Hit List

Centre Street, showing his summons to a guard who told him where to go. You had to pass through a metals detector, too. They had them in the schools now, and in an increasing number of public buildings. Pretty soon, he thought, you’d have to pass through a metals detector to go to the supermarket.
    Probably necessary, though. All these kids bringing guns to class, and all these terrorists. What it did, though, was screw things up for the average law-abiding citizen. Years ago there’d been a rash of airplane hijackings. Before that you just walked onto a plane, the same as a train or a bus, but then because of the hijackers they routed you through a metals detector, and ever since it had been impossible for an ordinary citizen like Keller to bring a gun on a plane.
    Well, maybe that wasn’t the best example . . .
    He hadn’t brought a gun to court, but what he did bring was a book. He hadn’t mentioned his impending jury duty to that many people—he wasn’t friendly with that many people—but he’d said something to the girl who served him breakfast at the coffee shop, and to the doorman at the building next door to his, and to the guy who sold him his newspaper. They all said the same thing, and he had to wonder about the guy at the newsstand. He was a Pakistani, he’d been in the country less than two years, and he already knew you had to bring something to read when you pulled jury duty? Well, Keller told himself, the guy was in the business. He sold reading material, and maybe he had people coming in from time to time, saying they were on jury duty and needed something to read. He’d get the drift that way, wouldn’t he?
    Keller’s novel was a thriller. The bad guy was a terrorist, but no metals detector had a chance against him, because he wasn’t carrying a gun. Instead he was equipped with a sufficient supply of a new supervirus to start a plague that would wipe out the city of New York, and possibly the whole country, and not inconceivably the world. The disease was a particularly nasty one, too, and 100 percent fatal, and it didn’t just kill you, either. You bled from every orifice, even your pores, and you convulsed and your bones ached and your tongue swelled up and your teeth fell out and your hands and feet turned purple and you went blind. Then you died, and not a moment too soon.
    The heroine, a special operative from the Centers for Disease Control, was beautiful, of course, but she was also resourceful and decisive and tough-minded. She kept doing stupid things, though, and you wanted to take her by the shoulders and give her a good shaking.
    Keller thought the hero was too good to be true. His wife had been a research scientist with the CDC, and she’d died from a similar disease, one she’d caught from an infected hamster at the research lab. The hero was grieving manfully, and bringing up their kids, all while investigating cases for some secret arm of the Treasury Department. He helped the old lady next door with yardwork, and he coached his kids with their homework, and every woman he met yearned to sleep with him or mother him, or both. Everyone was crazy about him, everyone except the heroine.
    And Keller, but that was pretty much par for the course. White knights had never appealed much to Keller.
    All morning long they called names, and people went to various rooms to see if they’d be selected for juries. Keller’s name wasn’t called, and by lunchtime he was well into his book. On the way out of the building, a woman fell into step beside him. “That book must be good,” she said. “You seemed really engrossed.”
    “It’s okay,” he said. “A maniac’s going to start a plague that’ll wipe out New York unless this girl finds a way to stop him.”
    “Woman,” she said.
    Oh boy, he thought. “Well, she’s only six years old,” he said, “so I figured it would be acceptable to call her a girl.”
    “She’s only six?”
    “Going on seven.”
    “And the fate of the world is in her hands?”
    “It’s quite a responsibility at any age,” Keller said. “But it’s good preparation. Fifteen years from now she might have to sit on a jury and decide the fate of a fellow human being.”
    “Awesome.”
    “I’ll say.”
    “You like Vietnamese food? There’s a place on the next block that’s supposed to be good. But I didn’t see it on the list they handed out.”
    “An unlisted restaurant,” he said. “Off-limits to jurors. Let’s be daring,