Quotidian Keller

by Lawrence Block

  “It’s a beauty,” Keller said. “What do I owe you for it?”

  “It’s a present.”

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “You’ve got to let me pay for it.”

  “Nope. You can’t buy it, Jackie. It’s not for sale. It’s a gift.”

  “But—”

  “It’ll cost you plenty in the long run,” Bingham told him, and paused to top up his own drink. “All the covers you’ll buy. But you’ve got to feed the shark, don’t you?”

  “Well, I’m very happy to have it. I wish I had something for you in return. And maybe I do.”

  “Oh?”

  “The reason I came up here,” Keller said. “You really expect to be killed, don’t you?”

  “Sooner or later. When someone with money and power is determined to kill you, you don’t stand much of a chance.”

  “Sherry, I think I know a way to get you off the hook.”

  “I don’t think there is any such way. But I’d be a fool not to hear you out.”

  “Well,” Keller said. “You know, the other day you were talking about how people don’t know that much about each other. And you said for all you knew I could be a stock swindler, or a confidence man.”

  “It wasn’t meant as an insult.”

  “I know that, but it hit a little close to the bone. I’m neither of those things, not exactly, but I haven’t lived my whole life inside the law, either.”

  “You know, I had the sense you were a man of the world, Jackie.”

  “I wouldn’t have the collection I do,” he said, “if it weren’t for insurance fraud.”

  “Reporting your own stamps as stolen? I wouldn’t think—”

  “When it comes to stamps, I’ve always been completely on the up-and-up.”

  “Same here. That’s the thing about hobbies.”

  “I’m talking about life insurance fraud. A couple of times over the years I’ve faked my own death. So I know a little about the mechanics of it. Sherry, you’ve got somebody back home who wants to kill you. You can’t buy him off or scare him off, and he won’t let up as long as you’re alive. But if he doesn’t think you’re alive . . .”

  Bingham had a ton of questions. Where would you get a body? What about DNA? Dental forensics?

  “Have another drink,” Keller suggested, “and I’ll explain what I have in mind.”

  “It just might work,” Bingham said. “You want to know something? It’s scarier than dying. I was pretty much used to the idea of that, but this . . .”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “And at the same time it’s exciting as hell. Because it’s a whole new life. I’d be starting over with next to nothing. Wayne State’ll get my stamps and everything else I own. I’ve got a little cash tucked away in secret accounts, and I can get that, so I’ll never have to wonder where my next meal is coming from. But where will I live, and how’ll I keep from running into somebody who can recognize me.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I suppose I could dye this. Or cut it real short. You shave it and people start wondering how you look with hair.”

  “There are a lot of tricks,” Keller said, figuring there must be. “And I can help you come up with them.”

  “And you can find a body that’ll pass for mine. Jackie, I’m not going to ask how.”

  “Nobody’s going to get killed,” he assured Bingham, and talked vaguely about cooperative funeral parlors. Even as he spoke, the whole prospect sounded dubious to him, and he was glad Bingham’s intake of whiskey was increasing its credibility.

  “Now here’s what’s crucial,” he said. “First of all, it has to happen here, in San Francisco. Where nobody knows you, and where the police will have every reason to wrap it up in a hurry and ship the body back to Detroit. Where nobody will bother with an autopsy, because San Francisco already held one.”

  “Stands to reason.”

  “Number one,” he said, “is that ring of yours. It’s distinctive.”

  “My high school ring. I’m not even sure I can get it off. Let me try some soap.”

  He returned from the bathroom with the ring in hand. “There,” he said, presenting it to Keller. “And number two?”

  “Your suicide note. You’ll want a sheet of Cumberford letterhead.”

  “In the desk drawer.”

  “Could you get it? We’ll want to have your fingerprints on it, and nobody else’s.”

  “Good thinking. Now what should I write?”

  Keller frowned in thought. “Let’s see,” he said. “‘To Whom It May Concern. I suppose I’m taking the easy way out, but I have no choice.’” He went on, and Bingham said he had the sense of it, and how would it be if he phrased it more in his own words? Keller told him it would be ideal.

  By the time he’d finished, he’d filled the whole sheet of hotel stationery. “‘I would advise my heirs at Wayne State University to sell my entire collection of stamps,’” he read aloud, “‘and recommend the San Francisco firm of Halliday & Okun for this purpose.’ You know, I spent close to fifty thousand this weekend. I might not have bothered if I’d had any idea I was only going to own the stamps for a matter of hours.”

  “You could take them along.”

  “You think so? No, it’s got to be more convincing to leave them behind. And it’s not as though I’m going to resume collecting German States in my new life, or anything else in the world of stamps. Handwriting’s a little shaky.”

  “Well, you’re about to kill yourself. That might make a man the least bit unsteady.”

  “I think the scotch may have had something to do with it. Just let me sign this. Signature looks okay, doesn’t it?”

  “It looks fine.”

  “So. What happens next?”

  “Pretty slick,” Dot said. “Got him to write a note, got him to take off his ring, and then gave him a helping hand out the window. I know people who drown themselves tend to leave their clothes all folded up on the beach, but do many jumpers do it naked?”

