Proactive Keller

Keller's flight from New York to Detroit was bumpy. That was okay. He didn't mind a little turbulence, but the pilot kept announcing every patch of rough air over the intercom and, worse, apologizing for it. By itself the turbulence wasn't that bad, and he could have dozed through it well enough, if the son of a bitch hadn't kept waking him up with announcements.

He hadn't checked a bag, so he hoisted his carry-on and walked straight to where the drivers were waiting and scanned the signs for one bearing the name Bogart. He found it right off the bat, and when his eyes moved from the sign to the man who was holding it, the man was looking right back at him, with an expression on his face that Keller found hard to read.

He was a short, stocky guy who looked as though he spent a lot of time at the gym lifting heavy objects. He said, "Mr. Bogart? Right this way, sir."

He followed the guy out of the terminal to a late-model Lincoln with Ontario plates. The guy triggered a remote to unlock the doors and then opened and held the passenger-side door for Keller, which was unexpected.

So was the presence of the big guy in the backseat.

Keller was already getting into the car when he saw him. He froze and felt a hand on his shoulder urging him forward.

The big guy chuckled, which wasn't what he much wanted to hear, and the short guy–he was too wide and muscular to be thought of as the little guy–told him there was nothing to worry about. "There's a gentleman wants to meet you," he said. "That's all."

His tone was reassuring, but Keller wasn't reassured.

•

They hadn't blindfolded him, so he could have paid attention to the route, but what good was that going to do? He didn't really know the area, and even if he did, geography wasn't likely to be a big factor here.

They got off the beltway and into a suburb and, after several left and right turns, wound up on a tree-shaded dead-end street–the Dead End sign gave him a turn–full of large homes on large lots. The driver pulled into a semicircular driveway and braked at the entrance of an oversize center-hall colonial.

This time the big guy from the backseat opened the door for him. The driver went on ahead and unlocked the front door. The two of them escorted him through a large living room with a fire in the fireplace, down a broad hallway and into what he supposed was a den. It held an enormous TV set, on which a tennis match was being played with the sound off, bookshelves artfully equipped with sets of leather-bound books, a couple of leather chairs and, in one of the chairs, a man with a broad face, pockmarked cheeks, hair like gray Brillo, thin lips, abundant eyebrows and an expression that, like everyone else's since he'd left New York, Keller found hard to read.

But it was a familiar face, somehow. He'd never met this man, so where had he seen his face?

Oh, right.

"I don't suppose your name is Bogart," the man said.

Keller agreed that it wasn't.

"Well, I don't necessarily have to know your name," the man said. "My guess is you already know mine."

"I believe so, yes."

"Prove it."

Prove it? "I believe you're Mr. Horvath," he said.

"Alan Horvath," the man said. "You recognize me, or you just make a good guess?"

"I, uh, recognized you."

"Wha'd they do, send you a picture?" Keller nodded. "And then someone was gonna meet you at the airport, point me out?"

"I think so. The arrangements got a little vague after I was to meet up with the man with the sign."

"Bogart," said the driver, who was stationed at Keller's right, with the big man on his other side. Keller couldn't see the driver's face, but the sneer in his voice was unmistakable.

"Not a name I would have picked," Keller said.

"I always liked Bogart," Horvath said. "But I wouldn't want to be looking for a sign with his name on it, or holding one, either. You were supposed to kill me."

Keller didn't say anything.

"Awww, relax," Horvath said. "You think I've got a beef with you? You took a job, for Chrissake. You couldn't help who hired you. You even know who hired you?"

"They never tell me."

"Well, I can tell you. A little prick named Kevin Dealey hired you. Guess what happened to him."

Keller had a pretty good idea.

"The point is," Horvath told him, "you don't have a client anymore. So the job's canceled. You're no longer required to kill me."

"Good," Keller said.

Somehow that struck Horvath funny, and the men flanking Keller joined in the laughter. When it died down Horvath said, "He talked a little, Kevin Dealey did, before we fixed it so he couldn't. Told us what flight you'd be on and all about the Bogart bullshit. First thought I had, Phil and Norman here meet you at the airport, turn you around and send you back to New York. Hi there, Mr. Bogart, services no longer required, have a nice return flight, blah blah blah. Put you on the plane, wave good-bye, and you go back to your quotidian life."

Keller's face must have shown something, because Horvath grinned at him. "Quotidian. Means ordinary, everyday. I read books. Not all the ones you see, but plenty. You a reader yourself?"

"Some."

"Yeah? What else do you do? When you're not flying off to Detroit."

Keller told him.

