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  “No kidding,” Dot said. “What did she do to piss you off, if you don’t mind my asking? Was she sleeping with somebody else?”

  “No,” he said, and then thought about it. “Or maybe she was, for all I know. I never gave it much thought.”

  “I guess you’re not the jealous type. So it must have been something serious, like eating crackers in bed.”

  “I wasn’t angry.”

  “If I just sit here quietly,” Dot said, “you’ll explain.”

  When he’d finished, Dot took the empty pitcher inside and came back with a full one. “This weather,” she said, “I drink gallons of this stuff. You suppose it’s possible to drink too much iced tea?”

  “No idea.”

  “I guess everything’s bad for you if you take in enough of it.”

  “I guess.”

  “Keller,” she said, “the woman’s a loose end. Getting the impulse to tie her off doesn’t make you a homicidal maniac.”

  “I never said—“

  “I know what you never said. You think you’re frustrated because you keep going out on jobs and fate won’t let you pull the trigger. And maybe you are, but that’s not why the hair stood up on the back of your neck when your girlfriend said what she did.”

  “It was more that I got a tingling in my hands.”

  “Thanks for clearing that up, Keller. I repeat, she’s a loose end. You’d have had the same impulse if you’d just come back from depopulating Kosovo. And it wouldn’t have just been a passing thought, either. You’d have closed the sale.”

  “She didn’t do anything, Dot.”

  “And you’d have made sure she never did.”

  He thought about it. “Maybe,” he acknowledged. “But I didn’t, and I never heard anything from her. By now she’s probably been in and out of half a dozen other superficial relationships. Odds are she never even thinks of me.”

  “You’re probably right,” Dot said. “Let’s hope so.”

  Six weeks later, Keller got a phone call, made another trip to White Plains. He was back in his apartment around one in the afternoon, and two hours later he was at JFK, waiting to board a TWA flight to St. Louis.

  During the flight, Keller read the SkyMall catalog. There were articles he wanted to buy, and he knew he wouldn’t have given them a second thought under other circumstances. This happened all the time when he flew, and once he was on the ground the urge to order the supervalue luggage or the handy Pocket Planner vanished forever, or at least until his next flight. Maybe it was the altitude, he thought. Maybe it undercut your sales resistance.

  No one was supposed to meet him at the airport, and no one did. Keller took a slip of paper from his wallet. He’d already committed the name and address to memory, but he read them again, just to be certain. Then he went outside and got a cab.

  The target was a man named Elwood Murray. He lived in Florissant, a suburb north of the city, and had an office on Olive, halfway between City Hall and the city’s trademark arch.

  Keller had the cab drop him at a lunch counter a block from Murray’s office. A sign in the window said the daily special was Three-Alarm Chili, and that sounded good to Keller. If it was as good as it sounded, he could come back for more. There was no rush on this one, Dot had told him. He could take his time.

  But instead he went directly to Murray’s office building. It was six stories tall and a few years past its prime. Murray’s name was listed on the board in the lobby: Murray, Elwood, #604. The self-service elevator was one of the slowest Keller had encountered, and he found himself urging it upward. If he’d known it was going to be this slow he’d have taken the stairs.

  Murray had his name painted on the frosted glass of his office door, along with some initials that didn’t mean anything to Keller. There was a light on, and Keller turned the knob, opened the door. A man a few years older than Keller sat behind a big oak desk. He was in shirtsleeves, and his suit jacket was hanging from a peg on the side wall.

  “Elwood Murray?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ll just need a minute of your time,” Keller said, and closed the door. That would keep them from being observed by anyone passing in the hall, but the act was enough to alert Murray, and one look at Murray’s face was enough to put Keller in motion. Murray moved first, his hand darting into the desk’s center drawer, and Keller threw himself forward, hurling himself against Murray’s desk and shoving it all the way to the wall, pinning Murray and his chair, jamming the drawer shut on his hand.

  Murray couldn’t open the drawer, couldn’t get his hand out, couldn’t move. Keller could move, though, and did, and got his hands on the man.

  “Oh, good,” Dot said. “You got the message.”

  “What message?”

  “On your machine. You didn’t get it? Then why are you calling?”

  “Mission accomplished,” he said.

  There was a pause. Then she said, “I suppose that means what I think it means.”

  “There aren’t too many different things it could mean,” he said. “Remember the errand you asked me to run this morning? Well, I ran it.”

  “You’re not still in New York, then.”

  “No, of course not. I’m in . . . well, I can see the Arch from here.”

  “And I don’t suppose it’s the McDonald’s across the street, is it? And you already did what you went there to do.”

  “Or I wouldn’t be calling. Dot, what the hell’s the matter?”

  “They called it off,” she said.

  “They . . .”

  “Called it off. Changed their minds. Canceled the contract.”

  “Oh.”

  “But you didn’t know that.”

  “How would I know?”

  “You wouldn’t, not unless you happened to check your machine, and why would you do that? Well, what’s your plan now, Keller?”

