“Good.”
“But, you see, I want to... well, amend the agreement.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Besides the dog.”
“Oh?”
“Of course I want you to take care of the dog, but there’s something else I’d like to have you do, and I’m prepared to pay extra for it. I mean, considerably extra.”
The owner, too, he thought. Well, that was appropriate, wasn’t it? The dog couldn’t help its behavior, while the owner actively encouraged it.
She was carrying a tote bag bearing the logo of a bank, and she started to draw a large brown envelope from it, then changed her mind. “Take the whole thing,” she said, handing him the tote bag. “There’s nothing else in it, just the money, and it’ll be easier to carry this way. Here, take it.”
Not at all the professional way to do things, he thought. But he took the tote bag.
“This is irregular,” he said carefully. “I’ll have to talk to my people in Chicago, and—”
“Why?”
He looked at her.
“They don’t have to know about this,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “This is just between you and me. It’s all cash, and it’s a lot more than the two of us gave you for the dog, and if you don’t say anything about it to your people, well, you won’t have to split with them, will you?”
He wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.
“I want you to kill her,” she said, and there was no lack of conviction in her tone. “You can make it look like an accident, or like a mugging gone wrong, or, I don’t know, a sex crime? Anything you want, it doesn’t matter, just as long as she dies. And if it’s painful, well, that’s fine with me.”
Was she wearing a wire? Were there plainclothes cops stationed behind the trees? And wouldn’t that be a cute way to entrap a hit man. Bring him in to kill a dog, then raise the stakes and—
“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. You’re paying me this money yourself, and it’s in cash, and nobody else is going to know about it.”
“That’s right.”
“And in return you want me to take care of Aida Cuppering.”
She stared at him. “Aida Cuppering? What do I care about Aida Cuppering?”
“I thought—”
“I don’t care about her,” Myra Tannen said. “I don’t even care about her damn dog, not really. What I want you to do is kill Evelyn.”
“What a mess,” Dot said.
“No kidding.”
“All I can say is I’m sorry I got you into this. Two women hired you to put a dog down, and you’ve met each of them face to face, and one of them knows where you live.”
“She doesn’t know that I live there,” he said. “She thinks I flew in from Chicago. But she knows the address, and probably thinks I’m staying there for the time being.”
“You never noticed you were being followed?”
“It never occurred to me to check. I walk home all the time, Dot. I never feel the need to look over my shoulder.”
“And you’d never have to, if I’d borne in mind the old rule about not crapping where we eat. You know what it was, Keller? There were two reasons to turn the job down, because it was in New York and because it was a dog, and what I did, I let the two of them cancel each other out. My apologies.”
“How much was in the bag?”
“Twenty-five.”
“I hope that’s twenty-five thousand.”
“It is.”
“Because the way things have been going, it could have been twenty-five hundred.”
“Or just plain twenty-five.”
“That’d be a stretch. So the whole package is thirty-five. It’s still a hard way to get rich. What’s she got against Evelyn, anyway? It can’t be that she’s pissed she didn’t get to go to the airport.”
“Her husband’s been having an affair with Evelyn.”
“Oh. I thought it was Evelyn’s husband that was fooling around.”
“I thought so, too. I guess the Upper West Side’s a hotbed of adultery.”
“And here I always figured it was all concerts. What are you going to do, Keller?”
“I’ve been wondering that myself.”
“I bet you have. A certain amount of damage control would seem to be indicated. I mean, two of them have seen your face.”
“I know.”
“And one of them followed you home. Which doesn’t mean you can keep her, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t.”
“I hope not. I gather both of them are reasonably attractive.”
“So?”
“And they’re probably attracted to you. A dangerous man, a mysterious character — how can they resist you?”
“I don’t think they’re interested,” he said, “and I know I’m not.”
“How about the dog owner? The one who looks like a dominatrix.”
“I’m not interested in her, either.”
“Well, I’m relieved to hear it. You think you can find a way to make all of this go away?”
“I was ready to give back the money,” he said, “but we’re past that point. I’ll think of something, Dot.”
Just as Keller reached to knock on the door, it opened. Evelyn Augenblick, wearing a pants suit and a white blouse and a flowing bow tie, stood there beaming at him. “It’s you,” she said. “Thank God. Quick, so I can shut the door.”
She did so, and turned to him, and he saw something he had somehow failed to notice before. She had a gun in her hand, a short-barreled revolver.
Keller didn’t know what to make of it. She’d seemed relieved to see him, so what was the gun for? To shoot him? Or was she expecting somebody else, against whom she felt the need to defend herself?
And should he take a step toward her and swat the gun out of her hand? That would probably work, but if it didn’t...
“I guess you saw the ad,” she said.
The ad? What ad?
“ ‘Paul Niebauer, Please Get In Touch.’ On the front page of the New York Times, one of those tiny ads at the very bottom of the page. I always wondered if anybody read those ads. But you didn’t, I can see by the look on your face. How did you know to come here?”
How indeed? “I just had a feeling,” he said.
“Well, I’m glad you did. I didn’t know how else to reach you, because I didn’t want to go through the usual channels. And it was important that I see you.”
“The gun,” he said.
She looked at him.
“You’re holding a gun,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, and looked at her hand, as if surprised to discover a gun in it. “That’s for you,” she said, and before he could react she handed the thing to him. He didn’t want it, but neither did he want her to have it. So he took it, noting that it was a .38, and a loaded one at that.
“What’s this for?” he asked.
She didn’t exactly answer. “It belongs to my husband,” she said. “It’s registered. He has a permit to keep it on the premises, and that’s what he does. He keeps it in the drawer of his bedside table. For burglars, he says.”
“I don’t really think it would be useful to me,” he said. “Since it’s registered to your husband, it would lead right back to you, which is the last thing we’d want, and—”
“You don’t understand.”
“Oh.”
“This isn’t for Fluffy.”
“It’s not?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t really care about Fluffy. Killing Fluffy won’t bring Rilke back. And it’s not so bad with Rilke gone, anyway. He was a beautiful dog, but he was really pretty stupid, and it was a pain in the ass having to walk him twice a day.”
“Oh.”
“So the gun has nothing to do with Fluffy,” she explained. “The gun’s for you to use when you kill my husband.”
“Damnedest thing I ever heard of,” Dot said. “And that covers a lot of ground. Well, she’d said her husband was running around on her. So she wants you to kill him?”