The Best American Mystery Stories 1998

Lawrence Block Keller on the Spot from Playboy

Keller, drink in hand, agreed with the woman in the pink dress that it was indeed a lovely evening. He threaded his way through a crowd of young marrieds on what he supposed you would call the patio. A waitress passed carrying a tray of drinks in stemmed glasses and he traded in his own for a fresh one. He sipped as he walked along, wondering what he was drinking. Some sort of vodka sour, he decided, and decided as well that he didn’t need to narrow it down any further than that. He figured he’d have this one and one more, but he could have ten more if he wanted, because he wasn’t working tonight. He could relax and cut loose and have a good time.

Well, almost. He couldn’t relax completely, couldn’t cut loose altogether. Because, while this might not be work, neither was it entirely recreational. The garden party this evening was a heaven-sent opportunity for reconnaissance, and he would use it to get a close look at his quarry. He had been handed a picture back in White Plains, and he had brought that picture with him to Dallas, but even the best photo wasn’t the same as a glimpse of the fellow in the flesh, and in his native habitat.

And a lush habitat it was. Keller hadn’t been inside the house yet, but it was clearly immense, a sprawling multilevel affair of innumerable large rooms. The grounds sprawled as well, covering an acre or two, with enough plants and shrubbery to stock an arboretum. Keller didn’t know anything about flowers, but five minutes in a garden like this one had him thinking he ought to know more about the subject. Maybe they had evening classes at Hunter or NYU; maybe they’d take you on field trips to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

He walked along a brick path, smiling at this stranger, nodding at that one, and wound up standing alongside the swimming pool. Some 12 or 15 people sat at poolside tables, talking and drinking, the volume of their conversations rising as they drank. In the enormous pool, a young boy swam back and forth, back and forth.

Keller felt a curious kinship with the kid. He was standing instead of swimming, but he felt as distant as the kid from everybody else around. There were two parties going on, he decided. There was the hearty social whirl, and there was the solitude he felt in the midst of it all, akin to the solitude of the swimming boy.

Huge pool. The boy was swimming its width, but that dimension was still greater than the length of your typical backyard pool. Keller wasn’t sure if this was an Olympic-size pool, but he figured you could just call it enormous and let it go at that.

Ages ago he’d heard about some college-boy stunt, filling a swimming pool with Jell-O, and he’d wondered how many little boxes of the gelatin dessert it would have required, and how the college boys could have afforded it. It would cost a fortune, he decided, to fill this pool with Jell-O, but if you could afford the pool in the first place, he supposed the Jell-O would be the least of your worries.

There were cut flowers on all the tables, and the blooms looked like ones Keller had seen in the garden. It stood to reason. If you grew all these flowers, you wouldn’t have to order from the florist. You could cut your own.

What good would it do, he wondered, to know the names of all the shrubs and flowers? Wouldn’t it just leave you wanting to dig in the soil and grow your own? And he didn’t want to get into all that, for God’s sake.

So maybe he’d just forget about evening classes at Hunter, and field trips to Brooklyn. If he wanted to get close to nature he could walk in Central Park, and if he didn’t know the names of the flowers he would just hold off on introducing himself to them. And if—

Where was the kid?

The boy, the swimmer. Keller’s companion in solitude. Where the hell did he go? The pool was empty, its surface still. Keller saw a ripple toward the far end, saw bubbles break the surface.

He didn’t react without thinking. That was how he’d always heard that sort of thing described, but that wasn’t what happened, because the thoughts were there, loud and clear. He’s down there. He’s in trouble. He’s drowning. And, echoing in his head in a voice sour with exasperation: Keller, for Christ’s sake, do something!

He set his glass on a table, shucked his coat, kicked off his shoes, dropped his pants and stepped out of them. Ages ago he’d earned a Red Gross lifesaving certificate, and the first thing they taught you was to strip before you hit the water. The six or seven seconds you spent peeling off your clothes would be repaid many times over in quickness and mobility.

But the strip show did not go unnoticed. Everybody at poolside had a comment, one more hilarious than the next. He barely heard them. In no time at all he was down to his underwear. Then he was out of range of their cleverness, hitting the water in a flat racing dive, churning the water till he reached the spot where he’d seen the bubbles, then diving, eyes wide, barely noticing the burn of the chlorine.

