Hit List

with the mustache? Why does he need to change his appearance?”
    “To keep from being recognized.”
    “Who’s going to recognize him, Dot? Maggie? She saw him once, when he stopped her on the street, but she never has to see him again. The other hitter? The other hitter doesn’t know anything about Roger. He’s here to do a job and he’s got no reason to think it’s going to be complicated.”
    “On the one hand he’s Roger,” she said, “and on the other hand he’s not.”
    “There you go,” he said.
    “I had this thought,” he said.
    “Care to share it?”
    “I could just do them both, you know? Instead of waiting, because we could sit here forever. She’s out, and God knows when she’s coming back, and nobody can do anything until she does. Unless our hitter tailed her, but he wouldn’t do that, would he?”
    “Two things I told him,” she said. “It has to be in her loft and it has to look like an accident.”
    “So it won’t happen until she comes back, but what do we need her for? I go across the street and up four flights and take out the guy with the mustache. Then I come down and hit a few doorways until I bump into the guy with the windbreaker, and I do him.”
    “Kill ’em both and let God sort ’em out.”
    “We might never know which was which,” he said, “but what difference would it make? The thing is, I’d be killing an innocent man.”
    “How do you figure that?”
    “The guy you hired. He comes to New York to do a job and gets killed by the people who hired him.”
    “He’s here to kill a girl, Keller. Don’t you think it’s a stretch to call him innocent?”
    “You know what I mean. I’d be killing him for no reason.”
    “Suppose someone hired you to kill him.”
    “Then I’d have a reason.”
    “But this way you don’t.”
    “Not in the same way, no. But it’s a waste of time talking about it. I mean, who even knows for sure that it’s narrowed down to those two guys? Maybe somebody else is Roger, somebody we haven’t even noticed yet.”
    “It’s possible.”
    “So it’d be nuts, taking them both out. Anyway, it was just a thought.”
    “Keller, I had the same thought.”
    “Really?”
    “And the same objections, plus an extra. We’d still have that dame to worry about. Your girlfriend, and I’m sorry, I was going to stop calling her that.”
    “Well,” he said.
    “I suppose we could burn that bridge when we came to it,” she said, “but I think what we’ve got to do is stick with the original plan. I just wish I’d realized there was going to be so much waiting involved. I’d have set it up differently.”

Twenty-seven
----
    “Keller!”
    He was dreaming, and yearned to sink back into the dream, but she said his name again and he shook it off and got out of bed. “Quick,” she said, and he hurried over to the window in time to see a woman leaning against the side of a cab while her companion counted out bills and paid the driver. The cab pulled away and the two of them stood in the middle of Crosby Street. The woman was Maggie, but who was the man?
    He wore jeans and a beat-up leather jacket, and for a minute Keller thought it was the locksmith, but this guy was bigger. Of course, he thought, the little man could have put on a few pounds by now. Boston cream pie will do that, but would it make you taller, too? Maybe if you stood on it . . .
    Maggie pulled the man into an embrace, and Keller felt as though he shouldn’t be watching this. “Her latest superficial relationship,” Dot said dryly. “We haven’t seen him before, or have we? Help me out here, Keller.”
    “He doesn’t look familiar.”
    “He’s certainly getting familiar with her, though, isn’t he? Has he got his hand where I think he does?”
    “I think she’s bringing him in the building.”
    “I knew that when the cab drove off, Keller. Although for a minute there I thought they were going to do it in the middle of the street. No, don’t say anything. Just listen for a minute. There!”
    “What?”
    “They’re on the elevator. Noisy contraption, isn’t it? Slow, too. Now it stopped, they must be at her place. Did you get a good look at his face, Keller?”
    “Not really.”
    “Neither did I, and by now she’s probably sitting on it. Use the binoculars. Do you see either of our friends out there? The mustache or the windbreaker?”
    “No.”
    “See a cigarette in the usual window?”
    “No.”
    “The guy she was with. Could it be one