Keller 05 - Hit Me

  And Thursday night he wanted to be on his way to New Orleans. The last flight out was JetBlue’s, at 8:59, and with luck he’d be on it.

  He walked all the way to Thessalonian House, and it looked no different than it had the previous afternoon. The brass knocker was just as inviting, the heavy door just as forbidding. He looked over at it from the uptown side of the street, and barely slowed as he passed on by.

  He didn’t see a pay phone at the corner of 36th and Park, and walked another block to Lexington. No pay phones there, either, and he walked a block uptown before he found one, and it didn’t work. He had a prepaid cell phone in his pocket, which he’d bought at the New Orleans airport, and he’d hoped he could use it to call Julia, but it looked as though he was only going to be able to get one call out of it.

  Well, too bad.

  He punched in 911, spoke briefly, and disconnected. Then he walked over to the curb and slipped the inoffensive phone down a storm drain.

  He retraced his steps slowly, south to 36th Street, west toward Thessalonian House. He was halfway to Park Avenue when he heard the first siren, but maintained his measured pace. By the time he reached the scene, three city vehicles had already arrived, two NYPD squad cars and an FDNY hook and ladder.

  Not surprisingly, a crowd was gathering, with a couple of uniformed cops moving spectators to the uptown side of the street, and firefighters setting up barricades to block the sidewalk on either side of the monastery.

  Keller picked out one of the cops and asked him what was going on. The man didn’t answer, but a fellow spectator chimed in. “Guy broke in, shot two nuns, and he’s holding the rest of ’em hostage.”

  The doors opened, and the monastery began to empty out, the sidewalk filling up with men, some of them in robes, some in business suits. The man who’d just spoken said he might have been wrong about the nuns, and a woman said you didn’t have nuns in a monastery, and another man said, “What meat can a priest eat on Friday? None. Get it?”

  Keller was the first to spot the bomb squad truck, but he let somebody else point it out. It looked like one of the Brink’s armored cars used to transport large amounts of cash, but it said BOMB SQUAD on the side, in letters large enough to command attention. “Oh, it must be a bomb,” someone said, and everyone immediately moved one step in from the street.

  So did Keller, even though he couldn’t imagine what protection an additional foot of distance from a blast could possibly afford. And in any event he knew there was no bomb, having called in the threat himself.

  Another cop, younger and larger than the first, was standing off to the side. He was smoking a cigarette, and Keller got the impression that doing so was against department regulations, and that the man didn’t give a damn.

  Keller moved closer to him, but not too close, and asked if the building across the street was the Thessalonian monastery.

  The cop bristled. “And if it is?”

  “I just wondered,” Keller said. “A fellow I went to school with, a good friend, actually, he was going to join the Thessalonians.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “He thought very highly of them,” Keller said. “But you know, you lose track of people. I don’t know whether he joined up or not. Say, isn’t that—”

  “Father O’Herlihy,” the cop said. “He hasn’t got enough on his plate, he needs a bomb threat on top of everything else.”

  The man in question looked to Keller as though very little stayed for very long on any plate of his. He had a full face and an extra chin, and looked massive even though his robe hid his figure. His was a plain brown robe, but somehow it seemed less plain and even less brown than those worn by the other monks. He was quite clearly in command, and while Keller couldn’t make out what he was saying he could see how the rest rearranged themselves according to his orders.

  “And here comes Eyewitness News,” the cop said sourly. “Fuckin’ media won’t leave the man alone. Jersey’s got a certain level of corruption, and it don’t matter whether you’re the Church or some local businessman, you gotta go along to get along. But maybe you see it different.”

  “No, I’m with you,” Keller said.

  “But as soon as a man of God’s involved, and especially if he just happens to be a Catholic man of God, then it’s all over the goddamn papers. These days, beating up on the Church is everybody’s favorite sport. Not too many years ago this woulda got swept back under the rug, where it belongs.”

