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“This is a hot town,” said the other. “What do they call it?” 

“Summit.”

“Ever hear of it?” Al asked his friend. 

“No,” said the friend.

Summit is a small town that’s located close to Chicago, apart from the world of crime and violence yet still under its influence. The two killers who arrive in town are from Chicago, presumably where they work as some kind of mob hitmen. They’ve traveled to Summit to find and kill Ole, but they have little interest in the town. It’s presumed that in contrast to crime-ridden 1920s Chicago, the town of Summit is generally safe and quiet, as the gangsters later joke that the only thing to do in the town is go out to eat at night. This safety and quiet is invaded by the threatening force of the killers, shattering the peace of the hostages to the point where Nick feels that he must leave Summit at the end of the story.

George looked at the clock on the wall behind the counter. 

“It’s five o’clock.”

“The clock says twenty minutes past five,” the second man said. 

“It’s twenty minutes fast.” 

“Oh, to hell with the clock,” the first man said.

The clock in Henry’s lunchroom, which runs twenty minutes fast, appears in the first part of the story. The broken clock helps to build the suspense of “The Killers.” During the story, George looks at the clock several times to see how much time has gone by, which also lets the readers know how much time has passed. The time counts down until the clock reads 6:15, only five minutes before Ole’s normal arrival for dinner. This moment is when the suspense is at its highest. The tension continues as Ole fails to make an appearance for another forty minutes and the killers decide to stay for longer periods of time. George and the reader must continue to watch the minutes tick by until, finally, the killers are gone. After that point, the clock is never mentioned again since the immediate tension has passed.

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