Hit Parade

27

Keller, trying not to feel foolish, hoisted his flight bag and stepped to the curb. Two cabs darted his way, and he got into the winner, even as the runner-up filled the air with curses. “JFK,” he said, and settled back in his seat.

“Which airline?”

He had to think about it. “American.”

“International or domestic?”

“Domestic.”

“What time’s your flight?”

Usually they just took you there. Today, when he didn’t have a plane to catch, he got a full-scale inquiry.

“Not to worry,” he told the driver. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

Which was just as well, because it took longer than usual to get through the tunnel, and the traffic on the Long Island Expressway was heavier than usual for that hour. He’d picked this time-early afternoon-because the traffic tended to be light, but today for some reason it wasn’t. Fortunately, he reminded himself, it didn’t matter. Time, for a change, was not of the essence.

“Where you headed?” the driver asked while Keller’s mind was wandering.

“ Panama,” he said, without thinking.

“Then you want International, don’t you?”

Why on earth had he said Panama? He’d been wondering if he should buy a straw hat, that was why. “ Panama City,” he corrected himself. “That’s in Florida, you change planes in Miami.”

“You got to fly all the way down to Miami and then back up again to Panama City? Ought to be a better way to do it.”

Thousands of cabdrivers in New York, and for once he had to draw one who could speak English. “Air miles,” he said, in a tone that brooked no argument, and they left it at that.

At the designated terminal, Keller paid and tipped the guy, then carried his flight bag past the curbside check-in. He followed the signs down to baggage claim and walked around until he found a woman holding a hand-lettered sign that read NIEBAUER.

She hadn’t noticed him, so he took a moment to notice her, and to determine that no one else was paying any attention to either of them. She was around forty, a trimly built woman wearing a skirt and blouse and glasses. Her brown hair was medium length, attractive if not stylish, her sharp nose contrasted with her generous mouth, and on balance he’d have to say she had a kind face. This, he knew, was no guarantee of anything. You didn’t have to be kind to have a kind face.

He approached her from the side, and got within a few feet of her before she sensed his presence, turned, and stepped back, looking a little startled. “I’m Mr. Niebauer,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, of course. I…you surprised me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I had noticed you, but I didn’t think…” She swallowed, started over. “I guess you don’t look the way I expected you to look.”

“Well, I’m older than I was a few hours ago.”

“No, I don’t mean…I don’t know what I mean. I’m sorry. How was your flight?”

“Routine.”

“I guess we have to collect your luggage.”

“I just have this,” he said, holding up the flight bag. “So we can go to your car.”

“We can’t,” she said. She managed a smile. “I don’t have one, and couldn’t drive it if I did. I’m a city girl, Mr. Niebauer. I never learned to drive. We’ll have to take a cab.”

There was a moment, of course, when Keller was sure he’d get the same cab, and he could see himself trying to field the driver’s questions without alarming the woman. Instead they got into a cab driven by a jittery little man who talked on his cell phone in a language Keller couldn’t recognize while his radio was tuned to a talk program in what may or may not have been the same unrecognizable language.

Keller, once again trying not to feel foolish, settled in for the drive back to Manhattan.

Two days earlier, on the wraparound porch of the big old house in White Plains, Keller hadn’t felt foolish. What he’d felt was confused.

“It’s in New York,” he said, starting with the job’s least objectionable aspect. “I live in New York. I don’t work there.”

“You drummed up a job on your own, remember? And it was right here in New York.”

“And it was a mistake, and we wound up spinning it, and by the time it ended it wasn’t in New York after all. It was in Detroit.”

“So it was,” she said, “but you’ve worked other jobs in New York.”

“A couple of times,” he allowed, “and it worked out all right, all things considered, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.”

“I know,” Dot said, “and I almost turned it down without consulting you. And not just because it’s local.”

“That’s the least of it.”

“Right.”

“It’s short money,” he said. “It’s ten thousand dollars. It’s not exactly chump change, but it’s a fraction of what I usually get.”

“The danger of working for short money,” she said, “is word gets around. But one thing we’d make sure of is nobody knows you’re the one who took this job. So it’s not a question of ten thousand dollars versus your usual fee, because your usual fee doesn’t come into the picture. It’s ten thousand dollars for two or three days’ work, and I know you can use the work.”

“And the money.”

“Right. And, of course, there’s no travel. Which was a minus the first time we looked at it, but in terms of time and money and all of that-”

“Suddenly it’s a plus.” He took a sip of his iced tea. “Look, this is stupid. We’re not talking about the most important thing.”

“I know.”

“The, uh, subject is generally a man. Sometimes it’s a woman.”

“You’re an equal-opportunity kind of guy, Keller.”

“One time,” he said, “somebody wanted me to do a kid. You remember?”

“Vividly.”

“We turned them down.”

“You’re damn right we did.”

“Grown-ups,” he said. “Adults only. That’s where we draw the line.”

“Well,” she said, “if it matters, the subject this time around is an adult.”

“How old is he?”

“Five.”

“A five-year-old adult,” he said heavily.

“Do the math, Keller. He’s thirty-five in dog years.”

“Somebody wants to pay me ten thousand dollars to kill a dog,” he said. “Why me, Dot? Why can’t they call the SPCA?”

“I wondered that myself,” she said. “Same token, every time we get a client who wants a spouse killed, I wonder if a divorce wouldn’t be a better way to go. Why call us? Has Raoul Felder got an unlisted phone number?”

