“And so is Klinger,” Dot said. “And you were right there.”

“I saw it happen,” he said. “I have to tell you, it gave me a turn.”

“You, Keller?”

“I saw a man die.”

She gave him a look. “Keller,” she said, “you see men die all the time, and you’re generally the cause of death.”

“This was different,” he said. “The unexpectedness of it. And it was so violent.”

“It’s usually violent, Keller. It’s what you do.”

“But I didn’t do it,” he said. “I just sat there and watched it. Then the cops came and-“

“And you were still there?”

“I figured it might be riskier if I drove away. You know, leaving the scene of an accident. Even if I wasn’t a part of the accident.” He shrugged. “They took a statement and waved me on. I told them I didn’t really see anything, and they had another witness who saw the whole thing, and it’s not as though there was any dispute about what had happened. Except that the little old lady still thinks it was the car’s fault and not hers.”

“But we know otherwise,” she said. “And so does the client.”

“The client?”

“Thinks you’re a genius, Keller. Thinks you arranged the whole thing, figures you found some perfectly ingenious way to get Klinger to step in front of that lady’s car.”

“But…”

“The customer,” she said, “is always right. Remember? Especially when he pays up, which this one did, like a shot. The job’s done and the client’s happy and we’ve been paid. Do you see a problem, Keller? Because I don’t.”

He thought about it.

“Keller? What did you do after Klinger got flattened?”

“He didn’t get flattened. It hit him and he went flying, and-“

“Spare me. I know you stuck around and gave a statement like a good citizen, but then what did you do?”

“I came home,” he said. “But not immediately. As a matter of fact, the first thing I did was go into Milwaukee and see a couple of stamp dealers.”

“You bought some stamps for your collection.”

“Well, yes. I was there anyway, and I didn’t figure there was any reason to hurry home.”

“You were right,” she said. “There wasn’t. And we’ve been paid, and now you can buy some more stamps. Are you all right, Keller? You seem a little bit out of it, and nobody gets jet lag coming home from Milwaukee.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “It just seems strange. That’s all.”

Sixteen

Three weeks later Keller was eating huevos rancheros at Call Me Carlos, on the edge of Albuquerque ’s Old Town. The menu had the same logo as the sign outside, with a grinning Mexican in an oversize sombrero. You knew at a glance that the place was Mexican-owned, Keller thought, because no gringo would have dared use such a broad caricature.

If there was any doubt, the food resolved it. They served the best huevos rancheros he’d had, with the possible exception of a little cafй he knew in Roseburg, Oregon.

He’d said as much to Dot the previous night. “Oh, spare me, Keller,” she’d replied. “ Roseburg, Oregon? Keller, you wanted to move there. Remember?”

It had been a mistake to mention Roseburg, and he’d realized it the minute he said it. Usually it was Dot who mentioned the town, throwing it up at him whenever he said anything nice about any of the places he visited.

“I didn’t exactly want to move there,” he protested.

“You looked at houses.”

“I thought about it,” he said, “the way you think about things, but I didn’t-“

“The way you think about things, Keller. Not the way I think about things. There’s something else you could be thinking about, instead of houses in Roseburg, Oregon.”

“I know,” he said. “And anyway, I wasn’t.”

“Thinking about houses? You said…”

“I was thinking about that cafй, and all I was thinking was that it was better than where I’ve been having breakfast. Except it probably isn’t, because memory improves things.”

“It would have to,” Dot said, “or we’d all kill ourselves.”

“And as far as the other thing I could be thinking about, I think it’s impossible.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.”

“A few more plates of huevos rancheros,” he said, “and I think it’ll be time for me to come home.”

“Without looking at houses?”

“They’re mostly adobe,” he said, “and I have to say they look pretty from the outside, but that’s as much as I want to see of them. I’ll stay long enough to make it look good, but then I’m coming home.”

He finished his eggs, finished his second cup of coffee, and went out to his rented Toyota. The sun was bright, the air cool and dry. If you had to make a pointless trip somewhere, this wasn’t the worst place for it.

A week earlier he’d taken the train to White Plains and sat across the kitchen table from Dot while she laid it all out for him. Michael Petrosian was in federal custody, guarded around the clock while he waited to testify. Without his testimony, the government didn’t have much of a case. With it, they could put some important people away for a long time.

“That’s why,” he’d said. “The question is how.”

“Sounds impossible, doesn’t it?”

“That’s the word that came to mind.”

“It came to my mind, too. It came to my lips, too, along with the phrase ‘I think we’ll pass on this one.’ “

“But you changed your mind.”

“The minute he agreed that you get paid either way.”

“How’s that?”

“Half in advance, half on completion.”

“So? That’s standard.”

“Patience,” she said. “What’s not standard is you can look it over, decide it’s impossible, and come on home. And the half they paid is yours to keep.”

“How’d you manage that?”

“By letting them talk me into it. It turns out I’m good at this, Keller.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“And I guess you could say they’re pretty desperate. One hand, the job has to be done. Other hand, it can’t be done. Add ’em up, it comes out desperate.”

“They probably got even more desperate,” he said, “when they offered the contract and got turned down.”

She poured herself some more iced tea. “I know they shopped this around. They wouldn’t come right out and say so, but they never would have taken my terms if they hadn’t run into a few brick walls along the way.”

“It’d be nice to know just who told them no.”

“Roger, for instance.”

“For instance,” he agreed.

“Well,” she said, “I think we have to assume they ran it past him. So we’re taking the usual precautions. Nobody’s meeting you, nobody knows who you are or where you’re coming from. Even if Roger’s out there in Albuquerque, even if he’s sitting in Petrosian’s lap, he’s never going to draw a bead on you. Because all you have to do is fly out there and fly back and you get paid.”

“Half,” he said.

“Half if all you do is take a look. The other half if you make it happen. And there’s an escalator.”

“Instead of a staircase?”

“No, of course not.”

“Because what’s the difference? He’s going to lose his footing on the escalator?”

“An escalator clause, Keller. In the contract.”

“Oh.”

“Big bonus if you get him before he testifies. Smaller bonus if it’s after he starts but before he finishes.”

“While he’s on the stand?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s going to take him several days to make all the trouble he can for our guys. Say he’s on the stand one day, and that night he slips on a banana peel and falls down the escalator.”

“Or finds some other way to break his neck.”

“Whatever. We get a bonus, but not as big as if he broke it a day earlier.” She shrugged. “That was just something to negotiate, because it’s not going to happen. You’ll go out there and come back, and they can console themselves by thinking how much money they just saved. Not just half the fee, but the bonus, too.”

“Because it’s impossible,” he said. “Except it’s never completely impossible. I mean, a bomb under a manhole cover on the route to the courthouse, say. Or a strike force of commandos hitting the place where he’s cooped up.”