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  “Ever since you left,” she said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said. That you would like it if I stayed here. But what I have to know is if you still feel that way, or if it was just, you know, how you felt that morning.”

  “I’d like you to stay.”

  “Well, I’d like it, too. I like being around your energy. I like your dog and I like your apartment and I like you.”

  “I missed you,” Keller said.

  “I missed you, too. But I liked being here while you were gone, living in your space and taking care of your dog. I have a confession to make. I slept in your bed.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake. Where else would you sleep?”

  “On the couch.”

  Keller gave her a look. She colored, and he said, “While I was away I thought about your toes.”

  “My toes?”

  “All different colors.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, I had trouble deciding which color to go with, and it came to me that when God couldn’t decide on a color, he created the rainbow.”

  “Rainbow toes,” Keller said. “I think I’ll take them one by one into my mouth, those pink little rainbow toes. What do you think about that?”

  “Oh,” she said.

  Later he said, “Suppose someone got killed by mistake.”

  “How could that happen?”

  “Say an area code turns into a room number. Human error, computer error, anything at all. Mistakes happen.”

  “No they don’t.”

  “They don’t?”

  “People make mistakes,” she said, “but there’s no such thing as a mistake.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You could make a mistake,” she said. “You could be swinging a dumbbell and it could sail out of the window. That would be a case of you making a mistake.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “And somebody looking for an address on the next block could get out of a cab here instead, and here comes a dumbbell. The person made a mistake.”

  “His last one, too.”

  “In this lifetime,” she agreed. “So you’ve both made a mistake, but if you look at the big picture, there was no mistake. The person got hit by a dumbbell and died.”

  “No mistake?”

  “No mistake, because it was meant to happen.”

  “But if it wasn’t meant to happen—”

  “Then it wouldn’t.”

  “And if it happened it was meant to.”

  “Right.”

  “Karma?”

  “Karma.”

  “Little pink toes,” Keller said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  6

  Keller in Shining Armor

  When the phone rang, Keller was finishing up the Times crossword puzzle. It looked as though this was going to be one of those days when he was able to fill in all the squares. That happened more often than not, but once or twice a week he’d come a cropper. A Brazilian tree in four letters would intersect with an Old World marsupial in five, and he’d be stumped. It didn’t make his day when he filled in the puzzle or spoil it when he didn’t, but it was something he noticed.

  He put down his pencil and picked up the phone, and Dot said, “Keller, I haven’t seen you in ages.”

  “I’ll be right over,” he said, and broke the connection. She was right, he thought, she hadn’t seen him in ages, and it was about time he paid a visit to White Plains. The old man hadn’t given him work in months, and you could get rusty, just sitting around with nothing better to do than crossword puzzles.

  There was still plenty of money. Keller lived well—a good apartment on First Avenue with a view of the Queensboro Bridge, nice clothes, decent restaurants. But no one had ever taken him for a drunken sailor, and in fact he tended to squirrel money away, stuffing it in safe deposit boxes, opening savings accounts under other names. If a rainy day came along, he had an umbrella at hand.

  Still, just because you had Blue Cross didn’t mean you couldn’t wait to get sick.

  “Good boy,” he told Nelson, reaching to scratch the dog behind the ears. “You wait right here. Guard the house, huh?”

  He had the door open when the phone rang again. Let it ring? No, better answer it.

  Dot again. “Keller,” she said, “did you hang up on me?”

  “I thought you were done.”

  “Why would you think that? I said hello, not goodbye.”

  “You didn’t say hello. You said you hadn’t seen me in ages.”

  “That’s closer to hello than goodbye. Well, let it go. The important thing is I caught you before you left the house.”

  “Just,” he said. “I had one foot out the door.”

  “I’d have called back right away,” she said, “but I had a hell of a time getting quarters. You ask for change of a dollar around here, people look at you like you’ve got a hidden agenda.”

  Quarters? What did she need with quarters?

  “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “There’s this little Italian place about four blocks from you called Giuseppe Joe’s. Don’t ask me what street it’s on.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “They’ve got tables set up outside under the awning. It’s a beautiful spring day. Why don’t you take your dog for a walk, swing by Giuseppe Joe’s. See if there’s anybody there you recognize.”

  * * *

  “So this is the famous Nelson,” Dot said. “He’s a handsome devil, isn’t he? I think he likes me.”

  “The only person he doesn’t like,” Keller said, “is the delivery boy for the Chinese restaurant.”

  “It’s probably the MSG.”

  “He barks at him, and Nelson almost never barks. The breed’s part dingo, and that makes him the silent type.”

  “Nelson the Wonder Dog. What’s the matter, Nelson? Don’t you like mu shu pork?” She gave the dog a pat. “I thought he’d be bigger. An Australian cattle dog, and you think how big sheep dogs are, and cows are bigger than sheep, et cetera, et cetera. But he’s just the right size.”

  If he hadn’t come looking for her, Keller might not have recognized Dot. He’d never seen her away from the old man’s house on Taunton Place, where she’d always lounged around in a Mother Hubbard or a housedress. This afternoon she wore a tailored suit, and she’d done something to her hair. She looked like a suburban matron, Keller thought, in town on a shopping spree.

