Hit List

lethal weapons? You’d think they’d fingerprint you before they passed them out.”
    “Well, it worked just fine,” he said. “Went between the ribs and into the heart, and he wouldn’t have died any faster if I’d used a twelve-inch Bowie. There were a couple of women yakking away at the other end of the smoking lounge, and they didn’t notice a thing.”
    “And you got rid of the knife.”
    “And the cigarettes.”
    “And spent a few days in Jacksonville, thinking about it.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Didn’t pick up a phone.”
    “I thought about it.”
    “Well, that’s the next best thing, isn’t it? If thoughts had wings, I could have heard them flapping. Instead I figured you were dead.”
    “I’m sorry, Dot.”
    “I figured Roger got you and the hitter both. Figured the bastard turned the hat trick.”
    “The hat trick is three,” he said.
    “I know that, Keller. The old man was a hockey fan, remember? Knew the names of all the Rangers back to the first year of the franchise. I used to watch hockey matches with him.”
    “I didn’t know you were a fan.”
    “I wasn’t. I hated it. But I know what a hat trick is. Three goals in one game, all scored by the same player.”
    “Right.”
    “So I figured Roger got the hat trick.”
    “Roger got shut out,” he said. “Roger sat in the doorway with his thumb up his ass while I took out the hitter for him. But even the way you figured it, it wouldn’t have been the hat trick. If he killed me and the hitter, that’s two. Who’s the third?”
    “Your girlfriend.”
    “My—you mean Maggie?”
    “That’s right, I wasn’t supposed to call her your girlfriend. I keep forgetting.”
    “Roger didn’t kill her.”
    “You sure about that, Keller?”
    He stared at her, tried to read her face. He said, “Dot, we saw what happened. She brought a guy home and he left and our hitter went up, and he left, and a little while later the painter on the fourth floor had water coming through the ceiling.”
    “Right.”
    “The guy she brought home,” he said. “If that was Roger . . . but it couldn’t have been, because we saw him. And she was still alive when he left, remember? He forgot his keys, and she threw them down to him.”
    “His wallet.”
    “Whatever. Roger didn’t do anything except lurk in a doorway and eat at a lunch counter, and that’s the one good thing to come out of all this, Dot. Because I got a good look at him. I didn’t know who was who at the time, but I do now, and I can recognize him when I see him again.”
    “The man in the cap and windbreaker.”
    “Right, Roger.”
    “You’d know him if you saw him again.”
    “Absolutely.”
    “Maybe you would,” she said, “but we’ll never know. Because you’ll never see him again.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Keller,” she said, “you’d better sit down.”
    “I am sitting down. I’ve been sitting down for the past twenty minutes.”
    “So you are,” she said. “And it’s a good thing. And don’t get up now, Keller. Stay right where you are.”
    It was just as well that he was sitting. He didn’t know that what she told him would have knocked him off his feet, but he didn’t know that it wouldn’t, either. One thing he could say was that it was hard to take it all in.
    “He was Roger,” he said.
    “Right.”
    “The guy in the hat and muffler. The guy who sat upstairs across the street, smoking one cigarette after another.”
    “Most smokers do it that way, Keller. They smoke them in turn, rather than all at once.”
    “The guy who went upstairs to Maggie’s loft. If he was Roger, why would he kill Maggie? He wasn’t getting paid for it. He turned down the assignment, remember? And came in on the sly so he could have a chance to kill off the competition.”
    “That’s right.”
    “So he was watching the building, waiting for the hitter to make his move. Did he think the guy she brought home was the hitter? No, he would have seen what we saw, her throwing his wallet down to him. He knew she was alive when he went up there.”
    “And he knew she was dead when he left.”
    “Thus depriving himself of the chance to draw a bead on the man who had a contract on her. So he threw away his hat and went home.”
    “With you in hot pursuit.”
    “Why would he leave New York without killing the man he came to kill? And why do the hitter’s work for him? What was he trying to do, make him lose face and kill himself? That might