“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 save somebody’s life.”
“It’s out of character,” Keller agreed.
“Besides, what would you be doing at the party in the first place? Wouldn’t you stay out of sight and wait until you could get me alone?”
“If I’d been thinking straight,” Keller said. “I told myself it wouldn’t hurt to have a look around. And this joker from the hotel bar assured me I had nothing to worry about. ‘Half the town’ll be at Wally’s tonight,’ he said.”
“Half the town was. You wouldn’t have tried anything that night, would you?”
“God, no.”
“I remember thinking, I hope he’s not here. I hope it’s not tonight. Because I was enjoying the party and I didn’t want to miss anything. But you were there, and a good thing, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Saved the boy from drowning. According to the Chinese, you save somebody’s life, you’re responsible for him for the rest of your life. Because you’ve interfered with the natural order of things. That make sense to you?”
“Not really.”
“Or me either. You can’t beat them for whipping up a meal or laundering a shirt, but they’ve got some queer ideas on other subjects. Of course they’d probably say the same for some of my notions.”
“Probably.”
Garrity looked at his glass. “You called my doctor,” he said. “Must have been to confirm a suspicion you already had. What tipped you off? Is it starting to show in my face, or the way I move around?”
Keller shook his head. “I couldn’t find anybody else with a motive,” he said, “or a grudge against you. You were the only one left. And then I remembered seeing you wince once or twice, and try to hide it. I barely noticed it at the time, but then I started to think about it.”
“I thought it would be easier than doing it myself,” Garrity said. “I thought I’d just let a professional take me by surprise. I’d be like an old bull elk on a hillside, never expecting the bullet that takes him out in his prime.”
“It makes sense.”
“No, it doesn’t. Because the elk didn’t arrange for the hunter to be there. Far as the elk knows, he’s all alone there. He’s not wondering every damn day if today’s the day. He’s not bracing himself, trying to sense the crosshairs centering on his shoulder.”
“I never thought of that.”
“Neither did I,” said Garrity. “Or I never would have called that fellow in the first place. Mike, what the hell are you doing here tonight? Don’t tell me you came over to kill me.”
“I came to tell you I can’t.”
“Because we’ve come to know each other.”
Keller nodded.
“I grew up on a farm,” Garrity said. “One of those vanishing family farms you hear about, and of course it’s vanished, and I say good riddance. But we raised our own beef and pork, you know, and we kept a milk cow and a flock of laying hens. And we never named the animals we were going to wind up eating. The milk cow had a name, but not the bull calf she dropped. The breeder sow’s name was Elsie, but we never named her piglets.”
“Makes sense,” Keller said.
“I guess it doesn’t take a Chinaman to see how you can’t kill me once you’ve hauled Timmy out of the drink. Let alone after you’ve sat at my table and smoked my cigars. Reminds me, you care for a cigar?”
“No, thank you.”
“Well, where do we go from here, Mike? I have to say I’m relieved. I feel like I’ve been bracing myself for a bullet for weeks now. All of a sudden I’ve got a new lease on life. I’d say this calls for a drink except we’re already having one, and you’ve scarcely touched yours.”
“There is one thing,” Keller said.
He left the den while Garrity made his phone call. Timothy was in the living room, puzzling over a chessboard. Keller played a game with him and lost badly. “Can’t win ’em all,” he said, and tipped over his king.
“I was going to checkmate you,” the boy said. “In a few more moves.”
“I could see it coming,” Keller told him.
He went back to the den. Garrity was selecting a cigar from his humidor. “Sit down,” he said. “I’m fixing to smoke one of these things. If you won’t kill me, maybe it will.”
“You never know.”
“I made the call, Mike, and it’s all taken care of. Be a while before the word filters up and down the chain of command, but sooner or later they’ll call you up and tell you the client changed his mind. He paid in full and called off the job.”
They talked some, then sat a while in silence. At length Keller said he ought to get going. “I should be at my hotel,” he said, “in case they call.”
“Be a couple of days, won’t it?”
“Probably,” he said, “but you never know. If everyone involved makes a phone call right away, the word could get to me in a couple of hours.”
“Calling you off, telling you to come home. Be glad to get home, I bet.”
“It’s nice here,” he said, “but yes, I’ll be glad to get home.”
