a little time off between engagements.”

“Keller,” she said, in her own voice, “get on the next train, will you? It’s urgent.”

“Urgent?”

“There’s a problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember saying something about a piece of cake?”

“So?”

“So your cake fell,” Dot said. “Get it?”

There was no one to meet him at the White Plains station so he took a cab to the big Victorian house on Taunton Place. Dot was waiting on the porch. “All right,” she said. “Report.”

“To you?”

“And then I report to him. That’s how he wants it.”

Keller shrugged and reported. Where he’d gone, what he’d done. It took only a few sentences. When he was done he paused for a moment, and then he said, “The woman wasn’t supposed to be there.”

“Neither was the man.”

“How’s that?”

“You killed the wrong people,” she said. “Wait here, Keller, okay? I have to relay this to His Eminence. You want coffee, there’s a fresh pot in the kitchen. Well, a reasonably fresh pot.”

Keller stayed on the porch. There was an old-fashioned glider and he sat on that, gliding back and forth, but it seemed too frivolous for the circumstances. He switched to a chair but was too restless to stay in it. He was on his feet when Dot returned.

She said, “You said room 314.”

“And that’s the room I went to,” he said. “That was the room I called from downstairs, and those were the numbers on the door. Room 314 at the Sheraton.”

“Wrong room.”

“I wrote it down,” he said. “He gave me the number and I wrote it down.”

“You didn’t happen to save the note, did you?”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “I keep everything. I have it on my coffee table, along with the boning knife and the vic’s watch and wallet. No, of course I didn’t keep the note.”

“Of course you didn’t, but it would have been nice if you’d made an exception on this particular occasion. The, uh, designated victim was in room 502.”

He frowned. “That’s not even close. What did he do, change his room? If I’d been given a name or a photo, you know-”

“I know. He didn’t change his room.”

“Dot, I can’t believe I wrote it down wrong.”

“Neither can I, Keller.”

“If I got one digit wrong or reversed the order, well, I could almost believe that, but to turn 502 into 314-”

“You know what 314 is, Keller?” He didn’t. “It’s the area code for St. Louis.”

“The area code? As in telephone?”

“As in telephone.”

“I don’t understand.”

She sighed. “He’s had a lot on his mind lately,” she said. “He’s been under a strain. So, just between you and me”-for God’s sake, who was he going to tell?-“he must have looked at the wrong slip of paper and wound up giving you the area code instead of the room number.”

“I thought he seemed tired. I even said something.”

“And I told you life tires people out, if I remember correctly. We were both right. Meanwhile, you have to go to Tulsa.”

“ Tulsa?”

“That’s where the target lives, and it seems he’s canceling the rest of his meetings and going home this afternoon. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or if the business two floors down spooked him. The client didn’t want to hit him in Tulsa, but now there’s no choice.”

“I just did the job,” Keller said, “and now I have to do it again. When she popped out of the bathroom it turned into two for the price of one, and now it’s three for the price of one.”

“Not exactly. He has to save face on this, Keller, so the idea is you stepped on your whatchamacallit and now you’re going to correct your mistake. But when all this is history there will be a little extra in your Christmas stocking.”

“Christmas?”

“A figure of speech. There’ll be a bonus, and you won’t have to wait for Christmas for it.”

“The client’s going to pay a bonus?”

“I said you’d get a bonus,” she said. “I didn’t say the client would be paying it. Tulsa, and you’ll be met at the airport and somebody will show you around and point the finger. Have you ever been to Tulsa?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’ll love it. You’ll want to move there.”

He didn’t even want to go there. Halfway down the porch stairs he turned, retraced his steps, and said, “The man and woman in 314. Who were they?”

“Who knows? They weren’t Gunnar Ruthven, I can tell you that much.”

“That’s who I’m going to see in Tulsa?”

“Let’s hope so. As far as the pair in 314, I don’t know any names. He was a local businessman, owned a dry-cleaning plant or something like that. I don’t know anything about her. They were married, but not to each other. What I hear, you interrupted a matinee.”

“That’s what it looked like.”

“Rang down the curtain,” Dot said. “What a world, huh?”

“His name was Harry.”

“See, I told you it wasn’t Gunnar Ruthven. What’s it matter, Keller? You’re not going to send flowers, are you?”

“I’ll be gone longer this time,” he told Andria. “I have to… go someplace and… take care of some business.”

“I’ll take care of Nelson,” she said. “And we’ll both be here when you get back.”

