Hit Man - Lawrence Block [47]
“Of what?”
“Of you.”
“Of me?”
“Just tell me you’re not going to hurt me,” she said. “Could you do that?”
“Why would I hurt you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, why would you say something like that?”
“Oh, God,” she said. She put a hand to her mouth and chewed on a knuckle. Her fingernails weren’t polished, just her toenails. Interesting. She said, “When I’m in a relationship I have to be completely honest.”
“Huh?”
“Not that this is a relationship, I mean we just went to bed together once, but I felt we really related, don’t you think?”
Keller wondered what she was getting at.
“So I have to be honest. See, I know what you do.”
“You know what I do?”
“On those trips.”
That was ridiculous. How could she know anything?
“Tell me,” he said.
“I’m afraid to say it.” God, maybe she did know.
“Go ahead,” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“You—”
“Go ahead.”
“You’re an assassin.”
Ooops.
He said, “What makes you think that?”
“I don’t think it,” she said. “I sort of know it. And I don’t know how I know it. I guess I knew it the day I met you. Something about your energy, I guess. It’s kind of intangible, but it’s there.”
“Oh.”
“I sense things about people. Please don’t hurt me.”
“I’ll never hurt you, Andria.”
“I know you mean that,” she said. “I hope it turns out to be true.”
He thought for a moment. “If you think that about me,” he said, “or know it, whatever you want to call it, and if you were afraid I might. . . hurt you—”
“Then why did I come into the bedroom?”
“Right. Why did you?”
She looked right into his eyes. “I couldn’t help myself,” she said.
He felt this sensation in the middle of his chest, as if there had been a steel band around his heart and it had just cracked and fallen away. He reached for her and drew her down.
On the floor at the side of the bed, Nelson slept like a lamb.
In the morning they walked Nelson together. Keller bought the paper and picked up a quart of milk. Back at the apartment, he made a pot of coffee while she put breakfast on the table.
He said, “Look, I’m not good at this, but there are some things I ought to say. The first is that you have nothing to fear from me. My work is one thing and my life is something else. I have no reason to hurt you, and even if I had a reason I wouldn’t do it.”
“I know that.”
“Oh?”
“I was afraid last night. I’m not afraid now.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, the other thing I want to say is that I know you don’t have a place to stay right now, and as far as I’m concerned you can stay here as long as you want. In fact I’d like it if you stayed here. You can even sleep on the couch if you want, assuming that Nelson will allow it. I’m not sure he will, though.”
She considered her reply, and the phone rang. He made a face and answered it.
It was Dot. “Young man,” she said, in an old lady’s quavering voice, “I think you had better pay a call on your kindly old Aunt Dorothy.”
“I just did,” he reminded her. “Just because it was quick and easy doesn’t mean I don’t need a little time off between engagements.”
“Keller,” she said, in her own voice, “get on the next train, will you? It’s urgent.”
“Urgent?”
“There’s a problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you remember saying something about a piece of cake?”
“So?”
“So your cake fell,” Dot said. “Get it?”
There was no one to meet him at the White Plains station so he took a cab to the big Victorian house on Taunton Place. Dot was waiting on the porch. “All right,” she said. “Report.”
“To you?”
“And then I report to him. That’s how he wants it.”
Keller shrugged and reported. Where he’d gone, what he’d done. It took only a few sentences. When he was done he paused for a moment, and then he said, “The woman wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“Neither was the man.”
“How’s that?”
“You killed the wrong people,” she said. “Wait here, Keller, okay? I have to relay this to His Eminence. You want coffee, there’s a fresh pot in the kitchen. Well, a reasonably fresh pot.”
Keller stayed on the porch. There was an old-fashioned glider and he sat on that, gliding back and forth, but