Hit Parade

Page 31

“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.”
KELLER’S DOUBLE DRIBBLE
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Keller, his hands in his pockets, watched a dark-skinned black man with his shirt off drive for the basket. His shaved head gleamed, and the muscles of his upper back, the traps and lats, bulged as if steroidally enhanced. Another man, wearing a T-shirt but otherwise of the same shade and physique, leapt to block the shot, and the two bodies met in midair. It was a little like ballet, Keller thought, and a little like combat, and the ball kissed off the backboard and dropped through the hoop.
There was no net, just a bare hoop. The playground was at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Third Street, in Greenwich Village, and Keller was one of a handful of spectators standing outside the high chain-link fence, watching idly as ten men, half wearing T-shirts, half bare-chested, played a fiercely competitive game of half-court basketball.
If this were a game at the Garden, the last play would have sent someone to the free-throw line. But there was no ref here to call fouls, and order was maintained in a simpler fashion; anyone who fouled too frequently was thrown out of the game. It was, Keller felt, an interesting libertarian solution, and he thought it might be worth a try outside the basketball court, but had a feeling it would be tough to make it work.
Keller watched a few more plays, feeling his spirits sink as he did, yet finding it oddly difficult to tear himself away. He’d had a tooth drilled and filled a few blocks away, by a dentist who had himself played varsity basketball years ago at the University of Kentucky, and had been walking around waiting for the Novocain to wear off so he could grab some lunch, and the basketball game had caught his eye, and here he was. Watching, and being brought down in the process, because basketball always depressed him.
His mouth wasn’t numb anymore. He crossed the street, walked two blocks east, turned right on Sullivan Street, left on Bleecker. He considered and rejected restaurants as he walked, knowing he wanted something spicy. If basketball depressed him, highly seasoned food put him right again. He thought it odd, didn’t understand it, but knew it worked.
The restaurant he found was Indian, and Keller made sure the waiter got the message. “You tone things down for Westerners,” he told the man. “I only look like an American of European ancestry. Inside, I am a man from Sri Lanka.”
“You want spicy,” the waiter said.
“I want very spicy,” Keller said. “And then some.”
The little man beamed. “You wish to sweat.”
“I wish to suffer.”
“Leave it to me,” the little man said.
The meal was almost too hot to eat. Nominally a lamb curry, its ingredients might have been anything. Lamb, beef, dog, duck. Tofu, shoe leather, balsa wood. Papier-mâché? Plaster of Paris? The searing heat of the cayenne obscured everything else. Keller, forcing himself to finish every bite, loved and hated every minute of it. By the time he was done he was drenched in perspiration, and felt as if he’d just gone ten rounds with a worthy opponent. He felt, too, a sense of accomplishment, and an abiding sense of peace with the world.
Something made him call home to check his answering machine. Two hours later he was on the front porch of the big old house on Taunton Place, sipping a glass of iced tea. Three days after that he was in Indiana.
At the Avis desk at Indy International, Keller turned in the Chevy he’d driven from New York. At the Hertz counter, he picked up the keys to the Ford he’d reserved. He carried his bag to the car, left it in short-term parking, and went back into the airport, remembering to take his bag with him. There was a fellow waiting at baggage claim, wearing the green and gold John Deere cap they’d said he’d be wearing.
“Oh, there you are,” the fellow said, when Keller approached him. “The bags are just starting to come down.”
Keller brandished his carry-on, said he hadn’t checked anything.
“Then I guess you didn’t bring a nail clipper,” the man said, “or a Swiss Army knife. Never mind a bazooka.”
Keller had a Swiss Army knife in his carry-on and a nail clipper in his pocket, attached to his key ring. Since he hadn’t flown anywhere, he’d had no problem. As for the other, well, he had never minded a bazooka in his life, and saw no reason to start now.
