Hit Man - Lawrence Block [69]
He’d managed to get a look at Moncrieff, managed to be in the lobby showing a misaddressed package to a concierge who was as puzzled as Keller was pretending to be, when Moncrieff entered, flanked by two young men with big shoulders and bulges under their jackets. Moncrieff was fiftyish and balding, with a downturned mouth and jowls like a basset hound.
He was fat, too. Keller might have thought of him as the fat man if he hadn’t already assigned that label to Arthur Strang. Moncrieff wasn’t fat the way Strang was fat—few people were—but that still left him a long way from being a borderline anorexic. Keller guessed he was seventy-five to a hundred pounds lighter than Strang. Strang waddled, while Moncrieff strutted like a pigeon.
Back in his motel, Keller found himself watching a newscast and looking at highlights from the game he’d just watched. He turned off the set, picked up the binoculars, and wondered why he’d bothered to buy them, and what he was going to do with them now. He caught himself thinking that Andria might enjoy using them to watch birds in Central Park. He told himself to stop that, and he went and took a shower.
Neither one would be the least bit easy to kill, he thought, but he could already see a couple of approaches to either man. The degree of difficulty, as an Olympic diver would say, was about the same. So, as far as he could tell, was the degree of risk.
A thought struck him. Maybe one of them deserved it.
“Arthur Strang,” the woman said. “You know, he was fat when I met him. I think he was born fat. But he was nothing like he is now. He was just, you know, heavy.”
Her name was Marie, and she was a tall woman with unconvincing red hair. Early thirties, Keller figured. Big lips, big eyes. Nice shape to her, too, but Keller’s opinion, since she brought it up, was she could stand to lose five pounds. Not that he was going to mention it.
“When I met him he was heavy,” she said, “but he wore these well-tailored Italian suits, and he looked okay, you know? Of course, naked, forget it.”
“It’s forgotten.”
“Huh?” She looked confused, but a sip of her drink put her at ease. “Before we were married,” she said, “he actually lost weight, believe it or not. Then we jumped over the broomstick together and he started eating with both hands. That’s just an expression.”
“He only ate with one hand?”
“No, silly! ‘Jumped over the broomstick.’ We had a regular wedding in a church. Anyway, I don’t think Arthur would have been too good at jumping over anything, not even if you laid the broomstick flat on the floor. I was married to him for three years, and I’ll bet he put on twenty or thirty pounds a year. Then we broke up three years ago, and have you seen him lately? He’s as big as a house.”
As big as a double-wide, maybe, Keller thought. But nowhere near as big as an estate.
“You know, Kevin,” she said, laying a hand on Keller’s arm, “it’s awful smoky in here. They passed a law against it but people smoke anyway, and what are you going to do, arrest them?”
“Maybe we should get some air,” he suggested, and she beamed at the notion.
Back at her place, she said, “He had preferences, Kevin.”
Keller nodded encouragingly, wondering if he’d ever been called Kevin before. He sort of liked the way she said it.
“As a matter of fact,” she said darkly, “he was sexually aberrant.”
“Really?”
“He wanted me to do things,” she said, rubbing his leg. “You wouldn’t believe the things he wanted.”
“Oh?”
She told him. “I thought it was disgusting,” she said, “but he insisted, and it was part of what broke us up. But do you want to know something weird?”
“Sure.”
“After the divorce,” she said, “I sort of became more broad-minded on the subject. You might