“But a dog, Dot.”

She took a long look at him. “You’re thinking about Nelson,” she said. “Am I right or am I right?”

“You’re right.”

“Keller,” she said, “I met Nelson, and I liked Nelson. Nelson was a friend of mine. Keller, this dog is no Nelson.”

“If you say so.”

“In fact,” she said, “if Nelson saw this dog and trotted over to give him a friendly sniff, that would be the end of Nelson. This dog’s a pit bull, Keller, and he’s enough to give the breed a bad name.”

“The breed already has a bad name.”

“And I can see why. If this dog was a movie actor, Keller, he’d be like Jack Elam.”

“I always liked Jack Elam.”

“You didn’t let me finish. He’d be like Jack Elam, but nasty.”

“What does he do, Dot? Eat children?”

She shook her head. “If he ever bit a kid,” she said, “or even snarled good and hard at one, that’d be the end of him. The law’s set up to protect people from dogs. What with due process and everything, he might rip the throats out of a few tykes before the law caught up with him, but once it did he’d be out of the game and on his way to Doggie Heaven.”

“Would he go to heaven? I mean, if he killed a kid-”

“All dogs go to heaven, Keller, even the bad ones. Where was I?”

“He doesn’t bite children.”

“Never has. Loves people, wants to make nice to everyone. If he sees another dog, however, or a cat or a ferret or a hamster, it’s another story. He kills it.”

“Oh.”

“He lives with his owner in the middle of Manhattan,” she said, “and she takes him to Central Park and lets him off his leash, and whenever he gets the chance he kills something. You’re going to ask why somebody doesn’t do something.”

“Well, why don’t they?”

“Because about all you can do, it turns out, is sue the owner, and about all you can collect is the replacement value of your pet, and you’ve got to go through the legal system to get that much. You can’t have the dog put down for killing other dogs, and you can’t press criminal charges against the owner. Meanwhile, you’ve still got the dog out there, a menace to other dogs.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Hardly anything does, Keller. Anyway, a couple of women lost their pets and they don’t want to take it anymore. One had a twelve-year-old Yorkie and the other had a frisky Weimaraner pup, and neither of them had a snowball’s chance against Fluffy, and-”

“Fluffy?”

“I know.”

“This killer pit bull is named Fluffy?”

“That’s his call name. He’s registered as Percy Bysshe Shelley, Keller, whom you’ll recall as the author of ‘Ozymandias.’ I suppose they could call him Percy, or Bysshe, or even Shelley, but instead they went for Fluffy.”

And Fluffy went for the Yorkie and the Weimaraner, with tragic results. As Dot explained it, this did seem like a time when one had to go outside the law to get results. But did they have to turn to a high-priced hit man? Couldn’t they just do it themselves?

“You’d think so,” Dot said. “But this is New York, Keller, and these are a couple of respectable middle-class women. They don’t own guns. They could probably get their hands on a bread knife, but I can’t see them trying to stab Fluffy, and evidently neither can they.”

“Even so,” he said, “how did they find their way to us?”

“Somebody knew somebody who knew somebody.”

“Who knew us?”

“Not exactly. Someone’s ex-husband’s brother-in-law is in the garment trade, and he knows a fellow in Chicago who can get things taken care of. And this fellow in Chicago picked up the phone, and next thing you know my phone was ringing.”

“And he said, ‘Have you got anybody who’d like to kill a dog?’”

“I’m not sure he knows it’s a dog. He gave me a number to call, and I drove twenty miles and picked up a pay phone and called it.”

“And somebody answered?”

“The woman who’s going to meet you at the airport.”

“A woman’s going to meet me? At an airport?”

“She had somebody call Chicago,” Dot said, “so I told her I was calling from Chicago, and she thinks you’re flying in from Chicago. So she’ll go to JFK to meet a flight from Chicago, and you’ll show up, looking like you just walked off a plane, and she’ll never guess that you’re local.”

“I don’t have a Chicago accent.”

“You don’t have any kind of an accent, Keller. You could be a radio announcer.”

“I could?”

“Well, it’s probably a little late in life for a career change, but you could have. Look, here’s the thing. Unless Fluffy gets his teeth in you, your risk here is minimal. If they catch you for killing a dog, about the worst that can happen to you is a fine. But they won’t catch you, because they won’t look for you, because catching a dog killer doesn’t get top priority at the NYPD. But what we don’t want is for the client to suspect that you’re local.”

“Because it could blow my cover sooner or later.”

“I suppose it could,” she said, “but that’s the least of it. The last thing we want is people thinking a top New York hit man will kill dogs for chump change.”

28

“The person I spoke to said there was no need for us to meet. She told me all I had to do was supply the name and address of the dog’s owner, and you could take it from there. But that just didn’t seem right to me. Suppose you got the wrong dog by mistake? I’d never forgive myself.”

That seemed extreme to Keller. There had been a time in St. Louis when he’d gotten the wrong man, through no fault of his own, and it hadn’t taken him terribly long to forgive himself. On the other hand, forgiving himself came easy to him. His, he’d come to realize, was a forgiving nature.

“Is the coffee all right, Mr. Niebauer? It feels strange calling you Mr. Niebauer, but I don’t know your first name. Though come to think of it I probably don’t know your last name either, because I don’t suppose it’s Niebauer, is it?”

“The coffee’s fine,” he said. “And no, my name’s not Niebauer. It’s not Paul, either, but you could call me that.”

“Paul,” she said. “I always liked that name.”

