Hit Man

had failed to notice it. Garrity would have been despondent. It was his party, his pool, his failure to provide supervision. He’d probably have blamed himself for the boy’s death.
    When Keller took him out, it would have been the kindest thing he could have done for him.
    He caught the waiter’s eye and signaled for more coffee. He’d just given himself something to think about.
    “Mike,” Garrity said, coming toward him with a hand outstretched. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Had a phone call from a fellow with a hankering to buy a little five-acre lot of mine on the south edge of town. Thing is, I don’t want to sell it to him.”
    “I see.”
    “But there’s ten acres on the other side of town I’d be perfectly happy to sell to him, but he’ll only want it if he thinks of it himself. So that left me on the phone longer than I would have liked. Now what would you say to a glass of brandy?”
    “Maybe a small one.”
    Garrity led the way to the den, poured drinks for both of them. “You should have come earlier,” he said. “In time for dinner. I hope you know you don’t need an invitation. There’ll always be a place for you at our table.”
    “Well,” Keller said.
    “I know you can’t talk about it,” Garrity said, “but I hope your project here in town is shaping up nicely.”
    “Slow but sure,” Keller said.
    “Some things can’t be hurried,” Garrity allowed, and sipped brandy, and winced. If Keller hadn’t been looking for it, he might have missed the shadow that crossed his host’s face.
    Gently he said, “Is the pain bad, Wally?”
    “How’s that, Mike?”
    Keller put his glass on the table. “I spoke to Dr. Jacklin,” he said. “I know what you’re going through.”
    “That son of a bitch,” Garrity said, “was supposed to keep his mouth shut.”
    “Well, he thought it was all right to talk to me,” Keller said. “He thought I was Dr. Edward Fishman from the Mayo Clinic.”
    “Calling for a consultation.”
    “Something like that.”
    “I did go to Mayo,” Garrity said, “but they didn’t need to call Harold Jacklin to double-check their results. They just confirmed his diagnosis and told me not to buy any long-playing records.” He looked to one side. “They said they couldn’t say for sure how much time I had left, but that the pain would be manageable for a while. And then it wouldn’t.”
    “I see.”
    “And I’d have all my faculties for a while,” he said. “And then I wouldn’t.”
    Keller didn’t say anything.
    “Well, hell,” Garrity said. “A man wants to take the bull by the horns, doesn’t he? I decided I’d go out for a walk with a shotgun and have a little hunting accident. Or I’d be cleaning a handgun here at my desk and have it go off. But it turned out I just couldn’t tolerate the idea of killing myself. Don’t know why, can’t explain it, but that seems to be the way I’m made.”
    He picked up his glass and looked at the brandy. “Funny how we hang on to life,” he said. “Something else Sam Johnson said, said there wasn’t a week of his life he’d voluntarily live through again. I’ve had more good times than bad, Mike, and even the bad times haven’t been that godawful, but I think I know what he was getting at. I wouldn’t want to repeat any of it, but that doesn’t mean there’s a minute of it I’d have been willing to miss. I don’t want to miss whatever’s coming next, either, and I don’t guess Dr. Johnson did either. That’s what keeps us going, isn’t it? Wanting to find out what’s around the next bend in the river.”
    “I guess so.”
    “I thought that would make the end easier to face,” he said. “Not knowing when it was coming, or how or where. And I recalled that years ago a fellow told me to let him know if I ever needed to have somebody killed. ‘You just let me know,’ he said, and I laughed, and that was the last said on the subject. A month or so ago I looked up his number and called him, and he gave me another number to call.”
    “And you put out a contract.”
    “Is that the expression? Then that’s what I did.”
    “Suicide by proxy,” Keller said.
    “And I guess you’re holding my proxy,” Garrity said, and drank some brandy. “You know, the thought flashed across my mind that first night, talking with you after you pulled my grandson out of the pool. I got this little glimmer, but I told myself I was being ridiculous. A hired killer doesn’t turn up and