Mr. Vinny (“No last names here, please”) held up a pudgy hand. “It’s a tough old world, that’s God’s truth, Sal.” Gold pinky ring gleaming, he was paging through the three or four sheets of paper that were Sally’s file.

  Mr. Vinny’s office was painted dark salmon. A huge aquarium built into the wall behind his antique desk added turquoise sparkle. He closed the folder and walked toward her.

  “So, Sally, how were ya gonna do it? Huh?” Mr. Vinny sat on the edge of his desk, one loafer dangling. “Pills, a gun, a dive out the window, what?”

  “Pills, I guess—”

  “Shit, you take pills, maybe you’ll get the job done. More likely you’ll wake up one morning in Bellevue, and you’ll be lucky if you don’t end up a vegetable in a wheelchair.” He got up and paced a step or two, hands clasped behind his back. “Nope, it’s not efficient.” He stared at her. “I don’t like inefficiency.”

  Sally wasn’t sure what he meant.

  “Ya know, nobody can tell you when it’s time to check out—I mean look at you.” He suddenly whirled around and snatched her file, flapping it in her face. “Overweight, nobody in your life—not even a cat. Your life is a shitpile, and nobody knows it better than you. So whaddya say? Have you had enough, or what?”

  “I thought—” she stopped. Confusion mounted inside her. She touched her thin brown hair and knew she looked bad. “I hate all of it,” she whispered.

  “Right. That’s my point. But ya know, it’s not easy to kill yourself. I could show you a dozen files about how tough it is.”

  “Yes,” she said. She had botched everything else—killing herself would be no different. She felt the hot flash of embarrassment and knew her face had turned the ugly purple-scarlet of a wine birth mark.

  “Guy holds a gun to his head,” he mimed, “but who knows; maybe he chickens out at the last second. Anyway, whammo-slam-mo. ’Cept he don’t die, he just ends up with a dent in his right temple and pissing his pajama bottoms because his fuckin’ catheter fell out, only he don’t know it, cause there’s no feeling from his neck down. Hoo-boy, and he thought he was depressed before.” Mr. Vinny smiled, his face broadening to a double chin.

  This wasn’t a place that coddled or pampered; they were going to make her realize what a terrible decision suicide was. “I guess it’s a bad idea.”

  “No it’s a great idea! But amateurs. . .unless you got like Jack Kevorkian on the spot, there’s no guarantees. You get amateurs involved, it’s not efficient It’s bad business.”

  “Oh,” she said. Confused, she clutched her purse a little tighter.

  “So what do you say, Sal? Should I pencil you in on my dance card or are you gonna stay miserable?”

  “In? You mean like a program?”

  He was rustling papers. “I got a guy here needs to be taken out, Sally, and you could—”

  “Taken out? I—I. . .What?”

  “The bastard’s been beatin’ the shit out of his wife, the kids. He’s lappin up the booze. He’s got millions, and he’s still as stingy as a whore’s alarm clock. But his wife—she’s a woman who understands good business, so she came to us for help. And what I want to know is, are you willing to kill him at the same time you kill yourself?”

  “But—”

  “We guarantee you go—no messy half-assed attempts. The lady gets her hit. Everybody wins.” He paused. “Sal?”

  “You’re the Mafia, aren’t you?” she said.

  He leaned forward, his bulky arms supporting his weight, hands resting on the arms of her club chair, his heavy chin an inch from hers.

  “There is no more Mafia.”

  He backed away and she breathed easier.

  “Between the last three or four asswipe mayors, what we used to call a hitman wouldn’t touch a contract. Too much risk. There’s no loyalty these days. But there are still people who need services. See? This woman needs a service—and you need a service. She paid for it, but, for you it’s free. And when it’s done there’ll be one less creep friggin’ up the world.”

  He paused. “Uh, I was referring to the shit-sucking gentleman. Not you, of course. You’re goin’ to your heavenly reward.”

  “I don’t know. I mean. . .” She squirmed in her seat, the thick nightgown wadding into a lump between her fleshy thighs. “How would I. . .?”

  “You drive?”

  She nodded.

