Keller's Designated Hitter Read online

  “You have.”

  “A couple of times,” he allowed, “and it worked out all right, all things considered, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.”

  “I know,” Dot said, “and I almost turned it down without consulting you. And not just because it’s local.”

  “That’s the least of it.”

  “Right.”

  “It’s short money,” he said. “It’s ten thousand dollars. It’s not exactly chump change, but it’s a fraction of what I usually get.”

  “The danger of working for short money,” she said, “is word gets around. But one thing we’d make sure of is nobody knows you’re the one who took this job. So it’s not a question of ten thousand dollars versus your usual fee, because your usual fee doesn’t come into the picture. It’s ten thousand dollars for two or three days work, and I know you can use the work.”

  “And the money.”

  “Right. And, of course, there’s no travel. Which was a minus the first time we looked at it, but in terms of time and money and all of that—”

  “Suddenly it’s a plus.” He took a sip of his iced tea. “Look, this is stupid. We’re not talking about the most important thing.”

  “I know.”

  “The, uh, subject is generally a man. Sometimes it’s a woman.”

  “You’re an equal-opportunity kind of guy, Keller.”

  “One time,” he said, “somebody wanted me to do a kid. You remember?”

  “Vividly.”

  “We turned them down.”

  “You’re damn right we did.”

  “Adults,” he said. “Grown-ups. That’s where we draw the line.”

  “Well,” she said, “if it matters, the subject this time around is an adult.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Five.”

  “A five-year-old adult,” he said heavily.

  “Do the math, Keller. He’s thirty-five in dog years.”

  “Somebody wants to pay me ten thousand dollars to kill a dog,” he said. “Why me, Dot? Why can’t they call the SPCA?”

  “I wondered that myself,” she said. “Same token, every time we get a client who wants a spouse killed, I wonder if a divorce wouldn’t be a better way to go. Why call us? Has Raoul Felder got an unlisted phone number?”

  “But a dog, Dot.”

  She took a long look at him. “You’re thinking about Nelson,” she said. “Am I right or am I right?”

  “You’re right.”

  Nelson, an Australian cattle dog, had entered Keller’s life in unexpected fashion, and made an equally surprising exit. He’d acquired the animal upon the death of a client, and lost it when the woman he’d hired to walk it—Andria, her name was, and she painted her toes all the colors of the rainbow—walked out of his life, and took Nelson with her.

  “Keller,” she said, “I met Nelson, and I liked Nelson. Nelson was a friend of mine. Keller, this dog is no Nelson.”

  “If you say so.”

  “In fact,” she said, “if Nelson saw this dog and trotted over to give him a friendly sniff, that would be the end of Nelson. This dog’s a pit bull, Keller, and he’s enough to give the breed a bad name.”

  “The breed already has a bad name.”

  “And I can see why. If this dog was a movie actor, Keller, he’d be Jack Elam.”

  “I always liked Jack Elam.”

  “You didn’t let me finish. He’d be like Jack Elam, but nasty.”

  “What does he do, Dot? Eat children?”

  She shook her head. “If he ever bit a kid,” she said, “or even snarled good and hard at one, that’d be the end of him. The law’s set up to protect people from dogs. What with due process and everything, he might rip the throats out of a few tykes before the law caught up with him, but once it did he’d be out of the game and on his way to Doggie Heaven.”

  “Would he go to heaven? I mean, if he killed a kid—”

  “All dogs go to heaven, Keller, even the bad ones. Where was I?”

  “He doesn’t bite children.”

  “Never has. Loves people, wants to make nice to everyone. If he sees another dog, however, or a cat or a ferret or a hamster, it’s another story. He kills it.”

  “Oh.”

  “He lives with his owner in the middle of Manhattan,” she said, “and she takes him to Central Park and lets him off his leash, and whenever he gets the chance he kills something. You’re going to ask why somebody doesn’t do something.”

  “Well, why don’t they?”

  “Because about all you can do, it turns out, is sue the owner, and about all you can collect is the replacement value of your pet, and you’ve got to go through the legal system to get that much. You can’t have the dog put down for killing other dogs, and you can’t press criminal charges against the owner. Meanwhile, you’ve still got the dog out there, a menace to other dogs.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Hardly anything does, Keller. Anyway, a couple of women lost their pets and they don’t want to take it anymore. One had a twelve-year-old Yorkie and the other had a frisky weimaraner pup, and neither one had a chance against Fluffy, and—”

  “Fluffy?”

  “I know.”

  “This killer pit bull is named Fluffy?”

  “That’s his call name. He’s registered as Percy Bysshe Shelley, Keller, whom you’ll recall as the author of ‘Ozymandias.’ I suppose they could call him Percy, or Bysshe, or even Shelley, but instead they went for Fluffy.”

  And Fluffy went for the Yorkie and the weimaraner, with tragic results. As Dot explained it, this did seem like a time when one had to go outside the law to get results. But did they have to turn to a high-priced hit man? Couldn’t they just do it themselves?

  “You’d think so,” Dot said. “But this is New York, Keller, and these are a couple of respectable middle-class women. They don’t own guns. They could probably get their hands on a bread knife, but I can’t see them trying to stab Fluffy, and evidently neither can they.”

  “Even so,” he said, “how did they find their way to us?”

  “Somebody knew somebody who knew somebody.”

  “Who knew us?”

  “Not exactly. Someone’s ex-husband’s brother-in-law is in the garment trade, and he knows a fellow in Chicago who can get things taken care of. And this fellow in Chicago picked up the phone, and next thing you know my phone was ringing.”

  “And he said, ‘Have you got anybody who’d like to kill a dog?’”

  “I’m not sure he knows it’s a dog. He gave me a number to call, and I drove twenty miles and picked up a pay phone and called it.”

  “And somebody answered?”

  “The woman who’s going to meet you at the airport.”

  “A woman’s going to meet me? At an airport?”

  “She had somebody call Chicago,” Dot said, “so I told her I was calling from Chicago, and she thinks you’re flying in from Chicago. So she’ll go to JFK to meet a flight from Chicago, and you’ll show up, looking like you just walked off a plane, and she’ll never guess that you’re local.”

  “I don’t have a Chicago accent.”

  “You don’t have any kind of an accent, Keller. You could be a radio announcer.”

  “I could?”

  “Well, it’s probably a little late in life for a career change, but you could have. Look, here’s the thing. Unless Fluffy gets his teeth in you, your risk here is minimal. If they catch you for killing a dog, about the worst that can happen to you is a fine. But they won’t catch you, because they won’t look for you, because catching a dog killer doesn’t get top priority at the NYPD. But what we don’t want is for the client to suspect that you’re local.”

  “Because it could blow my cover sooner or later.”

  “I suppose it could,” she said, “but that’s the least of it. The last thing we want is people thinking a top New York hit man will kill dogs for chump change.”

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