Hit Man

His name was Howard Ramsgate.”
    “Well,” Farrar said.
    “That was six years ago. So much for the heat of the moment.”
    “I wanted to find the right way to do it.”
    “You found me,” Keller said, “and got me to do it for you. And it worked, and if you’d left it like that you’d have been in the clear. But instead you sent me to Florida to kill an old man in a wheelchair.”
    “Louis Drucker,” Farrar said.
    “Your uncle, your mother’s brother. He didn’t have any children of his own, and who do you think he left his money to?”
    “What kind of a life did Uncle Lou have? Crippled, immobile, living on painkillers. . . ”
    “I guess we did him a favor,” Keller said. “The woman in Colorado used to live two doors down the street from you. I don’t know what she did to get on your list. Maybe she jilted you or insulted you, or maybe her dog pooped on your lawn. But what’s the difference? The point is you used me. You got me to chase around the country killing people.”
    “Isn’t that what you do?”
    “Right,” Keller said, “and that’s the part I don’t understand. I don’t know how you knew to call a certain number in White Plains, but you did, and that got me on the train with a flower in my lapel. Why the charade? Why not just pay the money and let out the contract?”
    “I couldn’t afford it.”
    Keller nodded. “I thought that might be it. Theft of services, that’s what we’re looking at here. You had me do all this for nickels and dimes.”
    “Look,” Farrar said, “I want to apologize.”
    “You do?”
    “I do, I honestly do. The first time, with that bastard Ramsgate, well, it was the only way to do it. The other two times I could have afforded to pay you a suitable sum, but we’d already established a relationship. You were working, you know, out of patriotism, and it seemed safer and simpler to leave it at that.”
    “Safer.”
    “And simpler.”
    “And cheaper,” Keller said. “At the time, but where are you in the long run?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well,” Keller said, “what do you figure happens now?”
    “You’re not going to kill me.”
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “You’d have done it,” Farrar said. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation. You want something, and I think I know what it is.”
    “A pat on the back,” Keller said, “from the man who never inhaled.”
    “Money,” Farrar said. “You want what’s rightfully yours, the money you would have been paid if I hadn’t misrepresented myself. That’s it, isn’t it?”
    “It’s close.”
    “Close?”
    “What I want,” Keller said, “is that and a little more. If I were the IRS, I’d call the difference penalties and interest.”
    “How much?”
    Keller named a figure, one large enough to make Farrar blink. He said it seemed high, and they kicked it around, and Keller found himself reducing the sum by a third.
    “I can raise most of that,” Farrar told him. “Not overnight. I’ll have to sell some securities. I can have some cash by the end of the week, or the beginning of next week at the latest.”
    “That’s good,” Keller said.
    “And I’ll have some more work for you.”
    “More work?”
    “That woman in Colorado,” Farrar said. “You wondered what I had against her. There was something, a remark she made once, but that’s not the point. I found a way to make myself a secondary beneficiary in an individual’s government insurance policy. It’s too complicated to explain but it ought to work like a charm.”
    “That’s pretty slick,” Keller said, getting to his feet. “I’ll tell you, Farrar, I’m prepared to wait a week or so for the money, especially with the prospect of future work. But I’d like some cash tonight as a binder. You must have some money around the house.”
    “Let me see what I’ve got in the safe,” Farrar said.
    “Twenty-two thousand dollars,” Keller said, slipping a rubber band around the bills and tucking them away. “That’s what, fifty-five hundred dollars a pop?”
    “You’ll get the balance next week,” Farrar assured him. “Or a substantial portion of it, at the very least.”
    “Great.”
    “Anyway, where do you get fifty-five hundred? There were three of them, and three into twenty-two is seven and a third. That makes it”—he frowned, calculating—“seven thousand, three hundred thirty-three dollars a head.”
    “Is that right?”
    “And thirty-three cents,” Farrar