Hit Man

“It’s a three-day auction,” he told Keller, “and you’re a general collector with a ton of lots in there to tempt you. You save your money for the stamps.”
    It was indeed a three-day sale, and Keller was in his chair for all three days. The first session was all U.S., so there was nothing for him to bid on, but the whole process was fascinating all the same. There were mail bids for all the lots, and floor action on the majority of them, and the auction moved along at a surprisingly brisk pace. It was good to have a session where he was just an observer; it gave him the chance to get the hang of it.
    The next two days, he was a player.
    He’d brought a lot of cash, more than he’d planned on spending, and he got more in the form of a cash advance on his Visa card. When it was all over he sat in his hotel room with his purchases on the desk in front of him, pleased with what he’d acquired and the bargain prices he’d paid, but a little bit anxious at having spent so much money.
    He had dinner again that night with McEwell, and confided some of what he was feeling. “I know what you mean,” McEwell said, “and I’ve been there myself. I remember the first time I paid over a thousand dollars for a single stamp.”
    “It’s a milestone.”
    “Well, it was for me. And I said to the dealer, ‘You know, that’s a lot of money.’ And he said, ‘Well, it is, but you’re only going to buy that stamp once.’ ”
    “I never thought of it that way,” Keller said.
    He stayed on at the hotel after the sale was over, and every morning at breakfast he read the New York Times. On Thursday he found the article he’d been more or less waiting for. He read it several times through, and he would have liked to pick up a phone but decided he’d better not.
    He stayed in Kansas City that day, and the next day, too. He walked around an art museum for a couple of hours without paying much attention to what he saw. He dropped in on a couple of stamp dealers, one of whom he’d seen at the auction, and he spent a few dollars, but his heart wasn’t really in it.
    The next day he packed his bag and flew back to New York. First thing the following morning he got on a train to White Plains.
    In the kitchen, Dot poured him a glass of iced tea and muted the television set. How many times had he been here, sitting like this? But there was a difference. This time the two of them were all alone in the big old house.
    “It’s hard to believe he’s gone,” he said.
    “Tell me about it,” Dot said. “I keep thinking I should be bringing him his breakfast on a tray, taking the paper up to him. Then I remind myself I’ll never get to do that again. He’s gone.”
    “So many years . . .”
    “For you and me both, Keller.”
    “The paper just said natural causes,” he said. “It didn’t go into detail.”
    “No.”
    “But I don’t suppose it could have been all that natural. Or you wouldn’t have sent me to Kansas City.”
    “That’s where you went? Kansas City?”
    He nodded. “Nice enough town.”
    “But you wouldn’t want to live there.”
    “I’m a New Yorker,” he said. “Remember?”
    “Vividly.”
    “Natural causes,” he prompted.
    “Well, what could be more natural? You live too long, you got a mind that’s starting to turn to pablum, you become erratic and unreliable, what’s the natural thing for someone to do?”
    “It was that bad, huh?”
    “Keller,” she said, “three weeks ago this reporter showed up. A kid barely old enough to shave, working his first job on the local paper. I’ll tell you, I thought he was there to sell me a subscription, but no, he came to interview the old man.”
    “You’d think the editor would have sent somebody more experienced.”
    “It wasn’t the editor’s idea,” she said, “or the kid’s either, God help him. And who does that leave?”
    “You mean. . . ”
    “He’d decided it was time to write his memoirs. Time to tell all the untold stories, time to tell where the bodies were buried. And I do mean bodies, Keller, and I do mean buried.”
    “Jesus.”
    “He saw this kid’s byline on some high school basketball roundup and decided he was the perfect person to collaborate with.”
    “For God’s sake.”
    “Need I say more? I’d already reached the point where I made sure all incoming calls got routed downstairs. Now I had to worry about the calls he made on his own. Keller, it’s the hardest decision I ever had to make in my