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knowing his name.
Gregory Dowling.
So you know his name. I guess that changes everything. You d have killed him
without it being personal, is what I m saying here, and I did what I did, and
that wasn t personal, either.
I understand that.
So what do you want from me? Money? I got twenty thousand dollars in my safe.
You want it, you can take it.
I thought you didn t keep any money in the house.
And I thought you were the strong-arm division of the Little Sisters of the
Poor. You want money?
Keller shook his head. We re both professionals, he said, and I ve got
nothing against you. Like you said, you were just doing a job.
So what do you want from me?
Information.
Information?
I want to know who you did the job for.
Jesus, Taggert said. Why don t you ask me something easy, like where s
Jimmy Hoffa? You want to know who put the hit on Longford, you re pissing on
the wrong tree. Nobody s gonna tell me shit like that.
I don t care who ordered the hit.
You don t? Who are you after, the shooter?
No, Keller said. He was just doing his job.
Like you and me.
Just like us. Except we re alive, and I have the feeling the shooter s not.
I wouldn t know.
Oh, you d know, Keller thought. But since he didn t care either way, he didn t
bother to push the point. He said, I don t care about the shooter, or about
the person who commissioned the job. And I ll stop caring about you as soon as
you give me somebody else to care about.
Like who?
Call me Al, Dot said.
Huh?
The man who made the call to hire me, Keller said. The man who gave you
your orders. Your boss.
Forget it.
Keller touched the man s shin with his foot, pressed just enough to get the
message across. You re going to tell me, he said. It s just a question of
when.
So we ll see who s got the most patience, Taggert said.
You had to admire the man s nerve. You really want the other leg broken? And
everything else that comes after that?
Once I give you what you want, I m dead.
And if you don t
If I don t I m dead anyway? Maybe, maybe not. Way I see it, if you re up for
killing me, you ll do it whether I talk or not. In fact as long as I don t
talk, you ll keep me alive hoping you can open me up. But once I turn rat and
sell the boss out, I m a dead man walking.
Not walking, Keller said.
Not on this leg, you re right about that. Point is, either you kill me or he
does. Either way it s the same ending. So I think maybe I ll see how long I
can hold out.
There s only one problem with that.
Oh?
Sooner or later, Keller said, your wife s going to come home. She was
dressed for a day on the town, so maybe she ll go shopping, maybe have lunch
with a girlfriend. If we re gone by the time she gets back, she ll be fine. If
we re still here, we ll have to deal with her.
You d hurt an innocent woman?
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It wouldn t hurt her much. She d get what the dog got.
Jesus Christ, what did you do with the dog?
Keller brandished the pry bar, made a chopping motion with it. Hated to do
it, he said, but I couldn t take the chance he d bite somebody.
Aw, God, Taggert said. Poor old Sulky? He never bit anybody in his life. He
could barely bite his dinner. Why d you go and do a thing like that?
I didn t feel I had any choice.
Yeah, the poor old guy might have licked your face. Slobbered all over you.
He s got arthritis, he can barely walk, most of his teeth are gone
It sounds like I did him a favor.
Sometimes I think I m a hard case, Taggert said, and then I run into a son
of a bitch like you. My kids loved that fucking dog. He s been part of the
family longer n they ve been alive. How am I gonna explain to them that their
buddy Sulky s dead?
Make up some story about Doggie Heaven, Dot suggested. Kids buy that crap
all the time.
Jesus, you re colder n he is.
And speaking of the kids, Keller said, if you re still holding out when
they come home
You d do that?
I d rather not, but if we re still here when they turn up, you want to tell
me what choice I d have?
He looked at Keller, looked at Dot, looked down at his own broken leg. It
hurts like a bastard, he said.
Sorry about that.
Yeah, I can tell. Okay, you win. Between you and him, either one of you would
kill me, but he wouldn t come after my family.
What s his name?
Benjamin Wheeler. And you never heard of him. That s his fucking secret,
nobody ever heard of him.
Call me Ben, Dot said.
How s that?
Never mind, Keller said. Keep talking. His address, his schedule,
everything you can think of.
