Hit Man Read Free Page A

inside of somebody else’s business. I’d rather have my own little business, work there side by side with my wife. We’re right there on the street and you can look in the front window and see us. You need stationery, you need business cards, you need invoice forms, I’ll print ’em for you.”
    “How did you learn the business?”
    “It’s a franchise kind of thing, a turnkey operation. Anybody could learn it in twenty minutes.”
    “No kidding?”
    “Oh, yeah. Anybody.”
    Keller drank some of his coffee. He asked if Engleman had said anything to his wife and learned that he hadn’t. “That’s good,” he said. “Don’t say anything. I’m this guy, weighing some business ventures, needs a printer, has to have, you know, arrangements so there’s no cash-flow problem. And I’m shy talking business in front of women, so the two of us go off and have coffee from time to time.”
    “Whatever you say,” Engleman said.
    Poor scared bastard, Keller thought. He said, “See, I don’t want to hurt you, Burt. I wanted to, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d put a gun to your head, do what I’m supposed to do. You see a gun?”
    “No.”
    “The thing is, I don’t do it, they send somebody else. I come back empty, they want to know why. What I have to do, I have to figure something out. You’re positive you don’t want to run?”
    “No. The hell with running.”
    “Swell, I’ll figure something out,” Keller said. “I’ve got a few days. I’ll think of something.”
    After breakfast the next morning, Keller drove to the office of one of the real estate agents whose ads he’d been reading. A woman about the same age as Betty Engleman took him around and showed him three houses. They were modest homes but decent and comfortable, and they ranged between forty and sixty thousand dollars.
    He could buy any of them out of his safe deposit box.
    “Here’s your kitchen,” the woman said. “Here’s your half-bath. Here’s your fenced yard.”
    “I’ll be in touch,” he told her, taking her card. “I have a business deal pending and a lot depends on the outcome.”
    He and Engleman had lunch the next day. They went to the Mexican place and Engleman wanted everything very mild. “Remember,” he told Keller, “I used to be an accountant.”
    “You’re a printer now,” Keller said. “Printers can handle hot food.”
    “Not this printer. Not this printer’s stomach.”
    They each drank a bottle of Carta Blanca with the meal. Keller had another bottle afterward. Engleman had a cup of coffee.
    “If I had a house with a fenced yard,” Keller said, “I could have a dog and not worry about him running off.”
    “I guess you could,” Engleman said.
    “I had a dog when I was a kid,” Keller said. “Just the once. I had him for about two years when I was eleven, twelve years old. His name was Soldier.”
    “I was wondering about that.”
    “He wasn’t part shepherd. He was a little thing. I suppose he must have been some kind of terrier cross.”
    “Did he run off?”
    “No, he got hit by a car. He was stupid about cars, he just ran out into the street. The driver couldn’t help it.”
    “How did you happen to call him Soldier?”
    “I forget. Then, when I did the flyer, I don’t know, I had to put ‘Answers to something.’ All I could think of were names like Fido and Rover and Spot. Be like signing John Smith on a hotel register, you know? Then it came to me. Soldier. Been years since I thought about that dog.”
    After lunch Engleman went back to the shop and Keller returned to the motel for his car. He drove out of town on the same road he’d taken the day he bought the gun. This time he drove a few miles farther before pulling over and cutting the engine.
    He got the gun from the glove box and opened the cylinder, spilling the shells into his palm. He tossed them underhand, then weighed the gun in his hand for a moment before hurling it into a patch of