  “He thinks I’m shopping for summer clothes,” she said, as if reading his mind. “I shouldn’t be here at all, Keller.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve been doing things I shouldn’t do,” she said. “Idle hands and all that. What about you, Keller? Been a long dry spell. What have your idle hands been up to?”

  Keller looked at his hands. “Nothing much,” he said.

  “How are you fixed for dough?”

  “I’ll get by.”

  “You wouldn’t mind work, though.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “That’s why you couldn’t wait to hang up on me and hop on a train.” She drank some iced tea and wrinkled her nose. “Two bucks a glass for this crap and they make it from a mix. You wonder why I don’t come to the city often? It’s nice, though, sitting at an outside table like this.”

  “Pleasant.”

  “You probably do this all the time. Walk the dog, pick up a newspaper, stop and have a cup of coffee. While away the hours. Right?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You’re patient, Keller, I’ll give you that. I take all day to come to the point and you sit there like you’ve got nothing better to do. But in a way that’s the whole point, isn’t it? You don’t have anything better to do and neither do I.”

  “Sometimes there’s no work,” he said. “If nothing comes in—”

  “Things have been coming in.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m not here, you never saw me, and we never had this conversation. Understood?”

  “Understood.”

&nbs
p; “I don’t know what’s the matter with him, Keller. He’s going through something and I don’t know what it is. It’s like he’s lost his taste for it. There’ve been calls, people with work that would have been right up your alley. He tells them no. He tells them he hasn’t got anybody available at the moment. He tells them to call somebody else.”

  “Does he say why?”

  “Sure, there’s always a reason. This one he doesn’t want to deal with, that one won’t pay enough, the other one, something doesn’t sound kosher about it. There’s three jobs he turned down I know of since the first of the year.”

  “No kidding.”

  “And who knows what came in that I don’t know about.”

  “I wonder what’s wrong.”

  “I figure it’ll pass,” she said. “But who knows when? So I did something crazy.”

  “Oh?”

  “Don’t laugh, all right?”

  “I won’t.”

  “You familiar with a magazine called Mercenary Times?”

  “Like Soldier of Fortune,” he said.

  “Like it, but more homemade and reckless.” She drew a copy from her handbag, handed it to him. “Page forty-seven. It’s circled, you can’t miss it.”

  It was in the classifieds, under “Situations Wanted,” circled in red Magic Marker. Odd Jobs Wanted, he read. Removals a specialty. Write to Toxic Waste, PO Box 1149, Yonkers NY.

  He said, “Toxic Waste?”

  “That may have been a mistake,” she acknowledged. “I thought it sounded good, cold and lethal and up to here with attitude. I got a couple of letters from people with chemicals to dump and swamps to drain, wanted someone to help them do an end run around the environmentalists. Plus I managed to get myself on some damn mailing list where I get invitations to subscribe to waste-management newsletters.”

  “But that’s not all you got.”

  “It’s not, because I also got half a dozen letters so far from people who knew what kind of removals I had in mind. I was wondering what kind of idiot would answer a blind ad like that, and they were about what you would expect. I burned five of them.”

  “And the sixth?”

  “Was neatly typed,” she said, “on printed letterhead, if you please. And written in English, God help us. But here, read it yourself.”

  “ ‘Cressida Wallace, 411 Fairview Avenue, Muscatine, Iowa 52761. Dear Sir or—’ ”

  “Not out loud, Keller.”

  Dear Sir or Madam, he read to himself. I can only hope the removal service you provide is of the sort I require. If so, I am in urgent need of your services. My name is Cressida Wallace and I am a forty-one-year-old author and illustrator of books for children. I have been divorced for fifteen years and have no children.

  While my life was never dramatically exciting, I have always found fulfillment in my work and quiet satisfaction in my personal life. Then, four years ago, a complete stranger began to transform my life into a living hell.

  Without going into detail, I will simply state that I have become the innocent target of a stalker. Why this man singled me out is quite unfathomable to me. I am neither a talk show host nor a teenage tennis champion. While presentable, I am by no means a raving beauty. I had never met him, nor had I done anything to arouse his interest or his ill will. Yet he will not leave me alone.

  He parks his car across the street and watches my house through binoculars. He follows me when I leave the house. He calls me at all hours. I have long since stopped answering the phone, but this does not stop him from leaving horribly obscene and threatening messages on my answering machine.

  I was living in Missouri when this began, in a suburb of St. Louis. I have moved four times, and each time he has managed to find me. I cannot tell you how many times I have changed my telephone number. He always manages to find out my new unlisted number. I don’t know how. Perhaps he has a confederate at the telephone company. . . .

  He read the letter on through to the end. There had been a perceptible escalation in the harassment, she reported. He had begun telling her he would kill her, and had taken to describing the manner in which he intended to take her life. He had on several occasions broken into her house in her absence. He had stolen some undergarments from the clothes hamper, slashed a painting, and used her lipstick to write an obscene message on the wall. He had performed various acts of minor vandalism on her car. After one invasion of her home she’d bought a dog; a week later she’d returned home to find the dog missing. Not long afterward there was another message on her answering machine. No human speech, just a lot of barking and yipping and canine whimpering, ending with what she took to be a gunshot.