  “I thought I’d come home.”

  “You’re not going to visit some stamp dealers? Spend a few days, find a nice Mexican restaurant?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Probably just as well,” she said. “Come home, come see me, and we’ll get this sorted out.”

  “On the way out,” he said, “I had the urge to buy a Pocket Planner. Coming home, it was a set of college courses on video. The country’s best lecturers, the ad said.”

  “Would you watch them?”

  “Of course not,” Keller said. “Any more than I’d use the Pocket Planner. What do I want to plan? It’s funny how it works. You stow your carry-on in the overhead compartment, you make sure your seat belt’s securely fastened, and you start wanting things you never wanted before. They have these in-flight phones, and you can call and order this stuff at no charge.” He frowned. “No charge for the phone call, that is.”

  “What did you buy?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I never do, but I always think about it.”

  “Keller . . .”

  “Why’d they call it off?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, “because I don’t know why they called it on in the first place. Who was he, anyway?”

  “He had an office,” Keller said, “all by himself, and he had some initials after his name, but I don’t remember what they were. I guess he was some kind of businessman, and I got the impression he wasn’t doing too well at it.”

  “Well, maybe he owed money, and maybe he paid up after all. Which is more than they’re going to do.”

  “The client, you mean.”

  “Right.”

  “Paid half in front, and doesn’t want to pay the balance.”

  “Right again.”

  “I don’t see why. I did what I was supposed to do.”

  “But by the time you did it,” she said, “you weren’t supposed to do it.”

  “Not my fault.”

  “I agree with you, Keller.”

  “They didn’t say go out there and await further instructions. They said do the job, and I did the job. What’
s the problem?”

  “The problem is they hate paying for a job they tried to cancel. As a matter of fact, they wanted their advance back.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Exactly what I told them.”

  “I did the job,” he said. “I should get paid in full.”

  “I told them that, too.”

  “And?”

  “You could call it a Mexican standoff,” she said, “if you’re prepared to run the risk of being politically incorrect.”

  “We keep what they already paid us.”

  “You got it.”

  “And they keep what they owe us.”

  “If you want to call it that.”

  “I don’t know what else to call it,” he said. “Why a Mexican standoff, do you happen to know? What’s Mexican about it?”

  “You’re the stamp collector, Keller. Is there a Mexican stamp with a famous standoff pictured on it?”

  “A famous standoff? What’s a famous standoff?”

  “I don’t know. The Alamo, maybe.”

  “The Alamo wasn’t a standoff. It was a massacre, everybody got killed.”

  “If you say so.”

  “And the Mexicans wouldn’t put it on a stamp. It’s the Texans who made a shrine out of the place.”

  “The ones who got massacred.”

  “Well, not the same ones, but other Texans. The Mexicans would just as soon forget the whole thing.”

  “All right,” she said. “Forget the Alamo. Forget the Maine, too, while you’re at it. If you want to know why they call it a Mexican standoff, I’m sure you can look it up. Spend an afternoon at the library, ask the lady at the research desk to help you out. That’s what she’s there for, Keller.”

  “Dot . . .”

  “Keller, it’s an expression. Who cares where it came from?”

  “It won’t keep me up nights.”

  “And who cares about the money? You don’t. It’s not about the money, is it?”

  He thought about it. “No,” he said. “I guess not.”

  “It’s about being right. They don’t pay you, they’re saying you’re wrong. You settle for half, you’re admitting you’re wrong.”

  “But I did what I was supposed to do, Dot! They didn’t say go there and wait for instructions. They didn’t say find the guy and count to ten. They said—“

  “I know what they said, Keller.”

  “Well.”

  “You were in a hurry,” she said, “because of the way things have been going lately, and because there’s always the shadow of Roger lurking in the wings. On the one hand you’re absolutely right, you did what you were supposed to do, but there’s something else to think about that’s got nothing to do with the client.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Normally you take your time,” she said. “A couple of days, anyway. Sometimes a week, sometimes longer.”

  “So?”

  “Why, Keller?”

  “Why was I in a hurry? You just told me why I was in a hurry.”

  She shook her head. “Why do you take your time? I’ll tell you, Keller, sometimes it’s frustrating for the folks on the home front. You don’t just take your time. You dawdle.”

  “I dawdle?”

  “You probably don’t, but it seems that way from a distance. And it’s not just because there’s a good place for breakfast, or the motel television set gets HBO. You take your time so you can make sure you do the job right.”

  She went on talking and he found himself nodding. He got the point. Because he’d been in such a rush, Murray had seen it coming, had been reaching for a gun when Keller got to him. If the desk drawer had been open to begin with, if Murray had been a little bit faster or Keller a little bit slower . . .

  “I’m not saying it’s anything to worry about,” Dot said. “It’s over and you came out of it okay. But you might want to think about it.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said, “whether I want to or not.”

  “I suppose you will. Keller?”

