Hit Man

especially interested in a particular breed. They could keep his name on file, and when a specimen of that breed became available—
    “I don’t think I can have a pet,” he said. “I travel too much. I can’t handle the responsibility.” The woman didn’t respond, and Keller’s words echoed in her silence. “But I want to make a donation,” he said. “I want to support the work you do.”
    He got out his wallet, pulled bills from it, handed them to her without counting them. “An anonymous donation,” he said. “I don’t want a receipt. I’m sorry for taking your time. I’m sorry I can’t adopt a dog. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
    She was saying something, but he didn’t listen. He hurried out of there.
    “ ‘I want to support the work you do.’ That’s what I told her, and then I rushed out of there because I didn’t want her thanking me. Or asking me questions.”
    “What would she ask?”
    “I don’t know,” Keller said. He rolled over on the couch, facing away from Breen, facing the wall. “ ‘I want to support your work.’ But I don’t even know what their work is. They find homes for some animals, and what do they do with the others? Put them to sleep?”
    “Perhaps.”
    “What do I want to support? The placement or the killing?”
    “You tell me.”
    “I tell you too much as it is,” Keller said.
    “Or not enough.”
    Keller didn’t say anything.
    “Why did it sadden you to see the dogs in their cages?”
    “I felt their sadness.”
    “One feels only one’s own sadness. Why is it sad to you, a dog in a cage? Are you in a cage?”
    “No.”
    “Your dog, Soldier. Tell me about him.”
    “All right,” Keller said. “I guess I could do that.”
    A session or two later, Breen said, “You have never been married.”
    “No.”
    “I was married.”
    “Oh?”
    “For eight years. She was my receptionist, she booked my appointments, showed clients to the waiting room until I was ready for them. Now I have no receptionist. A machine answers the phone. I check the machine between appointments, and take and return calls at that time. If I had had a machine in the first place I’d have been spared a lot of agony.”
    “It wasn’t a good marriage?”
    Breen didn’t seem to have heard the question. “I wanted children. She had three abortions in eight years and never told me. Never said a word. Then one day she threw it in my face. I’d been to a doctor, I’d had tests, and all indications were that I was fertile, with a high sperm count and extremely motile sperm. So I wanted her to see a doctor. ‘You fool, I’ve killed three of your babies already, why don’t you leave me alone?’ I told her I wanted a divorce. She said it would cost me.”
    “And?”
    “We were married eight years. We’ve been divorced for nine. Every month I write an alimony check and put it in the mail. If it was up to me I’d rather burn the money.”
    Breen fell silent. After a moment Keller said, “Why are you telling me all this?”
    “No reason.”
    “Is it supposed to relate to something in my psyche? Am I supposed to make a connection, clap my hand to my forehead, say, ‘Of course, of course! I’ve been so blind!’ ”
    “You confide in me,” Breen said. “It seems only fitting that I confide in you.”
    A couple of days later Dot called. Keller took a train to White Plains, where Louis met him at the station and drove him to the house on Taunton Place. Later Louis drove him back to the train station and he returned to the city. He timed his call to Breen so that he got the man’s machine. “This is Peter Stone,” he said. “I’m flying to San Diego on business. I’ll have to miss my next appointment, and possibly the one after that. I’ll try to let you know.”
    Was there anything else to tell Breen? He couldn’t think of anything. He hung up, packed a bag, and rode Amtrak to Philadelphia.
    No one met his train. The man in White Plains had shown him a photograph and given him a slip of paper with a name and address on it. The man in question managed an adult bookstore a few blocks from Independence Hall. There was a tavern across the street, a perfect vantage point, but one look inside made it clear to Keller that he couldn’t spend time there without calling attention to himself, not unless he first got rid of his tie and jacket and spent twenty minutes rolling around in the gutter.
    Down the street Keller found a diner, and if he sat at the far end he