Hit List

the Dragnet theme. “Dum-de-dum-dum. Dum-de-dum-dum-dah! One forty-seven! The death room!”
    “All I know,” he said doggedly, “is a couple of hours later they were dead.”
    “While you lived to bear witness.”
    “I guess it really does sound weird, doesn’t it?”
    “Weirder than weird.”
    “It made sense on the train.”
    “Well, that’s trains for you.”
    “What you said earlier, about a reality check?”
    “You want my take on it?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Okay,” she said. “Now you have to bear in mind that I don’t know squat about karma or angels or any of that Twilight Zone stuff. You got a bad feeling when the pickup at the airport came off a little raggedy-ass, and then the guy they sent to meet you turned out to be a turkey. And seeing the family photo didn’t help, either.”
    “I already said all that.”
    “Then the drunk knocked on your door, and you were edgy to begin with, and you reacted the way you did. And your own reaction made you edgier than ever.”
    “Exactly how it was.”
    “But all he was,” she said, “was a drunk knocking on doors. He probably knocked on every door he came to until he found Ralph. You don’t need angel’s wings to do that.”
    “Go on.”
    “The noisy party upstairs? Bikers aren’t exactly famous for their silent vigils. A motel’s dumb enough to rent to people like that, they’re going to have some loud parties. Somebody’s got to be downstairs from them, and this time it was you, and as soon as you could you got your room changed.”
    “But if I hadn’t—“
    “If you hadn’t,” she said, patiently but firmly, “then the loving couple would have wound up in some other room when they decided they couldn’t keep their hands off each other another minute. Not One forty-seven but, oh, I don’t know. Say Two oh eight.”
    “But then when the husband turned up—“
    “He’d have gone to Two oh eight, Keller, because that’s where they were. He was looking for them, not whatever damn fool happened to be in One forty-seven. He followed them to their room and wreaked his horrible revenge, and it had nothing to do with what room they were in and even less to do with you.”
    “Oh,” he said.
    “That’s your take on it? ‘Oh?’ “
    “I had this whole elaborate theory,” he said, “and it was all crap, wasn’t it?”
    “It was certainly out there on the crap side of the spectrum.”
    “But you thought it was a coincidence. That was your first thought.”
    “No, my first thought was it couldn’t be a coincidence. That it was the client, or somebody the client sent.”
    “But it wasn’t.”
    “No, because the client’s satisfied, and he couldn’t have found you even if he wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean it had to be angels. What it means is it really was a coincidence after all.”
    “Oh.”
    “And it was a coincidence for everybody in the motel, Keller, not just you. They were all there while the couple in One forty-seven was getting killed.”
    “But they hadn’t just checked out of the room.”
    “So? That means they had an even narrower escape. They might have checked into One forty-seven. But you couldn’t do that, because you’d already checked out of it.”
    He wasn’t sure he followed that, but he let it go. “I guess it was a coincidence,” he said.
    “Don’t sound so disappointed.”
    “But I sensed something. I knew something was going to happen.”
    “And it did,” she said. “To Mr. Hirschhorn, may he rest in peace. Go home, Keller. Those stamps you bought? Go paste them in your album. What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?”
    “You don’t paste them,” he said. “You use hinges.”
    “I stand corrected.”
    “Or mounts, sometimes you use mounts.”
    “Whatever.”
    “Anyway,” he said, “I already mounted them. Last night. I was up until three in the morning.”
    “Well, isn’t that a coincidence? You’re all done mounting your stamps, and you coincidentally just came into some money.” She beamed at him. “That means you can go buy some more.”

Five
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    Keller speared a cube of cheese with a toothpick, helped himself to a glass of dry white wine. To his left, two young women clad entirely in black were chatting. “I can’t believe he really said that,” one announced. “I mean, just because you’re postmodern doesn’t mean you absolutely have to be an asshole.”
    “Chad would be just as big an asshole if he was a Dadaist,” the other replied.