  “It happens,” he said. “What I figured was that nobody undresses a guy before shoving him out a window, so it would make it look that much more like suicide.”

  “But you said he was dressed when you went upstairs. So you had to undress him.”

  “When I phoned him,” he recalled, “he said he’d just got out of the shower. I should have told him to just put on a robe.”

  “I think he did enough, Keller. How’d you get him unconscious?”

  “Rabbit punch.”

  “Always a popular favorite.”

  “At first I thought I’d killed him. I figured it was better to hit him too hard than not hard enough. Because I didn’t want him to know what was happening.”

  “But the blow didn’t kill him.”

  “No, he was alive when he went out the window.”

  “But not for long. Six stories?”

  “Six stories.”

  “With no overhangs or canopies to break his fall.”

  “That was the pavement’s job,” he said.

  “And the cops? Were you in town long enough for them to get around to you?”

  “I went to them myself,” he said.

  “Jesus, that’s a first.”

  “As soon as I heard about Bingham’s death, and that didn’t take long. I told them how I’d spent some time with him over the weekend, and that it’d be my guess that he’d received bad news from his doctor, because he would say things like why was he buying these stamps when he couldn’t look forward to owning them for very long. And he’d sort of hinted at suicide, talking about meeting Fate head-on instead of waiting for it to come up on him from behind.”

  “How’d this go over?”

  “Well, the detective I talked to wrote everything down, but it just seemed to be confirming what he’d already decided. It was pretty much open and shut, Dot.”

  “The window was open,” she said, “and the door was shut.”

  “That’s about it. A very candid suicide note in his own
hand, signed and dated, and weighted down with his class ring. And, alongside it, all the stamps he’d bought over the weekend, plus a wallet full of cash.”

  “That’s enough to fool just about anybody,” she allowed. “Except for Alan Horvath, who thinks you’re the greatest thing since Google. He said he can’t wait until somebody pisses him off so he can use you again.”

  “He actually said that?”

  “No, of course not. But he’s a happy man, and he sent us the cash to prove it. I have to say he’s not the only one you managed to impress, Keller. Getting him to write the note, that’s kind of rich.”

  “You gave me the idea.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “You said maybe he’d kill himself. Out of disappointment at losing the blue ribbon.”

  “I said that? I don’t even remember, but I’ll take your word for it. Did he lose the blue ribbon?”

  “No, he won.”

  “But he found something else to be disappointed about. That’s what gave you the idea? My idle remark?”

  “Plus an idle remark of Bingham’s, saying I could be a confidence man or a stock swindler. And I realized that I felt like a con man, pretending to be his friend while I was getting ready to take him out, and then I thought, well, what would a con man do?” He frowned. “It was interesting, manipulating things, making it all work out, but I wouldn’t want to be a con man full time. I really did like him, you know.”

  “But you didn’t let that stop you.”

  “Well, no. And if I did, then what? It only meant Horvath would bite the bullet and find a way to do the job in Detroit. Tunnel under Bingham’s house and blow him up, like Bingham suggested. Or send in a private army to overwhelm the bodyguards. Bingham knew it was all over. He didn’t want to go back to Detroit.”

  “And you fixed it so he didn’t have to.”

  “Well,” he said.

  “I’ve got a bundle of cash for you. Horvath was quick and so was FedEx. I’d tell you to buy some stamps, but you already did that.” She pointed at an envelope. “So you can put this toward your retirement fund.”

  He glanced at the soundless television set, where stock symbols and prices crawled across the screen beneath two men holding a furious silent argument. “How’re we doing?” he asked.

  “In the market? We have good days and we have bad days, but lately the good days are running ahead of the bad ones.”

  “What are you going to do with your share?”

  “I might just stick it in the market,” she said, “and see if I can fatten it up a little.”

  He pushed the envelope across the table. “Do the same with mine,” he said. “Otherwise I’ll spend it.”

  “If you’re sure. I was thinking we should diversify into some overseas companies. India and Korea are booming.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  She put a hand on the envelope, drew it closer to her. She said, “Keller? Those stamps he bought at auction, that you just left on the table with the suicide note. Weren’t you tempted?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Because it’s your hobby.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I guess I get it,” she said. “The envelope he gave you, except you called it something else.”

  “The cover.”

  “There you go. From Martinique, right? What did it cost him?”

  “It’s worth somewhere between eight and ten thousand. I don’t know if he paid that much.”

  “And you’re keeping it.”

  “Well, sure. It was a present.”

  “I see.”

  “And something to remember him by.”

  “I guess,” she said. “But don’t you usually try to forget them as quickly and completely as possible? Don’t you do that mental exercise, fading their image to black and white and then graying it out? Letting it get smaller and smaller until it disappears?”

  “Usually.”

  “Oh. Are you all right, Keller?”

  “I think so,” he said.

  T H E • E N D

  About the Author

  Lawrence Block has been writing award-winning mystery and suspense fiction for half a century. He has written five books about Keller, the Urban Lonely Guy of assassins—Hit Man, Hit List, Hit Parade, Hit and Run, and Hit Me, and a Keller series for cable television is in development. “Keller,” he points out, “is a Guilty Pleasure for a lot of my readers. They like him, even though they don’t think they should.”

