Hit List

not married, did nothing to diminish the news value of his death.
    Both papers assured him that the police were pursuing various leads. Keller, reading between the lines, concluded that they didn’t have a clue. They might guess that someone had contracted to have Thurnauer hit, and they might be able to guess who that someone was, but they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere with it. There were no witnesses, no useful physical evidence.
    He almost missed the second murder.
    The Globe didn’t have it. But there it was in the Herald, a small story on a back page, a man found dead on Boston Common, shot twice in the head with a small-calibre weapon.
    Keller could picture the poor bastard, lying facedown on the grass, the rain washing relentlessly down on him. He could picture the dead man’s coat, too. The Herald didn’t say anything about a coat, but that didn’t matter. Keller could picture it all the same.
    He went home and made some phone calls. The next morning he went out first thing and bought the Globe and the Herald and read them both over breakfast. Then he made one more phone call and caught a train.

Thirteen
----
    “His name was Louis ‘Why Not?’ Minot,” he told Dot. “No ID on the body, but his prints were on file. He had a dozen arrests on charges ranging from petty theft to bad checks.”
    “Well, you wondered what kind of man would steal another man’s raincoat. A small-time crook, that’s what kind.”
    “Somebody gave him two in the head with a twenty-two.”
    “Mathematically, that’s the same as one with a forty-four.”
    “It was enough. Gun was silenced, would be my guess, but there’s no way to tell. Minot was walking on the Common, someone waited until there was nobody nearby, not hard to manage with the weather as bad as it was. Went up to him, popped him, and walked away.”
    “Must have been a vigilante,” Dot said. “Whenever he sees someone steal a coat, he wreaks vengeance. Charles Bronson can play him in the movie.”
    “What do you know about our client, Dot?”
    “I can’t believe this came from him. I just can’t.”
    “What must have happened,” he said, “is someone was watching the house on Exeter Street. As a matter of fact . . .”
    “What?”
    “There was a cab came along, dropped a guy in front of the place. I thought it was him, what’s his name, Thurnauer. Not that there was a resemblance, but I was seeing him from the back, watching him take a long look at the house across the street. But he walked away. Except maybe he just walked a little ways off and waited.”
    “And saw you go in and come out.”
    “In my pretty green coat. Then he tagged me to the place where I had lunch, and then he picked me up when I left, except this time it wasn’t me.”
    “It was Louis Minot.”
    “Wearing my coat. A day like that, rain coming down hard, he wouldn’t get too good a look at my face. The coat would do it. He stayed with the coat. Minot walked over to the Common, the shooter followed him, picked his moment . . .”
    “Bang bang.”
    “Or pop pop, if he used a suppressor.”
    “Who knew you were going to Exeter Street? Answer: the client. But I still can’t believe it.”
    “The cops believe it.”
    “How’s that?”
    “We already know what color Minot’s coat was. Do you want to guess what he had in the pockets?”
    “The keys and the knife.”
    “Letter opener.”
    “Whatever. I forgot about them, Keller. The cops made the connection?”
    “Well, how could they miss it? One guy’s stabbed to death and another guy turns up dead less than a mile away with a letter opener in his pocket? They found blood traces on it, too.”
    “I thought you wiped it.”
    “I wiped it, I didn’t run it through a car wash. They found traces. Probably not enough for a DNA match, but they can type it, and it’ll be the same type as Thurnauer’s.”
    “And the letter opener fits the wound.”
    “Right. And the keys fit the locks.”
    She nodded slowly. “Not hard to reconstruct. Minot moved up in class and took a contract, iced Thurnauer on Exeter Street and kept a date on Boston Common to get paid off. And got shot instead, bang bang or pop pop, because dead men tell no tales.”
    “That’s how they figure it.”
    “But we know better, don’t we, Keller? Minot said ‘Why not?’ to the wrong coat, and got himself killed by mistake. By somebody working for our client.”
    “You just got finished saying you couldn’t believe