Searching for the boy. Groping, searching, then finding him, reaching to grab hold of him. And pushing off against the bottom, lungs bursting, racing to the surface.

People were saying things to Keller, thanking him, congratulating him, but it wasn’t really registering. A man clapped him on the back, a woman handed him a glass of brandy. He heard the word hero and realized people were saying it all over the place, and applying it to him.

Hell of a note.

Keller sipped the brandy. It gave him heartburn, which assured him of its quality; good cognac always gave him heartburn. He turned to look at the boy. He was a little fellow, 12 or 13 years old, his hair lightened and his skin bronzed by the summer sun. He was sitting up now, Keller saw, and looking none the worse for his near-death experience.

“Timothy,” a woman said, “this is the man who saved your life. Do you have something to say to him?”

“Thanks,” Timothy said, predictably.

“Is that all you have to say, young man?” the woman asked.

“It’s enough,” Keller said, and smiled. To the boy he said, “There’s something I’ve always wondered. Did your life actually flash before your eyes?”

Timothy shook his head. “I got this cramp,” he said, “and it was like my whole body turned into one big knot, and there wasn’t anything I could do to untie it. And I didn’t even think about drowning. I was just fighting the cramp, ’cause it hurt, and about the next thing I knew I was up here, coughing and puking up water.” He made a face. “I must have swallowed half the pool. All I have to do is think about it and I can taste vomit and chlorine.”

“Timothy,” the woman said, rolling her eyes.

“Something to be said for plain speech,” an older man said. He had a mane of white hair and prominent white eyebrows, and his eyes were a vivid blue. He was holding a glass of brandy in one hand and a bottle in the other, and he reached with the bottle to fill Keller’s glass to the brim. “‘Claret for boys and port for men,’” he said. “‘But he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.’ That’s Samuel Johnson, though I may have gotten a word wrong.”

The woman patted his hand. “If you did, Daddy, I’m sure you just improved Mr. Johnson’s wording.”

“Dr. Johnson,” he said, “and one could hardly do that. Improve the man’s wording, that is. ‘Being in a ship is like being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.’ He said that as well, and I defy anyone to comment more trenchantly on the experience, or to say it better.” He beamed at Keller. “I owe you more than a glass of brandy and a well-turned Johnsonian phrase. This little rascal whose life you’ve saved is my grandson, and the apple — nay, sir, the very nectarine — of my eye. And we’d have all stood around drinking and laughing while he drowned. You observed, and you acted, and God bless you for it.”

What did you say to that, Keller wondered. It was nothing? Well, shucks f There had to be some sort of apt phrase, and maybe Samuel Johnson could have found it, but Keller couldn’t. So he said nothing, and tried not to look po-faced.

“I don’t even know your name,” the white-haired man went on. “That’s not remarkable in and of itself. I don’t know half the people here, and I’m content to remain in my ignorance. But I ought to know your name, wouldn’t you agree?”

Keller might have picked a name out of the air, but the one that leaped to mind was Boswell, and he couldn’t say that to a man who quoted Samuel Johnson. So he supplied the name he’d traveled under, the one he’d signed when he checked into the hotel, the one on the driver’s license and credit cards in his wallet.

“It’s Michael Soderholm,” he said, “and I can’t even tell you the name of the fellow who brought me here. We met over drinks in the hotel bar, and he said he was going to a party and it would be perfectly all right if I came along. I felt a little funny about it, but—”

“Please,” the man said. “You can’t possibly propose to apologize for your presence here. It has kept my grandson from a watery if chlorinated grave. And I’ve just told you I don’t know half my guests, but that doesn’t make them any the less welcome.” He took a deep drink of his brandy and topped up both glasses. “Michael Soderholm,” he said. “Swedish?”

“A mixture of everything,” Keller said, improvising. “My great-grandfather Soderholm came over from Sweden, but my other ancestors came from all over Europe, plus I’m something like a sixteenth American Indian.”

“Oh? Which tribe?”

“Cherokee,” Keller said, thinking of the jazz tune.

“I’m an eighth Comanche,” the man said. “So I’m afraid we’re not tribal blood brothers. The rest’s British Isles, a mix of Scots and Irish and English. Old Texas stock. But you’re not Texan yourself.”

“No.”

“Well, it can’t be helped, as the saying goes. Unless you decide to move here, and who’s to say you won’t? It’s a fine place for a man to live.”