"Stamps," Horvath said. "I had a collection when I was a kid. I don't know what the hell ever happened to it. That's a great pastime, collecting stamps."

They talked a little about stamps, and Keller was beginning to believe they weren't going to kill him. If you were planning on killing a man, would you start telling him about the stamps you collected as a kid?

"Where was I?" Horvath said and answered his own question. "Oh, right, meet you at the airport, turn you around and send you home. Thing is, why would you believe Phil and Normie? But if you meet the putative victim in his own house, that makes it clear-cut. So now I'll shake your hand because for all I know the day may come when I have to hire you myself, and I got no hard feelings against you and hope you don't resent me for keeping you from completing your job. You get paid something in front?"

"Half."

"That's what Dealey said, but he was never the kind of fellow whose word you could take to the bank. Well, that's all you get, but the bright side is you get to keep it without having to earn it. You can buy yourself some stamps."

•

"You say that all the time," Keller said.

"I do?"

"'You can buy yourself some stamps.' When you hand me my share or when you let me know the money's arrived. 'Here you go, Keller-buy yourself some stamps.'"

"It does have a familiar ring to it," Dot allowed. "I didn't realize I said it all the time."

"Actually it's nice," he said. "And it'll echo in my mind when I'm looking over a price list and trying to decide whether to order something. I hear your voice in my head telling me I can buy myself some stamps, and it gives me permission to be extravagant."

"The roles we play in each other's lives," Dot said, "and we're not even aware of it. Who says there's no divine order to the universe?"

"Not me," said Keller.

They were in White Plains, sitting at the kitchen table in Dot's big old house on Taunton (continued on page 136)Keller(continued from page 74) Place. She'd made coffee for him and was herself sipping her usual glass of iced tea.

"Well," she said. "Must have been scary."

"What I was afraid of," he said, "was that there was a way out of it but that I couldn't see it. So if I got killed, on top of being dead it'd be my own fault."

"I think I see what you mean."

"But it turned out I was worried about nothing, because all he wanted to do was let me know the game had changed."

"And here you are," she said. "And I've evidently said this before, but I'll say it again, Keller: Now you can buy yourself some stamps."

"But not as many as I'd like."

"Halfa loaf may be better than none," she agreed, "but it's not as good as the whole enchilada. Are you hurting for dough?"

"I wouldn't say hurting. But I was sort of counting on the money."

"I know the feeling. I wish I had work for you, Keller, but all I can do is sit back like a good spider and see what flies into the web. The jobs have to come to us."

"Maybe."

She gave him a look.

"On the trip to Detroit," he said, "I flew first-class. It's a funny thing about sitting in the front of the plane. You've got more legroom, and the seats are wider, with more space between you and the person sitting next to you. You'd think that would be a distancing factor, but people in first are much more likely to get into conversations. In coach you sit there with your knees jammed against the seat in front of you, trying to keep your elbow from pushing the other guy's elbow off the shared armrest, and you crawl in a cocoon and stay there until the plane's back on the ground."

"But in first class you turn into Chatty Cathy?"

"Not on the flight out," he said, "but on the way back, the guy next to me started talking the minute we got off the ground."

"This is when I get to relax," the man had said for openers. "When I'm in a plane and the plane's in the air. I never even think about crashing. Never even consider the possibility. Do you?"

"Not until just now," Keller said.

"What I do," the man went on, "is I leave my troubles on the ground. Except this is one of those days when I just don't think it'll work. Because I can't shake the thought that in two hours we'll be back on the ground and I'm in the same pile of crap as always."

The fellow didn't look like someone who spent much time in a pile of crap. He was a businessman, obviously, and in his early 40s or thereabouts. Keller guessed he'd played a minor sport in college-track, maybe-and had eaten well since then. He wasn't jowly yet, but he was on his way. "I'm from New York," he announced. "Yourself?"

"The same," Keller said.

"Live in the city itself? Manhattan?"

Keller nodded.

"Me too. Moved back after the divorce."

"I was never married," Keller said, "so I never left. Manhattan, I mean."

"Right. Name's Harrelson, Claude Harrelson."

"Pleased to know you," Keller said and then realized it was now his turn to tell who he was. "Eric Fischvogel," he said, supplying the name he was flying under, the name on the ID and credit cards he was carrying.

"Fischvogel," Harrelson said. "German?"

There was a lot to be said, Keller sometimes thought, for false ID with a name like Johnson or Brooks, something simple and unremarkable. "It means fish bird," he said. "In fact one branch of the family changed it to Osprey."

"Really? Well, Eric, it's a pleasure to meet you."

"Pleasure's mine."

