Hit Man - Lawrence Block [71]
“You’re right,” he said. “And who am I to be making that kind of decision, anyway?”
“Spare me the humility,” she said. “Listen, I’m as crazy as you are. I had this idea, call both brokers, have them get in touch with their clients. Explain that due to the exigencies of this particular situation, di dah di dah di dah, we need full payment in advance.”
“You think they’d go for it?”
“If one of them went for it,” she said, “that’d make the decision, wouldn’t it? Knock him off and the other guy’s left alive to pay in full, a satisfied customer.”
“That’s brilliant,” he said, and thought a moment. “Except . . .”
“Ah, you spotted it, didn’t you? The guy who cooperates, the guy who goes the extra mile to be a really good client, he’s the one who gets rewarded by getting killed. I like ironic as much as the next person, Keller, but I decided that’s a little too much for me.”
“Besides,” he said, “with our luck they’d both pay.”
“And we’d be back where we started. Keller?”
“What?”
“All said and done, there’s only one answer. You got a quarter?”
“Probably. Why?”
“Toss it,” she said. “Heads or tails.”
Heads.
Keller picked up the quarter he’d tossed, dropped it into the slot. He dialed a number, and while it rang he wondered at the wisdom of making such a decision on the basis of a coin toss. It seemed awfully arbitrary to him, but then again maybe it was the way of the world. Maybe somewhere up above the clouds there was an old man with a beard making life-and-death decisions in the very same way, tossing coins, shrugging, and passing out train wrecks and heart attacks.
“Let me talk to Mr. Strang,” he told the person who answered. “Just tell him it’s in reference to a recent contract.”
There was a long pause, and Keller dug out another quarter in case the phone needed feeding. Then Strang came on the line. It seemed to Keller that he recognized the voice even though he had never heard it before. The voice was resonant, like an opera singer’s, though hardly musical.
“I don’t know who you are,” Strang said without preamble, “and I don’t discuss business over the phone with people I don’t know.”
Fat, Keller thought. The man sounded fat.
“Very wise,” Keller told him. “Well, we’ve got business to discuss, and I agree it shouldn’t be over the phone. We ought to meet, but nobody should see us together, or even know we’re having the meeting.” He listened for a moment. “You’re the client,” he said. “I was hoping you could suggest a time and a place.” He listened some more. “Good,” he said. “I’ll be there.”
“But it seems irregular,” Strang said, with a whine in his voice that you would never have heard from Pavarotti. “I don’t see the need for this, I really don’t.”
“You will,” Keller told him. “I can promise you that.”
He broke the connection, then opened his hand and looked at the quarter he was holding. He thought for a moment—about the old man in White Plains, and then about the old man up in the sky. The one with the long white beard, the one who tossed coins of his own and ran the universe accordingly. He thought about the turns in his own life, and the way people could walk in and out of it.
He weighed the coin in his palm—it didn’t weigh very much—and he gave it a toss, caught it, slapped it down on the back of his hand.
Tails.
He reached for the phone.
“This time it’s iced tea,” Dot said. “Last time I promised you iced tea and gave you lemonade.”
“It was good lemonade.”
“Well, this is good iced tea, as far as that goes. Made with real tea.”
“And real ice, I’ll bet.”
“You put the tea bags in a jar of cold water,” she said, “and set the jar in the sun, and forget about them for a few hours. Then you put the jar in the fridge.”
“You don’t boil the water at all?”
“No, you don’t have to. For years I thought you did but it turns out I was wrong. But I lost track of what I was getting at. Iced tea. Oh, right. This time you called and said, ‘I’m on my way. Get ready to break out the lemonade.’ So you were expecting lemonade this time, and here I’m giving you