Hit Man

runs into money.”
    “It does,” he agreed. “I’m afraid I’ve been dipping into my retirement fund the last month or so. I’ve spent more money than I expected to.”
    “No kidding.”
    “And the thing is I’m really enjoying it,” he said, “and learning more and more about it as I go along. I’d like to keep on spending serious money on stamps.”
    She gave him a thoughtful look. “It doesn’t sound as though you’re quite ready to retire after all.”
    “I’m not in a position to,” he said. “Not anymore. And I don’t really want to, either. In fact I’d like to get as much work as I can, because I can use the money.”
    “To buy stamps.”
    “It sounds silly, I know, but. . . ”
    “No it doesn’t,” she said. “It sounds like the answer to a maiden’s prayer. We always worked well together, didn’t we, Keller?”
    “Always.”
    “Some of the other jokers I was considering, I think they might have a hard time coming to terms with the idea of working for a woman. But I don’t see that as a problem for you and me.”
    “Certainly not.”
    “Well,” she said. “Thank God for stamp collecting is all that I can say. How about another glass of iced tea, Keller? And you can even tell me about postmasters’ promotionals, if it makes you happy.”
    “Provisionals,” he said. “And you don’t have to hear about them. I’m happy already.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    Keller gets around a great deal, and it is perhaps fitting that the author was similarly peripatetic while chronicling his adventures. He is thus pleased to acknowledge the following venues, where various sections of this book were written: the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, in Sweet Briar, Virginia; the Ragdale Foundation, in Lake Forest, Illinois; the Park Plaza Motor Lodge, in Johnson City, New York; the SS Nordlys, in Norwegian coastal waters; Emilie Poe Wood’s house, in Lucedale, Mississippi; Continental Airlines flight 214 from Houston to Newark; and, in New York City, the Writers Room (Waverly Place), the Writers Room (Astor Place), the Peacock Caffé (Greenwich Avenue), Caffe ` Lucca (Bleecker Street), and the Donnell branch of the New York Public Library.
    Grateful acknowledgment is also due to those publications in which some of Keller’s adventures appeared in a slightly different form: Murder on the Run, a collection of stories by members of the Adams Round Table; Murder Is My Business, an anthology edited by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins; and, of course, Playboy.

About the Author
    L AWRENCE B LOCK is a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master and a multiple winner of the Edgar, Shamus, and Maltese Falcon awards. His fifty-plus books include the fifteen Matthew Scudder novels, all of which are available as HarperCollins e-books (complete list is below). Scudder also appears in Enough Rope , a collection of Mr. Block’s classic short stories. That volume, and Small Town , a novel, are also published by PerfectBound, along with the Keller books, Hit Man and Hit List .
    Please visit www.lawrenceblock.com.
    Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
    The Matthew Scudder Crime Novels are (in publication order): The Sins of the Fathers; Time to Murder and Create; In the Midst of Death; A Stab in the Dark; Eight Million Ways to Die; When the Sacred Ginmill Closes; Out on the Cutting Edge; A Ticket to the Boneyard; A Dance at the Slaughterhouse; A Walk Among the Tombstones; The Devil Knows You’re Dead; A Long Line of Dead Men; Even the Wicked; Everybody Dies; Hope to Die.

HIT MAN
    “PAGE-TURNER OF THE WEEK. . .
Macabre charm. . . In what amounts to a series
of interlocking short stories with more plot twists
than the current White House imbroglio,
Keller proves the perfect observer of life—
clear-eyed, ironic and always dead-on.”
People
    “A collection of stories that reads like the flowing
memoir of a man who is letting it all out for
the first time. . . The ironic tone and confessional
content make these intimate tales so funny and
full of rue . . . [Keller] may have no ethics,
but he definitely has a way about him.”
The New York Times Book Review
    “A brilliant writer . . . superb entertainment.”
Booklist
    “Block’s ravenous fans [will be]
delighted to see at least three masterpieces
gathered in one volume.”
Kirkus Reviews
    “Block, one of the genre’s finest practitioners,
is in fine form here. Anyone looking
for a disturbing