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  “The man in the cap and windbreaker.”

  “Right, Roger.”

  “You’d know him if you saw him again.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Maybe you would,” she said, “but we’ll never know. Because you’ll never see him again.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Keller,” she said, “you’d better sit down.”

  “I am sitting down. I’ve been sitting down for the past twenty minutes.”

  “So you are,” she said. “And it’s a good thing. And don’t get up now, Keller. Stay right where you are.”

  It was just as well that he was sitting. He didn’t know that what she told him would have knocked him off his feet, but he didn’t know that it wouldn’t, either. One thing he could say was that it was hard to take it all in.

  “He was Roger,” he said.

  “Right.”

  “The guy in the hat and muffler. The guy who sat upstairs across the street, smoking one cigarette after another.”

  “Most smokers do it that way, Keller. They smoke them in turn, rather than all at once.”

  “The guy who went upstairs to Maggie’s loft. If he was Roger, why would he kill Maggie? He wasn’t getting paid for it. He turned down the assignment, remember? And came in on the sly so he could have a chance to kill off the competition.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So he was watching the building, waiting for the hitter to make his move. Did he think the guy she brought home was the hitter? No, he would have seen what we saw, her throwing his wallet down to him. He knew she was alive when he went up there.”

  “And he knew she was dead when he left.”

  “Thus depriving himself of the chance to draw a bead on the man who had a contract on her. So he threw away his hat and went home.”

  “With you in hot pursuit.”

  “Why would he leave New York without killing the man he came to kill? And why do the hitter’s work for him? What was he trying to do, make him lose face and kill himself? That might work in Japan, but—“

  “He already did it, Keller.”

  “Did what?”

  “Hit the hitter. And we can stop calling him that, incidentally. His name was Marcus Allenby, or at least that’s the name he was registered under.”

  “Registered where?”

  “The Woodleigh,” she said. “And he had a couple different names on the ID in his wallet, and Allenby wasn’t one of them, and he’d hanged himself with a sheet from the bed, and it was all dramatic enough to get his picture in the Post. The picture didn’t show the cap or the windbreaker, but it was the same guy.”

  “Roger drowned Maggie,” Keller said, working it out. “And then he went to the Woodleigh, went to Allenby’s room—Allenby?”

  “Got to call him something.”

  “Forced his way in, strung the guy up, and left.”

  “I think he went to the Woodleigh first. Followed Allenby there, got into the room by posing as a cop or a hotel employee. That part wouldn’t be hard. Then he caught Allenby off guard.”

  “And killed him? Then why did he come back after he killed Maggie?”

  “Maybe he left Allenby trussed up,” she said. “And then, after he’d killed her and left the tub running to establish the time of death, he went back to the Woodleigh, took the Do Not Disturb sign off the knob, let himself in with the key he’d taken from Allenby on his first visit, hanged the poor bastard with a sheet from his own bed, and wrote out the note.”

  “What note?”

  “Didn’t I mention that? A note on hotel letterhead. ‘I can’t do this anymore. God forgive me.’ “

  “Allenby’s handwriting?”

  “How would anybody know?”

  He nodded. “The drowning looks like an accident,” he said, “but the client who ordered the job—“

  “Which is to say us.”

  “—knows it’s a hit, and figures it was one job too many for Allenby, and the guy’s conscience tortured him into ending it all. Either he left Allenby alive while he went down and did Maggie—“

  “Risky.”

  “—or he killed him the first time, figuring nobody was going to discover the body, and so what if they did? But by coming back he could make a phone call from the dead man’s room, and the phone records would establish time of death regardless of the forensic evidence.”

  Keller frowned. “It’s too tricky,” he said. “Too many things could go wrong.”

  “Well, he was a tricky guy.”

  “Speaking of tricky, didn’t you say he hanged him with a bed sheet? That’s what guys do in prison, but would you hang yourself with a sheet if you had other things to choose from?”

  “I wouldn’t hang myself at all, Keller.”

  “But a sheet,” he said. “Why not a belt?”

  “Maybe Allenby wore suspenders. Or maybe it was part of the game Roger was playing.”

  “He liked playing games,” he agreed. “The whole thing was a game, wasn’t it? I mean, chasing around the country to murder other people in the same line of work as yourself. The idea is you increase your income that way, but do you? What you really do is use up a lot of time and spend a ton of money on airfare.”

  “Not a good career move, you’re saying.”

  “But it made him feel smarter than the rest of us. Smarter than everybody. Switching clothes, pasting on a mustache and peeling it off. All that phony crap. You’d expect it from some jerk in the CIA, but would a pro waste his time like that?”

  “He wasn’t perfect, Keller. He killed the couple in Louisville that wound up in your old motel room, and he popped the guy in Boston who stole your coat.”

  “I was lucky.”

  “And he was a little too cute for his own good. I guess he spotted Allenby easily enough. Well, so did we. Allenby wasn’t worried about being spotted by anybody but the designated victim. And then I guess he got tired of waiting. Well, I can understand that. We were getting pretty sick of it ourselves, as I recall. You even said something about killing them both and getting it over with.”