The flight attendant came along with the cart, and Harrelson asked for a bloody mary. Keller thought about having a beer, but something made him ask for a Coke instead. She asked if Pepsi was all right, and he said it would be fine.

"I wonder," Harrelson said, "what would have happened if you told her no, Pepsi wasn't all right and you had to have Coke. I mean, we're at what, 35,000 feet? It's pretty much like it or lump it, wouldn't you say?"

"That's a point."

Harrelson took a moment to work on his drink, then looked at Keller over the brim. "Eric," he said, "mind a question?"

Which, Keller thought, was a little like asking him if Pepsi was all right, because how could he say no?

In any event, Harrelson didn't wait for an answer. "Eric," he said, "have you ever wanted to kill somebody?"

•

"Now that's a hell of a question," Dot said. "I thought all men talked about was sports and the stock market."

"It shook me," he admitted, "coming out of the blue like that. What I said was I supposed everybody felt like that from time to time. When some clown cuts you off in traffic, say. But we learn to suppress those impulses, and they pass."

'Just who the hell did you think you were, Keller? Dr. Phil?"

"Well, I didn't know what to say. But he wasn't talking about getting cut off in traffic or momentary impulses. He was serious."

•

"My business partner," Harrelson was saying. "We've got this little company, merchandising generic pharmaceuticals. We were both in the field, and I was a born salesman, and he's the kind of guy who makes the trains run on time. We were both itching to go out on our own, and we figured the two of us would be a good fit, Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside."

"And you were wrong?"

"No, we were absolutely right. We showed a profit the first year, and both our sales and our net have gone up every year since."

"That's great."

"Yeah, it's just peachy."

Keller looked at him.

"We were never like buddy-buddy, see. But we got along. I was on the road most of the time and he never left the city, so we didn't spend that much time looking at each other. Then he started nailing our secretary."

"A bad thing, eh?"

"I suppose it's never good policy," Harrelson said, "but I can't be too critical here because I was schtupping her myself."

"Oh."

"I'm not really clear who started first," he said, "but she was having affairs with both of us. Overlapping affairs, except that's probably not a good word to use here. Or maybe it is. She was...nice."

"I see."

"And it was okay, Eric. I mean, if neither of us knew the other was boinking her, what difference did it make? I certainly didn't figure I was the only man in her life, and anyway, I wouldn't have wanted to be. I mean, I was a married guy. I was on the road more often than not. I only had limited time for her, and what did I want with the responsibility?"

"It makes sense," Keller said.

"But then Chandra lost it."

"That was her name? Chandra?"

"That was her name," Harrelson said, "and she lost it big-time. She went public, and by the time it was over, my wife had left me, and his wife had left him, and we had two nasty divorces going on, and Barry and I weren't speaking."

"Barry's your partner."

"My partner," Harrelson said heavily. "You can divorce your wife. You can't divorce your partner."

•

"They wound up stuck with each other," he told Dot. "By now they both hate each odier, I mean really hate each other, and neither can buy the other out. And the company's all either of them has, and neither one of them can walk away from it."

"Couldn't they sell it?"

"I asked him that. I wasn't going to mention it just now because I figured you'd ask me who the hell I thought I was, Suze Orman? He explained why they couldn't, and the gist of it was that the business didn't have a lot of assets. It's only worth the profit it returns, and it only does that when they're running it. So it's worth far more to them than it would be to another buyer."

"I'll take your word for it," she said. "You know, Keller, I'm beginning to see where this is going."

•

"I swear I'd kill him," Harrelson said. "Except there's no way on earth I could get away with it. Who's got a motive here? Besides, look at me. I don't even like swatting flies. And spiders—my wife would get creeped out when she saw a spider, and she'd want me to kill it. I'd take it outside and release it. I mean, what have I got against spiders?"

Keller, who had nothing against spiders himself, nodded encouragingly.

"Barry Blyden," Harrelson said, "is a different matter altogether."

•

"Strangers on a plane," Dot said. "Like the Hitchcock movie, except at 35,000 feet. I don't suppose you gave him your card, told him you worked for a first-dass removal service."

"No."

"He said he wanted his partner dead, and you left it at that."

"Right."

"The plane landed, and you went your separate ways."

"Right."

She frowned. "So you're telling me this just to let me know that there are a lot of people out there who want other people dead? You want to be proactive, don't you? You want this Harrelson to hire us?"

"Well," he said.

She gave him a look. "He's met you," she said. "He knows who you are."

"He knows my name's Eric Fischvogel."

"He saw your face."

"He barely looked at it."