  “Absolutely,” Keller said.

  “What did the man do, for Christ’s sake? I didn’t hear no scandals about altar boys. All right, somebody goes and sells a kidney, that’s gonna draw attention. I’ll grant you that. But is it any reason to sling mud at a man who does as much good in the world as Father O’Herlihy?”

  Keller was ready to express agreement, when someone off to the side said, “Hey, look, a dog!” And indeed a uniformed bomb squad officer was fastening a leash to the collar of a sprightly beagle.

  “Jesus,” somebody said. “Don’t tell me the monks are selling drugs on top of everything else.”

  “It’s a bomb-sniffing dog, you moron,” someone else said.

  “It’s cute, whatever it is,” a woman said.

  “We had one just like that when I was a kid,” a man said. “Dumber than dirt. Couldn’t find food in his dish.”

  The dog disappeared into the building, and the conversation looked for other topics. The abbot continued to move among his corps of monks, patting this one on the back, touching this one on the shoulder, looking like an officer rallying the troops.

  “Hey, O’Herlihy,” someone called out. “I hear you’re running a special on kidneys this week!”

  The crowd had been buzzing with casual conversation, and it stopped dead, as if someone had unplugged it. Keller sensed his fellow spectators gathering themselves, brought up short by the combination of shock and a sense of opportunity. The speaker had clearly crossed the line, and they were deciding whether to disapprove or join in. It would depend, he figured, on whether they came up with things too clever to suppress.

  But the abbot made the decision for them. He broke off his conversation, spun around to his left, and stalked up to the curb. He drew himself up to his full height and silenced the crowd with a stare.

  Then he spoke. “Disperse,” he said. “All of ye. Have ye nothing better to do? Go about your proper business, or return to your homes. There’s no need for ye here.”

  And damned if they didn’t do exactly that, and Keller with them.

  Fourteen

  It was pretty impressive,” he told Dot. “He just assumed command.”

  “I guess he must be used to it. Comes with the job, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I suppose so, but I got the feeling he’s been like that all his life. I can picture him as a ten-year-old in the schoolyard, settling disputes in kickball games.”

  “I always wanted to play kickball,” Dot said, “but at my school it was boys only. I’ll bet it’s different now.”

  He’d bought another prepaid phone, with a chip good for one hundred minutes or one call to 911, whichever came first. His first call was to Julia; he told her how it felt to be in New York, and how the auction was shaping up, and she filled him in on Jenny’s day, and passed on some gossip about a couple two doors down the street. He hadn’t told her anything specific about his assignment, and didn’t talk about it now.

  To Dot he said, “I’m not sure I accomplished anything with that call I made.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Keller. You got a look at him, didn’t you?”

  “It’s not as though I hadn’t seen enough pictures of him.”

  “But seeing him in person’s a little different. You got a sense of the person.”

  “I guess.”

  “And you established for certain that he’s in residence there. You’d assumed as much, but now you know it for a fact.”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “You don’t sound conv
inced, Keller. What’s the matter?”

  “The phone.”

  “Why’d you toss it? I know they log 911 calls, but I thought your phone’s untraceable.”

  “They can’t tie it to me,” he said, “but they can tell what numbers I call with that phone. Then all they have to do is walk back the cat.”

  “To Sedona,” she said, “and to New Orleans. No, you wouldn’t want them to do that. So what’s the problem? You bought a disposable phone and then you disposed of it.”

  “I paid seventy bucks for that phone,” he said, “and I made one useless call with it, and now it’s floating in the New York sewer system.”

  “I doubt it’s floating, Keller. It probably sank like a stone.”

  “Well.”

  “And landed on the bottom,” she said, “unless an alligator ate it. Remember Tick-Tock the alligator? In Peter Pan?”

  “Wasn’t that a crocodile?”

  “Keller, I know there’s a difference between alligators and crocodiles, but is it one we have to care about? Tick-Tock swallowed a clock once, and that’s why you could always hear him coming.”

