Keller's Homecoming Read online

  “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 New York One, the 24-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 cost 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 onto 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.

  “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.

  “Who is this?”

  “Someone you knew in Cold Springs Harbor.”

  “Tell me your name.” Not What’s your name? but Tell me your name. This man, when he prayed, probably gave orders to God.

  “Timothy Michael Hannan, father, but you called me Timmy.”

  “Did I? And when was this, by God?”

  “Almost thirty years ago. You did . . . bad things.”

  “Bad things.”

  “And I forgot! I blocked it all out, and last week I saw you on television, and I heard your voice, and—”

  “And it all came back to ye, did it?”

  Remarkable how the son of a bitch managed to put you on the defensive. Keller, in his high-voiced role as little Timmy Hannan, damn near cowered.

  He drew a quick breath and said, “Father, they want me to go to the media, to the District Attorney, to the Diocesan office, but first I wanted—”

  “Wanted what?”

  “To meet with you. If I could just have a few private minutes with you this afternoon, or perhaps this evening—”

  “Private minutes.”

  “Because, I don’t know, maybe it’s a false memory. God knows I want it to be. If we could just meet in person, in private—”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Uh, I was hoping we could find some time today.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” the abbot said, “a car will call for me at 9:45 to take me to the New York Athletic Club. Do ye know where that is?”

  “I can find it.”

  “No doubt ye can. I am a member, and I will arrange for ye to be admitted as my guest. Spell your name for me.”

  “T-I-M—”

  “Your last name, ye idiot.”

  Keller wasn’t sure how to spell it, Hannan or Hannon, but he figured he was all right either way. He spelled it with two As.

  “You’ll arrive at 10:15, no sooner and no later. They’ll give ye a pass and a locker key, and tell ye how to find the steam room. Strip to the skin, put your clothes in a locker, fasten the key around your wrist, and help yourself to a towel. I’ll be taking the steam before my massage. You’ll come join me, and we’ll have our ‘private time.’”

  Keller wasn’t sure how to reply to that. While he was working it out, the phone clicked in his ear.

  Hell.

  Wednesday morning’s session at Peachpit would feature Great Britain and the British Commonwealth, and there were several lots that Keller was hoping to bid on. The starting time was ten o’clock, and he’d just agreed to show up at the New York Athletic Club at 10:15.

  Or had he? It seemed to him that he, in the persona of little Timmy Hannan, hadn’t been provided with the opportunity to agree or disagree. He’d been issued his instructions, and it seemed to be a given that he would follow them to the letter. And to the number, which was precisely fifteen minutes after the Peachpit crew began selling British stamps.

  It was impossible to predict the pace of an auction; the more competitive the bidding, the longer it took to get through the lots. But no matter how you figured it, Keller couldn’t keep his date with the abbot without missing the first half of the session, and the tyranny of alphabetical order placed British East Africa very much in that time span.

  British East Africa was what philatelists designate a dead country. The first time Keller heard that term he visualized an arid wasteland, with the skulls of cattle scattered here and there, and noxious vapors rising from the occasional water source. In due course he learned that the term merely indicated that a particular stamp-issuing entity was no longer operating under that name.

  Keller’s collection had a cutoff date of 1940. He’d stretched that out to include British Common
wealth issues through 1952, the end of George VI’s reign constituting a natural stopping-point. And lately he seemed to be stretching his limits for other countries as well, to accommodate World War II issues. All in all, though, his collection held no end of dead countries, and the list kept growing. Even Czechoslovakia had become a dead country, once it divvied itself up into the separate Czech and Slovak Republics.

  British East Africa had its philatelic birth in 1890, when the British East Africa Company overprinted three Indian stamps for use in the territory under its administration. The next eight years saw the appearance of just over a hundred British East Africa stamps, some of them created specifically for the colony, others overprinted on stamps of India or Zanzibar. Then British East Africa was incorporated in the East Africa and Uganda Protectorate, which was subsequently folded into the Kenya colony, which gave way to what collectors knew as K.U.T., for Kenya Uganda and Tanganyika, which Keller always thought of as an African version of the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe.

