Hit List - Lawrence Block [98]
“And how did it come out? And don’t tell me you’re not supposed to talk about the case, because the outcome’s a matter of record.”
“Actually,” he said, “it’s okay to talk about it now. And we found him guilty.”
“So he goes to jail.”
“I guess so, but that part’s not up to us. He’s remanded to custody until sentencing.”
“He’ll get what, a couple of years?”
“Something like that.”
“You went down to Baltimore and clipped a woman, and then you came back to New York and put a man away for a few years for selling a hot television set.”
“A VCR.”
“Well, that makes all the difference. Don’t you see a contradiction here, Keller? Or at least an irony?”
He thought about it. “No,” he said. “One’s my job and the other’s my duty.”
“And you did them both.”
“That’s right.”
“And we got paid, and Huberman’s headed upstate.”
“That’s right,” he said. “The system works.”
Twenty-four
* * *
Odd, Keller thought.
He’d called his astrologer, Louise Carpenter, the night he came back from Baltimore. He couldn’t remember why, something about wondering if the moon was full, and you didn’t have to call an expert to determine something like that. He supposed he’d just had the urge to talk to her, and when she didn’t answer he got over it.
Then a week or so later he called again, and it wasn’t Sunday evening this time, it was a weekday, and normal business hours, if there was such a thing for an astrologer. Middle of the afternoon, middle of the week, and no answer. No answering machine, either.
He’d frowned, puzzled, and then he’d decided she was out of town. Astrologers very likely took vacations, just like anybody else. Maybe she was on a beach somewhere, looking up at the stars.
He’d let it go, and hadn’t thought about the woman since, until the call from Dot.
He was reading a stamp magazine when she called, absorbed in a story about forged overprints on early French colonial issues. There were a lot of legitimate varieties, as well as an abundance of forgeries, and it wasn’t all that easy to tell the difference. He was wondering if he had any forgeries in his own collection, and if there was any point in finding out, when the phone rang.
“Our friend’s been busy,” she said.
“Our friend?”
“We’ve been calling him Roger.”
“You know,” he said, “he was on my mind a lot for a while there, and then he wasn’t. I couldn’t tell you when I last thought of him.”
“The big question, Keller, is whether he’s thinking of you.”
“And the answer is yes, or you wouldn’t be calling.”
“He may not be thinking of you personally,” she said, “because he doesn’t know you personally, which I’d have to say is a good thing. But it’s clear he hasn’t decided to take up golf, or anything else that might distract him from his primary purpose, and you remember what that is.”
“Narrowing the field,” he said.
“It just got narrower. There was a job I turned down, and it’s a good thing I did.”
“I guess you’d better tell me about it.”
“Tomorrow morning,” she said, “hop on a train and come see me.”
“I could come up now, Dot.”
“No,” she said, “wait until tomorrow. I’ve got some things to line up first, Keller, and then we’re going to have to make some moves. We’ve been waiting for this clown to dry up and blow away, and it’s not going to happen. Unless we make it happen.”
“How?”
“Tomorrow morning,” she said.
He hung up, and the first thing that popped into his head was the astrologer. He could call her, and she could give him some idea of just how dangerous a time this was. He tried the number, and this time the phone only rang once. Then a recording came on, informing him that the number he had called was no longer in service.
He tried it again, figuring he’d dialed wrong, and he got the same recording. No longer in service.
Odd.
Her apartment was clear across town on West End Avenue between Ninety-seventh and Ninety-eighth.