Hit Man - Lawrence Block [43]
When he woke up the dog was missing. So was Andria, and so was the leash. Keller was shaved and dressed and out the door before they returned. He got a cab to La Guardia and was there in plenty of time for his flight to St. Louis.
He rented a Ford Tempo from Hertz and let the girl trace the route to the Sheraton on the map. “It’s the turn right after the mall,” she said helpfully. He took the exit for the mall and found a parking place, taking careful note of where it was so he could find it again. Once, a couple of years ago, he had parked a rental car at a mall in suburban Detroit without paying attention to where he’d parked it or what it looked like. For all he knew it was still there.
He walked through the mall, looking for a sporting goods store with a selection of hunting knives. There was probably one to be found; they had everything else, including several jewelry stores to catch anyone who hadn’t gotten her fill of cubic zirconium on television. But he came to a Hoffritz store first and the kitchen knives caught his eye. He picked out a boning knife with a five-inch blade.
He could have brought his own knife, but that would have meant checking a bag, and he never did that if he could help it. Easy enough to buy what you needed at the scene. The hardest part was convincing the clerk he didn’t want the rest of the set, and ignoring the sales pitch assuring him the knife wouldn’t need sharpening for years. He was only going to use it once, for God’s sake.
* * *
He found the Ford, found the Sheraton, found a parking place, and left his overnight bag in the trunk. It would have been nice if the knife had come with a sheath, but kitchen knives rarely do, so he’d been moved to improvise, lifting a cardboard mailing envelope from a Federal Express drop box at the mall entrance. He walked into the hotel lobby with the mailer under his arm and the knife snug inside it.
That gave him an idea.
He checked the slip of paper in his wallet. St. Louis, Sheraton, Rm. 314.
“Man’s a union official,” the old man in White Plains had told him. “Some people are afraid he might tell what he knows.”
Just recently some people at a funded drug rehabilitation project in the Bronx had been afraid their accountant might tell what she knew, so they paid a pair of teenagers $150 to kill her. The two of them picked her up leaving the office, walked down the street behind her, and after a two-block stroll the sixteen-year-old shot her in the head. Within twenty-four hours they were in custody, and two days later so was the genius who hired them.
Keller figured you got what you paid for.
He went over to the house phone and dialed 314. It rang almost long enough to convince him the room was empty. Then a man picked up and said, “Yeah?”
“FedEx,” Keller said.
“Huh?”
“Federal Express. Got a delivery for you.”
“That’s crazy,” the man said.
“Room 314, right? I’ll be right up.”
The man protested that he wasn’t expecting anything, but Keller hung up on him in mid-sentence and got the elevator to the third floor. The halls were empty. He found room 314 and knocked briskly on the door. “FedEx,” he sang out. “Delivery.”
Some muffled sounds came through the door. Then silence, and he was about to knock again when the man said, “What the hell is this?”
“Parcel for you,” he said. “Federal Express.”
“Can’t be,” the man said. “You got the wrong room.”
“Room 314. That’s what it says, on the package and on the door.”
“Well, there’s a mistake. Nobody knows I’m here.” That’s what you think, thought Keller. “Who’s it addressed to?”
Who indeed? “Can’t make it out.”
“Who’s it from, then?”
“Can’t make that out, either,” Keller said. “That whole