“Wherever it is, they say there’s no place like it.” Garrity leaned back, then allowed himself to wince at the pain that came over him. “If it never hurts worse than this,” he said, “then I can stand it. But of course it will get worse. And I’ll dec
ide I can stand that, and then it’ll get worse again.”
There was nothing to say to that.
“I guess I’ll know when it’s time to do something,” Garrity said. “And who knows? Maybe my heart’ll cut out on me out of the blue. Or I’ll get hit by a bus, or I don’t know what. Struck by lightning?”
“It could happen.”
“Anything can happen,” Garrity agreed. He got to his feet. “Mike,” he said, “I guess we won’t be seeing any more of each other, and I have to say I’m a little bit sorry about that. I’ve truly enjoyed our time together.”
“So have I, Wally.”
“I wondered, you know, what he’d be like. The man they’d send to do this kind of work. I don’t know what I expected, but you’re not it.”
He stuck out his hand, and Keller gripped it. “Take care,” Garrity said. “Be well, Mike.”
Back at his hotel, Keller took a hot bath and got a good night’s sleep. In the morning he went out for breakfast, and when he got back there was a message at the desk for him: Mr. Soderholm—please call your office.
He called from a pay phone, even though it didn’t matter, and he was careful not to overreact when Dot told him to come home, the mission was aborted.
“You told me I had all the time in the world,” he said. “If I’d known the guy was in such a rush—”
“Keller,” she said, “it’s a good thing you waited. What he did, he changed his mind.”
“He changed his mind?”
“It used to be a woman’s prerogative,” Dot said, “but now we’ve got equality between the sexes, so that means anyone can do it. It works out fine because we’re getting paid in full. So kick the dust of Texas off your feet and come on home.”
“I’ll do that,” he said, “but I may hang out here for a few more days.”
“Oh?”
“Or even a week,” he said. “It’s a pretty nice town.”
“Don’t tell me you’re itching to move there, Keller. We’ve been through this before.”
“Nothing like that,” he said, “but there’s this girl I met.”
“Oh, Keller.”
“Well, she’s nice,” he said. “And if I’m off the job there’s no reason not to have a date or two with her, is there?”
“As long as you don’t decide to move in.”
“She’s not that nice,” he said, and Dot laughed and told him not to change.
He hung up and drove around and found a movie he’d been meaning to see. The next morning he packed and checked out of his hotel.
He drove across town and got a room on the motel strip, paying cash for four nights in advance and registering as J. D. Smith from Los Angeles.
There was no girl he’d met, no girl he wanted to meet. But it wasn’t time to go home yet.
He had unfinished business, and four days should give him time to do it. Time for Wallace Garrity to get used to the idea of not feeling those imaginary crosshairs on his shoulder blades.
But not so much time that the pain would be too much to bear.
And, sometime in those four days, Keller would give him a gift. If he could, he’d make it look natural—a heart attack, say, or an accident. In any event it would be swift and without warning, and as close as he could make it to painless.
And it would be unexpected. Garrity would never see it coming.
Keller frowned, trying to figure out how he would manage it. It would be a lot trickier than the task that had drawn him to town originally, but he’d brought it on himself. Getting involved, fishing the boy out of the pool. He’d interfered with the natural order of things. He was under an obligation.
It was the least he could do.
Keller’s Horoscope
Keller got out of the taxi at Bleecker and Broadway because that was easier than trying to tell the Haitian cabdriver how to find Crosby Street. He walked to Maggie’s building, a former warehouse with a forbidding exterior, and rode up to her fifth-floor loft. She was waiting for him, wearing a black canvas coat of the sort you saw in western movies. It was called a duster, probably because it was cut long to keep the dust off. Maggie was a small woman—elfin, he had decided, was a good word for her—and this particular duster reached clear to the floor.
“Surprise,” she said, and flung it open, and there was nothing under it but her.
Keller, who’d met Maggie Griscomb at an art gallery, had been keeping infrequent company with her for a while now. Just the other day a chance remark of his had led Dot to ask if he was seeing anybody, and he’d been stuck for an answer. Was he? It was hard to say.
“It’s a superficial relationship,” he’d explained.
“Keller, what other kind is there?”
“The thing is,” he said, “she wants it that way. We get together once a week, if that. And we go to bed.”
“Don’t you at least go out for dinner first?”