  “Smacko.” He brought his hands together in a thunderclap. “Head-on collision. We pump you through-and-through with your drug of choice. Guaranteed lights out and you won’t feel a thing after the first ten seconds.”

  “No, I couldn’t!” In her mind she saw glass spewing in a slow arc like water droplets from a fountain. She heard the ripping clang of metal, felt the thud of the impact hewing her instantly, saw blood.

  “You disappoint me. I thought sure you’d go for the car.” He sighed. “You could shoot him. Him and the assholes he hangs with. Have you had target practice? Cause we can arrange lessons at the local shooting range—”

  “No guns,” Sally said.

  “Tough shit. Gun it is.”

  “I think I should go now.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Not unless you want to have a messy accident. . .because I got ten lonely guys and five world-weary pre-menopausal ladies like yourself that’s gonna call me before the close of business today.” His smile was too wide, his teeth too prominent.

  She understood at once. One of his other cases, a would-be suicide, would do her in. A small scritchy noise—the sound of a cornered ferret—pushed its way past Sally’s lips. But so what? Death was what she wanted anyway.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to have time to make your preparations, write your note, call your mother? Get some closure on the mess of your life?”

  “No!” She started to get up, but the menacing look on his face told her to sit. She was in a trap, caught under the bell jar of her own neurosis. She was making herself sick and depressed. Was her life so terrible that she couldn’t snap herself out of it?

  “Cause you can walk right out the door, if you want—but you won’t know when the knife’s gonna go through your cheek in some cold alley, and there’ll be no time to get your shit together. And no guarantees you’d die. Nope, no guarantees. Except the guarantee that you’ll suffer.”

  “Mr. Vinny—” Sally said.

  “Just Vinny, now.” He smiled. From his desk drawer he removed a plain manila folder and opened it. “Sign here.”

  A single sheet of white paper with black print like flea dirt came at her. At the bottom was a line marked with a huge blue X.

  Sally signed.

  A HALF-HOUR LATER, she left with photos of “John Doe,” his thinning gray hair offset by a neatly trimmed, silvery mustache. He was wearing a tuxedo in all the pictures.

  She hailed a cab back to her apartment.

  The contract was totally illegal, she thought. But she had no doubt Vinny would see she kept her end of the bargain.

  The last words he’d said to her were Happy New Year.

  “Happy New Year,” Sally said, sliding the key into the scratched brass of her door lock and letting herself in. “Happy fucking New Year.”

  Inside the apartment she opened her black purse and took the greasy towel wrapping off the .22 Ruger. Its serial numbers had been filed off.

  Tomorrow she was scheduled for practice at the shooting range at eight A.M. Sharp.

  Vinny told her if she didn’t show, he’d begin to have doubts about her intention to honor the contract. And that would be too bad.

  Sally picked up the gun and aimed at an age-browned lampshade in her tiny living room. She pretended it was Vinny’s double-chinned face.

  “Pow,” she said, and then she let the hand holding the gun fall to her side. How could she think there was any help for someone like her, or that anyone cared? How stupid could a person be?

  “I CAN’T,” SALLY wept into the phone in her galley kitchen. “This man’s never done a thing to me!”

  “So what? He’s hurt plenty of people. And that’s all you need to know. You’ll be doing the world a big favor.”

  “I went to the shooting range.” Her tears were coming harder now. “I just know, Vinny, I just know, I mean the minute I take the gun out in the restaurant, someone will see me, I won’t be able to shoot, I’ll wind up in jail!”

  “No you won’t, Sally.” His voice was ice. “You’ll never see the inside of a jail.”

  “All right,” she sighed.

  “Good girl. The Moon Over the Tiber Ristorante. Nine P.M. Sharp. Saturday night the 23rd and no later. We don’t want to ruin his kids’ Christmas Eve. It’s a big night with Italians.”

  The phone came down with a thunk in her ear.

  It was two days until the end of the world.

  SHE STOOD OUTSIDE the restaurant. The crosswinds veered madly around the corners, and she shivered. Garlands of colored Christmas lights sparkled through the fogged glass of the Moon Over the Tiber’s red door.