  Block’s other series characters include Bernie Rhodenbarr (The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons) and Matthew Scudder, brilliantly embodied by Liam Neeson in the new film, A Walk Among The Tombstones. His non-series novella, Resume Speed, is a bestselling Kindle Single, and will soon appear as a deluxe hardcover from Subterranean Press.

  The author is also well known for his books for writers, including the classic Telling Lies For Fun & Profit and Write For Your Life, and for his writings about the mystery genre and its practitioners, The Crime Of Our Lives. In addition to prose works, he has written episodic television (Tilt!) and the Wong Kar-wai film, My Blueberry Nights. He is a modest and humble fellow, although you would never guess as much from this biographical note.

  lawrenceblock.com

  NEWSLETTER: Lawrence Block sends out an email newsletter from time to time, with updates, announcements, and special offers. It’s free, and an email to lawbloc@gmail.com with NEWSLETTER—KF in the header will get you on the list.

  Now turn the page for a bonus excerpt from Keller on the Spot, an Edgar Award-winning story exclusively eVailable on Amazon:

  E X C E R P T

  Keller on the Spot

  * * *

  Keller, drink in hand, agreed with the woman in the pink dress that it was a lovely evening. He threaded his way through a crowd of young marrieds on what he supposed you would call the patio. A waitress passed carrying a tray of drinks in stemmed glasses and he traded in his own for a fresh one. He sipped as he walked along, wondering what he was drinking. Some sort of vodka sour, he decided, and decided as well that he didn’t need to narrow it down any further than that. He figured he’d have this one and one more, but he could have ten more if he wanted, because he wasn’t working tonight. He could relax and cut back and have a good time.

  Well, almost. He couldn’t relax completely, couldn’t cut back altogether. Because, while this might not be work, neither was it entirely recreational. The garden party this evening was a heaven-sent opportunity for reconnaissance, and he would use it to get a close look at his quarry. He had been handed a picture in the old man’s study back in White Plains, and he had brought that picture with him to Dallas, but even the best photo wasn’t the same as a glimpse of the fellow in the flesh, and in his native habitat.

  And a lush habitat it was. Keller hadn’t been inside the house yet, but it was clearly immense, a sprawling multi-level affair of innumerable large rooms. The grounds sprawled as well, covering an acre or two, with enough plants and shrubbery to stock an arboretum. Keller didn’t know anything about flowers, but five minutes in a garden like this one had him thinking he ought to know more about the subject. Maybe they had evening classes at Hunter or NYU, maybe they’d take you on field trips to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Maybe his life would be richer if he knew the names of the flowers, and whether they were annuals or perennials, and whatever else there was to know about them. Their soil requirements, say, and what bug killer to spray on their leaves, or what fertilizer to spread at their roots.

  He walked along a brick path, smiling at this stranger, nodding at that one, and wound up standing alongside the swimming pool. Some twelve or fifteen people sat at poolside tables, talking and drinking, the volume of their conversation rising as they drank. In the enormous pool, a young boy swam back and forth, back and forth.

  Keller felt a curious kinship with the kid. He was standing instead of swimming, but he felt as distant as the kid from everybody else around. There were two pa
rties going on, he decided. There was the hearty social whirl of everybody else, and there was the solitude he felt in the midst of it all, identical to the solitude of the swimming boy.

  Huge pool. The boy was swimming its width, but that dimension was still greater than the length of your typical backyard pool. Keller didn’t know that this was an Olympic pool, he wasn’t quite sure how big that would have to be, but he figured you could just call it enormous and let it go at that.

  Ages ago he’d heard about some college-boy stunt, filling a swimming pool with Jell-O, and he’d wondered how many little boxes of the gelatin dessert it would have required, and how the college boys could have afforded it. It would cost a fortune, he decided, and to fill this pool with Jell-O—but if you could afford the pool in the first place, he supposed the Jell-O would be the least of your worries.

  There were cut flowers on all of the tables, and the blooms looked like ones Keller had seen in the garden. It stood to reason. If you grew all these flowers, you wouldn’t have to order from the florist. You could cut your own.

  What good would it do, he wondered, to know the names of all the shrubs and flowers? Wouldn’t it just leave you wanting to dig in the soil and grow your own? And he didn’t want to get into all that, for God’s sake. He lived in a one-bedroom apartment on First Avenue in the Forties. It was all he needed or wanted, but it was no place for a garden. He hadn’t even tried growing an avocado pit there, and he didn’t intend to. He was the only living thing in the apartment, and that was the way he wanted it. The day that changed was the day he’d call the exterminator.

  So maybe he’d just forget about evening classes at Hunter, and field trips to Brooklyn. If he wanted to get close to nature he could walk in Central Park, and if he didn’t know the names of the flowers he would just hold off on introducing himself to them. And if—

  Where was the kid?

  The boy, the swimmer. Keller’s companion in solitude. Where the hell did he go?

  The pool was empty, its surface still. Keller saw a ripple toward the far end, saw a brace of bubbles break the surface.