  Dead countries, all of them.

  Commencing in 1890, British East Africa issued seventeen stamps with the design of a crowned sun, ostensibly symbolizing light and liberty. The following year, a shortage of certain denominations led the postal authorities to surcharge others, changing their denominations either by handstamp or pen and ink, and creating eight collectible stamps in the process. One of these, listed in the Scott catalog as #33, consisted of a 2 anna vermilion stamp surcharged 1/2 anna in manuscript, and marked as well with the initials A. B., for Archibald Brown.

  Keller had no idea who Archibald Brown might be, and didn’t much care, but he wanted the stamp. It was unused, with only a trace of original gum, and the centering was not absolutely perfect, but the color was bright and unfaded, and an accompanying Sergio Sismondo certificate proclaimed it genuine and free of flaws.

  Scott valued the stamp at $6000, and Peachpit’s pre-sale estimate was $3500. A mail or internet bidder had submitted an opening bid of $2750, and no one had topped it when Keller had last checked. But there was no telling what would happen when it went under the hammer.

  How much did he want it? How high would he go for it? Well, that was one of the things you found out when you sat in an auction room. You might have a top figure in mind, but when the time came you might find out you didn’t really want it all that much. Or you might go much higher than you’d planned.

  Could he get there in time? No, not a chance. British East Africa #33 was Lot No. 77, and would surely be sold in the first hour of the auction. At 10:15 he’d show up at the NYAC, and by the time he was actually inside the steam room it would be 10:30, and he couldn’t envision a scenario that left Paul Vincent O’Herlihy dead and Keller dressed and in Peachpit’s auction room by eleven o’clock.

  Get real, he told himself. It’s only a hobby.

  It was only a hobby, and the stamp was only a stamp, but that didn’t mean he could get it out of his head. He had dinner at a deli that was famous for giving you more food than you could eat, and they lived up to their reputation. The waiter was surprised, and seemed slightly offended, when Keller didn’t want to take home the leftover half of his enormous sandwich. “That’s a whole meal you’re throwing away,” the man told him. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you they’re starving in Africa?”

  And there he was, back in the blighted landscape of British East Africa, with its longhorned cattle skulls and poisoned waterholes. And now, thanks to this helpful son of a bitch, the picture included little black children, their stomachs bloated with kwashiorkor, flies buzzing around their mournful eyes. It was a hard image to get rid of, and the only solution was to resume thinking about the stamp.

  And he went on thinking about the stamp for the rest of the evening, except when he forced himself to think about what he would do in the steam room. He could guess why O’Herlihy had chosen it as the venue for their meeting, as it combined convenience with security. He was going there anyway for his massage appointment, so there’d be no unexplained absence from the monastery. And how could Timmy Hannan, with only a towel to cover himself, wear a wire into a steam room?

  Keller hadn’t planned on wearing a wire, as a recording of the proceedings was the last thing he wanted. But it would be nice to have a weapon.

  A gun, say. Keller wasn’t that crazy about guns. They were noisy, unless you used a suppressor. They left nitrate particles on your hand, unless you wore gloves. Sometimes they jammed, and sometimes they misfired. And, unless you got fairly close to your target, there was always the chance that you would miss. If you were close enough to rule out a miss, well, you were probably close enough to get the job done without a gun.

  Still, O’Herlihy was an awfully large man. Sheer bulk was part of what made him so imposing. It might be mostly fat, but simply carrying all that weight around could make a man strong, couldn’t it? So there was a certain appeal in being a couple of steps away from him, maybe even three or four steps, and pointing a gun at him, and finding out if he could stop the bullets by sheer force of will.

  Well, forget that. They wouldn’t make you go through a metal detector to get into the New York Athletic Club, but there’d be other people in the locker room, and possibly in the steam room as well, and even if he took a second towel and wrapped the gun in it—no, never mind, he couldn’t go in there with a gun.

  Not that he had a gun, or knew offhand where to get hold of one.

  Then what? A knife? Anything large enough to do the job would be a problem to conceal.