Her name was Evelyn, and he’d never had strong feelings about it one way or another, but he’d have preferred not to know it, just as he’d have preferred not to be sitting in the kitchen of her West End Avenue apartment, and not to know that her husband was an attorney named George Augenblick, that they had no children, and that their eight-month-old Weimaraner had answered to the name of Rilke.

“I suppose we could have called him Rainer,” she said, “but we called him Rilke.” He must have looked blank, because she explained that they’d named him for Rainer Maria Rilke. “He had the nature of a German Romantic poet,” she added, “and of course the breed is German in origin. From Weimar, as in Weimar Republic. You must think I’m silly, saying a young dog had the nature of a poet.”

“Not at all.”

“George thinks I’m silly. He humors me, which is good, I suppose, except he’s careful to make it clear to me and everyone else that that’s what he’s doing. Humoring me. And I in turn pretend I don’t know about his girlfriends.”

“Uh,” Keller said.

They’d come to her apartment because they had to talk somewhere. They’d shared long silences in the cab, interrupted briefly by observations about the weather, and her kitchen seemed a better bet than a coffee shop, or any other public place. Still, Keller wasn’t crazy about the idea. If you were dealing with pros, a certain amount of client contact was just barely acceptable. With amateurs, you really wanted to keep your distance.

“If he knew about you,” Evelyn said, “he’d have a fit. It’s just a dog, he said. Let it go, he said. You want another dog, I’ll buy you another dog. Maybe I am being silly, I don’t know, but George, George just doesn’t get the point.”

She’d taken her glasses off while she was talking, and now she turned her eyes on him. They were a deep blue, and luminous.

“More coffee, Paul? No? Then maybe we should go look for that woman and her dog. If we can’t find her, at least I can show you where they live.”

“Rilke,” he told Dot. “How do you like that for a coincidence? A Weimaraner and a pit bull, and they’re both named after poets.”

“What about the Yorkie?”

“Evelyn thinks his name was Buster. Of course that could just be his call name, and he could have been registered as John Greenleaf Whittier.”

“Evelyn,” Dot said thoughtfully.

“Don’t start.”

“Now how do you like that for a coincidence? Because that’s just what I was about to say to you.”

His name aside, there was nothing remotely fluffy about Percy Bysshe Shelley. Nor did his appearance suggest an evil nature. He looked capable and confident, and so did the woman who held on to the end of his leash.

Her name, Keller had learned, was Aida Cuppering, and she was at least as striking in looks as her dog, with strong features and deeply set dark eyes and an athletic stride. She wore tight black jeans and black lace-up boots and a leather motorcycle jacket with a lot of metal on it, chains and studs and zippers, and she lived alone on West Eighty-seventh Street half a block from Central Park, and, according to Evelyn Augenblick, she had no visible means of support.

Keller wasn’t so sure about that. It seemed to him that she had a means of support, and that it was all too visible. If she wasn’t making a living as a dominatrix, she ought to make an appointment right away for vocational counseling.

There was no way to lurk outside her brownstone without looking as though he was doing precisely that, but Keller had learned that lurking wasn’t required. Whenever Cuppering took Fluffy for a walk, they headed straight for the park. Keller, stationed on a park bench, could lurk to his heart’s content without attracting attention.

And when the two of them appeared, it was easy enough to get up from the bench and tag along in their wake. Cuppering, with a powerful dog for a companion, was not likely to worry that someone might be following her.

The dog seemed perfectly well behaved. Keller, walking along behind the two of them, was impressed with the way Fluffy walked perfectly at heel, never straining at his leash, never lagging behind. As Evelyn had told him, the dog was unmuzzled. A muzzle would prevent Fluffy from biting anyone, human or animal, and Aida Cuppering had been advised to muzzle her dog, but it was evidently advice she was prepared to ignore. Still, three times a day she walked the animal, and three times a day Keller was there to watch them, and he didn’t see Fluffy so much as glower at anyone.

Suppose the dog was innocent? Suppose there was a larger picture here? Suppose, say, Evelyn Augenblick had found out that her husband had been dillydallying with Aida Cuppering. Suppose the high-powered attorney liked to lick Cuppering’s boots, suppose he let her lead him around on a leash, muzzled or not. And suppose Evelyn’s way of getting even was to…

To spend ten thousand dollars having the woman’s dog killed?

Keller shook his head. This was something that needed more thought.

“Excuse me,” the woman said. “Is this seat taken?”

Keller had read all he wanted to read in the New York Times, and now he was taking a shot at the crossword puzzle. It was a Thursday, so that made it a fairly difficult puzzle, though nowhere near as hard as the Saturday one would be. For some reason-Keller didn’t know what it might be-the Times puzzle started out each Monday at a grade-school level, and by Saturday became damn near impossible to finish.

Keller looked up, abandoning the search for a seven-letter word for “Diana’s nemesis,” to see a slender woman in her late thirties, wearing faded jeans and a Leggs Mini-Marathon T-shirt. Beyond her, he noted a pair of unoccupied benches, and a glance to either side indicated similarly empty benches on either side of him.

“No,” he said, carefully. “No, make yourself comfortable.”

She sat down to his right, and he waited for her to say something, and when she didn’t he returned to his crossword puzzle. Diana’s nemesis. Which Diana? he wondered. The English princess? The Roman goddess of the hunt?