  “I remember.”

  “Once he spotted Allenby, why wait? He could just follow him home and take him out, and he did, in his hotel room.”

  “He didn’t have to kill Maggie,” Keller said.

  “But the contract was always carried out, remember? That was Roger’s trademark, he bided his time until the hitter got the job done, and then he did a job of his own on the hitter. This time the hitter was out of the picture early, so Roger felt it was up to him to do the job. Maybe he thought it was part of being a pro.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And it got him killed.”

  He sat there for a while. She went on talking, going over it, and he let the words wash over him without taking in everything she was saying. He’d avenged Maggie, which had seemed important at the time, for reasons that made no sense at all now. He tried to picture her, and realized that her image was already fading, getting smaller, losing color and definition. Fading into the past, fading the way everything faded.

  And Roger was gone. He’d been looking over his shoulder for months, stalked by a faceless killer, and now that threat had been removed. And he’d done it himself. He hadn’t known that was what he was doing, but he’d done it anyway.

  “If I’d done the right thing,” he said, “he would have gotten away.”

  “Roger.”

  “Uh-huh. I’d have turned around and gone home, convinced that Roger wasn’t going to show. And I’d have been letting the real Roger off the hook, and we wouldn’t know anything more about him. Not his name or where he lived. We wouldn’t know any of those things.”

  “We still don’t,” she pointed out.

  “But now we don’t need to.”

  “No.”

  “The broker who found Allenby for us says we owe the balance.”

  “What did he get, half in advance?”

  “And the rest due on com
pletion, and the guy’s point is the job was completed. Woman’s dead and it goes in the books as an accident, so we should be satisfied, right? If Allenby gets pangs of conscience afterward and decides to kill himself, well, what does that have to do with us? He offed himself without blowing the Crosby Street hit, so we got what we ordered.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I wasn’t about to explain what really happened.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “He thought I had booked this on behalf of a client, and that the client should pay. And I told him I agreed, but on the other hand we both knew the money wasn’t going to Allenby, because Allenby wasn’t alive to collect it.”

  “The broker would keep it.”

  “Of course. So I said, ‘Look, your guy killed himself, and that’s a shame because he did good work.’ “

  “All he did was stand in a doorway.”

  “Let me finish, will you? ‘He did good work,’ I said, ‘but he’s dead, and you’re not gonna pay him, and I’m not gonna give my client a refund. So what do you say we split it?’ And I sent him half of the half we owed.”

  “That sounds fair.”

  “I’m not sure fairness has anything to do with it, but I could live with it and so could he. Keller, we’re out of the woods. The loose ends are tied off and Roger’s dead and gone. You take all that in yet?”

  “Just about.”

  “You did the absolute right thing,” she said, “for the wrong reason. That’s a whole lot better than the other way around.”

  “I guess so.”

  “It wasn’t that girl, you know. That’s not why you wanted to kill him. That’s what you told yourself, but that wasn’t it.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No. Be honest, Keller. You don’t care about her, do you?”

  “Not now.”

  “You never did.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “You sensed something about that guy. You didn’t know he was Roger, you really thought he was our guy, but you picked up some vibration. And you didn’t like him.”

  “I hated the bastard.”

  “And how do you feel about him now?”

  “Now?” He thought about it. “He’s gone,” he said. “There’s nothing to feel.”

  “Same as always, right?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Maybe it’s your thumb.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your murderer’s thumb, Keller. Maybe it gives you good instincts, or maybe it’s just good luck. Either way, I think you should keep it.”

  He looked at his thumb. When he’d first become aware of its special quality, he’d gotten so he didn’t like to look at it. It had looked weird to him.

  Now it looked just right. Not like everybody else’s thumb, maybe. Not even like his other thumb, for that matter. But it looked as though it belonged on his hand. It looked right for him.

  “You buy some stamps in Jacksonville, Keller?”

  “Some.”

  “Paste them in your album yet?”

  “You don’t paste them,” he said. “You’d ruin them if you pasted them.”

  “You told me once what it is you do. You mount them, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Like you’d mount a horse,” she said, “except different. Did you mount these yet?”

  “No, I didn’t have a chance.”

  “So you’ve got stamps waiting to be mounted. And there’s probably mail that came while you were gone, too.”

  “The usual.”

  “Magazines and catalogs, I’ll bet. And what do you call it when they send you stamps and you get to pick and choose?”

  “Approvals.”

  “Any of those come?”

  “There was a shipment, yes. From a woman in Maine.”

  “She’s going to stay in Maine, right? And you’re not going to run up there for a visit.”

  “Of course not.”

  “So you can go home and work on your stamps.”

  “I could,” he said. “I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

  “I think that’s a good idea,” she said. “And take good care of your thumb, okay? Dress it warm and keep it out of drafts. Because Allenby’s dead, and so is Roger, and so are all the people good old Roger put out of business. Which means there are fewer people than ever doing what you do, Keller, and I can’t see the volume of work shrinking.”

  “No,” he said, and touched his thumb. “No, I don’t think that’s anything we have to worry about.”

