Hit List - Lawrence Block [71]
And then he’d said he was out of town, and Maggie said she knew, and he’d been ready to grab her and snap her neck. Just like that.
He’d called up, as requested, to replace his home number on her Caller ID with the number of the pay phone. But was that how Caller ID worked? Did it keep track of just one number at a time? He didn’t have it on his phone, he couldn’t imagine why he’d want it, so he wasn’t too clear on how it worked. And, even if it was the way she’d said it was, how did he know she hadn’t picked up the phone the minute he was out the door? She could have copied the number off the screen before he called back to erase it.
She was, let’s face it, more than a little strange. That had been part of her initial appeal, that offbeat downtown weirdness, though he had to say it had grown less appealing with time. Still, it made it impossible to guess what the woman would do.
If she had the number, she could get the address. She’d mentioned the reverse directory herself, so she knew about it, knew how to get an address to go with a phone number. If she knew all that, and of course she already knew his name, she’d known that from the beginning . . .
But that didn’t mean she knew what he did for a living. Suppose she’d picked up on his reaction, suppose she’d half-sensed that he’d been ready to reach for her and put her down. The fact remained that he hadn’t done anything, hadn’t even acted angry, let alone homicidal. Once he was out the door, once it was clear that she was safe, she’d talk herself out of any alarm she might have felt.
Wouldn’t she?
Back home, he worked on his stamp collection for a few minutes, then put everything away and turned on the TV. He worked his way through the channels two or three times, triggering the remote until his hand was tired, then thumbing the power button and darkening the set. And sat there in what little light came in from the window, looking at the remote in his hand. Looking at his thumb.
Maggie knew he had a murderer’s thumb. She’d pointed it out, called it to his attention.
Maybe she’d think about that and put it together with whatever she’d picked up when he’d been ready to reach for her. And maybe she’d factor in the way he was retired at an early age, but went out of town occasionally on special jobs for unspecified corporate employers. And maybe there’d be a hired killer in the headlines, or in some movie she saw, or some TV program. And maybe her eyes would widen, and she’d make a connection, and realize just who he was and what he was.
And then?
Eighteen
* * *
The airport in Orange County was named after John Wayne. Keller got off the plane with a tune running through his head, and he was halfway to the baggage claim before he worked out what it was. The theme from The High and the Mighty.
Funny how the mind did things like that.
There were half a dozen men standing alongside the baggage claim, some in chauffeur’s livery, all of them holding hand-lettered signs. Keller walked past them without a glance. No one was meeting him—that was policy, now that the mysterious Roger was out there somewhere. Anyway, no one would be expecting him to fly to Orange County, because his assignment was all the way down in La Jolla. La Jolla was a suburb of San Diego, and San Diego had a perfectly good airport of its own, larger and busier than Orange County’s, and not named after anyone.
“Unless you count St. James,” Dot had said. When he looked blank, she told him that San Diego was Spanish for St. James. “Or Santiago,” she said. “San Diego, Santiago. Same guy.”
“Then why do they have two names for him?”
“Maybe one’s the equivalent of James,” she