The woman cleared her throat, and Keller figured the puzzle was a lost cause. He kept his eyes on it, but his attention was on his companion, and he waited for her to say something. What she said, hesitantly, was that she didn’t know where to begin.

“Anywhere,” Keller suggested.

“All right. My name is Myra Tannen. I followed you from Evelyn’s.”

“You followed me…”

“From Evelyn’s. The other day. I wanted to come along to the airport, but Evelyn insisted on going alone. I’m paying half the fee, I ought to have as much right to meet you as she has, but, well, that’s Evelyn for you.”

Well, Dot had said there were two women, and this one, Myra, was evidently the owner of the twelve-year-old Yorkie of whom Fluffy had made short work. It wasn’t bad enough that he’d met one of his employers, but now he’d met the other. And she’d followed him from Evelyn’s-followed him!-and this morning she’d come to the park and found him.

“When you followed me…”

“I live on the same block as Evelyn,” she said. “Just two doors down, actually. I saw the two of you get out of the taxi, and I was watching when you left. And I, well, followed you.”

“I see.”

“I got a nice long walk out of it. I don’t walk that much now that I don’t have a dog to walk. But you know about that.”

“Yes.”

“She was the sweetest thing, my little dog. Well, never mind about that. I followed you all the way through the park and down to First Avenue and wherever it was. Forty-ninth Street? You went into a building there, and I was going to wait for you, and then I told myself I was being silly. So I got in a cab and came home.”

For God’s sake, he thought. This amateur, this little housewife, had followed him home. She knew where he lived.

He hesitated, looking for the right words. Would it be enough to tell her that this was no way to proceed, that contact with his clients compromised his mission? Was it in fact time to abort the whole business? If they had to give back the money, well, that was one good thing about working for chump change: a refund wasn’t all that expensive.

He said, “Look, what you have to understand-”

“Not now. There she is.”

And there she was, all right. Aida Cuppering, dressed rather like a Doberman pinscher, all black leather and metal studs and high black lace-up boots, striding along imperiously with Fluffy, leashed, stepping along at her side. As she drew abreast of Keller and his companion, the woman stopped long enough to unclip the dog’s lead from his collar. She straightened up, and for a moment her gaze swept the bench where Keller and Myra Tannen sat, dismissing them even as she took note of them. Then she walked on, and Fluffy walked along at heel, both of them looking perfectly lethal.

“She’s not supposed to do that,” Myra said. “In the first place he’s supposed to be muzzled, and every dog’s supposed to be kept on a leash.”

“Well,” Keller said.

“She wants him to kill other dogs. I saw her face when my Millicent was killed. It was quick, you know. He picked her up in his jaws and shook her and snapped her spine.”

“Oh.”

“And I saw her face. That’s not where I was looking, I was watching what was happening, I was trying to do something, but my eyes went to her face, and she was…excited.”

“Oh.”

“That dog’s a danger. Something has to be done about it. Are you going to-”

“Yes,” he said, “but, you know, I can’t have an audience when it happens. I’m not used to working under supervision.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, “and believe me, I won’t do anything like this again. I won’t approach you or follow you, nothing like that.”

“Good.”

“But, you see, I want to…well, amend the agreement.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Besides the dog.”

“Oh?”

“Of course I want you to take care of the dog, but there’s something else I’d like to have you do, and I’m prepared to pay extra for it. I mean, considerably extra.”

The owner too, he thought. Well, that was appropriate, wasn’t it? The dog couldn’t help its behavior, while the owner actively encouraged it.

She was carrying a tote bag bearing the logo of a bank, and she started to draw a large brown envelope from it, then changed her mind. “Take the whole thing,” she said, handing him the tote bag. “There’s nothing else in it, just the money, and it’ll be easier to carry this way. Here, take it.”

Not at all the professional way to do things, he thought. But he took the tote bag.

“This is irregular,” he said carefully. “I’ll have to talk to my people in Chicago, and-”

“Why?”

He looked at her.

“They don’t have to know about this,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “This is just between you and me. It’s all cash, and it’s a lot more than the two of us gave you for the dog, and if you don’t say anything about it to your people, well, you won’t have to split with them, will you?”

He wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.

“I want you to kill her,” she said, and there was no lack of conviction in her tone. “You can make it look like an accident, or like a mugging gone wrong, or, I don’t know, a sex crime? Anything you want, it doesn’t matter, just as long as she dies. And if it’s painful, well, that’s fine with me.”

Was she wearing a wire? Were there plainclothes cops stationed behind the trees? And wouldn’t that be a cute way to entrap a hit man. Bring him in to kill a dog, then raise the stakes, and-

“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You’re paying me this money yourself, and it’s in cash, and nobody else is going to know about it.”

“That’s right.”

“And in return you want me to take care of Aida Cuppering.”

She stared at him. “Aida Cuppering? What do I care about Aida Cuppering?”

“I thought-”

“I don’t care about her,” Myra Tannen said. “I don’t even care about her damn dog, not really. What I want you to do is kill Evelyn.”

29

“What a mess,” Dot said.

“No kidding.”

“All I can say is I’m sorry I got you into this. Two women hired you to put a dog down, and you’ve met each of them face-to-face, and one of them knows where you live.”

“She doesn’t know that I live there,” he said. “She thinks I flew in from Chicago. But she knows the address, and probably thinks I’m staying there for the time being.”

“You never noticed you were being followed?”

“It never occurred to me to check. I walk home all the time, Dot. I never feel the need to look over my shoulder.”