  “What?”

  “You’re fussing with your thumb.”

  “I am?”

  “The funny one. I forget what you called it.”

  “Murderer’s thumb.”

  “Rubbing it, hiding it behind your fingers.”

  “Just a nervous habit,” he said.

  “I suppose twiddling it would be worse. Look, lighten up, huh? Nothing went wrong, you went out and came back the same day, and on an hourly basis I’d say you made out like a bandit.”

  “I guess.”

  “But?”

  “I was thinking about Elwood Murray.”

  “Never think about them, Keller.”

  “I hardly ever do. Murray, though, he got killed for no reason.”

  She was shaking her head. “There’s always a reason,” she said. “He pissed somebody off. Then he straightened it out, but how long would it stay that way? How long before he pissed somebody else off big-time, and somebody picked up a phone?”

  “He did look like the kind of guy who would piss people off.”

  “There you go,” she said.

  Nineteen

  * * *

  “I suppose I should be glad you recognize my voice,” Dot said. “You haven’t heard it much lately, have you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “I turned a couple of things down,” she said, “because they didn’t smell right. But this one smells as good as morning coffee, and we’re definitely the first ones called, so you won’t have to be looking over your shoulder all the time. So why don’t you get on a train and I’ll tell you all about it?”

  “Hold on,” Keller said, and put the phone down. When he picked it up again he said, “Sorry, the water was boiling.”

  “I heard it whistling. I’m glad you told me what it was. For a minute there I thought you were having an air raid.”

  “No, just a cup of tea.”

  “I didn’t know you were that domestic,” she said. “You wouldn’t happen to have a soufflé in the oven, would you?”

  “A soufflé?”

  “Never mind, Keller. Pour the tea in the sink and come up and see me. I’ll give you all the tea you can drink. . . . Keller? Where’d you go?”

  “I’m here,” he said. “This is out of town, right?”

  “It’s White Plains,” she said. “Same as always. A scant forty minutes on Metro North. Does it all come back to you now?”

  “But the job’s out of town.”

  “Well, of course, Keller. I’m not about to book you in the city you call home. We tried that once, remember?”

  “I remember,” he said. “The thing is, I can’t leave town.”

  “You can’t leave town?”

  “Not for a while.”

  “What have you got, one of those house-arrest collars on your ankle? It gives you a shock if you leave your property?”

  “I have to stay in New York, Dot.”

  “You can’t take a train to White Plains?”

  “I could do that,” he allowed. “Today, anyway. But I can’t take a job out of town.”

  “For a while, you say.”

  “Right.”

  “How long is a while, anyway? A day? A week? A month?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Drink your tea,” she said. “Maybe it’ll perk you up. And then catch the next train, and we’ll talk.”

  “I think I figured it out,” she said, “but maybe not. What I decided is there’s a stamp auction that you just can’t miss, some stamp coming up that you need for your collection.”

  “Dot, for God’s sake.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s a hobby,” he said. “I wouldn’t pass up work to go to a stamp auction.”

  “You wouldn’t?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Even if it was a stamp you needed for your collection?”

  “There are thousands of stamps I need for my collection,”
he said. “Enough so that I can keep busy without having to go to any particular auction.”

  “But if there was one particular stamp you absolutely had to have? But I guess it doesn’t work that way.”

  “For some collectors, maybe, but not for me. Anyway, I haven’t been spending that much time with my stamps lately.”

  “Oh?”

  “I wouldn’t say I’ve lost interest,” he said, “but it sort of ebbs and flows. I subscribe to a couple of magazines and a weekly newspaper, and sometimes I’ll read everything cover to cover, but lately I haven’t even glanced at them. A couple of dealers send me selections on approval, and I keep up with those, but that’s about all I’ve been doing lately. Other dealers send me price lists and auction catalogs and lately I’ve been tossing them out without looking at them.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “No,” he said, “it’s more like taking a break from it. I was worried myself, that it was turning out to be a passing fancy, but the astrologer said not to worry.”

  “You’ve been to the astrologer again?”

  “I call her sometimes, if there’s something that bothers me. She takes a quick look at my chart and tells me if it’s a dangerous time for me, or whatever it was made me call her in the first place.”

  “This time it was stamps.”

  “And she said my interest would be like the weather.”

  “Partly cloudy, with a threat of rain.”

  “Hot one day and cold the next,” he said. “Variable, but nothing to worry about. And the nice thing about stamp collecting is you can put it aside for as long as you want and pick it up right where you left off. It’s not like a garden, where you have to keep up with the weeds.”

  “I know, they’re worse than the Joneses.”

  “Or a virtual aquarium, where the fish die.”

  “A virtuous aquarium? As opposed to what, Keller? A sinful one?”

  “Virtual,” he said. “A virtual aquarium.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s something you can buy for your computer,” he said. “You install it and the screen looks like a fish tank, with plants and guppies and everything. And you can add other species of fish—“