Hit Man

cigarette or two while he took the sun.
    Keller considered and rejected elaborate schemes for getting into the building. They’d work, but then what? The woman lived in the traitor’s apartment, so he’d have to take her out, too. He had no compunctions about this, recognizing that civilian casualties were inevitable in modern warfare, and who was to say she was an entirely unwitting pawn? No, if the only way to nullify the traitor led through her, Keller would take her out without a second thought.
    But a double homicide made for a high-profile incident, and why draw unnecessary attention? With an aged and infirm quarry, it was so much simpler to make it look like natural causes.
    Could he lure the woman off the premises? Could he gain access during her absence? And could he get out unobtrusively, his work completed, before she got back?
    He was working it out, fumbling with a plan, when Fate dropped it all in his lap. It was mid-morning, with the sun climbing the eastern sky, and he’d dutifully dogged their footsteps (well, her footsteps, since the traitor’s feet never touched the ground) a mile or so up the beach. Now the traitor sat in his chair facing the ocean, his head back, his eyes closed, his leathery skin soaking up the rays. A few yards away the woman lay on her side on a beach towel, smoking a cigarette, reading a magazine.
    She put out the cigarette, burying it in the sand. And, moments later, the magazine slipped from her fingers as she dozed off.
    Keller gave her a minute. He looked left, then right. There was nobody close by, and he was willing to take his chances with those who were fifty yards or more from the scene. Even if they were looking right at him, they’d never realize what was happening right before their eyes. Especially given the age of most of those eyes.
    He came up behind the traitor, clapped a hand over his treacherous mouth, used the thumb and forefinger of his other hand to pinch the man’s nostrils closed, and kept his air shut off while he counted, slowly, to a number that seemed high enough.
    When he let go, the traitor’s hand fell to one side. Keller propped it up and left him looking as though asleep, basking like a lizard in the warm embrace of the sun.
    “Where’ve you been, Keller? I’ve been calling you for days.”
    “I was out of town,” he said.
    “Out of town?”
    “Florida, actually.”
    “Florida? Disney World, by any chance? Do I get to shake the hand that shook the hand of Mickey Mouse?”
    “I just wanted a little sun and sand,” he said. “I went to the Gulf Coast. Sanibel Island.”
    “Did you bring me a seashell, Keller?”
    “A seashell?”
    “The shelling is supposed to be spectacular there,” Dot said. “The island sticks out into the Gulf instead of stretching out parallel to the land, the way they’re supposed to.” “ ‘The way they’re supposed to’?”
    “Well, the way they usually do. So the tides bring in shells by the carload and people come from all over the world to walk the beach and pick them up. But why am I telling you all this? You’re the one who just got back from the damn place. You didn’t bring me a shell, did you?”
    “You have to get up early in the morning for the serious shelling,” Keller said, wondering if it was true. “The shellers are out there at the crack of dawn, like locusts on a field of barley.”
    “Barley, huh?”
    “Amber waves of grain,” he said. “Anyway, what do I care about shells? I just wanted a break.”
    “You missed some work.”
    “Oh,” he said.
    “It couldn’t wait, and who knew where you were or when you’d be back? You should really call in when you leave town.”
    “I didn’t think of it.”
    “Well, why would you? You never leave town.
    When’s the last time you had a vacation?”
    “I’m on vacation most of my life,” he said. “Right here in New York.”
    “Then I guess it was about time you went away for something besides work. I suppose you had company.”
    “Well . . .”
    “Good for you, Keller. It’s just as well I couldn’t reach you. But next time . . .”
    “Next time I’ll keep you posted,” he said. “Better than that, next time I’ll bring home a seashell.”
    This time he didn’t try to track the story in the papers. Even if Pompano Beach had a newspaper of its own, you couldn’t expect to find it at the UN newsstand. They’d have the Miami Herald there, but somehow he didn’t figure the Herald ran a story every time