Keller on the Spot

by Lawrence Block

  “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 decide 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 in the natural order of things. He was under an obligation.

  It was the least he could do.

  T H E • E N D

  About the Author

  Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. He has written five books about Keller, the Urban Lonely Guy of assassins—Hit Man, Hit List, Hit Parade, Hit and Run, and Hit Me, and a Keller series for cable television is in development. “Keller,” he points out, “is a Guilty Pleasure for a lot of my readers. They like him, even though they don’t think they should.”

  Block’s other series characters include Bernie Rhodenbarr (The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons) and Matthew Scudder, brilliantly embodied by Liam Neeson in the new film, A Walk Among The Tombstones. His non-series novella, Resume Speed, is a bestselling Kindle Single, and will soon appear as a deluxe hardcover from Subterranean Press.


  The author is also well known for his books for writers, including the classic Telling Lies For Fun & Profit and Write For Your Life, and for his writings about the mystery genre and its practitioners, The Crime Of Our Lives. In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television (Tilt!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.

  lawrenceblock.com

  NEWSLETTER: Lawrence Block sends out an email newsletter from time to time, with updates, announcements, and special offers. It’s free, and an email to lawbloc@gmail.com with NEWSLETTER—KS in the header will get you on the list.

  Now turn the page for a bonus excerpt from Keller’s Therapy, an Edgar Award-winning story exclusively eVailable on Amazon:

  E X C E R P T

  Keller’s Therapy

  * * *

  “I had this dream,” Keller said. “Matter of fact I wrote it down, as you suggested.”

  “Good.”

  Before getting on the couch Keller had removed his jacket and hung it on the back of a chair. He moved from the couch to retrieve his notebook from the jacket’s inside breast pocket, then sat on the couch and found the page with the dream on it. He read through his notes rapidly, closed the book, and sat there, uncertain how to proceed.

  “As you prefer,” said Breen. “Sitting up or lying down, whichever is more comfortable.”

  “It doesn’t matter?”

  “Not to me.”

  And which was more comfortable? A seated posture seemed more natural for conversation, while lying down on the couch had the weight of tradition on its side. Keller, who felt driven to give this his best shot, decided to go with tradition. He stretched out, put his feet up.

  He said, “I’m living in a house, except it’s almost like a castle. Endless passageways and dozens of rooms.”

  “Is it your house?”

  “No, I just live here. In fact I’m a kind of servant for the family that owns the house. They’re almost like royalty.”

  “And you are a servant.”

  “Except I have very little to do, and I’m treated like an equal. I play tennis with members of the family. There’s this tennis court in back of the house.”

  “And this is your job? To play tennis with them?”

  “No, that’s an example of how they treat me as an equal. And I eat at the same table with them, instead of eating downstairs with the servants. My job is the mice.”

  “The mice?”

  “The house is infested with mice. I’m having dinner with the family, I’ve got a plate piled high with good food, and a waiter in black tie comes in and presents a covered dish. I lift the cover and there’s a note on it, and it says, ‘Mice.’”

  “Just the single word?”

  “That’s all. I get up from the table and I follow the servant down a long hallway, and I wind up in an unfinished room in the attic. There are tiny mice all over the room, there must be twenty or thirty of them, and I have to kill them.”

  “How?”

  “By crushing them underfoot. That’s the quickest and most humane way, but it bothers me and I don’t want to do it. But the sooner I finish, the sooner I can get back to my dinner, and I’m very hungry.”

  “So you kill the mice?”

  “Yes,” Keller said. “One almost gets away but I stomp on it just as it’s getting out the door. And then I’m back at the dinner table and everybody’s eating and drinking and laughing, and my plate’s been cleared away. Then there’s a big fuss, and finally they bring my plate back from the kitchen, but it’s not the same food as before. It’s . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Mice,” Keller said. “They’re skinned and cooked, but it’s a plateful of mice.”

  “And you eat them?”

  “That’s when I woke up,” Keller said. “And not a moment too soon, I’d have to say.”

  “Ah,” Breen said. He was a tall man, long-limbed and gawky, wearing chinos and a dark green shirt and a brown corduroy jacket. He looked to Keller like someone who had been a nerd in high school, and who now managed to look distinguished, in an eccentric sort of way. He said “Ah” again, and folded his hands, and asked Keller what he thought the dream meant.

  “You’re the doctor,” Keller said.

  “You think it means that I am the doctor?”

  “No, I think you’re the one who can say what it means. Maybe it just means I shouldn’t eat Rocky Road ice cream right before I go to bed.”