"He's in New York. He travels a lot, but his partner's here in New York, right? And he's Mr. Inside; he stays put."

"That's right."

"Two things we try to avoid," she said, "are working for people who know who we are and working close to home."

"Sometimes we don't have any choice."

"But in this case," she said, "we do." She looked long and hard at him. "You want to do this, don't you? In spite of everything."

"Well, I could use the work," he said. "And I could use the money. I want to take the next step, see where it goes."

•

Keller, wearing jeans and a Mets warm-up jacket, stood near a water fountain in Central Park. On the phone, he'd designated a particular park bench, and he'd stationed himself where he could keep an eye on it. He'd set the meeting time for 10 P.M., and Claude Harrelson, wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase, was two minutes early.

Keller watched him walk right to the bench and sit down. The man didn't look around at all, but there was something furtive about him all the same. Keller circled around, came up behind Harrelson and stood there for a moment.

"Don't turn around," Keller said quietly, and Harrelson started visibly but didn't turn. "I don't want to see your face, and I don't want you to see mine. I'm going to touch you, though, because I need to make sure you're not wearing a wire."

Then he talked, explaining just what was on offer here. He had a friend, an associate, who would undertake to solve Harrelson's problem. "He won't know your name," Keller assured him, "and you won't know his, and you'll never meet him, so there'll be nothing to connect the two of you."

"I like that part," Harrelson said.

"So? Have you had enough time to think it over?"

"God knows I've been thinking about it," Harrelson said. "I haven't been able to think of anything else. For all this time I've wanted him dead, I've had fantasies of killing him in dozens of different ways. Smashing his skull with a baseball bat, stabbing him, shooting him, running him over with a car. You can't imagine."

Keller, who had done all those things and more at one time or another, figured he could imagine well enough. But he didn't say anything.

"But it was never real," Harrelson went on. "It was safe to have fantasies like that because I knew it was all they were, just fantasies. Fantasies never got anybody killed."

Keller wasn't too sure about that, but he let it go.

"Now it's real," Harrelson said. "At least I think it's real. I mean, for all I know, you could be wearing a wire. How do I know I'm not being entrapped?"

How did you answer something like that? Keller decided a solemn approach was indicated. "You have my word," he said.

"Oh."

"I think you're probably a good judge of character, Claude. I think you know my word is good."

Harrelson, who still had not turned to look at him, considered the point and nodded. "Then it's real," he said. "I have a chance at getting what I've been wishing for all this time. Just because I was indiscreet enough to get on a plane and tell my troubles to the guy sitting next to me. I don't ordinarily do that."

"I don't ordinarily listen," Keller said, "and I certainly don't ordinarily try to drum up business for my friend. But I'm a pretty good judge of character myself. I somehow sensed I could trust you."

"That's good of you to say that."

"You'll be out of town when it happens," Keller went on. "My friend's very good at making things look accidental, so the police may not even bother with you."

"The police?"

"If they ask you questions, you just say you don't know anything. If they push it, you refuse to answer any more questions without a lawyer."

"One thing I've learned, ever since my divorce, is I don't do anything without a lawyer."

Just don't bring him along to the park, Keller thought. He said, "The money. If you want to make the initial payment now, we can put this into play."

"Oh."

"Is there a problem?"

"Well, it's just that I didn't bring it,"

Harrelson said. "Carrying cash to the park at night, well, it sort of goes against the grain, if you know what I mean."

"I know what you mean. What's in the briefcase?"

"Nohing but papers," he said. "I don't know why I brought it. Force of habit, I guess."

•

"All I had to do was mention the briefcase," he said, "and he was hugging it like a long-lost brother. He had the money. He just didn't want to turn it over."

"Let's hope it was just money," Dot said, "and not a tape recorder. Don't look like that, Keller. You're not a deer, and I'm not a headlight. I'm sure it was money. He brought it along, and then he got second thoughts."

"That's what it felt like."

"You figure he's searching his soul, Keller?"

"Maybe."

"I have to say it's easier when the clients come to us. Whatever soul-searching they have to do, they've already done it by the time they get in touch. Now he's going out of town again?"

"For a couple of days. I'll call him when he gets back and arrange another meeting, and either he'll bring the cash or he won't."

"Like eggplant ice cream," she said.

"Huh?"

"Either I'll have some for breakfast tomorrow," she said, "or I won't. I have to say the odds are pretty good I won't. Keller, you know what you could have done? You could have conked him over the head and walked off with the briefcase. We'd have half the money, and you wouldn't even have to kill anybody."

"I thought of that later," he admitted. "And the first thought I had-and it's kind of silly-is that's not what I do. I'm not a mugger."