  She pushed on the door, and a gust of steamy air scented with garlic assailed her. It was so warm it was almost tropical. Sally shivered again.

  A phone call from Vinny this morning had included her final instructions.

  She was to take Doe out first, and any baggy gentlemen dining with him were fair game. But no grandmas would get shot because we’re not fuckin’ barbarians, capisce?

  Doe, then the linguine-slurpers. And she was told not to worry. Since she refused to use the gun on herself, all she had to do was clamp down on the little yellow capsule she’d been told to keep between her back teeth. A little blood might leak out of her mouth, but, hey, that was it. She’d seen the photos of all those crazy cultists from Guyana, right? Cyanide was a sure bet.

  It lay like a dollop of dentist’s gel in the gutter between her cheek and her teeth. She’d been afraid she’d inadvertently clamp down on it too soon.

  If that happened, the Lifespan Treatment Center was going to bring her mother in for bereavement counseling.

  Sally stood in the cramped foyer, hesitating. The gun in her purse felt like an anvil.

  Have dinner, Vinny told her. We want to keep our clients happy. But don’t pay for it—you don’t want anybody seeing the gun before you yank it out. Stand up like you’re gonna use the can, then let ’er rip.

  She’d left no note. Nothing in the dog-eared diary she called a journal about being angry or feeling crazy or having a gun. There would be no clues.

  A waiter wearing a long dark blue apron over his suit showed her to a table. Twenty feet or so away, John Doe was sucking clams from the shells. There was a white napkin tied bib-style around his neck.

  “Wine, Signora?”

  “Yes. A bottle of Pinot Grigio.”

  “Bene.” He scribbled onto a small pad.

  She ordered fried calamari, a caesar salad, stuffed cannelloni, and tiramisu for dessert.

  Sally fingered the empty wine glass on the table in front of her. The wine would taste damn good, she thought. Then she suddenly realized the capsule was in her mouth. How could she eat or drink anything with the capsule in her mouth?

  She waggled it out and placed it gently in the under the rim of her bread plate. She would shovel it back in right after the tiramisu, just before the check, just before. . .Yes, she sighed, that would work out fine.

  The waiter brought the wine and uncorked it. “How festive,” Sally said, taking a sip and nodding assent.

  “Si,” the waiter said, fussing over the glasses, rearranging the tableware, the glowing votive lamp.

  The waiter hurried off again.

  The condemned woman ate heartily. At least it was a great restaurant. The calamari had been delicious.

  Sally was into her second forkful of caesar salad when she realized the waiter had taken away the bread plate.

  The capsule was nowhere on the table.

  Panic seized her, and she shifted the short white vase with the single red carnation, the silverware, skimming her finger around the underside of her salad plate. She even lifted the tablecloth and peered at the floor.

  It was gone.

  It must have disappeared when the waiter cleared the appetizer and dipping oil. Oh hell, did it matter? The capsule was probably already in a big industrial garbage bag, invisible in a soggy mess of half-eaten cream tortes, tossed lemon slices, and limp parsley.

  It wasn’t like she could ask for it back. Oh waiter, I’ll take the check and my cyanide capsule; I’m afraid of guns you know.

  Sally stifled a snort, drank some more wine, and ate dripping romaine lettuce, mopping the dressing with the half-eaten slice of crusty bread she’d left perched on the salad dish.

  She glanced at John Doe. He was with three other men. They were eating provolone and fruit.

  Everybody wins. It was so much like her own dreary, wrecked life.

  Everybody else wins, she thought, but not me.

  And she was tired of it all, tired of being the loser, watching everyone else get what they want. Was she tired enough to do anything about it?

  She ate the tiramisu but her appetite was gone, and the food was no more than dust and the steely taste of gunmetal in her mouth.

  And Mr. Doe became everything she hated about herself. If he was as disgusting as Vinny claimed—disgusting enough for Doe’s wife to want to have him killed—then who was Sally to argue?

  She pulled the gun out of her purse as she stood, and aimed it at Mr. Doe’s face.

  His startled expression disappeared a moment after she pulled the trigger. His dinner companions never had a chance to react as she easily dispatched them one after the other.