“Daddy thinks that everybody should love Texas the same way he does,” the woman said.

“Everybody should,” her father said. “The only thing wrong with Texans is we’re a long-winded lot. Look at the time it’s taking me to introduce myself! Mr. Soderholm, Mr. Michael Soderholm, my name’s Garrity, Wallace Penrose Garrity, and I’m your grateful host this evening.”

No kidding, thought Keller.

The party, lifesaving and all, took place on Saturday night. The next day Keller sat in his hotel room and watched the Cowboys beat the Vikings with a field goal in the last three minutes of double overtime. The game seesawed back and forth, with interceptions and runbacks, and the announcers kept telling each other what a great game it was.

Keller supposed they were right. It had all the ingredients, and it wasn’t the players’ fault that he was entirely unmoved by their performance. He could watch sports, and often did, but he almost never got caught up in it. He had occasionally wondered if his work might have something to do with it. On one level, when your job involved dealing regularly with life and death, how could you care if some overpaid steroid abuser had a touchdown run called back? And, on another level, you saw unorthodox solutions to a team’s problems on the field. When Emmitt Smith kept crashing through the Minnesota line, Keller wondered why they didn’t deputize someone to shoot the son of a bitch in the back of the neck, right below his star-covered helmet.

Still, it was better than watching golf, say, which had to be better than playing golf. And he couldn’t get out and work, because there was nothing for him to do. Last night’s reconnaissance mission had been both better and worse than he could have hoped, and what was he supposed to do now? Park his rented Ford across the street from the Garrity mansion and clock the comings and goings?

No need for that. He could bide his time, just so he got there in time for Sunday dinner.

“More potatoes, Mr. Soderholm?”

“They are delicious,” Keller said. “But I’m full. Really.”

“And we can’t keep calling you ‘Mr. Soderholm,’” Garrity said. “I’ve only held off this long for not knowing whether you prefer Mike or Michael.”

“Mike’s fine,” Keller said.

“Then Mike it is. And I’m Wally, Mike, or W.P., though there are those who call me the Walrus.”

Timmy laughed and clapped both hands over his mouth. “Though never to his face,” said the woman who had offered Keller more potatoes. She was Ellen Garrity, Timmy’s aunt and Garrity’s daughter-in-law, and Keller was now instructed to call her Ellie. Her husband, a big-shouldered fellow who seemed to be smiling bravely through the heartbreak of male-pattern baldness, was Garrity’s son, Hank.

Keller remembered Timothy’s mother from the night before, but hadn’t caught her name, or her relationship to Garrity. She was Rhonda Sue Butler, as it turned out, and everybody called her Rhonda Sue, except for her husband, who called her Ronnie. His name was Doak Butler, and he looked like a college jock who’d been too light for pro ball, though he now seemed to be closing the gap.

Hank and Ellie, Doak and Rhonda Sue. And, at the far end of the table, Vanessa, who was married to Wally but who was clearly not the mother of Hank or Rhonda Sue, or anyone else. Keller supposed you could describe her as Wally’s trophy wife, a sign of his success. She was no older than Wally’s kids, and she looked to be well bred and elegant, and she even had the good grace to hide the boredom Keller was sure she felt.

And that was the lot of them. Wally and Vanessa, Hank and Ellen, Doak and Rhonda Sue. And Timothy, who had been swimming that very afternoon, the aquatic equivalent of getting right back on the horse. He’d had no cramps this time, but he’d had an attentive eye kept on him throughout.

Seven of them, then. And Keller… also known as Mike.

“So you’re here on business,” Wally said. “And stuck here over the weekend, which is the worst part of a business trip, as far as I’m concerned. More trouble than it’s worth to fly back to Chicago?”

The two of them were in Wally’s den, a fine room paneled in knotty pecan and trimmed in red leather, with Western doodads on the walls — here a branding iron, there a longhorn skull. Keller had accepted a brandy and declined a cigar, but the aroma of Wally’s Havana was giving him second thoughts. Keller didn’t smoke, but from the smell of it the cigar wasn’t smoking. It was more along the lines of a religious experience.

“Seemed that way,” Keller said. He had supplied Chicago as Michael Soderholm’s home base, even though Soderholm’s license placed him in southern California. “By the time I fly there and back—”

“You’ve spent your weekend on airplanes. Well, it’s our good fortune you decided to stay. Now what I’d like to do is find a way to make it your good fortune as well.”