"You've got your code of honor."

"I don't know about codes, and I'm pretty sure honor hasn't got anything to do with it. But it's just not what I do. I told you it was silly."

•

By the time Harrelson showed up, at the same park bench they'd used the first time, Keller had been waiting almost 45 minutes. Harrelson wasn't late-if anything he was a couple of minutes early-but Keller had wanted to make sure there weren't any surprises.

While he waited, trying to be unobtrusive without looking unobtrusive, a man and woman came along and sat down on the appointed bench. Keller couldn't hear what they were saying, but from what he could see they weren't picking out names for their unborn children. The woman looked on the brink of tears, and the man looked as though he wanted to give her something to cry about.

After 10 or 12 minutes of disagreement, the woman sprang to her feet, turned on her heel and stalked off into the night. "Ignorant cunt," the man said to himself (but just loud enough for Keller to hear it) and eventually stood up, yawned, stretched and set off in the opposite direction.

Other park visitors passed the bench, but nobody else sat on it until Harrelson appeared. He looked around carefully, reminding Keller of a dog turning around three times before lying down. Then he sat, and Keller moved to approach him from the rear.

"Claude," he said softly. "How was your trip?"

"Oh," Harrelson said. "You startled me. I wasn't expecting...well, that's not true; of course I was expecting you, but——"

"Right," Keller said. "Claude, let me ask you straight-out. Do you want to go through with this?"

"Of course I do."

"Hold still." He frisked the man, wondering what he'd do if he actually found a wire. But he didn't, so what did it matter?

"What makes you think——"

"That you might have had second thoughts? Well, you didn't bring your briefcase, so I'm taking a wild guess that you didn't bring the money, either."

"The money's in an envelope," he said. "In my inside jacket pocket."

Harrelson made no move to get it, and Keller wondered if he was supposed to reach for it himself. He wasn't sure it was something he wanted to do. It was one thing to frisk a man and another thing altogether to pick his pocket.

"The envelope," he prompted.

"Oh, right," Harrelson said, as if he hadn't thought of the envelope in days. He reached for it and paused with his hand inside his jacket. "When I give you the money," he said, "it's on, right?"

"Right."

"But it has to wait until I'm out of town."

"So tell me your schedule."

"Well, it varies," Harrelson said. "I'm back and forth all the time. That's why I need a way to get in touch with you."

He didn't really, as far as Keller could see, but he thought he did, and maybe that amounted to the same thing. Keller reached into his own pocket, extended his hand. "Here," he said. "No, don't turn around. And don't unwrap it now. It's a cell phone."

"I already have a cell phone."

No kidding, Keller thought. "This is untraceable," he said. "It's prepaid, and the only diing you can use it for is to call me at the number written on the wrapper. That's the number of my untraceable cell phone, which I'll only use to talk to you."

"Like a pair of walkie-talkies," Harrelson said.

"There you go. You call me when you need to, and I'll call you if I need to, and as soon as our business is done we can throw both phones down a storm drain and forget the whole thing. Don't lose the number."

"I won't. Incidentally, what's the number of my phone?"

"You don't need to know that. I mean, you're not going to call yourself, are you?"

"No, but——"

"And you're not going to give out the number, because the only person who's going to have it is me. Right?"

"Right."

"So all I need now," Keller reminded him, "is the envelope."

•

"He only had half," Dot said. "Well, that was the deal, right? Half in front?"

"He had half of half. Half of what he was supposed to have."

"In other words, 25 percent of the total price."

"Bingo."

"I hope you took it."

"If it was going to be in somebody's pocket," he said, "I figured it was better off in mine. But it's still only half of what it's supposed to be."

"Call it a good-faith deposit," Dot said. "When's he going to come up with the rest?"

"He was thinking maybe never."

"Huh?"

"Cash is evidently a problem for him these days," he said, "and he made the point that raising the money might leave a paper trail that could be suspicious. If the cops take a good look at him and he's just liquidated assets and can't account for where the money went——"

"So you're supposed to do the job for a quarter of the price?"

"After it's all done," he said, "and Barry Blyden's out of the picture, he'll have access to all the company funds. At that point he'll pay everything he owes, plus a bonus if the death passes for accidental."

"What, like double indemnity?"

"Sort of. Not double, but a bonus. I didn't get into numbers, because it seemed to me the whole business was a little hypothetical."

"I'll say. Keller, tell me you didn't agree to do it for 25 percent down."

"Tell me you got a phone call from somebody in Seattle or Sioux Falls," he said, "and we got a real offer from a real client."

"I wish."

