Alan (on December semi-hiatus) Teder’s Reviews > Hit Me > Status Update

5. Keller’s Obligation *** Keller is reluctant to take on a job when he discovers the target is not only a juvenile but also a fellow stamp collector. He decides his obligation is to ensure the future of stamp collecting and will take out the client instead.

4. Keller’s Sideline **** Keller wants out of the hit man racket but needs to keep busy. His body feels too old to continue doing housing renovation work. Why not turn his stamp collecting hobby into a business and become a stamp broker / seller?

“There are approximately a third of a million Icelanders,” he said, as softly as he said everything, “and they are all descended from five Viking men and four Irish women.”

“It’s great chili,” Keller said.
“The secret’s the cumin,” she said, “except it’s not much of a secret, because you can smell it, can’t you? But there is a secret. Would you like to know what it is?”
“Sure.”
“Coffee. Leftover coffee, .... You simmer the beans in it. You can’t taste it, can you? I can’t, not even if I know it’s there. But it is there, and it makes all the difference.”

Keller took a long hot shower. When he was done drying off, he tossed his towel on the floor of the shower stall. That’s what the little card told you to do, but it was hard for Keller to get used to it. / This would save water, the management explained, and fight global warming, so Keller figured it was the least he could do. But he couldn’t throw a towel on the floor without imagining the look on his mother’s face.

“All I need,” he said, “is something that looks like a business. I need a sideline, but it doesn’t have to be a profitable one. It could even lose money and that would be all right. In fact, we could declare a net profit whether we actually earned one or not. Pay a few dollars in taxes and keep everybody happy.”
“You’ve got that quick Yankee mind,” she said. “I do admire that in a man.”

3. Keller at Sea *** The job requires that Keller take a trip on a Caribbean cruise liner and new wife Julia is willing to go along to be part of the cover of a vacationing couple. The target is an old time mobster with 2 security guards though and he is staying in a hard-to-get-at upper deck suite.

2. Keller’s Homecoming **** Keller goes back to New York City when yet another hitjob is offered in the same city as a stamp auction. Will he be recognized by anyone from back in the day, before he had to go on the run? And how will he penetrate the fortress-like sanctum of his target?

In his head he heard the voice of a middle-aged Irishwoman: “Ah, but doesn’t he carry it well?” Likes a drink, Keller added, taking note of the florid complexion, the network of broken blood vessels in the cheeks and nose. “Ah, shure, and don’t they call that a strong man’s weakness?”

Keller had read somewhere that all of man’s difficulties stemmed from his inability to sit alone in a room.
The line stayed with him, and a while ago he’d Googled his way to its source. Someone named Pascal had made the observation, Blaise Pascal, and it turned out he’d said a lot of other interesting things as well, but all but the first one had slipped Keller’s mind.