Hit Man

him?”
    “Shit, yes, I’m positive. Why?”
    “Just making sure.”
    Joel ran him back to the All-American and gave him a map of Tulsa with different locations marked on it—the All-American Inn, Ruthven’s house, Ruthven’s office, and a southside restaurant Joel said was outstanding. He also gave Keller a slip of paper with a phone number on it. “Anything you want,” he said. “You want a girl, you want to get in a card game, you want to see a cockfight, just call that number and I’ll take care of it. You ever been to a cockfight?”
    “Never.”
    “You want to?”
    Keller thought about it. “I don’t think so,” he said.
    “Well, if you change your mind, just let me know. Or anything else you want.” Joel hesitated. “I got to say I’ve got a lot of respect for you,” he said, averting his eyes from Keller’s as he said it. “I don’t guess I could do what you do. I haven’t got the sand for it.”
    Keller went to his room and stretched out on the bed. Sand, he thought. What the hell did sand have to do with anything?
    He thought about Ruthven, coming off the elevator, long and lean, and realized why he’d been bothered by the man’s appearance. He wasn’t what Keller had expected. He didn’t look anything like Harry in 314.
    Did Ruthven know he was a target? Driving around in the Toyota, keeping an eye on the man, Keller decided that he did. There was a certain wariness about him. The way to handle that, Keller decided, was to let him get over it. A few days of peace and quiet and Ruthven could revert to his usual way of thinking. He’d decide that Harry and his girlfriend had been killed by a jealous husband, and he’d drop his guard and stick his neck out, and Keller could get the job done and go home.
    The gun seemed all right. The third afternoon he drove out into the country, popped a full clip into the gun, and emptied the clip at a CATTLE CROSSING sign. None of his shots hit the mark, but he didn’t figure that was the gun’s fault. He was fifteen yards away, for God’s sake, and the sign was no more than ten inches across. Keller wasn’t a particularly good shot, but he arranged his life so he didn’t have to be. If you walked up behind a guy and put the gun muzzle to the back of his neck, all you had to do was pull the trigger. You didn’t have to be a marksman. All you needed was—
    What? Karma? Sand?
    He reloaded and made a real effort this time, and two shots actually hit the sign. Remarkable what a man could do when he put his mind to it.
    The hard part was finding a way to pass the time. He went to a movie, walked through a mall, and watched a lot of television. He had Joel’s number but never called it. He didn’t want female companionship, nor did he feel like playing cards or watching a cockfight.
    He kept fighting off the urge to call New York.
    On one of the home shopping channels, one woman said earnestly to another, “Now there’s one thing we both know, and that’s that you just can’t have too many earrings.” Keller couldn’t get the line out of his head. Was it literally true? Suppose you had a thousand pairs, or ten thousand. Suppose you had a million pairs. Wouldn’t that constitute a surplus?
    The woman in 314 hadn’t been wearing earrings, but there had been a pair on the bedside table. How many other pairs had she had at home?
    Finally one morning he got up at daybreak and showered and shaved. He packed his bag and wiped the motel room free of prints. He had done this routinely every time he left the place, so that it would never be necessary for him to return to it, but this morning he sensed that it was time to wind things up. He drove to Ruthven’s house and parked around the corner at the curb. He went through the driveway and yard of a house on the side street, scaled a four-foot Cyclone fence, and jimmied a window in order to get into Ruthven’s garage. The car inside the garage was unlocked, and he got into the back seat and waited patiently.
    Eventually the garage door opened, and when that happened Keller scrunched down so that he couldn’t be seen. Ruthven opened the car door and got behind the wheel.
    Keller sat up slowly. Ruthven was fumbling with the key, having a hard time getting it into the ignition. But was it really Ruthven?
    Jesus, get a grip. Who else could it be?
    Keller stuck the gun in his ear and emptied the clip.
    “These are beautiful,” Andria said. “You didn’t have to bring me anything.”
    “I