His plane was leaving from Newark. He packed a bag and called a livery service for a car to the airport.

He said, “Does it bother you?”

“What you do? It would bother me if I did it, but I couldn’t do it, so that’s beside the point. But does it bother me that you do it? I don’t think so. I mean, it’s what you do.”

“But don’t you think it’s wrong?”

She thought it over. “I don’t think it’s wrong foryou, ” she said. “I think it’s your karma.”

“You mean like destiny or something?”

“Sort of. It’s what you have to do in order to learn the lesson you’re supposed to learn in this lifetime. We’re not just here once, you know. We live many lives.”

“You believe that, huh?”

“It’s more a matter of knowledge than belief.”

“Oh.” Karma, he thought. “What about the people I go and see? It’s just their karma?”

“Doesn’t that make sense to you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll have to think about it.”

He had plenty of time to think about karma. He was in Tulsa for five days before he had a chance to close the file on Gunnar Ruthven. A sad-eyed young man named Joel met his flight and gave him a tour of the city that included Ruthven’s suburban home and downtown office building. Ruthven lived in a two-story mock-Tudor house on about half an acre of land and had an office in the Great Southwestern Bank building within a block of the courthouse. Then Joel drove to the All-American Inn, one of a couple of dozen motels clustered together on a strip a mile from the airport. “The reason for the name,” Joel said, “is so you would know the place wasn’t owned by Indians. I don’t mean your Native Americans, I mean Indians from India. They own most of the motels. So this here place, the owners changed the name to the All-American, and they even had a huge signboard announcing the place was owned and operated by hundred-percent Americans.”

“Did somebody make them take the sign down?”

Joel shook his head. “After about a year,” he said, “they sold out, and the new owners took the sign down.”

“They didn’t like the implications?”

“Not hardly. See, they’re Indians. Place is decent, though, and you don’t have to go through the lobby. In fact you’re already registered and paid in advance for a week. I figured you’d like that. Here’s your room key, and here’s a set of car keys. They belong to that Toyota over there, third from the end. Paper for it’s in the glove box, along with a little twenty-two automatic. If you prefer something heavier, just say so.”

Keller assured him it would be fine. “Why don’t you get settled,” Joel said, “and get yourself something to eat if you’re hungry. The Sizzler across the street on the left isn’t bad. I’ll pick you up in say two hours and we’ll sneak a peek at the fellow you came out here to see.”

Joel picked him up on schedule and they rode downtown and parked in a metered lot. They sat in the lobby of Ruthven’s office building. After twenty minutes Joel said, “Getting off the elevator. Glen plaid suit, horn-rimmed glasses, carrying the aluminum briefcase. Looks space age, I guess, but I’d go for genuine leather every time, myself.”

Keller took a good look. Ruthven was tall and slender, with a sharp nose and a pointed chin. Keller said, “Are you positive that’s him?”

“Shit, yes, I’m positive. Why?”

“Just making sure.”

Joel ran him back to the All-American and gave him a map of Tulsa with different locations marked on it-the All-American Inn, Ruthven’s house, Ruthven’s office, and a southside restaurant Joel said was outstanding. He also gave Keller a slip of paper with a phone number on it. “Anything you want,” he said. “You want a girl, you want to get in a card game, you want to see a cockfight, just call that number and I’ll take care of it. You ever been to a cockfight?”

“Never.”

“You want to?”

Keller thought about it. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“Well, if you change your mind, just let me know. Or anything else you want.” Joel hesitated. “I got to say I’ve got a lot of respect for you,” he said, averting his eyes from Keller’s as he said it. “I don’t guess I could do what you do. I haven’t got the sand for it.”

Keller went to his room and stretched out on the bed. Sand, he thought. What the hell did sand have to do with anything?

He thought about Ruthven, coming off the elevator, long and lean, and realized why he’d been bothered by the man’s appearance. He wasn’t what Keller had expected. He didn’t look anything like Harry in 314.

Did Ruthven know he was a target? Driving around in the Toyota, keeping an eye on the man, Keller decided that he did. There was a certain wariness about him. The way to handle that, Keller decided, was to let him get over it. A few days of peace and quiet and Ruthven could revert to his usual way of thinking. He’d decide that Harry and his girlfriend had been killed by a jealous husband, and he’d drop his guard and stick his neck out, and Keller could get the job done and go home.