  “Probably how he got his name, too.”

  “Odds are. You know, I always wondered how come it didn’t run down. You figure it was like a self-winding watch? Just swimming around was enough to keep it going?”

  “Dot—”

  “So here’s your phone,” she said, “and this alligator swallows it, and now what happens if somebody calls you?”

  How did he get into conversations like this? “Nobody has the number,” he said.

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Besides, I turned the phone off after I made the call. So it wouldn’t ring.”

  “That was wise of you, Keller. Because all you need is an alligator in the sewer with a phone ringing inside his belly.”

  “And anyway it’s a myth. There aren’t really any alligators in the New York sewers.”

  She sighed heavily. “Keller,” she said, “you know what you are? A genuine killjoy. You got any inside information about Santa Claus, kindly keep it to yourself. And I wouldn’t worry too much about the seventy dollars. It’s not gonna keep you from buying any stamps, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there you go. How’s New York?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “You comfortable there?”

  “Pretty much. At first I was worried someone would recognize me, but nobody did, so I stopped worrying.”

  “I guess so, if you actually started a conversation with a cop.”

  “Until this moment,” he said, “it never occurred to me that I was doing anything risky.”

  “Maybe you weren’t, Keller. The world has a short memory, and I have to say that’s just as well. Look, you’ll figure out a way to get the job done. You always do.”

  Keller had Thai food for lunch. You could get perfectly decent Thai food, and almost everything else, in New Orleans, but there was a Thai restaurant two blocks from his old apartment that he remembered fondly. He walked over there, and the hostess put him at a table for two on the left wall, about halfway between the front door and the kitchen.

  He was studying the menu when the waitress brought him a glass of Thai iced tea before he could ask for it. How did she know that was what he wanted? He reached for it, and she said, “Papaya salad? Shrimp pad thai, very spicy?”

  Was the young woman psychic? No, of course not. She remembered him.

  And so had the hostess. Because, he realized, this was the table where he’d always sat years ago, and the meal was the one he’d almost invariably ordered.

  Now what? He’d always paid cash, so they wouldn’t know his name. Still, they would certainly have seen his photograph, in the papers or on the TV news. But would it have registered out of context?

  More to the point, what should he do now? Get up and make a run for it? Or, more discreetly, invent a pretext: “Uh-oh, forgot my wallet, I’ll be back in a minute.” And they’d never see him again.

  But wouldn’t that create suspicion where it might well not already exist? And once he’d done that, they’d have reason to wonder what was the matter, and at that point one of them might link this old customer of theirs to a photo dimly recalled, and they could call 911 and it wouldn’t even cost them a $70 phone.

  On the other hand, he’d be gone by then.

  But the authorities, who’d had years to get used to the idea that Keller the Assassin had been liquidated by his employers, would have reason to believe he wasn’t dead after all. And there’d be a manhunt, and attention from the media, and what would happen to his life in New Orleans?

  The papaya salad came. If he wanted to allay suspicion, he thought, then he ought to act like a man with nothing to hide. So he picked up his fork and dug in.

  It was just as he remembered it.

  So was the pad thai—the rice noodles nicely slippery on the tongue, the shrimp tender and flavorful, the whole thing fiercely hot. He’d lost his appetite when he realized he’d been recognized, but it returned in full measure once he started eating, and he cleaned both his plates. He might have ordered dessert, there was a baked coconut rice pudding he used to like, but he decided not to push it.

  He scribbled in the air, and the hostess brought the check, took his money, and brought his change. He left a tip designed to be generous without being memorable, and on the way out the hostess said, “Long time we don’t see you.”

  “I moved away.”

  “Ah, that’s what I say! Somebody say maybe you don’t like us no more, but I say he move. Where you now, Upper West Side?”

  “Montana.”

  “Oh, so far! What city?”