“You’ve already done that,” Keller told him. “I crashed a great party last night and actually got to feel like a hero for a few minutes. And tonight I get a fine dinner with nice people and get to top it off with a glass of outstanding brandy.”

The heartburn told him how outstanding it was.

“What I had in mind,” Wally said smoothly, “was to get you to work for me.”

Who did he want him to kill? Keller almost blurted out the question until he remembered that Garrity didn’t know what he did for a living.

“You won’t say who you work for?” Garrity went on.

“I can’t.”

“Because the job’s hush-hush for now. Well, I can respect that, and from the hints you’ve dropped I gather you’re here scouting out something in the way of mergers and acquisitions.”

“That’s close.”

“And I’m sure it’s well paid, and you must like the work or I don’t think you’d stay with it. So what do I have to do to get you to switch horses and come work for me? I’ll tell you one thing — Chicago’s a nice place, but nobody who ever moved from there to Big D went around with a sour face about it. I don’t know you well yet, but I can tell you’re our kind of people and Dallas will be your kind of town. I don’t know what they’re paying you, but I suspect I can top it and offer you a stake in a growing company with all sorts of attractive possibilities.”

Keller listened, nodded judiciously, sipped a little brandy. It was amazing, he thought, the way things came along when you weren’t looking for them. It was straight out of Horatio Alger, for God’s sake — Ragged Dick stops the runaway Horse and saves the daughter of the captain of industry, and the next thing you know he’s president of IBM with rising expectations.

“Maybe I’ll have that cigar after all,” Keller said.

“Now come on, Keller,” Dot said. “You know the rules. I can’t give you that information.”

“It’s sort of important,” he said.

“One of the things the client buys,” she said, “is confidentiality. That’s what he wants and it’s what we provide. Even if the agent in place—”

“The agent in place?”

“That’s you,” she said. “You’re the agent, and Dallas is the place. Even if you get caught red-handed, the confidentiality of the client remains uncompromised. And do you know why?”

“Because the agent in place knows how to keep mum.”

“Mum’s the word,” she agreed, “and there’s no question you’re the strong, silent type. But even if your lip loosens, you can’t sink a ship if you don’t know when it’s sailing.”

Keller thought that over. “You lost me,” he said.

“Yeah, it came out a little abstruse, didn’t it? Point is, you can’t tell what you don’t know, Keller, which is why the agent doesn’t get to know the client’s name.”

“Dot,” he said, trying to sound injured, “how long have you known me?”

“Ages, Keller. Many lifetimes.”

“Many lifetimes?”

“We were in Atlantis together. Look, I know nobody’s going to catch you red-handed, and I know you wouldn’t blab if they did. But I can’t tell what I don’t know.”

“Oh.”

“Right. I think the spies call it a double cutout. The client made arrangements with somebody we know, and that person called us. But he didn’t give him the client’s name, and why should he? Come to think of it, Keller, why do you have to know, anyway?”

He had his answer ready. “It might not be a single,” he said. “Oh?”

“The target’s always got people around him,” he said, “and the best way to do it might be a sort of group plan, if you follow me.”

“Two for the price of one.”

“Or three or four,” he said. “But if one of those innocent bystanders turned out to be the client, it might make things a little awkward.”

“Well, I can see where we might have trouble collecting the final payment.”

“If we knew for a fact that the client was fishing for trout in Montana,” he said, “it would be no problem. But if he’s here in Dallas…”

“It would help to know his name.” Dot sighed. “Give me an hour or two, huh? Then call me back.”

If Keller knew who the client was, the client could have an accident.

It would have to be an artful accident, too. It would have to look good not only to the police but also to whoever was aware of the client’s intentions. The local go-between, the helpful fellow who had hooked up the client to the old man in White Plains — and, thus, to Keller — could be expected to cast a cold eye on any suspicious death. So it would have to be a damn good accident, but Keller had managed a few of those in his day. It took a little planning, but it wasn’t brain surgery. You just figured out a method and took your best shot.

If, as he rather hoped, the client was some business rival in Houston or Denver or San Diego, he’d have to slip off to that city without anyone noting his absence. Then, having induced a quick attack of accidental death, he’d fly back to Dallas and hang around until someone called him off the case. He’d need a different ID for Houston or Denver or San Diego — it wouldn’t do to overexpose Michael Soderholm — and he’d need to mask his actions from all concerned: Garrity, his homicidal rival and, perhaps most important, Dot and the old man.