The gun seemed all right. The third afternoon he drove out into the country, popped a full clip into the gun, and emptied the clip at aCATTLE CROSSING sign. None of his shots hit the mark, but he didn’t figure that was the gun’s fault. He was fifteen yards away, for God’s sake, and the sign was no more than ten inches across. Keller wasn’t a particularly good shot, but he arranged his life so he didn’t have to be. If you walked up behind a guy and put the gun muzzle to the back of his neck, all you had to do was pull the trigger. You didn’t have to be a marksman. All you needed was-

What? Karma? Sand?

He reloaded and made a real effort this time, and two shots actually hit the sign. Remarkable what a man could do when he put his mind to it.

The hard part was finding a way to pass the time. He went to a movie, walked through a mall, and watched a lot of television. He had Joel’s number but never called it. He didn’t want female companionship, nor did he feel like playing cards or watching a cockfight.

He kept fighting off the urge to call New York.

On one of the home shopping channels, one woman said earnestly to another, “Now there’s one thing we both know, and that’s that you just can’t have too many earrings.” Keller couldn’t get the line out of his head. Was it literally true? Suppose you had a thousand pairs, or ten thousand. Suppose you had a million pairs. Wouldn’t that constitute a surplus?

The woman in 314 hadn’t been wearing earrings, but there had been a pair on the bedside table. How many other pairs had she had at home?

Finally one morning he got up at daybreak and showered and shaved. He packed his bag and wiped the motel room free of prints. He had done this routinely every time he left the place, so that it would never be necessary for him to return to it, but this morning he sensed that it was time to wind things up. He drove to Ruthven’s house and parked around the corner at the curb. He went through the driveway and yard of a house on the side street, scaled a four-foot Cyclone fence, and jimmied a window in order to get into Ruthven’s garage. The car inside the garage was unlocked, and he got into the back seat and waited patiently.

Eventually the garage door opened, and when that happened Keller scrunched down so that he couldn’t be seen. Ruthven opened the car door and got behind the wheel.

Keller sat up slowly. Ruthven was fumbling with the key, having a hard time getting it into the ignition. But was it really Ruthven?

Jesus, get a grip. Who else could it be?

Keller stuck the gun in his ear and emptied the clip.

“These are beautiful,” Andria said. “You didn’t have to bring me anything.”

“I know that.”

“But I’m glad you did. I love them.”

“I didn’t know what to get you,” Keller said, “because I don’t know what you already have. But I figured you can never have too many earrings.”

“That is absolutely true,” Andria said, “and not many men realize it.”

Keller tried not to smirk.

“Ever since you left,” she said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said. That you would like it if I stayed here. But what I have to know is if you still feel that way, or if it was just, you know, how you felt that morning.”

“I’d like you to stay.”

“Well, I’d like it, too. I like being around your energy. I like your dog and I like your apartment and I like you.”

“I missed you,” Keller said.

“I missed you, too. But I liked being here while you were gone, living in your space and taking care of your dog. I have a confession to make. I slept in your bed.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake. Where else would you sleep?”

“On the couch.”

Keller gave her a look. She colored, and he said, “While I was away I thought about your toes.”

“My toes?”

“All different colors.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I had trouble deciding which color to go with, and it came to me that when God couldn’t decide on a color, he created the rainbow.”

“Rainbow toes,” Keller said. “I think I’ll take them one by one into my mouth, those pink little rainbow toes. What do you think about that?”

“Oh,” she said.

Later he said, “Suppose someone got killed by mistake.”

“How could that happen?”

“Say an area code turns into a room number. Human error, computer error, anything at all. Mistakes happen.”

“No they don’t.”

“They don’t?”

“People make mistakes,” she said, “but there’s no such thing as a mistake.”

“How’s that?”

“You could make a mistake,” she said. “You could be swinging a dumbbell and it could sail out of the window. That would be a case of you making a mistake.”

“I’ll say.”

“And somebody looking for an address on the next block could get out of a cab here instead, and here comes a dumbbell. The person made a mistake.”

“His last one, too.”

“In this lifetime,” she agreed. “So you’ve both made a mistake, but if you look at the big picture, there was no mistake. The person got hit by a dumbbell and died.”

“No mistake?”

“No mistake, because it was meant to happen.”

“But if it wasn’t meant to happen-”

“Then it wouldn’t.”

“And if it happened it was meant to.”

“Right.”

“Karma?”

“Karma.”

“Little pink toes,” Keller said. “I’m glad you’re here.”