Hit Man

found the Ford, found the Sheraton, found a parking place, and left his overnight bag in the trunk. It would have been nice if the knife had come with a sheath, but kitchen knives rarely do, so he’d been moved to improvise, lifting a cardboard mailing envelope from a Federal Express drop box at the mall entrance. He walked into the hotel lobby with the mailer under his arm and the knife snug inside it.
    That gave him an idea.
    He checked the slip of paper in his wallet. St. Louis, Sheraton, Rm. 314.
    “Man’s a union official,” the old man in White Plains had told him. “Some people are afraid he might tell what he knows.”
    Just recently some people at a funded drug rehabilitation project in the Bronx had been afraid their accountant might tell what she knew, so they paid a pair of teenagers $150 to kill her. The two of them picked her up leaving the office, walked down the street behind her, and after a two-block stroll the sixteen-year-old shot her in the head. Within twenty-four hours they were in custody, and two days later so was the genius who hired them.
    Keller figured you got what you paid for.
    He went over to the house phone and dialed 314. It rang almost long enough to convince him the room was empty. Then a man picked up and said, “Yeah?”
    “FedEx,” Keller said.
    “Huh?”
    “Federal Express. Got a delivery for you.”
    “That’s crazy,” the man said.
    “Room 314, right? I’ll be right up.”
    The man protested that he wasn’t expecting anything, but Keller hung up on him in mid-sentence and got the elevator to the third floor. The halls were empty. He found room 314 and knocked briskly on the door. “FedEx,” he sang out. “Delivery.”
    Some muffled sounds came through the door. Then silence, and he was about to knock again when the man said, “What the hell is this?”
    “Parcel for you,” he said. “Federal Express.”
    “Can’t be,” the man said. “You got the wrong room.”
    “Room 314. That’s what it says, on the package and on the door.”
    “Well, there’s a mistake. Nobody knows I’m here.” That’s what you think, thought Keller. “Who’s it addressed to?”
    Who indeed? “Can’t make it out.”
    “Who’s it from, then?”
    “Can’t make that out, either,” Keller said. “That whole line’s screwed up, sender’s name and recipient’s name, but it says room 314 at the Sheraton, so that’s got to be you, right?”
    “Ridiculous,” the man said. “It’s not for me and that’s all there is to it.”
    “Well, suppose you sign for it,” Keller suggested, “and you take a look what’s in it, and if it’s really not for you you can drop it at the desk later, or call us and we’ll pick it up.”
    “Just leave it outside the door, will you?”
    “Can’t,” Keller said. “It needs a signature.”
    “Then take it back, because I don’t want it.”
    “You want to refuse it?”
    “Very good,” the man said. “You’re a quick study, aren’t you? Yes, by God, I want to refuse it.”
    “Fine with me,” Keller said. “But I still need a signature. You just check where it says ‘Refused’ and sign by the X. ”
    “For Christ’s sake, ” the man said, “is that the only way I’m going to get rid of you?”
    He unfastened the chain, turned the knob, and opened the door a crack. “Let me show you where to sign,” Keller said, displaying the envelope, and the door opened a little more to show a tall, balding man, heavyset, and unclothed but for a hotel towel wrapped around his middle. He reached out for the envelope, and Keller pushed into the room, boning knife in hand, and drove the blade in beneath the lower ribs, angling upward toward the heart.
    The man fell backward and lay sprawled out on the carpet at the foot of the unmade king-size bed. The room was a mess, Keller noted, with an open bottle of scotch on the dresser and an unfinished drink on each of the bedside tables. There were clothes tossed here and there, his clothes, her clothes—
    Her clothes?
    Keller’s eyes went to the closed bathroom door. Jesus, he thought. Time to get the hell out. Take the knife, pick up the FedEx envelope, and—
    The bathroom door opened. “Harry?” she said. “What on earth is—”
    And she saw Keller. Looked right at him, saw his face.
    Any second now she’d scream.
    “It’s his heart,” Keller cried. “Come here, you’ve got to help me.”
    She didn’t get it, but there was Harry on the floor, and here was this