“I’ve given up suggesting it. She’s tiny, she probably doesn’t eat much. Maybe eating is something she can only do in private.”
“You’d be surprised how many people feel that way about sex,” Dot said. “But I’d have to say she sounds like the proverbial sailor’s dream. Does she own a liquor store?”
She was a failed painter who’d reinvented herself as a jewelry maker. “You bought earrings for the last woman in your life,” Dot reminded him. “This one makes her own. What are you going to buy for her?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s economical. Between not giving her gifts and not taking her out to dinner, I can’t see this one putting much of a strain on your budget. Can you at least send the woman flowers?”
“I already did.”
“Well, it’s something you can do more than once, Keller. That’s one of the nice things about flowers. The little buggers die, so you get to throw them out and make room for fresh ones.”
“She liked the flowers,” he said, “but she told me once was enough. Don’t do it again, she said.”
“Because she wants to keep things superficial.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Keller,” she said, “I’ve got to hand it to you. You don’t find that many of them, but you sure pick the strange ones.”
“Now that was intense,” Maggie said. “Was it just my imagination, or was that a major earth-shaking experience?”
“High up there on the Richter scale,” he said.
“I thought tonight would be special. Full moon tomorrow.”
“Does that mean we should have waited?”
“In my experience,” she said, “it’s the day before the full moon that I feel it the strongest.”
“Feel what?”
“The moon.”
“But what is it you feel? What effect does it have on you?”
“Makes me restless. Heightens my moods. Sort of intensifies things. Same as everybody else, I guess. What about you, Keller? What does the moon do for you?”
As far as Keller could tell, all the moon did for him was light up the sky a little. Living in the city, where there were plenty of streetlights to take up the slack, he paid little attention to the moon, and might not have noticed if someone took it away. New moon, half moon, full moon—only when he caught an occasional glimpse of it between the buildings did he know what phase it was in.
Maggie evidently paid more attention to the moon, and attached more significance to it. Well, if the moon had had anything to do with the pleasure they’d just shared, he was grateful to it, and glad to have it around.
“Besides,” she was saying, “my horoscope says I’m going through a very sexy time.”
“Your horoscope.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What do you do, read it every morning?”
“You mean in the newspaper? Well, I’m not saying I never look, but I wouldn’t rely on a newspaper horoscope for advice and counsel any more than I’d need Ann Landers to tell me if I have to pet to be popular.”
“On that subject,” he
said, “I’d say you don’t absolutely have to, but what could it hurt?”
“And who knows,” she said, reaching out for him. “I might even enjoy it.”
A while later she said, “Newspaper astrology columns are fun, like Peanuts and Doonesbury, but they’re not very accurate. But I got my chart done, and I go in once a year for a tune-up. So I’ll have an idea what to expect over the coming twelve months.”
“You believe in all that?”
“Astrology? Well, it’s like gravity, isn’t it?”
“It keeps things from flying off in space?”
“It works whether I believe in it or not,” she said. “So I might as well. Besides, I believe in everything.”
“Like Santa Claus?”
“And the Tooth Fairy. No, all the occult stuff, like tarot and numerology and palmistry and phrenology and—”
“What’s that?”
“Head bumps,” she said, and capped his skull with her hand. “You’ve got some.”
“I’ve got head bumps?”
“Uh-huh, but don’t ask me what they mean. I’ve never even been to a phrenologist.”
“Would you?”
“Go to one? Sure, if somebody steered me to a good one. In all of these areas, some practitioners are better than others. There are the storefront gypsies who are really just running a scam, but after that you’ve still got different levels of proficiency. Some people have a knack and some just hack away at it. But that’s true in every line of work, isn’t it?”
It was certainly true in his.
“What I don’t get,” he said, “is how any of it works. What difference does it make where the stars are when you’re born? What has that got to do with anything?”
“I don’t know how anything works,” she said, “or why it should. Why does the light go on when I throw the switch? Why do I get wet when you touch me? It’s all a mystery.”
“But head bumps, for Christ’s sake. Tarot cards.”
“Sometimes it’s just a way for a person to access her intuition,” she said. “I used to know a woman who could read shoes.”
“The labels? I don’t follow you.”
“She’d look at a pair of shoes that you’d owned for a while, and she could tell you things about yourself.”