“And you’d never have to, if I’d borne in mind the old rule about not crapping where we eat. You know what it was, Keller? There were two reasons to turn the job down, because it was in New York and because it was a dog, and what I did, I let the two of them cancel each other out. My apologies. Still, a question arises.”

“Oh?”

“How much was in the bag?”

“Twenty-five.”

“I hope that’s twenty-five thousand.”

“It is.”

“Because the way things have been going, it could have been twenty-five hundred.”

“Or just plain twenty-five.”

“That’d be a stretch. So the whole package is thirty-five. It’s still a hard way to get rich. What’s she got against Evelyn, anyway? It can’t be that she’s pissed she didn’t get to go to the airport.”

“Her husband’s been having an affair with Evelyn.”

“Oh. I thought it was Evelyn’s husband that was fooling around.”

“I thought so, too. I guess the Upper West Side ’s a hotbed of adultery.”

“And here I always figured it was all concerts and dairy restaurants. What are you going to do, Keller?”

“I’ve been wondering that myself.”

“I bet you have. A certain amount of damage control would seem to be indicated. I mean, two of them have seen your face.”

“I know.”

“And one of them followed you home. Which doesn’t mean you can keep her, in case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I hope not. I gather both of them are reasonably attractive.”

“So?”

“And they’re probably attracted to you. A dangerous man, a mysterious character-how can they resist you?”

“I don’t think they’re interested,” he said, “and I know I’m not.”

“How about the dog owner? The one who looks like a dominatrix.”

“I’m not interested in her, either.”

“Well, I’m relieved to hear it. You think you can find a way to make all of this go away?”

“I was ready to give back the money,” he said, “but we’re past that point. I’ll think of something, Dot.”

Just as Keller reached to knock on the door, it opened. Evelyn Augenblick, wearing a pants suit and a white blouse and a flowing bow tie, stood there beaming at him. “It’s you,” she said. “Thank God. Quick, so I can shut the door.”

She did so, and turned to him, and he saw something he had somehow failed to notice before. She had a gun in her hand, a short-barreled revolver.

Keller didn’t know what to make of it. She’d seemed relieved to see him, so what was the gun for? To shoot him? Or was she expecting somebody else, against whom she felt the need to defend herself?

And should he take a step toward her and swat the gun out of her hand? That would probably work, but if it didn’t…

“I guess you saw the ad,” she said.

The ad? What ad?

“‘Paul Niebauer, Please Get in Touch.’ On the front page of the New York Times, one of those tiny ads at the very bottom of the page. I always wondered if anybody read those ads. But you didn’t, I can see by the look on your face. How did you know to come here?”

How indeed? “I just had a feeling,” he said.

“Well, I’m glad you did. I didn’t know how else to reach you, because I didn’t want to go through the usual channels. And it was important that I see you.”

“The gun,” he said.

She looked at him.

“You’re holding a gun,” he said.

“Oh,” she said, and looked at her hand, as if surprised to discover a gun in it. “That’s for you,” she said, and before he could react she handed the thing to him. He didn’t want it, but neither did he want her to have it. So he took it, noting that it was a.38, and a loaded one at that.

“What’s this for?” he asked.

She didn’t exactly answer. “It belongs to my husband,” she said. “It’s registered. He has a permit to keep it on the premises, and that’s what he does. He keeps it in the drawer of his bedside table. For burglars, he says.”

“I don’t really think it would be useful to me,” he said. “Since it’s registered to your husband, it would lead right back to you, which is the last thing we’d want, and-”

“You don’t understand.”

“Oh.”

“This isn’t for Fluffy.”

“It’s not?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t really care about Fluffy. Killing Fluffy won’t bring Rilke back. And it’s not so bad with Rilke gone, anyway. He was a beautiful dog, but he was really pretty stupid, and it was a pain in the ass having to walk him twice a day.”

“Oh.”

“So the gun has nothing to do with Fluffy,” she explained. “The gun’s for you to use when you kill my husband.”

“Damnedest thing I ever heard of,” Dot said. “And that covers a lot of ground. Well, she’d said her husband was running around on her. So she wants you to kill him?”

“With his own gun.”

“Suicide?”

“Murder-suicide.”

“Where does the murder come in?”

“I’m supposed to stage it,” he said, “so that it looks as though he shot the woman he was having an affair with, then turned the gun on himself.”

“The woman he’s having the affair with.”

“Right.”

“Don’t tell me, Keller.”

“Okay.”

“Keller, that’s an expression. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to know. But I have a feeling I know already. Am I right, Keller?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s her, isn’t it? Myra Tannenbaum.”

“Just Tannen.”

“Whatever. They both fly you in from the Windy City to kill a dog, and now neither one really gives a hoot in hell about the dog, and each one wants you to kill the other. How much did this one give you?”

“Forty-two thousand dollars.”

“Forty-two thousand dollars? How did she happen to arrive at that particular number, do you happen to know?”

“It’s what she got for her jewelry.”

“She sold her jewelry so she could get her husband killed? I suppose it’s jewelry her husband gave her in the first place, don’t you think? Keller, this is beginning to have a definite ‘Gift of the Magi’ quality to it.”

“She was going to give me the jewelry,” he said, “since it was actually worth quite a bit more than she got for it, but she figured I’d rather have the cash.”

“Amazing. She actually got something right. Didn’t you tell me Myra Tannen’s husband was having the affair with Evelyn?”

“That’s what she told me, but it may have been a lie.”

“Oh.”

