Hit List - Lawrence Block [43]
“Right.”
“So?”
“Remember how I had a bad feeling about it, and then a couple got killed in my old room, and—“
“I remember the whole business, Keller. What about it?”
“I guess I’ve just been wondering how much of life is destined and preordained. How much choice do people really have?”
“If we had a choice,” she said, “we could be having some other conversation.”
“I never set out to be what I’ve become. It’s not like I took an aptitude test in high school and my guidance counselor took me aside and recommended a career as a killer for hire.”
“You drifted into it, didn’t you?”
“That’s what I always thought. That’s certainly what it felt like. But suppose I was just fulfilling my destiny?”
“I don’t know,” she said, cocking her head. “Shouldn’t there be music playing in the background? There always is when they have conversations like this in one of my soap operas.”
“Dot, I’ve got a murderer’s thumb.”
“Oh, for the love of God, we’re back to your thumb. How did you manage that, and what in the hell are you talking about?”
“Palmistry,” he said. “In palmistry, a thumb like mine is called a murderer’s thumb.”
“In palmistry.”
“Right.”
“I grant you it’s an unusual-looking thumb,” she said, “although I never noticed it in all the years I’ve known you, and never would have noticed it if you hadn’t pointed it out. But where does the murderer part come in? What do you do, kill people by running your thumb across their life line?”
“I don’t think you actually do anything with your thumb.”
“I don’t see what you could do, aside from hitching a ride. Or making a rude gesture.”
“All I know,” he said, “is I had a murderer’s thumb and I grew up to be a murderer.”
“ ‘His Thumb Made Him Do It.’ “
“Or was it the other way around? Maybe my thumb was normal at birth, and it changed as my character changed.”
“That sounds crazy,” she said, “but you ought to be able to clear it up, because you’ve been carrying that thumb around all your life. Was it always like that?”
“How do I know? I never paid much attention to it.”
“Keller, it’s your thumb.”
“But did I notice it was different from other thumbs? I don’t know, Dot. Maybe I should see somebody.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad idea,” she said, “but I’d think twice before I let them put me on any medication.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said.
The astrologer was not what he’d expected.
Hard to say just what he’d been expecting. Someone with a lot of eye makeup, say, and long hair bound up in a scarf, and big hoop earrings—some sort of cross between a Gypsy fortune-teller and a hippie chick. What he got in Louise Carpenter was a pleasant woman in her forties who had long since thrown in the towel in the battle to maintain her figure. She had big blue-green eyes and a low-maintenance haircut, and she lived in an apartment on West End Avenue full of comfortable furniture, and she wore loose clothing and read romance novels and ate chocolate, all of which seemed to agree with her.
“It would help,” she told Keller, “if we knew the precise time of your birth.”
“I don’t think there’s any way to find out.”
“Your mother has passed?”
Passed. It might be more accurate, he thought, to say that she’d failed. He said, “She died a long time ago.”
“And your father . . .”
“Died before I was born,” Keller said, wondering if it was true. “You asked me over the phone if there was anyone who might remember. I’m the only one who’s still around, and I don’t remember a thing.”
“There are ways to recover a lot of early memory,” she said, and popped a chocolate into her mouth. “All the way back to birth, in some instances, and I’ve known people who claim they can remember their own conception. But I don’t know how much to credit all of that. Is it memory or is it Memorex? Besides, you probably weren’t wearing a watch at the time.”
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I don’t know the doctor’s name, and he might be dead himself by this time, but I’ve got a copy of my birth certificate. It