Hit Man

here to kill, Keller thought. This was comforting to realize, but left her waiting for an answer to her question. “That’s he’s not used to getting his own way,” Keller said.
    She laughed. “He’s not,” she said, “but it’s not for lack of trying. You know, I like you, Dale. You’re a nice fellow. But if it wasn’t you tonight it would have been somebody else.”
    “And here I thought it was my aftershave.”
    “I’ll just bet you did. No, the kind of marriage I got, I come around here a lot. I’ve put a lot of quarters in that jukebox the last year or so.”
    “And played a lot of cheating songs?”
    “And done a fair amount of cheating. But it doesn’t really work. I still wake up the next day married to that bastard.”
    “Why don’t you divorce him?”
    “I’ve thought about it.”
    “And?”
    “I was brought up not to believe in it,” she said. “But I don’t guess that’s it. I wasn’t raised to believe in cheating, either.” She frowned. “Money’s part of it,” she admitted. “I won’t bore you with the details, but I’d get gored pretty bad in a divorce.”
    “That’s a problem.”
    “I guess, except what do I care about money anyway? Enough’s as much as a person needs, and my daddy’s got pots of money. He’s not about to let me starve.”
    “Well, then—”
    “But he thinks the world of Hobie,” she said, glaring at Keller as if it were his fault. “Hunts elk with him, goes after trout and salmon with him, thinks he’s just the best thing ever came over the pass. And he doesn’t even want to hear the word divorce. You know that Tammy Wynette song where she spells it out a letter at a time? I swear he’d leave the room before you got past R. I say it’d about break Lyman Crowder’s heart if his little girl ever got herself divorced.”
    Well, it was true. If you kept your mouth shut and your ears open, you learned things. What he had learned was that Crowder rhymed with powder.
    Now what?
    After her departure, after his own shower, he paced back and forth trying to sort it all out. In the few hours since his arrival in Martingale, he’d slept with a woman who turned out to be the loving daughter of the target and, in all likelihood, the unloving wife of the client.
    Well, maybe not. Lyman Crowder was a rich man, lived north of town on a good-sized ranch that he ran pretty much as a hobby. He’d made his real money in oil, and nobody ever made a small amount of money that way. You either went broke or got rich. Rich men had enemies. People they’d crossed in business, people who stood to profit from their death.
    But it figured that Yarnell was the client. There was a kind of poetic inevitability about it. She picks him up in the lounge, it’s not enough that she’s the target’s daughter. She also ought to be the client’s wife. Round things out, tie up all the loose ends.
    The thing to do . . . well, he knew the thing to do. The thing to do was get a few hours’ sleep and then, bright and early, reverse the usual order of affairs by riding off into the sunrise. Get on a plane, get off in New York, and write off Martingale as a happy little romantic adventure. Men, after all, had been known to travel farther than that in the hope of getting laid.
    He’d tell the man in White Plains to find somebody else. Sometimes you had to do that. No blame attached, as long as you didn’t make a habit of it. He’d say he was blown.
    Which, come to think of it, he was. Quite expertly, as a matter of fact.
    In the morning he got up and packed his carry-on. He’d call White Plains from the airport, or wait until he was back in New York. He didn’t want to phone from the room. When the real Dale Whitlock had a fit and called American Express, they’d look over things like the Holiday Inn statement. No sense leaving anything that led anywhere.
    He thought about June, and the memory made him playful. He checked the time. Eight o’clock, two hours later in the East, not an uncivil time to call.
    He called Whitlock’s home in Rowayton, Connecticut. A woman answered. He identified himself as a representative of a political polling organization, using a name she would recognize. By asking questions that encouraged lengthy responses, he had no trouble keeping her on the phone. “Well, thank you very much,” he said at length. “And have a nice day.”
    Now let Whitlock explain that one to American Express. He finished packing and was almost out the door