38
That s a nice computer his kids have, Dot said, and a real fast broadband
connection. You go to Google Image and type in Benjamin Wheeler and you get
a ton of hits. You make it Benjamin Wheeler Portland and it narrows it
down. She was holding three sheets of paper, and she showed one to Taggert.
He nodded, and nodded again at each of the other two sheets.
Keller took one of the sheets he d nodded at and looked at a color photo of
three men standing next to a horse. A fourth man, the jockey, was on top of
the horse, and one of the men was holding a trophy, to be presented to the
horse, the jockey, or the owner. Keller couldn t tell which, nor did he know
which of the men was Wheeler although he was ready to rule out the jockey.
He looked at the other photos, and there was only one man who appeared in all
three. In one he was with two women, posing for the camera, while the third
shot showed him and another man in conversation. In each of the pictures
Wheeler was the dominant figure, taller than anyone else, except for the
horse. He dressed in expensive suits conservatively cut, and wore them with
the ease of a retired athlete. His dark hair was well barbered, his face
deeply tanned, and he wore a mustache.
Financier, sportsman, and philanthropist, Keller read aloud.
A hell of a guy, Dot said. On all these committees for civic betterment.
Patron of local cultural events. That one woman there is an opera star, and
there was a pretty good shot of him shaking hands with the new mayor, but I
thought three was plenty.
You could have a hundred pictures, Taggert said, and that s as close as
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you re gonna get to him, because you can t just pick up a Bible and go ring
his doorbell. He s got a house that s the closest thing I ve ever seen to a
castle, up on a hill with an electric fence around the whole property. You got
to go through a gate to get close to the house, and the guy on the gate
confirms by intercom before he lets anyone in. If you got over the fence,
you d have the dogs to contend with, and you couldn t deal with them the way
you did with poor Sulky. Man, I can t believe you killed my dog.
Then don t.
They re Rhodesian ridgebacks, a boy and a girl, and if you took a swat at one
of them, he d take your hand off at the wrist, while his sister was having
your balls for dinner. Get past em somehow and make it into the house and
he s got four guys on staff, and they ve all got guns and know how to use em.
When he leaves the house, two of them go with him, one to drive and one to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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knowing his name.
Gregory Dowling.
So you know his name. I guess that changes everything. You d have killed him
without it being personal, is what I m saying here, and I did what I did, and
that wasn t personal, either.
I understand that.
So what do you want from me? Money? I got twenty thousand dollars in my safe.
You want it, you can take it.
I thought you didn t keep any money in the house.
And I thought you were the strong-arm division of the Little Sisters of the
Poor. You want money?
Keller shook his head. We re both professionals, he said, and I ve got
nothing against you. Like you said, you were just doing a job.
So what do you want from me?
Information.
Information?
I want to know who you did the job for.
Jesus, Taggert said. Why don t you ask me something easy, like where s
Jimmy Hoffa? You want to know who put the hit on Longford, you re pissing on
the wrong tree. Nobody s gonna tell me shit like that.
I don t care who ordered the hit.
You don t? Who are you after, the shooter?
No, Keller said. He was just doing his job.
Like you and me.
Just like us. Except we re alive, and I have the feeling the shooter s not.
I wouldn t know.
Oh, you d know, Keller thought. But since he didn t care either way, he didn t
bother to push the point. He said, I don t care about the shooter, or about
the person who commissioned the job. And I ll stop caring about you as soon as
you give me somebody else to care about.
Like who?
Call me Al, Dot said.
Huh?
The man who made the call to hire me, Keller said. The man who gave you
your orders. Your boss.
Forget it.
Keller touched the man s shin with his foot, pressed just enough to get the
message across. You re going to tell me, he said. It s just a question of
when.
So we ll see who s got the most patience, Taggert said.
You had to admire the man s nerve. You really want the other leg broken? And
everything else that comes after that?
Once I give you what you want, I m dead.
And if you don t
If I don t I m dead anyway? Maybe, maybe not. Way I see it, if you re up for
killing me, you ll do it whether I talk or not. In fact as long as I don t
talk, you ll keep me alive hoping you can open me up. But once I turn rat and
sell the boss out, I m a dead man walking.
Not walking, Keller said.
Not on this leg, you re right about that. Point is, either you kill me or he
does. Either way it s the same ending. So I think maybe I ll see how long I
can hold out.