“Or maybe each of them is having an affair with the other’s husband. It’s hard to say for sure.”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t know what to do, Dot.”

“Keller, neither of us has known what to do from the jump. I assume you took the money.”

“And the gun.”

“And now you still don’t know what to do.”

“As far as I can see, there’s only one thing I can do.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, in that case, I guess you’ll just have to go ahead and do it.”

Myra Tannen lived in a brownstone, which meant there was no doorman to deal with. There was a lock, but Evelyn had provided a key, and at two-thirty the following afternoon, Keller tried it in the lock. It turned easily, and he walked in and climbed four flights of stairs. There were two apartments on the top floor, and he found the right door and rang the bell.

He waited, and rang a second time, and followed it up with a knock. Finally he heard footsteps, and then the sound of the cover of the peephole being drawn back. “I can’t see anything,” Myra Tannen said.

He wasn’t surprised; he’d covered the peephole with his palm. “It’s me,” he said. “The man you sat next to in the park.”

“Oh?”

“I’d better come in.”

There was a pause. “I’m not alone,” she said at length.

“I know.”

“But…”

“We’ve got a real problem here,” he said, “and it’s going to get a lot worse if you don’t open the door.”

30

It was almost three when he picked up the phone. He wasn’t sure how good an idea it was to use the Tannen telephone. The police, checking the phone records, would know the precise time the call was made. Of course it would in all likelihood be just one of many calls made from the Tannen apartment to the Augenblick household across the street, and in any event all it could do was tie the two sets of people together, and what difference could that make to him?

Evelyn Augenblick answered on the first ring.

“Paul,” he said. “Across the street.”

“Oh, God.”

“I think you should come over here.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s all taken care of,” he said, “but there are some things I really need your input on.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to look at anything, if you don’t want to.”

“It’s done?”

“It’s done.”

“And they’re both…”

“Yes, both of them.”

“Oh, good,” she said. “I’ll be right over. But you’ve got the key.”

“Ring the bell,” he said. “I’ll buzz you in.”

It didn’t take her long. Time passed slowly in the Tannen apartment, but it was only ten minutes before the bell sounded. He poked the buzzer to unlock the door downstairs, and waited for her in the hallway while she climbed four flights of stairs. She was breathing hard from the effort, and the sight of her husband and her friend did nothing to calm her down.

“Oh, this is perfect,” she said. “ Myra ’s in her nightgown, sprawled on her back, with two bulletholes in her chest. And George-he’s barefoot, and wearing his pants but no shirt. The gun’s still in his hand. What did you do, stick the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger? That’s wonderful, it blew the whole back of his head off.”

“Well, not quite, but-”

“But close enough. God, you really did it. They’re both gone, I’ll never have to look at either one of them again. And this is the way I get to remember them, and that’s just perfect. You’re a genius for thinking of this, getting me to see them like this. But…”

“But what?”

“Well, I’m not complaining, but why did you want me to come over here?”

“I thought it might be exciting.”

“It is, but-”

“I thought maybe you could take off all your clothes.”

Her jaw dropped. “My God,” she said, “and here I thought I was kinky. Paul, I never even thought you were interested.”

“Well, I am now.”

“So it’s exciting for you, too. And you want me to take my clothes off? Well, why not?”

She made a rather elaborate striptease of it, which was a waste of time as far as he was concerned, but it didn’t take her too long. When she was naked he picked up her husband’s gun, muffled it with the same throw pillow he’d used earlier, and shot her twice in the chest. Then he put the gun back in her husband’s hand and got out of there.

It was hard to believe that they charged two dollars for a Good Humor. Keller wasn’t positive, but it seemed to him he could remember paying fifteen or twenty cents for one. Of course that had been many years ago, and everything had been cheaper way back when, and cost more nowadays.

But you really noticed it when it involved something you hadn’t bought in years, and a Good Humor, ice cream on a stick, was not something he’d often felt a longing for. Now, though, walking in the park, he’d seen a vendor, and the urge for a chocolate-coated ice cream bar, with a firm chocolate center and assorted gook embedded in the chocolate coating, was well nigh irresistible. He’d paid the two dollars-he probably would have paid ten dollars just then, if he’d had to-and went over to sit on a bench and enjoy his Good Humor.

If only.

Because he couldn’t really characterize his own humor as particularly good, or even neutral. He was, in fact, in a fairly dismal mood, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. There were things he liked about his work, but its immediate aftermath had never been one of them; whatever feeling of satisfaction came from a job well done was mitigated by the bad feeling brought about by the job’s nature. He’d just killed three people, and two of them had been his clients. That wasn’t the way things were supposed to go.

But what choice had he had? Both of the women had met him and seen his face, and one of them had tracked him to his apartment. He could leave them alive, but then he’d have to relocate to Chicago; it just wouldn’t be safe to stay in New York, where there’d be all too great a chance of running into one or the other of them.

Even if he didn’t, sooner or later one or the other would talk. They were amateurs, and if he did just what he was supposed to do originally-send Fluffy to that great dog run in the sky-either Evelyn or Myra would have an extra drink one night and delight in telling her friends how she’d managed to solve a problem in a sensible Sopranos-style way.

And of course if he executed the extra commission from one of them by killing the other, well, sooner or later the cops would talk to the survivor, who would hold out for about five minutes before spilling everything she knew. He’d have to kill Myra, because she’d followed him home and thus knew more than Evelyn, and that’s what he’d done, thinking he might be able to leave it at that, but with George dead the cops would go straight to Evelyn, and…

He had to do all three of them. Period, end of story.

