Hit List

for in the directory.”
    “Wasn’t his name there?”
    “I don’t know,” he said, “because I didn’t go in for a close look, not knowing what to look for. Aside from his own name, I mean. Like if there’s a company name listed, I wouldn’t know what company.”
    “Unless it was the Hirschhorn Company.”
    “Well,” he said.
    “Does it matter, Keller?”
    “Probably not,” he said, “or I would have figured out a way to learn what I had to know. Anyway, I ruled out going to the office.”
    “So why are you calling me, Keller?”
    “Well,” he said.
    “Not that I don’t welcome the sound of your voice, but is there a point to all this?”
    “Probably not. I had trouble getting to sleep, there were Hell’s Angels partying upstairs.”
    “What kind of place are you staying at, Keller?”
    “They gave me a new room. Dot, do we know anything about the guy?”
    “If I know it, so do you. Where he lives, where he works—“
    “Because he seems so white-bread suburban, and yet he’s got enemies who give you a car with a gun in the glove compartment. And a spare clip.”
    “So you can shoot him over and over again. I don’t know, Keller, and I’m not even sure the person who called me knows, but if I had to come up with one word it would be gambling.”
    “He owes money? They fly in a shooter over a gambling debt?”
    “That’s not where I was going. Are there casinos there?”
    “There’s a race track,” he said.
    “No kidding, Keller. The Kentucky Derby, di dah di dah di dah, but that’s in the spring. City’s on a river, isn’t it? Have they got one of those riverboat casinos?”
    “Maybe. Why?”
    “Well, maybe they’ve got casino gambling and he wants to get rid of it, or they want to have it and he’s in the way.”
    “Oh.”
    “Or it’s something entirely different, because this sort of thing’s generally on a need-to-know basis, and I don’t.” She sighed. “And neither do you, all things considered.”
    “You’re right,” he said. “You want to know what it is, Dot? I’m out of synch.”
    “Out of synch.”
    “Ever since I got off the goddam plane and walked up to the wrong guy. Tell me something. Why would anyone meet a plane carrying an unreadable sign?”
    “Maybe they told him to pick up a dyslexic.”
    “It’s the same as the little red light on the phone.”
    “Now you’ve lost me, Keller. What little red light on the phone?”
    “Never mind. You know what I just decided? I’m going to cut through all this crap and just do the job and come home.”
    “Jesus,” she said. “What a concept.”
    The convenience store clerk was sure they had ear plugs. “They’re here somewhere,” she said, her nose twitching like a rabbit’s. Keller wanted to tell her not to bother, but he sensed she was already committed to the hunt. And, wouldn’t you know it, she found them. Sterile foam ear plugs, two pairs to the packet, $1.19 plus tax.
    After all she’d gone through, how could he tell her he’d changed his room and didn’t need them, that he’d just asked out of curiosity? Oh, these are foam, he considered saying. I wanted the titanium ones. But that would just set her off on a twenty-minute hunt for titanium ear plugs, and who could say she wouldn’t find some?
    He paid for them and told her he wouldn’t need a bag. “It’s a good thing they’re sterile,” he said, pointing to the copy on the packet. “If they started breeding we’d have ’em coming out of our ears.”
    She avoided his eyes as she gave him his change.
    He drove back to Kentucky, then out to Norbourne Estates and Winding Acres Drive. He passed Hirschhorn’s house and couldn’t tell if anyone was home. He circled the block and parked where he could keep an eye on the place.
    On his way there he’d seen school buses on their afternoon run, and, shortly after he parked and killed the engine, one evidently made a stop nearby, because kids in ones and twos and threes began to show up on Winding Acres Drive, walking along until they either turned down side streets or disappeared into houses. One pair of boys stopped at the Hirschhorn driveway, and the shorter of the two went into the garage and emerged dribbling a basketball. They dropped their book bags at the side of the driveway, shucked their jackets, and began playing a game which seemed to involve shooting in turn from different squares of the driveway. Keller wasn’t sure how the game worked, but he could tell they