The other man made no note of the deformity but gave Becker’s hand a firm shake and then released it.
“I feel so much better now,” he said.
You’ll feel even better when the woman is dead, thought Becker.
“I never got your name,” he said. “Only directions to come here.”
“Wells,” said the man. “Herb Wells.”
The letter came two days later. Becker read through his instructions with growing bewilderment. The old man had said the job would be challenging. This seemed anything but. It was so straightforward, it put Becker fully on his guard. Yet the half payment was in his bank account, and there was a train ticket in the envelope for the day after tomorrow.
Becker dressed in his average suit and slipped a six-inch blade in his pocket after donning his ubiquitous gloves. He caught the high-speed train five minutes before it was set to leave the station. During the ride, the motion of the train, the clickety-clack of the wheels, and the passage through a long, dark tunnel made Becker do something he never had before. He fell asleep while traveling on an assignment.
When he awoke the train was just pulling into the station.
A sudden thought hit him as he came out of his stupor. Bellows of a steam engine? Why would this train make such a noise?
As he climbed off the train he stood quite still on the platform. The folks passing by him looked normal except for their clothes. He saw bowties and suits with wide lapels. All the men wore hats, bowlers and flat-brimmed straw hats, and one elderly fellow even had on a top hat! The ladies were dressed in wide pleated skirts hanging below the knee with sharply pointed hats and dainty shoes with thick heels of modest height. The children were formally dressed too. One skinny boy was twirling a wooden yo-yo.
The absence of something else made Becker jerk his head in the direction of the station.
No one had a cell phone. No BlackBerrys. No laptop computers, no buds in ears with iPods connected to belts.
He headed toward a stand and bought a newspaper. When he handed the man a dollar, he received ninety cents back. Becker stared down at the coins in the palm of his hand. For some reason the coins looked odd, but Becker thrust them in his pocket and forgot them when he saw the startling headline.
North Korea had just invaded South Korea. As he read further, his skin grew paler and there was a pronounced tic in a blood vessel on the left side of his temple. President Harry S. Truman denounced this unwarranted invasion and pledged support to the South Korean government. Becker shot a glance at the date.
“1950?”
He lowered the paper and stared suspiciously around. Vintage automobiles passed up and down the street. As he looked across at the train he’d just climbed off, he noted that the bullet train he’d earlier boarded had now turned into a diesel model that had long since been relegated to train museums.
Challenging? This must be what the old man had been referring to in his request. The job itself sounded simple. Yet how would Becker get back home, to his own time? How had he gotten here in the first place? He thought back. He remembered the long tunnel, how the train’s interior faded to darkness. How he’d fallen asleep at that moment. Normally, he was pumped and energetic for a job.
Frank Becker had spent the last twenty years of his life maintaining strict discipline and intense self-control. He grabbed hold of his rambling nerves, drew a long breath and dropped the paper in the trash. He fingered the knife in his pocket. He had his instructions and he’d received half his fee. He’d complete the job and then figure out how to return. He was a professional. Perhaps it would be as simple as boarding the train again, going back through the tunnel and falling asleep.
Asleep! Am I asleep? Dreaming?
Becker didn’t know what else to do, so he pinched himself and winced at the pain. He was not dreaming. He was fifty years in the past. He gathered his nerves, squared his shoulders, and walked out of the station.
It was a small town, really a village, with a butcher, baker, shops, restaurants, a pub, and a church on the main avenue. As Becker walked, this delicate burst of retail energy petered out and the lane he was walking alongside became quiet. All he heard was the wind and a few birds. Becker had memorized the contents of the letter from his client and then put a match to it. If things went awry, no one would find any evidence on him.
Like the successful man in the city, the woman he was looking for had a routine. Today being Thursday, she would be at her cottage a half-mile distant. She cleaned her home on Thursdays and then prepared a simple meal for her husband who came home promptly at six from work in town. Becker checked his watch. It still ran though it was now apparently five decades earlier than it had been this morning. He had four hours. More than enough time. The couple had no children, the letter had said. She would be alone.
He didn’t have to ask for directions to the cottage. The details in the letter were spot-on. He arrived there twenty minutes after leaving the train station. It was a small footprint of weathered clapboard with chipping white paint, a gingerbread trim painted in soft green and a small flowerbed on either side of the two-foot-high entrance gate that Becker stepped right over. The blooms were pretty, zinnias, geraniums, impatiens. And there was also some fox-glove, which Becker recognized, since he’d once milked deadly quantities of digitalis from the plant in preparation for poisoning another target of his some years ago.
The front door wasn’t even locked. The hinges were well oiled, and his entrance was silent. The place was isolated. He hadn’t passed one person or another home on his way here. He had seen an old DeSoto sedan parked on the side of the road, but there was no one inside.
He didn’t call out as there was no reason to give any warning. His hand slipped to his pocket as he cautiously made his way through the interior space from front to back. The kitchen and what would in the 1950s probably be called the parlor were empty. A pot was on the stove with simmering water in it so the woman of the house had to be nearby. The space was simple and contained no luxuries that Becker could see. He had no idea why a young woman — the letter informed him that she was only nineteen — living in such ordinary circumstances had incurred the wrath of his present client. But his was not to reason, only to execute.
There was only one room left. When he opened the door he saw instantly that it was the bedroom. A four-poster bed with cheap cloth hangings dominated the space. There was a mirror on the wall in which Becker caught his reflection for an instant. He froze. It was the only time he’d ever seen himself about to kill. His face was calm, but his eyes seemed to have swollen to unnatural size, as though the enormity of the deed to come had filled them like hot gas poured into a balloon. Then his attention became riveted on the chair next to the bed. The young woman sat there, her hands busy with knitting needles and yarn. He marveled at the dexterity of her fingers. Yet something did not quite seem right with the image.
He crossed the room and slipped the knife from his pocket. She had not yet looked up. For some reason he wanted to finish the job before she could look at him. Get back on the train, go back to where he belonged. It was the mirror. His reflection had unnerved him somehow. A bead of sweat appeared on his forehead, just above his left eyebrow.
His wish was not granted. She turned to stare at him. He did not like to face his victims. His job, of course, required nerve and daring, but he was actually something of a coward, preferring to strike from behind with an umbrella or a knife. And then run away. That was how he’d killed his father. A hammer to the head and then he’d run to catch a freight train to a new life.