  He walked around, letting his mind play with the problem. He remembered a television program he’d seen ages ago, in which the murder weapon was an icicle. A nice touch, he’d thought at the time. It was a locked-room murder, if he remembered correctly; the murderer and the victim were found in the room, the victim stabbed to death, and no murder weapon to be found. Because it melted.

  Did they solve it? Find water droplets in the wound and put two and two together? Or did the killer get away with it? He couldn’t remember, and didn’t see that it mattered. Nor did he see where he was going to find an icicle at this time of year, let alone carry it into a steam room.

  Maybe the best he could hope for from tomorrow’s meeting was to lay the groundwork for another meeting at a more promising venue. And then what? Set up something for Thursday afternoon and miss his shot at the German colonials?

  He spent twenty minutes in a chain drugstore. Then he headed back to his room at the Savoyard and went to bed.

  It was a quarter after seven when Keller opened his eyes, and he was grateful for the opportunity to get up and start the day. He’d set the bedside alarm clock for eight and backed it up with an 8:15 wake-up call, and he shut off the first and canceled the second and got under the shower, hoping the spray would sluice away the residue of the dream.

  He’d dreamed about the stamp, of course, and it managed to incorporate the old naked-in-public-places dream that he’d had in one form or another for most of his life. It had pretty much stopped since he wound up in New Orleans, but here it was again, with him sitting in Peachpit’s auction room and suddenly realizing that he was wearing a T-shirt and nothing else.

  And all night long he kept realizing it was a dream, and turning over and going back to sleep, and slipping right back into the dream all over again, trying to find a way to make it come out right. He missed out on the lot he wanted to buy, and he made mistakes and bought other things that he didn’t want or need, and throughout it all he was hoping nobody would notice that he didn’t have any pants on.

  Only a dream, he thought. Only a dream, only a hobby, only a stamp.

  Hell.

  Downstairs, he visited the business center and checked the stamp’s current price. It was unchanged, still $2750. Keller had decided the most he was willing to pay was $4500, and he registered on the site and entered the bid. He waited a minute or two and refreshed the page, and saw that the opening bid had now increased to $3000. That meant he was the high bidder, and someo
ne else would have to raise it another $1750 to top his maximum.

  Was it time to meet O’Herlihy? No, not even close. He had plenty of time for breakfast, but he’d just committed himself to pay $4500 for a stamp, and it would cost him more than that by the time he was done. The auction gallery tacked on a buyer’s premium of 20%, and there was New York sales tax on top of that, so a lot he bought for $4500 would cost him something over $5800, which wasn’t that much less than its $6000 Scott valuation.

  Shelling out thirty-five dollars for breakfast never seemed like a great idea to Keller, but it was even less attractive after the bid he’d just made. So he passed on both the hotel’s buffet and the ersatz bistro and found a vendor’s cart on one of the side streets. He got a croissant and a cup of coffee, which was as much as he wanted, and the bright-eyed immigrant, no doubt from a dead country, gave him change back from his five-dollar bill.

  The croissant was fine, and so was the coffee, and they had pedestrianized Times Square since he moved away, so he was able to pull a little chair up to a little table and have his breakfast in—well, not peace and quiet, not exactly, but it was pleasant all the same.

  When he was done he glanced at his watch. There was time, he saw, but he’d have to hurry.

  He walked quickly back to his hotel. The business center had four people in it, but it had five computers, and Keller was grateful for that.

  The New York Athletic Club was on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Central Park South, not far from the Savoyard and even closer to the Peachpit offices on Fifty-seventh Street. Parked out in front, next to a convenient fire hydrant, stood a black limousine, its chauffeur chatting away on a no-hands cell phone. And waiting, Keller suspected, to drive the abbot back to the monastery.

  Keller had put on a suit and tie, thinking the place might have a dress code, and realized the absurdity of it when a couple of over-age preppies passed him wearing workout clothes. Still, the suit might make a decent impression on the desk attendant, who looked up at his approach. “Hannan,” Keller told him. “I’m Father Paul O’Herlihy’s guest.”