  The first thought that came to him was Cheyenne, but that was in Wyoming. “Billings,” he said, pretty sure it was in Montana.

  “My brother’s in Helena,” she told him. “Big problem getting people there to try Thai food. So he put sushi on the menu. Sushi very big in Helena.”

  “In Billings, too.”

  “They come for sushi,” she said, “and then maybe they try something else. Smart guy, my brother. Almost went broke, thought of sushi, and now he’s making lots of money.”

  “That’s great.”

  “You get to Helena, you try Thai Pagoda. Nice place.” She frowned. “Cheap rent, too. Not like here. You come back when you in New York, okay?”

  “I will.”

  “You looking good,” she said. “Lost some weight!”

  “A couple of pounds.”

  “Almost didn’t recognize. Then it comes to me. Table seven! Thai iced tea! Papaya salad! Shrimp pad thai!”

  “That’s me, all right.”

  “Very spicy! Make sure very spicy!”

  Keller, back in his hotel room, sat in front of the television set watching NY1, the twenty-four-hour local news channel. It was pointless, he knew; if somebody at Thai Garden did make the connection and felt compelled to rat him out to the law, the media wouldn’t be reporting it for at least a couple of hours. But he sat there for a half hour anyway, and learned more than he needed to know about the sports and weather, along with ongoing coverage of the bomb scare at Thessalonian House. Once again he got to hear the abbot thunder at the crowd, bidding them to disperse, and even spotted himself in the act of dispersal.

  That gave him a turn, but he realized that no one could have identified him on the basis of what he’d just seen. He was part of a crowd shot, seen from a distance, and he had his back to the camera. If he hadn’t known he was there, he doubted he’d have recognized himself.

  There was, of course, no bomb to be found. The beagle’s name turned out to be Ajax, which struck Keller as a pretty decent name for a dog, bomb-sniffing or otherwise. There was a brief interview with Ajax’s handler, a light-side-of-the-news piece that Keller found reasonably interesting, and then the announcer’s voice turned serious as she talked about the criminal nature of bomb threats, and the need to respond to each of them, and the high c
ost involved.

  “Every call reporting a bomb is logged, and every caller identified,” she said. “If you make a false report, it’s just a question of time before the long arm of the law reaches out and takes hold of you.”

  Well, maybe not, Keller thought. Not unless the long arm of the law could reach all the way down into the sewers, and yank his phone out of the alligator’s belly.

  In the hotel’s business center, Keller logged on to the Peachpit site and checked the current status of the lots he was interested in. With one or two exceptions, the opening bids were unchanged. He noted the changes in his catalog and was ready to return to his room when he thought of something.

  Google. Who could imagine life without Google?

  He was on the computer for fifteen minutes more, and made a few more notes. Then he pulled down the History menu and deleted that day’s searches, his and everybody else’s.

  Then back to his room.

  Fifteen

  I’d like to talk to Abbot O’Herlihy,” Keller said. His voice, he noticed, was pitched higher than usual. He hadn’t planned on it. It just came out that way.

  “That would be Abbot Paul,” said the monk who’d answered the phone. “And I’m afraid he’s not taking any calls.”

  “I think it would be a good idea for him to take this one,” Keller said, and he could only hope he’d said it ominously.

  There was a thoughtful silence. Then, “Perhaps you could tell me the nature of your business with the abbot.”

  “It was almost thirty years ago,” Keller said, “and he wasn’t Abbot Paul then. He was Father O’Herlihy, with a parish in Cold Spring Harbor. And I was little Timmy Hannan, just ten years old, and, and—”

  “I’m putting you on hold,” the monk said, and Keller heard a click, and then spent a full five minutes listening to recorded Gregorian chants.

  Keller was just beginning to get into the music when it cut out in the middle of a phrase, and the voice that took over was very different from that of the mild-mannered chap who’d answered the phone. He placed it at once, the timbre, the authority, the slight but unmistakable touch of brogue.