Hit List - Lawrence Block [127]
“And then?”
“Oh.”
“Right, and the people downstairs banged on her door, and when that didn’t work they called the cops. It’s a way to let the client know the job’s been done. You don’t have to wait for the smell to tip off the neighbors. You should have thought of that in Salt Lake City.”
“It wasn’t a consideration,” he said. “Besides, it was a house in the suburbs. The tub overflows, the water winds up in the basement.”
Dot nodded. “Could run for days before anybody noticed.”
“I suppose.”
“Waste all that water. Bad enough anywhere, but in Salt Lake City? That’s the desert, isn’t it?”
“Well,” he said.
“Right,” she said. “Who cares? All water over the dam, or through the floorboards. How’d we get on this, anyway? Oh, right, you wanted to know how she died.”
“What I wanted,” he said, “was to kill the man who killed her. And that doesn’t make any sense, Dot. If you look at it in a certain way, I was the person who killed her.”
“Because if you never got involved with her . . .”
“It’s more direct than that. I was the client, I ordered the hit on her.”
“If you want to be technical,” she said, “I was the one who ordered it and set it up.”
“Maybe deep down I was angry at you,” he said, “and at myself, but that wasn’t how it felt. I sat there in the plane and I hated the guy, Dot. Him and his toupee and his fake mustache and his costume changes. He did just what I’d wanted him to do, what we were paying him to do, and I hated him for it.”
“I sort of get it,” she said.
“And the other one, Roger, had given us the slip. We went through all this and Roger slept through it, or whatever he did, and he’s still out there for us to worry about. Maybe he was lurking on Crosby Street when the neighbor called the cops, maybe he saw them bring her body out. I didn’t have a shot at Roger, but I had a shot at this bastard that I hated. So I took it.” He shook his head. “Roger’s home by now, cursing his luck. He doesn’t know I did his dirty work for him.”
“How’d you do it, Keller?”
“Followed him to the smoking lounge and stabbed him.”
“Stabbed him?”
“I leaned forward so he could light my cigarette, and I had a knife in my hand, and next thing you knew it was in his chest.”
“A knife.”
“Right.”
“How’d you get it through airport security?”
“It was already there.”
She looked at him.
“I had to fly first class,” he said, “and they serve you a real meal there, as if you were in a restaurant. Cloth napkin, china cup and plate, and metal utensils. When I was done eating, I put the knife in my pocket.”
“You were already planning to do it.”
“What struck me,” he said, “was this was a way to arm yourself after you had cleared the metal detector. At this point there was still a chance I’d find Roger waiting for us at Jacksonville.”
“And you could attack him with your butter knife.”
“It wasn’t a butter knife.”
“No, it was just the sort of thing Davy Crockett killed a bear with.”
“It had a serrated edge,” he said. “You could cut meat with it.”
“My God,” Dot said. “And they let just anybody have these lethal weapons? You’d think they’d fingerprint you before they passed them out.”
“Well, it worked just fine,” he said. “Went between the ribs and into the heart, and he wouldn’t have died any faster if I’d used a twelve-inch Bowie. There were a couple of women yakking away at the other end of the smoking lounge, and they didn’t notice a thing.”
“And you got rid of the knife.”
“And the cigarettes.”
“And spent a few days in Jacksonville, thinking about it.”
“That’s right.”
“Didn’t pick up a phone.”
“I thought about it.”
“Well, that’s the next best thing, isn’t it? If thoughts had wings, I could have heard them flapping. Instead I figured you were dead.”
“I’m sorry, Dot.”
“I figured Roger got you and the hitter both. Figured the bastard turned the hat trick.”
“The hat trick is three,” he said.
“I know that, Keller. The old man was a hockey fan, remember? Knew the names of all the Rangers back to the first year of the franchise. I used to watch hockey matches with him.”
“I didn’t know you were a fan.