Hit Man

anyway? Some kind of English hero, wasn’t he? A famous general or something?”
    “I think an admiral. Commander of the British fleet, if I remember correctly. Remember? The Battle of Trafalgar Square?”
    “It rings a muted bell,” he said. “Not a soldier but a sailor. Well, that’s close enough, wouldn’t you say? Now I suppose there’s an adoption fee to pay, and some papers to fill out.”
    When they’d handled that part she said, “I still can’t get over it. The coincidence and all.”
    “I knew a man once,” Keller said, “who insisted there was no such thing as a coincidence or an accident.”
    “Well, I wonder how he’d explain this.”
    “I’d like to hear him try,” Keller said. “Let’s go, Nelson. Good boy.”

4
    Dogs Walked, Plants Watered
    “N ow here’s my situation,” Keller said. “Ordinarily I have plenty of free time. I take Nelson for a minimum of two long walks a day, and sometimes when the weather’s nice we’ll be out all afternoon. It’s a pleasure for me, and he’s tireless, literally tireless. He’s an Australian cattle dog, and the breed was developed to drive herds of cattle vast distances. You could probably walk him to Yonkers and back and he’d still be raring to go.”
    “I’ve never been to Yonkers,” the girl said.
    Neither had Keller, but he had passed through it often enough on the way to and from White Plains. There was no need to mention this.
    “The thing is,” he went on, “I sometimes have to travel on business, and I don’t get much in the way of advance warning. I get a phone call, and two hours later I’m on a plane halfway across the country, and I may not get back for two weeks. Last time I boarded Nelson, and I don’t want to do that again.”
    “No.”
    “Aside from the fact that the kennels expect you to make reservations a week in advance,” he said, “I think it’s rotten for the dog. Last time, well, he was different when I picked him up. I don’t know how to explain it, but it was days before he was his old self again.”
    “I know what you mean.”
    “So I’d like to be able call you,” he said, “when I find out I have to travel. You could come in every day and feed him and give him fresh water and take him for a walk twice a day. That’s the kind of thing you could do, right?”
    “It’s what I do,” she said. “I have regular clients who don’t have the time to give their pets enough attention, and I have other clients who hire me just when they go out of town, and I’ll come to their houses and take care of their pets and their houseplants.”
    “But in the meantime,” Keller said, “I thought you and Nelson ought to get to know each other, because who knows how he’ll react if I just disappear one day and a few hours later you turn up and enter the apartment? He’s pretty territorial.”
    “But if Nelson and I already knew each other—”
    “That’s what I was getting at,” he said. “Suppose you were to walk him, I don’t know, twice a week? He’s not stupid, he’d get the idea right away. Then, by the time I had to leave town, you’d already be an old friend. He wouldn’t go nuts when you tried to enter the apartment or resist when you tried to lead him out of it. Does that make sense to you? And what would be a fair price?”
    They worked it out. She would walk Nelson for a full hour twice a week, on Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons, and for this Keller would pay her fifty dollars a week. Then, when Keller was out of town, she would get fifty dollars a day, in return for which she would see to Nelson’s food and water and walk him twice daily.
    “Why don’t we start now?” she suggested. “How about it, Nelson? Want to go for a walk?” The dog recognized the word but looked uncertain. “Walk, walk, walk!” she said, and his tail set to wagging.
    When they were out the door Keller began to worry. Suppose she never brought the dog back? Then what?
    Dogs Walked, Plants Watered, the notice had read. Responsible Young Woman Will Provide Quality Care for Your Flora and Fauna. Call Andria.
    The notice had appeared on the community bulletin board at the neighborhood Gristede’s, where Keller bought Grape-Nuts for himself and Milk-Bone for Nelson. There had been a phone number, and he had copied it down and dialed it, and now his dog was in the care and custody of this allegedly responsible young woman, and all he really knew about her was that she didn’t know how to