Lawrence Block - Hit and Run

“Obviously.”

“What’s not obvious,” she said, “is why you weren’t sure you wanted to, and why you didn’t have a subscription anymore. I’m missing something, Keller. Help me out.”

“I don’t have a subscription,” he said, “because it’s for stamp collectors, and it’s hard to be a stamp collector when you don’t have a collection.”

She stared at him. “You don’t know,” she said.

“I don’t know what?”

“Of course you don’t. How could you? You sort of glossed over that part, going to your apartment, or maybe I wasn’t paying attention, but—”

“I may not have mentioned it. It’s one part I don’t like to think about. I went to my apartment—”

“And the stamps were gone.”

“Gone, all ten albums. I don’t know who took them, the cops or Al’s guys, but whoever it was—”

“Neither of them.”

He looked at her.

“Oh, God,” she said. “I should have told you right away. Somehow it never entered my mind that you didn’t know, but how could you? Keller, it was me. I took your stamps.”

The first thing she’d done in Albany, after she’d found a place to stay, was buy a car. And the first thing she did with the car was drive it to New York City.

“To get your stamps,” she said. “Remember that time you got a case of the whim-whams and gave me elaborate instructions of what to do if you wound up dead? How I should go straight to your apartment and take your stamps home with me, and what dealers I should call and how to negotiate the best price for your collection?”

He remembered.

“Well, I wasn’t going to sell them, not so long as there was a chance on earth you were alive. But as far as getting them out of your apartment, I took care of that as soon as I possibly could, because I didn’t know how much of a window I had before the police came calling. I showed your doorman the letter I had authorizing me to act on your behalf and giving me full access to your apartment and its contents, and—”

“You know, I have absolutely no recollection of writing that letter.”

“Well, don’t go getting tested for Alzheimer’s just yet, Keller. I wrote it out myself on a computer at Kinko’s. I designed a nice letterhead for you, if I say so myself, and I didn’t sweat the signature, because how familiar would your doorman be with your handwriting? He didn’t have to let me in because I had the key you gave me.”

“How’d you manage to get them all out of there? Those books are heavy.”

“No kidding they’re heavy. I found a bag in the closet that held six of them” — his wheeled duffel, he thought — “and I got the doorman to give me a hand, and he brought a luggage cart they keep in the basement, and between us we got everything into the trunk of my car. Oh, and I took your computer, too, but you’re not getting that back. Unless you want to look for it at the bottom of the Hudson.”

“Between the two of us,” he said, “we’re hard on rivers.” He picked up his iced tea and took a long drink of it. “This is all tough for me to take in,” he admitted. “Let me make sure I’ve got it straight. The stamps—”

“Are in a climate-controlled storage locker in Albany, New York. Well, actually, it’s in Latham, but you probably don’t know where that is.”

“Albany’s close enough. And everything’s there? My whole stamp collection is intact, and I can go there and pick it up?”

“Anytime you want to. I probably should go with you, to make sure they don’t give you a hard time. We could fly to Albany tomorrow, if that’s what you decide you want to do.”

“I get the feeling,” he said, “that it wouldn’t be your first choice.”

“Well, I’d like to spend a few days and see New Orleans. But after that it’s your call. You’ll have your stamps back, and you’ll have two and a half million dollars just in case the construction business goes sour. You can just sit back and enjoy yourself.”

“Or?”

“Lord, did I finish that last glass of tea? I’m going to have some from your pitcher, if you don’t mind.”

“Go right ahead.”

“I’ll regret it, when I have to get up once an hour to pee, but if that’s my greatest regret I’d say I’m in good shape. Keller, I think we’re both pretty safe at this point. The cops seem to think you’re dead or in Brazil or both, which is about what I thought until my phone rang the other day. And I don’t know what our friend Al thinks, but at this point he probably has other matters that get the greater part of his attention. He knows I’m dead, and if you’re still on his list you’re way down toward the bottom of it. So there’s nothing we absolutely have to do.”

“But?”

She sighed. “Oh,” she said, “I’m sure it’s the sign of a defect of character, and there’s probably a seminar I could take to address the issue, and if there is you can bet someone’s offering it in Sedona. But what do you figure are the odds I’ll ever take that seminar?”

“Slim.”

“There you go. Keller, I can’t help it. I really would like to get even with that son of a bitch.”

“It was driving me crazy,” he said, “that he was alive and you weren’t.”

“Same with me, that he was alive and you weren’t. Now it turns out we’re both alive, and we’re both millionaires, and we should probably let it go at that, but—”

“You want to go after him.”

“You bet I do. And you?”

He drew a breath. “I think I’d better go talk to Julia,” he said.

“I’d like to meet her,” Julia said, and insisted Keller ask Dot to join them for dinner. They tried to decide on a restaurant, and Julia said, “No, you know what let’s do? Bring her over here, and I’ll cook.”

When he picked Dot up she wore a different suit, with a skirt instead of pants, and her hair was different. “I had to cancel my little Vietnamese girl in Sedona,” she said, “so I asked the concierge, and wound up with a local product who couldn’t stop talking. But I like what she did with my hair.”

Keller brought her into the house and introduced her to Julia, and stepped aside and waited for something to go wrong. By the time they sat down to dinner, after Dot had had the grand tour of the house and said all the appropriate things, he realized nothing terrible was going to happen. Both women were too well brought up.

Julia served pie for dessert, pecan this time, from the little bakery on Magazine Street, and they all had coffee, which Dot chose over iced tea. Throughout the evening Julia had referred to him as Nicholas, and Dot hadn’t called him anything at all, but as he was pouring her a second cup of coffee she called him Keller.

“I mean Nicholas,” she said, and looked across at Julia. “It’s a good thing I live a thousand miles from here, so you don’t have to sit around on pins and needles waiting for me to drop a brick in front of company. Have you ever done that, Julia? Called him Keller?”

When he was driving her back to the Intercontinental, she said, “That’s a real lady you found yourself, Keller. I’m sorry, I’ll be a long time getting used to any other name for you. You’ve been just plain Keller to me for a long time now.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“But why did she blush when I asked if she ever called you Keller? Jesus, Keller, now you’re the one blushing.”

“The hell I am,” he said. “Just forget it, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “Mea fucking culpa, and consider it forgotten.”

“Do I ever forget and call you Keller? I turned red as a beet.”

“I don’t think she noticed.”

“Oh? I doubt there’s a great deal that goes unnoticed around your friend Dot. I like her. Though she’s not quite what I expected.”