“Maybe.”
“And it got him killed.”
He sat there for a while. She went on talking, going over it, and he let the words wash over him without taking in everything she was saying. He’d avenged Maggie, which had seemed important at the time, for reasons that made no sense at all now. He tried to picture her, and realized that her image was already fading, getting smaller, losing color and definition. Fading into the past, fading the way everything faded.
And Roger was gone. He’d been looking over his shoulder for months, stalked by a faceless killer, and now that threat had been removed. And he’d done it himself. He hadn’t known that was what he was doing, but he’d done it anyway.
“If I’d done the right thing,” he said, “he would have gotten away.”
“Roger.”
“Uh-huh. I’d have turned around and gone home, convinced that Roger wasn’t going to show. And I’d have been letting the real Roger off the hook, and we wouldn’t know anything more about him. Not his name or where he lived. We wouldn’t know any of those things.”
“We still don’t,” she pointed out.
“But now we don’t need to.”
“No.”
“The broker who found Allenby for us says we owe the balance.”
“What did he get, half in advance?”
“And the rest due on completion, and the guy’s point is the job was completed. Woman’s dead and it goes in the books as an accident, so we should be satisfied, right? If Allenby gets pangs of conscience afterward and decides to kill himself, well, what does that have to do with us? He offed himself without blowing the Crosby Street hit, so we got what we ordered.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I wasn’t about to explain what really happened.”
“No, of course not.”
“He thought I had booked this on behalf of a client, and that the client should pay. And I told him I agreed, but on the other hand we both knew the money wasn’t going to Allenby, because Allenby wasn’t alive to collect it.”
“The broker would keep it.”
“Of course. So I said, ‘Look, your guy killed himself, and that’s a shame because he did good work.’ “
“All he did was stand in a doorway.”
“Let me finish, will you? ‘He did good work,’ I said, ‘but he’s dead, and you’re not gonna pay him, and I’m not gonna give my client a refund. So what do you say we split it?’ And I sent him half of the half we owed.”
“That sounds fair.”
“I’m not sure fairness has anything to do with it, but I could live with it and so could he. Keller, we’re out of the woods. The loose ends are tied off and Roger’s dead and gone. You take all that in yet?”
“Just about.”
“You did the absolute right thing,” she said, “for the wrong reason. That’s a whole lot better than the other way around.”
“I guess so.”
“It wasn’t that girl, you know. That’s not why you wanted to kill him. That’s what you told yourself, but that wasn’t it.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No. Be honest, Keller. You don’t care about her, do you?”
“Not now.”
“You never did.”
“Maybe not.”
“You sensed something about that guy. You didn’t know he was Roger, you really thought he was our guy, but you picked up some vibration. And you didn’t like him.”
“I hated the bastard.”
“And how do you feel about him now?”
“Now?” He thought about it. “He’s gone,” he said. “There’s nothing to feel.”
“Same as always, right?”
“Pretty much.”
“Maybe it’s your thumb.”
“Huh?”
“Your murderer’s thumb, Keller. Maybe it gives you good instincts, or maybe it’s just good luck. Either way, I think you should keep it.”
He looked at his thumb. When he’d first become aware of its special quality, he’d gotten so he didn’t like to look at it. It had looked weird to him.
Now it looked just right. Not like everybody else’s thumb, maybe. Not even like his other thumb, for that matter. But it looked as though it belonged on his hand. It looked right for him.
“You buy some stamps in Jacksonville, Keller?”
“Some.”
“Paste them in your album yet?”
“You don’t paste them,” he said. “You’d ruin them if you pasted them.”
“You told me once what it is you do. You mount them, right?”
“Right.”
“Like you’d mount a horse,” she said, “except different. Did you mount these yet?”
“No, I didn’t have a chance.”
“So you’ve got stamps waiting to be mounted. And there’s probably mail that came while you were gone, too.”
“The usual.”
“Magazines and catalogs, I’ll bet. And what do you call it when they send you stamps and you get to pick and choose?”
“Approvals.”
“Any of those come?”
“There was a shipment, yes. From a woman in Maine.”
“She’s going to stay in Maine, right? And you’re not going to run up there for a visit.”
“Of course not.”
“So you can go home and work on your stamps.”
“I could,” he said. “I guess that’s what I’ll do.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” she said. “And take good care of your thumb, okay? Dress it warm and keep it out of drafts. Because Allenby’s dead, and so is Roger, and so are all the people good old Roger put out of business. Which means there are fewer people than ever doing what you do, Keller, and I can’t see the volume of work shrinking.”
“No,” he said, and touched his thumb. “No, I don’t think that’s anything we have to worry about.”
Please turn the pagefor an early look atHOPE TO DIEby Lawrence BlockAvailable now in hardcover fromWilliam Morrow and Company
It was a perfect summer evening, the last Monday in July. The Hollanders arrived at Lincoln Center sometime between six and six-thirty. They may have met somewhere-in the plaza by the fountain, say, or in the lobby-and gone upstairs together. Byrne Hollander was a lawyer, a partner in a firm with offices in the Empire State Building, and he might have come directly from the office. Most of the men were wearing business suits, so he wouldn’t have had to change.
He left his office around five, and their house was on West Seventy-fourth Street between Columbus and Amsterdam, so he had time to go home first to collect his wife. They may have walked to Lincoln Center-it’s half a mile, no more than a ten-minute walk. That’s how Elaine and I got there, walking up from our apartment at Ninth and Fifty-seventh, but the Hollanders lived a little further away, and may not have felt like walking. They could have taken a cab, or a bus down Columbus.
However they got there, they’d have arrived in time for drinks before dinner. He was a tall man, two inches over six feet, two years past fifty, with a strong jaw and a high forehead. He’d been athletic in his youth and still worked out regularly at a midtown gym, but he’d thickened some through the middle; if he’d looked hungry as a young man, now he looked prosperous. His dark hair was graying at the temples, and his brown eyes were the sort people described as watchful, perhaps because he spent more time listening than talking.
She was quiet, too, a pretty girl whom age had turned into a handsome woman. Her hair, dark with red highlights, was shoulder-length, and she wore it back off her face. She was six years younger than her husband and as many inches shorter, although her high heels made up some of the difference. She’d put on a few pounds in the twenty-some years they’d been married, but she’d been fashion-model thin back then, and looked good now.
I can picture them, standing around on the second floor at Avery Fisher Hall, holding a glass of white wine, picking up an hors d’oeuvre from a tray. As far as that goes, it’s entirely possible I saw them, perhaps exchanging a nod and a smile with him, perhaps noticing her as one notices an attractive woman. We were there, and so were they, along with a few hundred other people. Later, when I saw their photographs, I thought they looked faintly familiar. But that doesn’t mean I saw them that night. I could have seen either or both of them on other nights at Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall, or walking in the neighborhood. We lived, after all, less than a mile apart. I could have laid eyes on them dozens of times, and never really noticed them, just as I very possibly did that night.