And the way he left things, the cops wouldn’t really have any reason to look much further. A domestic triangle, all three participants dead, all shot with the same gun, with nitrate particles in the shooter’s hand and the last bullet fired through the roof of his mouth and into his brain. (And, as Evelyn had observed with delight, out the back of his skull.) It’d make tabloid headlines, but there was no reason for anyone to go looking for a mystery man from Chicago or anywhere else.

Usually, after he’d finished a piece of work, the next order of business was for him to go home. Whether he drove or flew or took a train, he’d thus be putting some substantial physical distance between himself and what he’d just done. That, plus the mental tricks he used to distance himself from the job, made it easier to turn the page and get on with his life.

Walking across the park wasn’t quite the same thing.

He centered his attention on his Good Humor. The sweetness helped, no question about it. Took the sourness right out of his system. The sweetness, the creaminess, the tang of the chocolate center that remained after the last of the ice cream was gone-it was all just right, and he couldn’t believe he’d resented paying two dollars for it. It would have been a bargain at five dollars, he decided, and an acceptable luxury at ten. It was gone now, but…

Well, couldn’t he have another?

The only reason not to, he decided, was that it wasn’t the sort of thing a person did. You didn’t buy one ice cream bar and follow it with another. But why not? He wouldn’t miss the two dollars, and weight had never been a problem for him, nor was there any particular reason for him to watch his intake of fat or sugar or chocolate. So?

He found the vendor, handed him a pair of singles. “Think I’ll have another,” he said, and the vendor, who may or may not have spoken English, took his money and gave him his ice cream bar.

He was just finishing the second Good Humor when the woman showed up. Aida Cuppering walked briskly along the path, wearing her usual outfit and flanked by her usual companion. She stopped a few yards from Keller’s bench, but Fluffy strained at his leash, making a sound that was sort of an angry whimper. Keller looked in the direction the dog was pointing, and fifty yards or so up the path he saw what Fluffy saw, a Jack Russell terrier who was lifting a leg at the base of a tree.

“Oh, you good boy,” Aida Cuppering said, even as she stooped to unclip the lead from Fluffy’s collar.

“Go!” she said, and Fluffy went, tearing down the path at the little terrier.

Keller couldn’t watch the dogs. Instead he looked at the woman, and that was bad enough, as she glowed with the thrill of the kill. After the little dog’s yelping had ceased, after Cuppering’s body had shuddered with whatever sort of climax the spectacle had afforded her, she looked over and realized that Keller was watching her.

“He needs his exercise,” she said, smiling benignly, and turned to clap her hands to urge the dog to return.

Keller never planned what happened next. He didn’t have time, didn’t even think about it. He got to his feet, reached her in three quick strides, cupped her jaw with one hand and fastened the other on her shoulder, and broke her neck every bit as efficiently as her dog had broken the neck of the little terrier.

31

“So you saw Fluffy make a kill.”

He was in White Plains, drinking a glass of iced tea and watching Dot’s television. It was tuned to the Game Show Channel, and the sound was off. Game shows, he thought, were dopey enough when you could hear what the people were saying.

“No,” he said. “I couldn’t watch. The animal’s a killing machine, Dot.”

“Now that’s funny,” she said, “because I was just about to say the same thing about you. I don’t get it, Keller. We take a job for short money because all you have to do is kill a dog. The next thing I know, four people are dead, and two of them used to be clients of ours. I don’t know how we can expect them to recommend us to their friends, let alone give us some repeat business.”

“I didn’t have any choice, Dot.”

“I realize that. They already knew too much when it was just going to be a dog that got killed, but as soon as human beings entered the equation, it became very dangerous to leave them alive.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“And when you come right down to it, all you did was what each of them hired you to do. A says to kill B and C, you kill B and C. And then you kill A, because that’s what B hired you to do. I have to say I think D came out of left field.”

“D? Oh, Aida Cuppering.”

“Nobody wanted her killed,” she said, “and at last report nobody paid to have her killed. Was that what you call pro bono?”

“It was an impulse.”

“No kidding.”

“That dog of hers, killing other dogs is his nature, but there’s no question she did everything she could to encourage it. Just because she liked to watch. I was supposed to kill the dog, but he was just a dog, you know?”

“So you broke her neck. If anyone was watching…”

“Nobody was.”

“A good thing, or you’d have had more necks to break. The police certainly seem puzzled. They seem to think the killing might have been the work of one of her clients. It turns out she really was a dominatrix after all.”

“She would sort of have to have been.”

“And one of her clients lived in the apartment where the love triangle murder-suicide took place earlier that afternoon.”

“George was her client?”

“Not George,” she said. “George lived across the street with Evelyn, remember? No, her client was a man named Edmund Tannen.”

“ Myra ’s husband. I thought he was supposed to be having an affair with Evelyn.”

“I don’t suppose it matters who was doing what to whom,” she said, “since they’re all conveniently dead now. Or inconveniently, but one way or another they’ve all been wiped off the board. I don’t know about you, but I can’t say I’m going to miss any of them.”

“No.”

“And from a financial standpoint, well, it’s not the best payday we ever had, but it’s not the worst, either. Ten for the dog and twenty-five for Evelyn and forty-two for Myra and George. You know what that means, Keller.”

“I can buy some stamps.”