All told, it was a great deal more complicated (if easier to stomach) than the alternative.

Which was to carry out the assignment professionally and kill Wallace Penrose Garrity the first good chance he got.

And he really didn’t want to do that. He’d eaten at the man’s table, he’d drunk the man’s brandy, he’d smoked the man’s cigars. He’d been offered not merely a job but a well-paid executive position with a future, and, later that night, light-headed from alcohol and nicotine, he’d had fantasies of taking Wally up on it.

Hell, why not? He could live out his days as Michael Soderholm, doing whatever unspecified tasks Garrity was hiring him to perform. He probably lacked the requisite experience, but how hard could it be to pick up the skills he needed as he went along? Whatever he had to do, it would be easier than flying from town to town killing people. He could learn on the job. He could pull it off.

The fantasy had about as much substance as a dream, and, like a dream, it was gone when he awoke the next morning. No one would put him on the payroll without some sort of background check, and the most cursory scan would knock him out of the box. Michael Soderholm had no more substance than the fake ID in Keller’s wallet.

Even if he somehow finessed a background check, even if the old man in White Plains let him walk out of one life and into another, he knew he couldn’t really make it work. He already had a life. Misshapen though it was, it fit him like a glove.

He went out for a sandwich and a cup of coffee. He got back in his car and drove around for a while. Then he found a pay phone and called White Plains.

“Do a single,” Dot said.

“How’s that?”

“No added extras, no free dividends. Just do what they signed on for.”

“Because the client’s here in town,” he said. “Well, I could work around that if I knew his name. I could make sure he was out of it.”

“Forget it,” Dot said. “The client wants a long and happy life for everybody but the designated vie. Maybe the DV’s close associates are near and dear to the client. That’s just a guess, but all that really matters is that nobody else gets hurt. Capisce!

“Capisce!”

“It’s Italian, it means—”

“I know what it means. It just sounded odd from your lips, that’s all. But yes, I understand.” He took a breath. “Whole thing may take a little time,” he said.

“Then here comes the good news,” she said. “Time’s not of the essence. They don’t care how long it takes, just so you get it right.”

“I understand W.P. offered you a job,” Vanessa said. “I know he hopes you’ll take him up on it.”

“I think he was just being generous,” Keller told her. “I was in the right place at the right time, and he’d like to do me a favor. But I don’t think he really expects me to come to work for him.”

“He’d like it if you did,” she said, “or he never would have made the offer. He’d have just given you money, or a car, or something like that. And as far as what he expects, well, W.P. generally expects to get whatever he wants. Because that’s the way things usually work out.”

And had she been saving up her pennies to get things to work out a little differently? You had to wonder. Was she truly under Garrity’s spell, in awe of his power, as she seemed to be? Or was she in it only for the money, and was there a sharp edge of irony under her worshipful remarks?

Hard to say. Hard to tell about any of them. Was Hank the loyal son he appeared to be, content to live in the old man’s shadow and take what got tossed his way? Or was he secretly resentful and ambitious?

What about the son-in-law, Doak? On the surface, he looked to be delighted with the aftermath of his college football career — his work for his father-in-law consisted largely of playing golf with business associates and drinking with them afterward. But did he seethe inside, sure he was fit for greater things?

How about Hank’s wife, Ellie? She struck Keller as an unlikely Lady Macbeth. Keller could fabricate scenarios in which she or Rhonda Sue had a reason for wanting Wally dead, but they were the sort of thing you dreamed up watching reruns of Dallas and trying to guess who shot J.R. Maybe one of their marriages was in trouble. Maybe Garrity had put the moves on his daughter-in-law, or maybe a little too much brandy had led him into his daughter’s bedroom now and then. Maybe Doak or Hank was playing footsie with Vanessa. Maybe…

Pointless to speculate, he decided. You could go around and around like that, but it didn’t get you anywhere. Even if he managed to dope out which of them was the client, then what? Having saved young Timothy, and thus feeling obligated to spare his doting grandfather, what was he going to do? Kill the boy’s father? Or mother or aunt or uncle?

Of course he could just go home. He could explain the situation to the old man. Nobody loved it when you took yourself off a contract for personal reasons, but it wasn’t something they could talk you out of, either. If you made a habit of that sort of thing, well, that was different, but that wasn’t the case with Keller. He was a solid pro. Quirky perhaps, even whimsical, but a pro all the way. Tell him what to do and he does it.

