Hit List - Lawrence Block [125]
Where was he headed? Not the men’s room, it was directly opposite the gate, and clearly marked.
Oh, right.
Keller tagged along in his wake, stopping at a newsstand to buy cigarettes. If he’d guessed wrong, if the man’s destination wasn’t what he thought it was, well, he was out the price of a pack of Winstons. But no, there was a sign for the smoking lounge, and that’s where the man was headed.
He slowed down and let his quarry get settled in. The man was puffing away by the time Keller opened the door and slipped inside. It was a glassed-in area, the furnishings limited to a double row of couches and a generous supply of standing metal ashtrays. The killer was at one end of the room, and two women were over at the other end, barely visible through the smoke, heads together, chatting away. And smoking, of course. No one would come to this foul little room except to smoke.
Keller shook a cigarette out of his pack, put it between his lips. He approached the man, patting at his pockets, reaching into the breast pocket of his jacket. “Excuse me,” he said, “but have you got a light?” And, as recognition came into the man’s eyes, Keller said, “Say, didn’t I see you on the flight from Newark? I don’t know what the hell I did with my matches.”
The man reached into a pocket, came out with a lighter. Keller bent toward the flame.
Thirty
* * *
“Keller,” she said. “I swear to God I was sure you were dead.”
“Dead? I just talked to you on the phone.”
“Before that,” she said. “Well, don’t just stand there. Come on inside. What the hell happened to you, Keller? The last time I saw you, you were walking north on Crosby Street. Where have you been for the past four days?”
“Jacksonville,” he said.
“Jacksonville, Florida?”
“That’s the only Jacksonville I know of.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s one in North Carolina,” she said, “and there are probably others, but who cares? What the hell were you doing in Jacksonville, Florida?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I went to the movies,” he said. “Dropped in on a few stamp dealers. Watched television in my motel room.”
“Call a realtor? Look at some houses?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s something. I don’t want to sound like your mother, Keller, but how come you didn’t call?”
He thought about it. “I was ashamed,” he said.
“Ashamed?”
“I guess that’s what it was.”
“Ashamed of what?”
“Ashamed of myself.”
She rolled her eyes. “Keller,” she said, “do I look like a dentist?”
“A dentist?”
“So why does every conversation with you have to be like pulling teeth? Of course you were ashamed of yourself. A person can’t be ashamed of somebody else. Ashamed of yourself for what?”
Why was he stalling? He drew a breath. “Ashamed of myself for what I did,” he said. “Dot, I killed a man.”
“You killed a man.”
“Yes.”
“Keller, do you want to sit down? Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“But you killed a man.”
“In Jacksonville.”
“Keller,” she said, “that’s what you do. Remember? That’s what you’ve been doing all your life. Well, maybe not all your life, maybe not when you were a kid, but—“
“This was different, Dot.”
“What was different about it?”
“I wasn’t supposed to kill him.”
“You’re not supposed to kill anybody, according to what they teach kids in Sunday school. It’s against the rules. But you haven’t lived by those rules for a while now, Keller.”
“I broke my own rules,” he said. “I killed somebody I shouldn’t have.”
“Who?”
“I don’t even know his name.”
“Is that what bothers you? Not knowing his name?”
“Dot,” he said, “I killed our guy. I killed the man we hired. He came to New York to do a job, a job we hired him to do, and he did everything just the way he was supposed to do, and I followed him from New York to Jacksonville and murdered him in cold blood.”
“In cold blood,” she said.
“Or maybe it was hot blood. I don’t know.”
“Come on into the kitchen,” she said. “Have a seat, let me make you a cup of tea. And tell me all about it.”