Hit Man

should have specified.”
    “It’s probably not important. Did you want to offer a reward? People usually do, though I don’t know if it makes any difference. If I found somebody’s dog, I wouldn’t care about a reward. I’d just want to get him back with his owner.”
    “Everybody’s not as decent as you are,” Keller said. “Maybe I should say something about a reward. I didn’t even think of that.” He put his palms on the desk and leaned forward, looking down at the sheet of paper. “I don’t know,” he said. “It looks kind of homemade, doesn’t it? Maybe I should have you set it in type, do it right. What do you think?”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Ed? Would you come and take a look at this, please?”
    The man in the horn-rims came over and said he thought a hand-lettered look was best for a lost-dog notice. “It makes it more personal,” he said. “I could do it in type for you, but I think people would respond to it better as it is. Assuming somebody finds the dog, that is.”
    “I don’t suppose it’s a matter of national importance, anyway,” Keller said. “My wife’s attached to the animal and I’d like to recover him if it’s possible, but I’ve a feeling he’s not to be found. My name’s Gordon, by the way. Al Gordon.”
    “Ed Vandermeer,” the man said. “And this is my wife, Betty.”
    “A pleasure,” Keller said. “I guess fifty of these ought to be enough. More than enough, but I’ll take fifty. Will it take you long to run them?”
    “I’ll do it right now. Take about three minutes, set you back three-fifty.”
    “Can’t beat that,” Keller said. He uncapped the felt-tipped pen. “Just let me put in something about a reward.”
    Back in his motel room, he put through a call to a number in White Plains. When a woman answered he said, “Dot, let me speak to him, will you?” It took a few minutes, and then he said, “Yeah, I got here. It’s him, all right. He’s calling himself Vandermeer now. His wife’s still going by Betty.”
    The man in White Plains asked when he’d be back.
    “What’s today, Tuesday? I’ve got a flight booked Friday, but I might take a little longer. No point rushing things. I found a good place to eat. Mexican joint, and the motel set gets HBO. I figure I’ll take my time, do it right. Engleman’s not going anywhere.”
    He had lunch at the Mexican café. This time he ordered the combination plate. The waitress asked if he wanted the red or green chili.
    “Whichever’s hotter,” he said.
    Maybe a mobile home, he thought. You could buy one cheap, a nice double-wide, make a nice starter home for her and her fellow. Or maybe the best thing for them was to buy a duplex and rent out half, then rent out the other half when they were ready for something nicer for themselves. No time at all you’re in real estate, making a nice return, watching your holdings appreciate. No more waiting on tables for her, and pretty soon her husband could quit slaving at the lumber mill, quit worrying about layoffs when the industry hit one of its slumps.
    How you do go on, he thought.
    He spent the afternoon walking around town. In a gun shop, the proprietor, a man named McLarendon, took some rifles and shotguns off the wall and let him get the feel of them. A sign on the wall read GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE UNLESS YOU AIM REAL GOOD . Keller talked politics with McLarendon, and socioeconomics. It wasn’t that tricky to figure out his position and to adopt it as one’s own.
    “What I really been meaning to buy,” Keller said, “is a handgun.”
    “You want to protect yourself and your property,” McLarendon said.
    “That’s the idea.”
    “And your loved ones.”
    “Sure.”
    He let the man sell him a gun. There was, locally, a cooling-off period. You picked out your gun, filled out a form, and four days later you could come back and pick it up.
    “You a hothead?” McLarendon asked him. “You fixing to lean out the car window, bag a state trooper on the way home?”
    “It doesn’t seem likely.”
    “Then I’ll show you a trick. We just backdate this form and you’ve already had your cooling-off period. I’d say you look cool enough to me.”
    “You’re a good judge of character.”
    The man grinned. “This business,” he said, “a man’s got to be.”
    It was nice, a town that size. You got into your car and drove for ten minutes and you were way out in the country.
    Keller stopped the Taurus at the side of the