So, if he had a personal reason to bow out, you honored it. You let him come home and sit on the porch and drink iced tea with Dot.

And you picked up the phone and sent somebody else to Dallas.

Because, either way, the job was going to be done. If a hit man had a change of heart, it would be followed in short order by a change of hit man. If Keller didn’t pull the trigger, somebody else would.

His mistake, Keller thought savagely, was that he had jumped into the goddamn pool in the first place. All he’d have had to do was look the other way and let the little bastard drown. A few days later he could have taken Garrity out, possibly making it look like suicide, a natural consequence of despondency over the boy’s tragic accident.

But no, he thought, glaring at himself in the mirror. No, you had to go and get involved. You had to be a hero, for God’s sake. Had to strip down to your skivvies and prove you deserved that lifesaving certificate the Red Cross had given you all those years ago.

He wondered what had happened to that certificate.

It was gone, of course, like everything he’d owned in his childhood and youth. Gone like his high school diploma, like his Boy Scout merit badge sash, like his sack of marbles and his stack of baseball cards. He didn’t mind that these things were gone, didn’t waste time wishing he had them any more than he wanted those years back.

The certificate, when all was said and done, was only a piece of paper. What was important was the skill itself, and what was truly remarkable was that he’d retained it. Because of it, Timothy Butler was alive. Which was all well and good for the boy, but a great big headache for Keller.

Later, sitting with a cup of coffee, Keller thought some more about Wallace Penrose Garrity, a man who seemed to have not an enemy in the world.

Suppose Keller had let the kid drown. Suppose he just plain hadn’t noticed the boy’s disappearance beneath the water, just as everyone else had failed to notice it. Garrity would have been despondent. It was his party, his pool, his failure to provide supervision. He’d probably have blamed himself for the boy’s death.

When Keller took him out, it would have been the kindest thing he could have done for him.

He caught the waiter’s eye and signaled for more coffee.

“Mike,” Garrity said, with a hand outstretched. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Had a call from a fellow with a hankering to buy a little five-acre lot of mine on the south edge of town. Thing is, I don’t want to sell it to him.”

“I see.”

“There’s ten acres on the other side of town I’d be perfectly happy to sell to him, but he’ll only want it if he thinks of it himself. So that left me on the phone longer than I would have liked. Now then, what would you say to a glass of brandy?”

“Maybe a small one.”

Garrity led the way to the den, poured drinks for both of them. “You should have come earlier,” he said. “In time for dinner. I hope you know you don’t need an invitation. There’ll always be a place for you at our table.”

“Well,” Keller said.

“I know you can’t talk about it,” Garrity said, “but I hope your project here in town is shaping up nicely.”

“Slow but sure,” Keller said.

“Some things can’t be hurried,” Garrity allowed, and sipped brandy and winced. If Keller hadn’t been looking for it, he might have missed the shadow that crossed his host’s face.

Gently he asked, “Is the pain bad, Wally?”

“How’s that, Mike?”

Keller put his glass on the table. “I spoke to Dr. Jacklin,” he said. “I know what you’re going through.”

“That son of a bitch,” Garrity said, “was supposed to keep his mouth shut.”

“Well, he thought it was all right to talk to me,” Keller said. “He thought I was Dr. Edward Fishman from the Mayo Clinic.”

“Calling for a consultation.”

“Something like that.”

“I did go to Mayo,” Garrity said, “but they didn’t need to call Harold Jacklin to double-check their results. They just confirmed his diagnosis and told me not to buy any long-playing records.” He looked to one side. “They said they couldn’t say for sure how much time I had left, but that the pain would be manageable for a while. And then it wouldn’t.”

“I see.”

“And I’d have all my faculties for a while,” he said. “And then I wouldn’t.”

Keller didn’t say anything.

“Well, hell,” Garrity said. “A man wants to take the bull by the horns, doesn’t he? I decided I’d go out for a walk with a shotgun and have a little hunting accident. Or I’d be cleaning a handgun here at my desk and have it go off. But it turned out I just couldn’t tolerate the idea of killing myself. Don’t know why, can’t explain it, but that seems to be the way I’m made.”

