Hit Man

Ellen Bates?”
    “Yes?”
    “I guess you don’t remember. In the restaurant? I brought you your cocktails, and you smiled at me?”
    “Rings a bell,” Wickwire said.
    “I said how I knew all along you were innocent, and next time I came to the table you gave me a slip of paper? With your name and number on it?”
    “I did, did I? When was this, Sue Ellen?”
    “Oh, it was a while ago. It took me this long to get up my courage, and then I was out of town for a while. I just got back, I’m staying at a motel until I get my own place.”
    “Is that a fact?”
    “And now you don’t even remember me. Shoot, I knew I should of called earlier!”
    “Who says I don’t remember you? Refresh my memory, girl. What-all do you look like?”
    “Well, I’m blond.”
    “You know, I kind of thought you might be.”
    “And I’m slim, except I’m what you call fullfigured.”
    “I think I’m beginning to remember you, child.”
    “And I’m twenty-four years old, and I stand five foot seven, and my eyes are blue.”
    “Any tattoos or piercings I should know about?”
    “No, I think they’re tacky. Plus my mom’d about kill me.”
    “Well, you sound good enough to eat.”
    “Why, Mr. Wickwire!”
    “Just an expression. You know what’d be good? If I could meet you, that’d be the best way ever to refresh a man’s memory.”
    “You want to meet me at a restaurant or something?”
    “That’s a little public, Sue Ellen. And in my position . . .”
    “Oh, I see what you mean.”
    “Did you say you were staying at a motel, Sue Ellen? Where’s it at?”
    “Hello, this is Sue Ellen Bates calling?”
    “Come again?”
    “My name is like Sue Ellen Bates? I’m blond, and my eyes are like blue?”
    “Oh, for God’s sake,” Dot said. “Keller, when are you going to grow up?”
    “I’ve wondered that myself.”
    “You’re using one of those telephone voice-changers, and I wish to God you’d disconnect it. You sound like a girl, and a stupid one at that.”
    “I don’t know how you can say such a thing?”
    “It’s making every sentence sound like a question that does it,” she said. “That’s a nice touch, I’ve got to give you that. It makes you sound just like one of those teenage morons at the mall who can’t remember where she parked her mother’s car.”
    “Well,” Keller said, “ he likes me.”
    “Who? Oh, I get it.”
    “I’m meeting him the day after tomorrow. At my place.”
    “Not until then?”
    “It’s tough for him to get away.”
    “It’s going to get even tougher. Well, at least you’re in a town with plenty to do. You shouldn’t have trouble amusing yourself for the next couple of days.”
    “You’re right about that,” Keller said.
    “Australia,” the dealer said. He was a generation younger than Hildebrand, and his shop was on the second floor of an office building on Rampart Street.
    “I’ve got a good run of the early Kangaroos, if you’d like to see them. How about Australian States, while we’re in that part of the world? Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales . . .”
    “I haven’t got my lists for those.”
    “Another time,” the fellow said. “Here’s tongs, here’s a gauge if you want to check perfs. Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”
    “I’ll do that,” Keller said.
    The motel was in Metairie. Before his conversation with Richard Wickwire, Keller had called the motel and tried out the voice-changer on them, booking a room as Sue Ellen Bates. Then he drove over there, paid cash for a week in advance, and picked up the key. He let himself into the room, stowed some women’s garments in the dresser and closet, and messed up the bed.
    He didn’t pay another visit to the room until an hour before Sue Ellen’s date with Wickwire. He left the Pontiac a block away in a strip-mall parking lot, let himself into the room, and cracked the seal on a pint of bourbon. He poured an ounce of bourbon into each of two motel tumblers, made a lipstick mark on one of them, and placed them on the bedside table. He spilled a little bourbon on the rug, a little more on the chair, and left the pint standing open on the dresser.
    Then he unlocked the door and left it very slightly ajar. He switched on the TV, tuned it to a talk show, lowered the volume. Next came the hard part—sitting and waiting. He should have brought the stamp weekly along. He’d read everything in it, but he could have read it again. You always picked