"So do I, but meanwhile I've got an envelope full of his cash, and I figure I can get started, you know? I can get a line on Blyden, track his movements, figure out his pattern and make my plans."

"I suppose it can't hurt. What's that?"

"My phone," Keller said and answered it. "Yes," he whispered into it. "Yes. Right." He rang off and told Dot that Harrelson was leaving town first thing in the morning. "Not that he has to be away for me to do a little reconnaissance."

"You whispered because voiceprints don't work with whispers."

"Right."

"So why are you still whispering, Keller?"

"Oh," he said aloud. "I didn't realize."

•

Five days later he was in White Plains again.

"It felt good to be working again," he told Dot. "Getting a look at the guy, tracking his movements, starting to put a plan together. He's not going to be easy."

"Oh?"

"He seems to lead a pretty regular life," he said, "which can make things easy or difficult, depending. It's easy because you know where he'll be, but it's not necessarily easy to get to him. He's always at his office or in his apartment or on the way from one to the other. The office building has the kind of security procedures that used to be reserved for the Pentagon, and the apartment building is one of those Park Avenue fortresses with 24-hour doormen and elevator attendants and security cameras all over the place."

"How does he get from point A to point B?"

"He has a car service. The same driver every time, as far as I can see. Car pulls up in front of his apartment building in the morning, drops him at his office. Works the same way at night."

"What happens when he goes to a restaurant?"

"He eats lunch at his desk, orders in from somewhere or other. Same thing at night. Either he works late, which he does most of the time, or he goes home and orders dinner delivered."

"Workaholic, it sounds like."

"Assuming he's working. Maybe he goes to the office and puts his feet up, watches soap operas on a plasma TV."

"Maybe. Didn't he have an affair with somebody? Isn't that how all of this got started?"

"At the office. They were both having an affair with their secretary."

"So you'd do what, lurk outside his apartment building? Or lurk outside the office?"

"I'd have to time it just right."

"You'd swoop in, catch him between the car and the door and disappear before anybody can get a good look at you."

"Something like that."

"There's an awful lot that can go wrong, Keller."

"I know."

"And it's right here in New York. I can't say I like it. Maybe we should pull the plug on this one."

"Maybe we don't have to," he said. "Our client already did."

•

Dot's fingers drummed the tabletop. "He wants the money back," she said.

"He said it as if he really expected to get it," Keller told her, "but he's essentially a salesman, and that would make him an optimist, wouldn't it?"

"Evidently."

"I told him I didn't think it was possible. That I'd already passed the money on and that it wasn't like a refundable deposit."

"Why did he want to call it off? Money?"

"Cold feet."

"But while he was at it, he thought he'd ask for his money back. It was interesting, everything you said a few minutes ago about how you'd make your move on Blyden, but why bother telling me? If it's all off"

"It's off until he tells me it's on again."

"Oh."

"Because he's going to call me in the next couple days and let me know. Cash flow is evidently a big consideration."

"It always is."

"He says he'll be in touch," he said, "and.. Jesus, how's that for timing?"

"Timing?"

He drew the phone from his pocket, looked at the screen, frowned.

•

"I didn't know there was such a thing as an angry whisper," Dot said. "You were whispering, and it sounded for all the world as if you were shouting."

"He called me from his hotel," he said. "Through the hotel switchboard or whatever it is when you dial direct from your room."

"Because he lost the phone you gave him?"

"Misplaced it, I guess you'd say. He knew it was somewhere in the room, but he couldn't find it."

"So you called him back, and when it rang he found it. It's good he didn't have it set to vibrate. I gather we're back on the case."

"More or less."

"And you told him he has to come up with another 25 percent in front."

"He'll be back the end of the week," he said, "and he'll have the money then."

"And the final payment? Is he going to be able to swing it?"

"He says it's no problem. I think that means he'll deal with it when the time comes."

"In other words, stall us."

He nodded. "He knows he'll have plenty of cash when his partner's dead and the situation with the company is settled. And I suppose he figures we can wait, because what else are we going to do?"

"Clients," Dot said.

"I know."

"If it weren't for the clients, this would be the perfect business, wouldn't it? Lucrative, challenging and with enough variety built in that you'd never get bored."

"There's the moral aspect," Keller said.

"Well, that's true."

"But you get over that. And the reaction, the bad feeling, it becomes familiar, you know? 'Oh, right, I've felt like this before. I know it'll go away.' And it does."

"So do the clients, sooner or later. The guy in Detroit, he went away before you could do the work."

"Don't remind me."

"Usually," she said, "we don't even know who the client is, and that's ideal. And when we work directly, well, some clients are okay. But some are all wrong."