  “Tell me what you think the dream might mean.”

  “Maybe I see myself as a cat.”

  “Or as an exterminator?”

  Keller didn’t say anything.

  “Let us work with this dream on a very superficial level,” Breen said. “You’re employed as a corporate troubleshooter, except that you used another word for it.”

  “They tend to call us expediters,” Keller said, “but troubleshooter is what it amounts to.”

  “Most of the time there is nothing for you to do. You have considerable opportunity for recreation, for living the good life. For tennis, as it were, and for nourishing yourself at the table of the rich and powerful. Then mice are discovered, and it is at once clear that you are a servant with a job to do.”

  “I get it,” Keller said.

  “Go on, then. Explain it to me.”

  “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? There’s a problem and I’m called in and I have to drop what I’m doing and go and deal with it. I have to take abrupt arbitrary action, and that can involve firing people and closing out whole departments. I have to do it, but it’s like stepping on mice. And when I’m back at the table and I want my food—I suppose that’s my salary?”

  “Your compensation, yes.”

  “And I get a plate of mice.” He made a face. “In other words, what? My compensation comes from the destruction of the people I have to cut adrift. My sustenance comes at their expense. So it’s a guilt dream?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it’s guilt. My profit derives from the misfortunes of others, from the grief I bring to others. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “On the surface, yes. When we go deeper, perhaps we will begin to discover other connections. With your having chosen this job in the first place, perhaps, and with some aspects of your childhood.” He interlaced his fingers and sat back in his chair. “Everything is of a piece, you know. Nothing exists alone and nothing is accidental. Even your name.”

  “My name?”

  “Peter Stone. Think about it, why don’t you, between now and our next session.”

  “Think about my name?”

  “About your name and how it suits you. And”—a reflexive glance at his wristwatch—“I’m afraid our hour is up.”

  Jerrold Breen’s office was on Central Park West at Ninety-fourth Street. Keller walked to Columbus Avenue, rode a bus five blocks, crossed the street, and hailed a taxi. He had the driver go through Central Park, and by the time he got out of the cab at Fiftieth Street he was reasonably certain he hadn’t been followed. He bought coffee in a deli and stood on the sidewalk, keeping an eye open while he drank it. Then he walked to the building where he lived, on First Avenue between Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth. It was a prewar high-rise, with an Art Deco lobby and an attended elevator. “Ah, Mr. Keller,” the attendant said. “A beautiful day, yes?”

  “Beautiful,” Keller agreed.

  Keller had a one-bedroom apartment on the nineteenth floor. He could look out his window and see the UN building, the East River, the borough of Queens. On the first Sunday in November he could watch the runners streaming across the Queensboro Bridge, just a couple of miles past the midpoint of the New York marathon.

  It was a spectacle Keller tried not to miss. He would sit at his window for hours while thousands of them passed through his field of vision, first the world-class runners, then the middle-of-the-pack plodders, and finally the slowest of the slo
w, some walking, some hobbling. They started in Staten Island and finished in Central Park, and all he saw was a few hundred yards of their ordeal as they made their way over the bridge into Manhattan. Sooner or later the sight always moved him to tears, although he could not have said why.

  Maybe it was something to talk about with Breen.

  It was a woman who had led him to the therapist’s couch, an aerobics instructor named Donna. Keller had met her at the gym. They’d had a couple of dates, and had been to bed a couple of times, enough to establish their sexual incompatibility. Keller still went to the same gym two or three times a week to raise and lower heavy metal objects, and when he ran into her they were friendly.

  One time, just back from a trip somewhere, he must have rattled on about what a nice town it was. “Keller,” she said, “if there was ever a born New Yorker, you’re it. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “But you’ve got this fantasy, living the good life in Elephant, Montana. Every place you go, you dream up a whole life to go with it.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Who’s saying it’s bad? But I bet you could have fun with it in therapy.”

  “You think I need to be in therapy?”

  “I think you’d get a lot out of therapy,” she said. “Look, you come here, right? You climb the Stair Monster, you use the Nautilus.”

  “Mostly free weights.”

  “Whatever. You don’t do this because you’re a physical wreck.”

  “I do it to stay in shape.”

  “And because it makes you feel good.”

  “So?”

  “So I see you as all closed in and trying to reach out,” she said. “Going all over the country and getting real estate agents to show you houses you’re not going to buy.”

  “That was a couple of times. And what’s so bad about it, anyway? It passes the time.”