“Now let’s get you squared away,” the man said. He was around forty, and lean, except for an incongruous potbelly, as if he’d swallowed a small watermelon. “Quick orientation, drive you around, show you where he lives. We’ll take my car, and when we’re done you can drop me off and keep it.”
The airport was at the southwest corner of Indianapolis, and the man (who’d flipped the John Deere cap into the backseat of his Hyundai squareback, alongside Keller’s carry-on) drove to Carmel, an upscale suburb north of the I-465 beltway. He made a few efforts at conversation, which Keller let wither on the vine, whereupon he gave up and switched on the radio. He kept it tuned to an all-talk station, and right now two opinionated fellows were arguing about the outsourcing of jobs.
Keller thought about turning it off. You’re a hit man, brought in at great expense from out of town, and some gofer picks you up and plays the radio, and you turn it off, what’s he gonna do? Be impressed and a little intimidated, he thought, but decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.
The driver killed the radio himself when they left the interstate and drove through the tree-lined streets of Carmel. Keller paid close attention now, noting street names and landmarks, and taking a good look at the house that was pointed out to him. It was a Dutch Colonial with a mansard roof, he noted, and it reminded him of a house in Roseburg, Oregon.
Funny what you remembered.
When they were done the man asked him if there was anything else he wanted to see, and Keller said there wasn’t. “Then I’ll drive you to my house,” the man said, “and you can drop me off.”
Keller shook his head. “Drop me at the airport,” he said.
“Oh, Jesus,” the man said. “Is something wrong? Did I say the wrong thing?”
Keller looked at him.
“’Cause if you’re backing out, I’m gonna get blamed for it. They’ll have a goddam fit. Is it the location? Because, you know, it doesn’t have to be at his house. It could be anywhere.”
Oh. Keller explained that he didn’t want to use the Hyundai, that he’d pick up a car at the airport. He preferred it that way, he said.
Driving back to the airport, the man obviously wanted to ask why Keller wanted his own car, and just as obviously was afraid to say a word. Nor did he play the radio. The silence was a heavy one, but that was okay with Keller.
When they got there the fellow said he supposed Keller wanted to rent a car. Keller shook his head and directed him to the lot where he’d already stowed the Ford. “Keep going,” he said. “Maybe that one…no, that’s the one I want. Stop here.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Borrow a car,” Keller said.
He’d added the key to his key ring, and now he stood alongside the car and made a show of flipping through keys, finally selecting the one they’d given him. He tried it in the door and, unsurprisingly, it worked. He tried it in the ignition, and it worked there, too. He switched off the ignition and went back to the Hyundai for his carry-on, where the driver, wide-eyed, asked him if he was really going to steal that car.
“I’m just borrowing it,” he said.
“But if the owner reports it-”
“I’ll be done with it by then.” He smiled. “Relax. I do this all the time.”
The fellow started to say something, then changed his mind. “Well,” he said instead. “Look, do you want a piece?”
Was the man offering him a woman? Or, God forbid, offering to supply sexual favors personally? Keller frowned, and then realized the piece in question was a gun. Keller, relieved, shook his head, and said he had everything he needed in his carry-on. Amazing the damage you could inflict with a Swiss Army knife and a nail clipper.
“Well,” the man said again. “Well, here’s something.” He reached into his breast pocket and came out with a pair of tickets. “To the Pacers game,” he said. “They’re playing the Knicks, so you’ll probably get to see the home team win. Tonight, eight sharp. They’re not courtside, but they’re damn good seats. You want, I could dig up somebody to go with you, keep you company.”
Keller said he’d take care of that himself, and the man didn’t seem surprised to hear it.
34
“He’s a witness,” Dot had said, “but apparently nobody’s thought of sticking him in the Federal Witness Protection Program, but maybe that’s because the situation’s not federal. Do you have to be involved in a federal case in order to be protected by the federal government?”
Keller wasn’t sure, and Dot said it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that the witness wasn’t in the program, and wasn’t hidden at all, and that made it a job for Keller, because the client really didn’t want the witness to stand up and testify.