Hit Man

sense.”
    “Besides,” he said, “it’s not a bad town.”
    “Oh, God, Keller.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “ ‘It’s not a bad town.’ I bet you’re the first person to say that, including the head of the chamber of commerce.”
    “It’s not,” he insisted. “The motel set gets HBO. There’s a Pizza Hut down the street.”
    “Keep it to yourself, Keller, or everybody’s going to want to move there.”
    “And I’ve got things to do.”
    “Like what?”
    “A little metalwork project, for starters. And I want to buy something for Andria.”
    “Not earrings again.”
    “You can’t have too many earrings,” he said.
    “Well, that’s true,” she agreed. “I can’t argue with you there.”
    He hung up and used the carbide-bladed hacksaw from the hardware store to remove most of both barrels of the shotgun from the sporting goods store, then switched blades and cut away most of the stock as well. He loaded both chambers and left the gun tucked under the mattress. Then he drove along the river road until he found a good spot, and he tossed the sawed-off gun barrels, the hacksaw, and the box of shotgun shells into the Mississippi. Toxic waste, he thought, and shook his head, just imagining all the junk that wound up in the river.
    He drove around for a while, just enjoying the day, and returned to the motel. Right now Randall Cleary was telling himself he was safe, he was in the clear, he had nothing to worry about. But he wasn’t sure yet.
    In a few days he’d be sure. He’d even think to himself that maybe he should have called Keller’s bluff, or at least not agreed to pay double. But what the hell, it was only money, and money was something he had a ton of.
    Stupid amateur.
    Which one was he, anyway? The nerd with the wispy mustache? The plump one, the dumpling? Or someone yet unseen?
    Well, he’d find out.
    Keller, feeling professional, feeling mature, sat back and put his feet up. Postponing gratification was turning out to be more fun than he would have guessed.

7
    Keller's Choice
    K eller, behind the wheel of a rented Plymouth, kept an eye on the fat man’s house. It was very grand, with columns, for heaven’s sake, and a circular driveway, and one hell of a lot of lawn. Keller, who had done his share of lawn mowing as a teenager, wondered what a kid would get for mowing a lawn like that.
    Hard to say. The thing was, he had no frame of reference. He seemed to remember getting a couple of bucks way back when, but the lawns he’d mowed were tiny, postage stamps in comparison to the fat man’s rolling green envelope. Taking into consideration the disparity in lawn size, and the inexorable shrinkage of the dollar over the years, what was a lawn like this worth? Twenty dollars? Fifty dollars? More?
    The non-answer, he suspected, was that people who had lawns like this one didn’t hire kids to push a mower around. Instead they had gardeners who showed up regularly with vehicles appropriate to the season, mowing in the summer, raking leaves in the fall, plowing snow in the winter. And charging so much a month, a tidy sum that actually didn’t cost the fat man anything to speak of, because he very likely billed it to his company, or took it off his taxes. Or, if his accountant was enterprising, both.
    Keller, who lived in a one-bedroom apartment in midtown Manhattan, had no lawn to mow. There was a tree in front of his building, planted and diligently maintained by the Parks Department, and its leaves fell in the fall, but no one needed to rake them. The wind was pretty good about blowing them away. Snow, when it didn’t melt of its own accord, was shoveled from the sidewalk by the building’s superintendent, who kept the elevator running and replaced burned-out bulbs in the hall fixtures and dealt with minor plumbing emergencies. Keller had a low-maintenance life, really. All he had to do was pay the rent on time and everything else got taken care of by other people.
    He liked it that way. Even so, when his work took him away from home he found himself wondering. His fantasies, by and large, centered on simpler and more modest lifestyles. A cute little house in a subdivision, an undemanding job. A manageable life.
    The fat man’s house, in a swank suburban community north of Cincinnati, was neither cute nor little. Keller wasn’t too clear on what the fat man did, beyond the fact that it involved his playing host to a lot of visitors and spending a good deal of time in his