Hit List

got a good look at him,” he said, “and I don’t even know if the guy I saw was the guy who tried to kill me.”
    “And killed your raincoat by mistake.”
    “But this guy’s here for a reason,” he said. “He’s either Roger or he’s not.”
    “That’s true of everybody, Keller.”
    “You know what I mean. He’s here to do a job upstairs, or he’s here to do a job on the guy who does.”
    Whoever he was, he was right there on the opposite side of a narrow street. If he had a gun, Keller thought, he could shoot the son of a bitch, and then they could go across the street and take a closer look at him.
    “There’s somebody else,” he said. “See?”
    “Where?”
    “Walking down from the corner.”
    “Just a man walking,” she said, “but that’s rare enough on this street, isn’t it? How about this guy, Keller. Does he look familiar?”
    Keller tracked him with the binoculars. This one wasn’t in shadows, but he wore a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat and a muffler and glasses, and about all you could say for sure was that he didn’t have a mustache. He was on the tall side, but then so was the lurker, the guy in the doorway.
    “He’s turning around,” he said. “I think he’s looking for an address.”
    “And look who’s coming.”
    “What, in the doorway? He hasn’t moved.”
    “Coming down the street, Keller. Is that who I think it is? Dressed all in black, surprise surprise?”
    It was Maggie, on her way home. She was coming from the left, and the guy with the hat and muffler was coming from the right, and the guy in the windbreaker and cap was across the street, lurking.
    “This is handy,” Dot said. “Everybody on stage at the same time. You want to go downstairs and handle the introductions, Keller?”
    “He’s crossing the street,” he said. “He’s walking right toward her.”
    “He’s still in the doorway. Oh, the hat and muffler. You think he’s going to do it here and now?”
    “How? It’s supposed to look like an accident.”
    “Maybe he’ll throw her in front of a truck. There should be a garbage truck coming through sometime after midnight. Maybe he just wants a close look at her. No, he’s stopping her.”
    Keller had the impulse to shout a warning. He wouldn’t do that, but what was he supposed to do, just sit there and watch the woman get killed?
    “They’re talking,” Dot said, her own voice reduced to a whisper. “If the window was open we could hear them.”
    “Don’t open it now.”
    “No. From this angle all I can see is the tops of their heads, and they’re both wearing hats.”
    “What difference does that make?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe he’s a friend of hers.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Maybe she’ll take him upstairs. Maybe she’ll do that even if he’s a stranger. That’d make it easy for him, and then Roger’ll be waiting across the street when he comes out. Ooops, false alarm.”
    Maggie was entering the building. And the man in the hat had drawn away from her and was crossing the street, moving to the right, away from the man in the doorway. He walked fifteen or twenty yards to another darkened building and stood at the door.
    “He was asking directions,” Dot explained. “And she pointed him over there, and that’s where he’s going. See? He’s waiting for somebody to buzz him in. And somebody just did, and there he goes.”
    “And the lurker, the guy in the cap? He’s not in the doorway.”
    “That’s him two doors down,” she said. “Heading to the corner. The coffee shop’s still open. Maybe he’s hungry.”
    “The locksmith seemed to like the Boston cream pie.”
    “I wouldn’t mind a piece myself,” she said. “This watching and waiting takes a lot out of you.”
    Around midnight, Dot took her suitcase into the bathroom and emerged wearing a flannel robe and slippers. She had trouble with the Murphy bed, but stopped Keller when he rose to give her a hand. “Wait until I take over for you,” she said. “We want a pair of eyes at that window all the time.”
    “There’s nothing happening out there.”
    “And how long would it take for someone to cross the street and pop into the building? Okay, now you can get the bed down.”
    He knew she was right. That was the whole point of her joining him, so that at least one of them would be watching at all times. They could take turns sleeping, and one could go on watching while the other went out for sandwiches and coffee, or for a closer look at