There s only one problem with that.
Oh?
Sooner or later, Keller said, your wife s going to come home. She was
dressed for a day on the town, so maybe she ll go shopping, maybe have lunch
with a girlfriend. If we re gone by the time she gets back, she ll be fine. If
we re still here, we ll have to deal with her.
You d hurt an innocent woman?
Page 109
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
It wouldn t hurt her much. She d get what the dog got.
Jesus Christ, what did you do with the dog?
Keller brandished the pry bar, made a chopping motion with it. Hated to do
it, he said, but I couldn t take the chance he d bite somebody.
Aw, God, Taggert said. Poor old Sulky? He never bit anybody in his life. He
could barely bite his dinner. Why d you go and do a thing like that?
I didn t feel I had any choice.
Yeah, the poor old guy might have licked your face. Slobbered all over you.
He s got arthritis, he can barely walk, most of his teeth are gone
It sounds like I did him a favor.
Sometimes I think I m a hard case, Taggert said, and then I run into a son
of a bitch like you. My kids loved that fucking dog. He s been part of the
family longer n they ve been alive. How am I gonna explain to them that their
buddy Sulky s dead?
Make up some story about Doggie Heaven, Dot suggested. Kids buy that crap
all the time.
Jesus, you re colder n he is.
And speaking of the kids, Keller said, if you re still holding out when
they come home
You d do that?
I d rather not, but if we re still here when they turn up, you want to tell
me what choice I d have?
He looked at Keller, looked at Dot, looked down at his own broken leg. It
hurts like a bastard, he said.
Sorry about that.
Yeah, I can tell. Okay, you win. Between you and him, either one of you would
kill me, but he wouldn t come after my family.
What s his name?
Benjamin Wheeler. And you never heard of him. That s his fucking secret,
nobody ever heard of him.
Call me Ben, Dot said.
How s that?
Never mind, Keller said. Keep talking. His address, his schedule,
everything you can think of.
38
That s a nice computer his kids have, Dot said, and a real fast broadband
connection. You go to Google Image and type in Benjamin Wheeler and you get
a ton of hits. You make it Benjamin Wheeler Portland and it narrows it
down. She was holding three sheets of paper, and she showed one to Taggert.
He nodded, and nodded again at each of the other two sheets.
Keller took one of the sheets he d nodded at and looked at a color photo of
three men standing next to a horse. A fourth man, the jockey, was on top of
the horse, and one of the men was holding a trophy, to be presented to the
horse, the jockey, or the owner. Keller couldn t tell which, nor did he know
which of the men was Wheeler although he was ready to rule out the jockey.
He looked at the other photos, and there was only one man who appeared in all
three. In one he was with two women, posing for the camera, while the third
shot showed him and another man in conversation. In each of the pictures
Wheeler was the dominant figure, taller than anyone else, except for the
horse. He dressed in expensive suits conservatively cut, and wore them with
the ease of a retired athlete. His dark hair was well barbered, his face
deeply tanned, and he wore a mustache.
Financier, sportsman, and philanthropist, Keller read aloud.
A hell of a guy, Dot said. On all these committees for civic betterment.
Patron of local cultural events. That one woman there is an opera star, and
there was a pretty good shot of him shaking hands with the new mayor, but I
thought three was plenty.
You could have a hundred pictures, Taggert said, and that s as close as
Page 110
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
you re gonna get to him, because you can t just pick up a Bible and go ring
his doorbell. He s got a house that s the closest thing I ve ever seen to a
castle, up on a hill with an electric fence around the whole property. You got
to go through a gate to get close to the house, and the guy on the gate
confirms by intercom before he lets anyone in. If you got over the fence,
you d have the dogs to contend with, and you couldn t deal with them the way
you did with poor Sulky. Man, I can t believe you killed my dog.
Then don t.
They re Rhodesian ridgebacks, a boy and a girl, and if you took a swat at one
of them, he d take your hand off at the wrist, while his sister was having
your balls for dinner. Get past em somehow and make it into the house and
he s got four guys on staff, and they ve all got guns and know how to use em.
When he leaves the house, two of them go with him, one to drive and one to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]