He picked up his glass and looked at the brandy. “Funny how we hang on to life,” he said. “Something else I think Sam Johnson said, that there wasn’t a week of his life he would voluntarily live through again. I’ve had more good times than bad, Mike, and even the bad times haven’t been that god-awful. But I think I know what he was getting at. I wouldn’t want to repeat any of it, but that doesn’t mean there’s a minute of it I’d have been willing to miss. I don’t want to miss whatever’s coming next, and I don’t guess Dr. Johnson did either. That’s what keeps us going, isn’t it? Wanting to find out what’s around the next bend in the river?”

“I guess so.”

“I thought that would make the end easier to face,” he said, “not knowing when it was coming, or how or where. And I recalled that years ago a fellow told me to let him know if I ever needed to have somebody killed. ‘You just let me know,’ he had said, and I laughed, and that was the last said on the subject. A month or so ago I looked up his number and called him, and he gave me another number to call.”

“And you put out a contract.”

“Is that the expression? Then that’s what I did.”

“Suicide by proxy,” Keller said.

“And I guess you’re holding my proxy,” Garrity said, and drank some brandy. “You know, the thought flashed across my mind that first night, talking with you after you pulled my grandson out of the pool. I got this little glimmer, but I told myself I was being ridiculous. A hired killer doesn’t turn up and save somebody’s life.”

“It’s out of character,” Keller agreed.

“Besides, what would you be doing at the party in the first place? Wouldn’t you stay out of sight and wait until you could get me alone?”

“If I’d been thinking straight,” Keller said. “I told myself it wouldn’t hurt to have a look around. And this joker from the hotel bar assured me I had nothing to worry about. ‘Half the town will be at Wally’s tonight,’ he said.”

“Half the town was. You wouldn’t have tried anything that night, would you?”

“God, no.”

“I remember thinking, I hope he’s not here. I hope it’s not tonight. Because I was enjoying the party and I didn’t want to miss anything. But you were there, and a good thing, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Saved the boy from drowning. According to the Chinese, you save somebody’s life, you’re responsible for him for the rest of your life. Because you’ve interfered with the natural order of things. That make sense to you?”

“Not really.”

“Or me either. You can’t beat them for whipping up a meal or laundering a shirt, but they’ve got some queer ideas on other subjects. Of course, they’d probably say the same for some of my notions.”

“Probably.”

Garrity looked at his glass. “You called my doctor,” he said. “Must have been to confirm a suspicion you had. What tipped you off? Is it starting to show in my face, or how I move around?”

Keller shook his head. “I couldn’t find anybody else with a motive,” he said, “or a grudge against you. You were the only one left. And then I saw you wince once or twice and try to hide it. I barely noticed at the time, but then I started to think about it.”

“I thought it would be easier than doing it myself,” Garrity said. “I thought I’d just let a professional take me by surprise. I’d be like an old bull elk on a hillside, never expecting the bullet that takes him out in his prime.”

“It makes sense.”

“No, it doesn’t. Because the elk didn’t arrange for the hunter to be there. Far as the elk knows, he’s all alone. He’s not wondering every damn day if today’s the day. He’s not bracing himself, trying to sense the crosshairs centering on his shoulder.”

“I never thought of that.”

“Neither did I,” said Garrity. “Or I never would have called that fellow in the first place. Mike, what the hell are you doing here tonight? Don’t tell me you came over to kill me.”

“I came to tell you I can’t.”

“Because we’ve come to know each other.”

Keller nodded.

“I grew up on a farm,” Garrity said. “One of those vanishing family farms you hear about, and of course it’s vanished, and I say good riddance. But we raised our own beef and pork, and we kept a milk cow and a flock of laying hens. And we never named the animals we were going to wind up eating. The cow had a name, but not the bull calf she dropped. The breeder sow’s name was Elsie, but we never named her piglets.”

“Makes sense,” Keller said.

“I guess it doesn’t take a Chinaman to see how you can’t kill me once you’ve hauled Timmy out of the drink. Let alone after you’ve sat at my table and smoked my cigars. Reminds me, care for a cigar?”

“No, thank you.”

“Well, where do we go from here, Mike? I have to say I’m relieved. I feel like I’ve been bracing myself for a bullet for weeks now. All of a sudden I’ve got a new lease on life. I’d say this calls for a drink, except we’re already having one and you’ve scarcely touched yours.”

“There is one thing,” Keller said.