  “Jesus,” Keller said.

  “The dog, right? I figured that would get to you.”

  The police inform me there is nothing they can do, she continued. In two different states I obtained orders of protection, but what good does that do? He violates them at will and with apparent impunity. The police are powerless to act until he commits a crime. He has committed several, but has never left sufficient evidence for them to proceed. The messages on my answering machine do not constitute evidence because he uses some sort of instrument to distort his voice before leaving a message. Sometimes he changes his voice to that of a woman. The first time he did this I picked up the phone and said hello when I heard a female voice, sure that it was not him, and the next thing I knew his awful voice was sounding in my ear, accusing me of horrible acts and promising me torture and death.

  At a policeman’s off-the-record suggestion, I bought myself a gun. Given the chance, I would shoot this man without a moment’s hesitation. But when the attack comes, will I have the gun at hand? I doubt it. I feel certain he will choose his opportunity carefully and come upon me when I am helpless.

  I know the risk I take in writing to someone who is even more a stranger to me than my tormentor is. No doubt you could use this letter as an instrument of extortion. I can say only that you would be wasting your time. I won’t pay blackmail. And if you are some sort of policeman and this ad is some sort of “sting”–well, sting away! I don’t care.

  If you are what you imply yourself to be, please call me at the following number . . . . It is unlisted, but it is already well known to my adversary. Identify yourself with the phrase “Toxic Waste.” If I’m at home, I’ll pick up. If I don’t, simply ring off and call back at a later time.

  I am not wealthy, but I have had some success in my profession. I have saved my money and invested wisely. I will pay anything within my means to whoever will rid me forever of this diabolical man.

  He folded the letter, returned it to its envelope, and handed it across the table.

  “Well, Keller?”

  “You call her?”

  “First I went to the library,” she said. “She’s real. Has a whole lot of books for young readers. Writes them, draws the pictures herself. The Bunny Who Lost His Ears, that kind of thing.”

  “How did he lose his ears?”

  “I didn’t read the books, Keller, I just made sure they existed. Then I looked her up in a kind of Who’s Who they have for authors. It had her old address in Webster Groves, Missouri. Then I went home and watched him work on a jigsaw puzzle. That’s his favorite thing these days, jigsaw puzzles. When he’s done he glues cardboard to the back and mounts them on the wall like trophies.”

  “How long’s he been doing that?”

  “Long enough,” she said. “I went downstairs and put the TV on, and the next day I went out to a pay phone and called Muscatine. I looked that up, too, while I was at the library. It’s on the Mississippi.”

  “Everything’s got to be someplace.”

  “What do you think so far, Keller? Tell me.”

  He reached down and scratched the dog. “I think it’s asking for trouble,” he said. “Guy goes down, they pick her up before the body’s cold. She’s got to sing like a songbird. I mean, she told us everything and we didn’t even ask.”

  “Agreed. She’ll f
old the minute they knock on her door.”

  “So?”

  “So she can’t know anything,” Dot said. “Can’t tell what she doesn’t know, right? That’s the first thing I said to her, after I said ‘Toxic Waste’ and she picked up the phone. I laid it out for her. ‘No names, no pack drill,’ I said. I told her a number, said half in advance, half on completion. Cash, fifties and hundreds, wrap ’em up good and FedEx the package to John Smith at Mail Boxes Etc. in Scarsdale.”

  “John Smith?”

  “First name that came to me. Soon as I got off the phone I went over and rented a box under that name. The owner’s Afghani, he doesn’t know Smith from Shinola. It’s better than the post office because you can call up and find out if they’ve got anything for you. I called yesterday and guess what?”

  “She sent the money?”

  She nodded. “ ‘Send half the money,’ I said, ‘and our field operative will call when he’s on the scene. He’ll introduce himself and get the information he requires. You’ll never meet him face-to-face, but he’ll coordinate with you and take care of everything. And afterward you’ll get a final call telling you where to send the balance.’ ”

  Keller thought about it. “There’s stuff they could trace,” he said. “The PO box, the mailbox. Records of phone calls.”

  “There’s always something.”

  “Uh-huh. What kind of a price did you set?”

  “Just on the high side of standard.”

  “And you got half in front, and she hasn’t got a clue who she sent it to.”

  “Meaning I could just keep it. I thought of that, obviously. If you turn it down, that’s probably what I’ll do.”

  “Just probably? You’re not going to send it back.”

  “No, but I could call around, try and find another shooter.”

  “I didn’t turn it down yet,” he said.

  “Take your time.”

  “The old man would have a fit. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Gee, I’m glad you told me that, Keller. It never would have occurred to me.”

  “What does that mean, anyway, ‘No names, no pack drill’? I’m familiar with the expression, I get the sense of it, but what’s a pack drill, do you happen to know?”