"Like this one," he said. "I'll tell you, the target's no bargain either."

They looked at each other.

"Keller," she said, "aren't you the naughty boy."

"Huh? I didn't say anything."

"It was the way you didn't say it. It spoke volumes." She cocked her head. "And it makes sense. I'll see what I can do."

•

On balance, Keller would have liked to be going somewhere other than Detroit. Houston, St. Louis, Omaha, Cheyenne—almost anywhere, really. The flight was fine, he had to admit, but on his way out he kept looking around for a sign reading Bogart.

There was none of course. He went to the Hertz desk and picked up the car he'd reserved as Eric Fischvogel. The mall in Farmington Hills was pretty much a straight shot north from the airport. It was huge, of course, but one of the anchor stores was a Sears, and that's where they'd arranged to meet. Harrelson would park nearby and walk to the store's main entrance, and Keller would swing by and pick him up.

There was no one loitering in the appointed spot when Keller got there, and that was fine. He parked near the rear entrance, spent five minutes in the store, then moved the car to a spot with a good view of the front door.

Harrelson was a few minutes late, and Keller watched him for two or three additional minutes, watched as he paced, glanced at his watch, looked here and there and paced some more. If he was trying to look anxious, he was doing a good job of it.

Keller hit his speed dial.

Harrelson, looking startled now, patted his pockets until he found the phone. He said, "I'm here. Where are you?"

"Walk to your car," Keller whispered. "I'll meet you there."

"Oh. But I thought——"

Keller rang off. He got out of his car and watched while Harrelson gathered his resolve, such as it was, and headed for his car. Keller took a parallel aisle and had no trouble tracking the man.

"There you are," Harrelson said.

"Here I am."

You know, I'd forgotten what your voice sounded like. All that whispering over the phone. Is that necessary, do you think?"

"Just a precaution. It's sort of automatic."

"For you, I guess. Me, I'm not cut out for this type of thing. I'll be glad when it's over."

Keller couldn't argue with that. He asked about the money.

"Oh, right," Harrelson said. "You know, it's a shame you had to come all this way just to pick up the money."

"You don't have it?"

"Oh, I've got it. But it would have saved you a trip to give it to you in New York."

"Security," Keller said. "Probably an unnecessary precaution, but the chance of our being seen together in the city was a risk they didn't want me to run."

"They," Harrelson said.

"Right."

"Well," he said and drew an envelope from his breast pocket. Keller took it, and there was a comforting thickness to it.

"I'm going home Friday," Harrelson said. "I don't suppose you'll be staying that long."

"I won't be staying at all," Keller told him. "I'm going straight back to the airport."

"You fly in and you fly right back out again."

That was Detroit for you. He nodded, and Harrelson said, "The thing is,I go back on Friday. Now we agreed I shouldn't be in town when it happened,And——"

"You won't be. It'll be all taken care of before then."

"Oh."

"In fact," Keller said, improvising, "I'll make the call right now. I wouldn't be surprised if it's all wrapped up before the sun goes down."

"Wow."

Keller punched in a few numbers at random, then watched as the phone slipped from his fingers and tumbled to the pavement. "Hell," he said. "Just what I needed. Get that for me, will you?" And he reached for his hip pocket even as Harrelson bent obligingly to retrieve the phone.

•

"I guess the English would call it a spanner," he said.

"And what would we call it, Keller?" "A wrench." He held his hand palm up as if weighing the tool in his hand. "A monkey wrench, actually. Sears has this line, Craftsman tools. Quality at a price. Guaranteed for life, if you can believe that."

"Whose life?"

"Well," he said.

He'd drawn the heavy wrench from his hip pocket and swung it in an arc at Harrelson, who never saw it coming and consequently never knew what hit him. The first blow probably killed the man, but Keller made sure with two more, then scanned the area for bystanders before stooping to go through the dead man's pockets. He dug out Harrelson's calfskin wallet, took the cash and the credit cards and tucked the near-empty wallet under the dead man's extended right arm. He found a cell phone and pocketed it but kept searching until he turned up a second phone, the one he'd given Harrelson. He loaded his pockets with everything he'd taken from Harrelson, used Harrelson's pocket handkerchief to wipe anything he might have touched and was in his car and on his way out of the lot before anyone walked down that aisle and spotted the body.

"There's a bridge over the Detroit River," he said, "but on the other side of it you've got Windsor, Ontario. It's strange because you actually drive south across the bridge, so you're going south to get from the United States to Canada."

"And then I'll bet you drove north to get back."