He left the den while Garrity made his phone call. Timothy was in the living room, puzzling over a chessboard. Keller played a game with him and lost badly. “Can’t win ’em all,” he said, and tipped over his king.

“I was going to checkmate you,” the boy said, “in a few more moves.”

“I could see it coming,” Keller told him.

He went back to the den. Garrity was selecting a cigar from his humidor. “Sit down,” he said. “I’m fixing to smoke one of these things. If you won’t kill me, maybe it will.”

“You never know.”

“I made the call, Mike, and it’s all taken care of. Be a while before the word filters through the chain of command, but sooner or later they’ll call you and tell you the client changed his mind. He paid in full and called off the job.”

They talked some, then sat awhile in silence. At length Keller said he ought to get going. “I should be at my hotel,” he said, “in case they call.”

“Be a couple of days, won’t it?”

“Probably,” he said, “but you never know. If everyone involved makes a phone call right away, the word could get to me in a couple of hours.”

“Calling you off, telling you to come home. Be glad to get home, I bet.”

“It’s nice here,” he said, “but yes, I’ll be glad to get home.”

“Wherever it is, they say there’s no place like it.” Garrity leaned back, then allowed himself to wince at the pain that came over him. “If it never hurts worse than this,” he said, “then I can stand it. But of course it will get worse. And I’ll decide I can stand that, and then it’ll get worse again.”

There was nothing to say to that.

“I guess I’ll know when it’s time to do something,” Garrity said. “And who knows? Maybe my heart will cut out on me out of the blue. Or I’ll get hit by a bus, or I don’t know what. Struck by lightning?”

“It could happen.”

“Anything can happen,” Garrity agreed. He got to his feet. “Mike,” he said, “I guess we won’t be seeing any more of each other, and I have to say I’m a little bit sorry about that. I’ve truly enjoyed our time together.”

“So have I, Wally.”

“I wondered, you know, what he’d be like. The man they’d send to do this kind of work. I don’t know what I expected, but you’re not it.”

He stuck out his hand, and Keller gripped it. “Take care,” Garrity said. “Be well, Mike.”

Back at his hotel, Keller took a hot bath and got a good night’s sleep. In the morning he went out for breakfast, and when he got back there was a message at the desk for him: Mr. Soderholm — Please call your office.

He called from a pay phone, even though it didn’t matter, and was careful not to overreact when Dot told him to come home, the mission was aborted.

“You told me I had all the time in the world,” he said. “If I’d known the guy was in such a rush—”

“Keller,” she said, “it’s a good thing you waited. What he did, he changed his mind.”

“He changed his mind?”

“It used to be a woman’s prerogative,” Dot said, “but now we’ve got equality between the sexes, so that means anyone can do it. It works out fine because we’re getting paid in full. So kick the dust of Texas off your feet and come on home.”

“I’ll do that,” he said, “but I may hang out here for a few more days.”

“Oh?”

“Or even a week,” he said. “It’s a pretty nice town.”

“Don’t tell me you’re itching to move there, Keller. We’ve been through this before.”

“Nothing like that,” he said. “But there’s this girl I met.”

“Oh, Keller.”

“Well, she’s nice,” he said. “And if I’m off the job there’s no reason not to have a date or two with her, is there?”

“Not as long as you don’t decide to move in.”

“She’s not that nice,” he said, and Dot laughed and told him not to change.

He hung up and drove around and found a movie he’d been meaning to see. The next morning he packed and checked out of his hotel.

He drove across town and got a room on the motel strip, paying cash in advance for four nights and registering as J. D. Smith from Los Angeles.

There was no girl he’d met, no girl he wanted to meet. But it wasn’t time to go home yet.

He had unfinished business, and four days should give him time to do it. Time for Wallace Garrity to get used to the idea of not feeling those imaginary crosshairs on his shoulder blade.

But not so much time that the pain would be too much to bear. And, sometime in those four days, Keller would deliver a gift. If he could, he’d make it look natural — a heart attack, say, or an accident. In any event it would be swift and without warning, and as close as he could make it to painless.

And it would be unexpected. Garrity would never see it coming. Keller frowned, trying to figure out how he would manage it. It would be a lot trickier than the task that had drawn him to town originally, but he’d brought it on himself. Getting involved, fishing the boy out of the pool. He’d interfered in the natural order of things. He was under an obligation.

It was the least he could do.