  Please turn the page

  for an early look at

  HOPE TO DIE

  by Lawrence Block

  Available now in hardcover from

  William Morrow and Company

  It was a perfect summer evening, the last Monday in July. The Hollanders arrived at Lincoln Center sometime between six and six-thirty. They may have met somewhere—in the plaza by the fountain, say, or in the lobby—and gone upstairs together. Byrne Hollander was a lawyer, a partner in a firm with offices in the Empire State Building, and he might have come directly from the office. Most of the men were wearing business suits, so he wouldn’t have had to change.

  He left his office around five, and their house was on West Seventy-fourth Street between Columbus and Amsterdam, so he had time to go home first to collect his wife. They may have walked to Lincoln Center—it’s half a mile, no more than a ten-minute walk. That’s how Elaine and I got there, walking up from our apartment at Ninth and Fifty-seventh, but the Hollanders lived a little further away, and may not have felt like walking. They could have taken a cab, or a bus down Columbus.

  However they got there, they’d have arrived in time for drinks before dinner. He was a tall man, two inches over six feet, two years past fifty, with a strong jaw and a high forehead. He’d been athletic in his youth and still worked out regularly at a midtown gym, but he’d thickened some through the middle; if he’d looked hungry as a young man, now he looked prosperous. His dark hair was graying at the temples, and his brown eyes were the sort people described as watchful, perhaps because he spent more time listening than talking.

  She was quiet, too, a pretty girl whom age had turned into a handsome woman. Her hair, dark with red highlights, was shoulder-length, and she wore it back off her face. She was six years younger than her husband and as many inches shorter, although her high heels made up some of the difference. She’d put on a few pounds in the twenty-some years they’d been married, but she’d been fashion-model thin back then, and looked good now.

  I can picture them, standing around on the second floor at Avery Fisher Hall, holding a glass of white wine, picking up an hors d’oeuvre from a tray. As far as that goes, it’s entirely possible I saw them, perhaps exchanging a nod and a smile with him, perhaps noticing her as one notices an attractive woman. We were there, and so were they, along with a few hundred other people. Later, when I saw their photographs, I thought they looked faintly familiar. But that doesn’t mean I saw them that night. I could have seen either or both of them on other nights at Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall, or walking in the neighborhood. We lived, after all, less than a mile apart. I could have laid eyes on them dozens of times, and never really noticed them, just as I very possibly did that night.

  I did see other people I knew. Elaine and I talked briefly with Ray and Michelle Gruliow. Elaine introduced me to a woman she knew from a class she’d taken several years ago at the Metropolitan, and to a terribly earnest couple who’d been customers at her shop. I introduced her to Avery Davis, the real estate mogul, whom I knew from the Club of Thirty-one, and to one of the fellows passing the hors d’oeuvres trays, whom I knew from my AA home group at St. Paul’s. His name was Felix, and I didn’t know his last name, and don’t suppose he knew mine.

  And we saw some people we recognized but didn’t know, including Barbara Walters and Beverly Sills. The occasion was the opening of New York’s summer music festival, Mostly Mozart, and the cocktails and d
inner were the festival’s thank-you to its patrons, who had achieved that status by contributing $2500 or more to the festival’s operating fund.

  During her working years, Elaine made a habit of saving her money and investing it in rental property around town. New York real estate has been a can’t-lose area even for people who do everything wrong, and she did most things right, and has done very well for herself. She was able to buy our apartment at the Parc Vendome, and there’s enough income generated by her apartment houses in Queens so that, as far as money is concerned, neither of us needs to work. I have my work as a detective, of course, and she has her shop a few blocks south of us on Ninth Avenue, and we enjoy the work and can always find a use for the money it brings in. But if nobody hired me or bought paintings and antiques from her, we wouldn’t wind up missing any meals.

  We both like the idea of giving away a certain amount of what comes in. Years ago I got in the habit of stuffing ten percent of my earnings into whatever church poor box came along. I’ve grown a little more sophisticated in my giving since then, but I still find a way to get rid of it.

  Elaine likes to support the arts. She gets to more operas and gallery openings and museum shows than I do (and fewer ball games and prizefights) but we both like music, classical and jazz. The jazz joints don’t hit you up for contributions, they just call it a cover charge and let it go at that, but every year we write out a lot of checks to Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall. They like to encourage us with perks of one sort or another, and this evening was one of them—drinks, a sit-down dinner, and complimentary orchestra seats to the opening concert.

  Around six-thirty we went to our assigned table, where we were joined by three other couples, with whom we exchanged names and chatted amiably throughout the meal. If pressed, I could probably recall the names of most if not all of our table mates, but what’s the point? We haven’t seen them since, and they don’t figure in the story. Byrne and Susan Hollander were not among them.

  They were at another table, which I later learned was on the other side of the room from us. While I might have seen them earlier, it’s unlikely that I laid eyes on them during dinner. Their seats for the concert were just two rows in front of ours, but at the extreme right of the center section, while we were toward the left. So, unless we bumped into each other on the way to the rest room during intermission, I don’t suppose we would have seen them at all.