"I would have," he said, "but I decided not to take the bridge in the first place, because who knows what kind of records they keep. The Canadian border used to be like crossing a state line, but that's different these days."

"Like everything else. So you settled for a storm drain?"

"I liked the idea of the river. And it turned out there's a bridge a little ways south of the city that runs to Grosse He, which is an island in the Detroit River between the U.S. and Canada. The bridge is free, no toll, nobody checking license plates. And not much traffic. I drove across it, turned around, and halfway back I stopped the car and threw three cell phones and a Craftsman wrench over the rail."

"Why three cell phones? Oh, two from him and the one you used for calling him."

He nodded. "It bothered me a little, tossing the wrench. Lifetime guarantee and all."

"We've got a Sears right here in White Plains, Keller. You can always pick up a replacement."

"What for?"

"I don't know. Maybe it would come in handy when you're playing with your stamps. What's the matter, aren't you going to correct me?"

"Correct you?"

"Tell me you don't play with your stamps, you work with them."

He shrugged.

"Something the matter, Keller? You in a mood?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"What's wrong? The job's done, the loose ends are tied off, and we got paid. Got paid time and a half, since Barry Blyden paid the whole amount, and Harrelson's in no position to request a refund of his deposit." She sipped her iced tea and grinned over the brim of the glass. "Like I always say, Keller, now you can buy yourself some stamps."

"I guess."

"I'd say you're definitely in a mood."

"I think you're right."

She thought about it. "You met the guy, you got to know him, and then you had to do him. There was a personal element to it, and that's what bothers you."

He thought about it, shook his head. "No," he said. "I don't think so. Yes, I met him, and yes, I got to know him, but the more I got to know him, the less I liked him. I wouldn't say it was a pleasure to kill him, but it was satisfying and not just in the sense of the satisfaction of a job well-done."

"He was a pain in the neck."

"He was."

"But?"

"I solicited him, Dot. He ran his mouth on the plane, but he wasn't really looking to kill his partner. I put the idea into his head. That's why he kept dragging his feet and being a pain. He never would have been a client if I hadn't pitched him."

"You went proactive."

"And then, when he became difficult to deal with——"

"Try impossible, Keller."

"You went to his partner and Harrelson stopped being the client and became the target. It seems——"

"Strange?"

"Strange," he agreed. "And, I don't know. Inappropriate."

"I'll give you strange," she said. "But I'm not signing on for inappropriate."

"No?"

"No. He was the target from the beginning. It just took us a while to realize it."

"I don't follow you."

"You sat next to him on the plane," she said, "and he appointed you his designated psychotherapist and poured his heart out to you, and you saw an opportunity."

"I was looking for one."

"And you recognized this one when you saw it. You came home, and you got the idea of turning proactive, and you approached Harrelson."

"Right."

"And that was your mistake."

"Turning proactive."

"No," she said. "Actually that was brilliant, because we needed the money and you were going stale for lack of work. The mistake was you approached the wrong man. You should have gone straight to Blyden."

"It never occurred to me."

"Of course it didn't. But when you think about it, it becomes obvious. Harrelson met you, he sat next to you on the plane, he heard your voice and saw your face. He's got a name to go with the face, even if it's not yours. It's a risk, working for somebody who knows that much about you."

"I know."

"Besides," she went on, "Blyden's tough to kill. He's in New York all the time, which means violating the don't-crap-where-you-eat rule. And he's got this routine that makes him very hard to get at."

"I'd have found a way."

"But it wouldn't have been easy. Whereas Harrelson——"

"Was in a different city every week."

"Exactly. And Blyden has never seen your face or heard your voice, and never will. He's heard my voice, but he doesn't know who I am or how to reach me, and he doesn't seem to care. All he had to know was that the partner he hated was planning to have him killed, and he was happy to spend a few dollars to turn the tables."

"And he's not going to talk about it," Keller said, "because he's Mr. Inside. He won't spill the beans to the guy sitting next to him on the plane, because he's not going to be on the plane in the first place."

"There you go."

"And you're right," he said. "Going proactive was fine, but my mistake was I didn't see the whole picture. I should have gone straight to Blyden."

"No."

"No?"

"You should have come straight to me," she said, "and I should have gone straight to Blyden."

"You're right."

"But it came out all right," she said, "and they tell me that's all that matters. You feel better about it now?"

"I think so," he said. "I guess I'll go buy some stamps."

"Keller," she said, "you took the words right out of my mouth."

Keller was Beginning to Believe they weren't Going to Kill him. If You were Planning on Killing a Man, Would You start Telling him about the Stamps You Collected as a Kid?