  She was a natural at this.

  The handful of restaurant patrons had fled, leaving Sally alone with her four victims. Killing them had been shockingly liberating, and she realized she finally had a talent for something in her wretched life. She smiled as she wondered whether or not she could get away with this.

  She planned to try. It was incredibly fortunate the cyanide pill had been lost. Perhaps more than fortune. Perhaps fate.

  She turned to leave, to begin a new life.

  From out of the shadows her waiter approached, his gun drawn.

  She could tell he’d been crying.

  “I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “I have to. I signed a contract.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  LAWRENCE BLOCK

  LAWRENCE Block is a Grand Master of Mystery Writers of America, and a past president of both MWA and the Private Eye Writers of America. He has won the Edgar and Shamus awards four times each and the Japanese Maltese Falcon award twice, as well as the Nero Wolfe and Philip Marlowe awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and, most recently, the Cartier Diamond Dagger for Life Achievement from the Crime Writers Association (UK).

  About his character Keller, the hitman protagonist of this and many other short stories, Larry says: “The professional killer is an appealing character for writers and readers alike. His is an irresistible fantasy occupation; he does, after all, get paid handsomely for what you and I would cheerfully do for free.”

  Visit him at www.LawrenceBlock.com.

  KELLER’S DESIGNATED HITTER

  Lawrence Block

  KELLER, A BEER IN ONE hand and a hot dog in the other, walked up a flight and a half of concrete steps and found his way to his seat. In front of him, two men were discussing the ramifications of a recent trade the Tarpons had made, sending two minor-league prospects to the Florida Marlins in return for a left-handed reliever and a player to be named later. Keller figured he hadn’t missed anything, as they’d been talking about the same subject when he left. He figured the player in question would have been long since named by the time these two were done speculating about him.

  Keller took a bite of his hot dog, drew a sip of his beer. The fellow on his left said, “You didn’t bring me one.”

  Huh? He’d told the guy he’d be back in a minute, might have mentioned he was going to the refreshment stand, but had he missed something the man had said in return?

  “What didn’t I bring you? A hot dog or a beer?”

  “Either one,” the man said.

  “Was I supposed to?”

  “Nope,” the man said. “Hey, don’t mind me. I’m just jerking your chain a little.”

  “Oh,” Keller said.

  The fellow started to say something else, but broke it off after a word or two as he and everybody else in the stadium turned their attention to home plate, where the Tarpons’ cleanup hitter had just dropped to the dirt to avoid getting hit by a high inside fastball. The Yankee pitcher, a burly Japanese with a herky-jerky windup, seemed unfazed by the boos, and Keller wondered if he even knew they were for him. He caught the return throw from the catcher, set himself, and went into his pitching motion.

  “Taguchi likes to pitch inside,” said the man who’d been jerking Keller’s chain, “and Vollmer likes to crowd the plate. So every once in a while Vollmer has to hit the dirt or take one for the team.”

  Keller took another bite of his hot dog, wondering if he ought to offer a bite to his new friend. That he even considered it seemed to indicate that his chain had been jerked successfully. He was glad he didn’t have to share the hot dog, because he wanted every bite of it for himself. And, when it was gone, he had a feeling he might go back for another.

  Which was strange, because he never ate hot dogs. A few years back he’d read a political essay on the back page of a news magazine that likened legislation to sausage. You were better off not knowing how it was made, the writer observed, and Keller, who had heretofore never cared how laws were passed or sausages produced, found himself more conscious of the whole business. The legislative aspect didn’t change his life, but, without making any conscious decision on the matter, he found he’d lost his taste for sausage.

  Being at a ballpark somehow made it different. He had a hunch the hot dogs they sold here at Tarpon Stadium were if anything more dubious in their composition than your average supermarket frankfurter, but that seemed to be beside the point. A ballpark hot dog was just part of the baseball experience, along with listening to some flannel-mouthed fan shouting instructions to a ballplayer dozens of yards away who couldn’t possibly hear him, or booing a pitcher who couldn’t care less, or having one’s chain jerked by a total stranger. All part of the Great American Pastime.