Hit Man - Lawrence Block [105]
“Australia,” the dealer said. He was a generation younger than Hildebrand, and his shop was on the second floor of an office building on Rampart Street.
“I’ve got a good run of the early Kangaroos, if you’d like to see them. How about Australian States, while we’re in that part of the world? Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, New South Wales . . .”
“I haven’t got my lists for those.”
“Another time,” the fellow said. “Here’s tongs, here’s a gauge if you want to check perfs. Let me know if there’s anything else you need.”
“I’ll do that,” Keller said.
The motel was in Metairie. Before his conversation with Richard Wickwire, Keller had called the motel and tried out the voice-changer on them, booking a room as Sue Ellen Bates. Then he drove over there, paid cash for a week in advance, and picked up the key. He let himself into the room, stowed some women’s garments in the dresser and closet, and messed up the bed.
He didn’t pay another visit to the room until an hour before Sue Ellen’s date with Wickwire. He left the Pontiac a block away in a strip-mall parking lot, let himself into the room, and cracked the seal on a pint of bourbon. He poured an ounce of bourbon into each of two motel tumblers, made a lipstick mark on one of them, and placed them on the bedside table. He spilled a little bourbon on the rug, a little more on the chair, and left the pint standing open on the dresser.
Then he unlocked the door and left it very slightly ajar. He switched on the TV, tuned it to a talk show, lowered the volume. Next came the hard part—sitting and waiting. He should have brought the stamp weekly along. He’d read everything in it, but he could have read it again. You always picked up something you’d missed the first time.
Wickwire was due at two o’clock. At one-fifty, the phone on the bedside table rang. Keller frowned at it, then picked it up and said hello.
“Sue Ellen?”
“Mr. Wickwire?”
“I might be five or ten minutes late, sugar. Just wanted to let you know.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Keller said. “You just come right on in.”
He hung up and disconnected the voice-changer, wondering what he’d have done if he hadn’t thought to hook it up earlier. Well, no sense trembling over unspilled milk.
At 2:10 Wickwire still hadn’t shown. At 2:15 there was a knock at the door. “Sue Ellen?” Keller didn’t say anything.
“You here, Sue Ellen?”
Wickwire edged the door open. Keller, waiting behind it, let him get all the way inside. No telling who might be watching.
“Sue Ellen? Girl, where are you hiding yourself?”
Keller wrapped an arm around the big man’s neck, got him in a choke hold, and applied the pressure, kicking the door shut while he was at it. Wickwire struggled at first, his shoulders bucking, then sagged in Keller’s arms and slumped forward.
Keller let him go, stepped back, and kicked him three times in the face. Then he knelt down next to the unconscious Wickwire and broke his neck. He stripped the corpse to socks and underwear, heaved him onto the bed, and spilled most of the remaining bourbon into his open mouth. He took a chair and laid it on its side, took a pillow and flung it across the room, left dresser drawers half-open. He packed up the voice-changer, along with the clothing from the drawers and closet, and remembered to fetch Wickwire’s wallet and money clip from his trousers.
He locked the door, fastened the chain bolt. The peephole in the door didn’t afford much of a view, but he was able to see what looked like Wickwire’s Lincoln Town Car parked at the very edge of his field of vision. It was odds-on the bodyguards were in it, listening to terrible music on the radio, waiting for their boss to knock off a cutie.
Or vice versa, Keller thought.
He wiped the surfaces where he might have left prints, then climbed out through the bathroom window and headed for the strip mall where he’d left the car.
Back in his own hotel, Keller packed his suitcase and checked flight schedules. There was, as far as he could tell, no point in sticking around. The job was done, and, if he said so himself, done