“You sure can. You know the real irony here? Everybody else in the picture is dead, except for the Good Humor man. You didn’t do anything to him, did you?”

“No, for God’s sake. Why would I?”

“Who knows why anybody would do anything. But except for him, they’re all dead. Except for the one creature you were supposed to kill in the first place.”

“Fluffy.”

“Uh-huh. What is it, professional courtesy? One killing machine can’t bear to kill another?”

“He’ll get sent to the YMCA,” he said, “and when nobody adopts him, which they won’t because of his history, he’ll be put to sleep.”

“Is that what they do at the YMCA?”

“Is that what I said? I meant the SPCA.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“The animal shelter, whatever you want to call it. She lived alone, so there’s nobody else to take the dog.”

“In the paper,” Dot said, “it says they found him standing over her body, crying plaintively. But I don’t suppose you stuck around to watch that part.”

“No, I went straight home,” he said. “And this time nobody followed me.”

32

The following Thursday afternoon, the phone was ringing when he got back to his apartment. “Stay,” he said. “Good boy.” And he went and picked up the phone.

“There you are,” Dot said. “I tried you earlier, but I guess you were out.”

“I was.”

“But now you’re back,” she said. “Keller, is everything all right? You seemed a little out of it when you left here the other day.”

“No, I’m okay.”

“That’s really all I called to ask, because I just…Keller, what’s that sound?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s a dog.”

“Well,” he said.

“This whole dog business, it made you miss Nelson, so you went out and got yourself a dog. Right?”

“Not exactly.”

“‘Not exactly.’ What’s that supposed to mean? Oh, no. Keller, tell me it’s not what I think it is.”

“Well.”

“You went out and adopted that goddam killing machine. Didn’t you? You decided putting him to sleep would be a crime against nature, and you just couldn’t bear for that to happen, softhearted creature that you are, and now you’ve saddled yourself with a crazed bloodthirsty beast that’s going to make your life a living hell. Does that pretty much sum it up, Keller?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No,” he said. “Dot, they sent the dog to a shelter, just the way I said they would.”

“Well, there’s a big surprise. I thought for sure they’d run him for the Senate on the Republican ticket.”

“But it wasn’t the SPCA.”

“Or the YMCA either, I’ll bet.”

“They sent him to IBARF.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The Inter-Boro Animal Rescue Foundation, IBARF for short.”

“Whatever you say.”

“And the thing about IBARF,” he said, “is they never euthanize an animal. If it’s not adoptable, they just keep it there and keep feeding it until it dies of old age.”

“How old is Fluffy?”

“Not that old. And, you know, it’s not like a maximum-security institution there. Sooner or later somebody would leave a cage open, and Fluffy would get a chance to kill a dog or two.”

“I think I see where this is going.”

“Well, what choice did I have, Dot?”

“That’s the thing with you these days, Keller. You never seem to have any choice, and you wind up doing the damnedest things. I’m surprised they let you adopt him.”

“They didn’t want to. I explained how I needed a vicious dog to guard a used-car lot after hours.”

“One that would keep other dogs from breaking in and driving off in a late-model Honda. I hope you gave them a decent donation.”

“I gave them a hundred dollars.”

“Well, that’ll pay for fifty Good Humors, won’t it? How does it feel, having a born killer in your apartment?”

“He’s very sweet and gentle,” he said. “Jumps up on me, licks my face.”

“Oh, God.”

“Don’t worry, Dot. I know what I have to do.”

“What you have to do,” she said, “is go straight to the SPCA, or even the YMCA, as long as it’s not some chickenhearted outfit like IBARF. Some organization that you can count on to put Fluffy down in a humane manner, and to do it as soon as possible. Right?”

“Well,” he said, “not exactly.”

“What a nice dog,” the young woman said.

The animal, Keller had come to realize, was an absolute babe magnet. In the mile or so he’d walked from his apartment to the park, this was the third woman to make a fuss over Fluffy. This one said the same thing the others had said: that the dog certainly looked tough and capable, but that he really was just a big baby, wasn’t he? Wasn’t he?

Keller wanted to urge her to get down on all fours and bark. Then she’d find out just what kind of a big old softie Fluffy was.

He’d waited until twilight, hoping to avoid as many dogs and dog walkers as possible, but there were still some to be found, and Fluffy was remarkably good at spotting them. Whenever he caught sight of one, or caught the scent, his ears perked up and he strained at the leash. But Keller kept a good tight hold on it and kept leading the dog to the park’s less-traveled paths.

It would have been easy to follow Dot’s advice, to pay another hundred dollars and palm the dog off on the SPCA or some similar institution. But suppose they got their signals crossed and let someone adopt Fluffy, the way the damned fools at IBARF had let him? Suppose, one way or another, something went wrong and Fluffy got a chance to kill more dogs?

This wasn’t something to delegate. This was something he had to do for himself. That was the only way to be sure it got done, and got done properly. Besides, it was something he’d hired on to do long ago. He’d been paid, and it was time to do the work.

He thought about Nelson. It was impossible, walking in the park with a dog on a leash, not to think about Nelson. But Nelson was gone. In all the time since Nelson’s departure, it had never seriously occurred to him to get another dog. And, if it ever did, this wasn’t the dog he’d get.

He patted his pocket. There was a small-caliber gun in it, an automatic, unregistered, and never fired since it came into his possession several years ago. He’d kept it, because you never knew when you might need a gun, and now he had a use for it.

“This way, Fluffy,” he said. “That’s a good boy.”