Hit Man

Yarnell could have his cake and Edith, too. Only a question of time until she stopped calling him Bart and took to calling him Hobie, of course, and next thing you knew she would turn up at the Holiday Inn, dropping her quarter in the slot to play “Third-Rate Romance, Low-Rent Rendezvous.”
    It struck Keller that there ought to be some sort of solution that didn’t involve lowering the population. But he knew he was the person least likely to come up with it.
    If you had a medical problem, the treatment you got depended on the sort of person you went to. You didn’t expect a surgeon to manipulate your spine, or prescribe herbs and enemas, or kneel down and pray with you. Whatever the problem was, the first thing the surgeon would do was look around for something to cut. That’s how he’d been trained, that’s how he saw the world, that’s what he did.
    Keller, too, was predisposed to a surgical approach. While others might push counseling or 12-step programs, Keller reached for a scalpel. But sometimes it was difficult to tell where to make the incision.
    Kill ’em all, he thought savagely, and let God sort ’em out. Or ride off into the sunset with your tail between your legs.
    First thing in the morning. Keller drove to Sheridan and caught a plane to Salt Lake City. He paid cash for his ticket, and used the name John Richards. At the TWA counter in Salt Lake City he bought a one-way ticket to Las Vegas and again paid cash, this time using the name Alan Johnson.
    At the Las Vegas airport he walked around the long-term parking lot as if looking for his car. He’d been doing this for five minutes or so when a balding man wearing a glen plaid sportcoat parked a two-year-old Plymouth and removed several large suitcases from its trunk, affixing them to one of those aluminum luggage carriers. Wherever he was headed, he’d packed enough to stay there for a while.
    As soon as he was out of sight, Keller dropped to a knee and groped the undercarriage until he found the magnetized Hide-A-Key. He always looked before breaking into a car, and he got lucky about one time in five. As usual, he was elated. It was a good omen, finding a key. It boded well.
    Keller had been to Vegas frequently over the years. He didn’t like the place, but he knew his way around. He drove to Caesars Palace and left his borrowed Plymouth for the attendant to park. He knocked on the door of an eighth-floor room until its occupant protested that she was trying to sleep.
    He said, “It’s news from Martingale, Miss Bodine. For Christ’s sake, open the door.”
    She opened the door a crack but kept the chain fastened. She was about the same age as June but looked older, her black hair a mess, her eyes bleary, her face still bearing traces of yesterday’s makeup.
    “Crowder’s dead,” he said.
    Keller could think of any number of things she might have said, ranging from “What happened?” to “Who cares?” This woman cut to the chase. “You idiot,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
    Mistake.
    “Let me in,” he said, and she did.
    Another mistake.
    The attendant brought Keller’s Plymouth and seemed happy with the tip Keller gave him. At the airport, someone else had left a Toyota Camry in the spot where the balding man had originally parked the Plymouth, and the best Keller could do was wedge it into a spot one aisle over and a dozen spaces off to the side. He figured the owner would find it, and hoped he wouldn’t worry that he was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
    Keller flew to Denver as Richard Hill, to Sheridan as David Edwards. En route he thought about Edith Bodine, who’d evidently slipped on a wet tile in the bathroom of her room at Caesars, cracking her skull on the side of the big tub. With the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from the doorknob and the air conditioner at its highest setting, there was no telling how long she might remain undisturbed.
    He’d figured she had to be the client. It wasn’t June or Hobie, both of whom thought the world revolved around Lyman Crowder, so who did that leave? Crowder himself, turned sneakily suicidal? Some old enemy, some business rival?
    No, Edith was the best prospect. A client would either want to meet Keller—not obliquely, as both Yarnells had done, but by arrangement. Or the client would contrive to be demonstrably off the scene when it all happened. Thus the trip to Las Vegas.
    Why? The Crowder fortune, of course. She had Hobie Yarnell crazy about her,