Free Keller 05 - Hit Me by Lawrence Block Page A

upstairs to retrieve his stamp collection. Only he was too late for that…
    And so he’d gone off, never to return. Until now, when he was suddenly back in New York. He wasn’t Keller anymore, and he didn’t live here anymore, and just what did he think he was doing here, anyway?
    He walked halfway across the street until he could get a look at the doorman. The fellow was wearing the uniform they all wore, maroon with gold piping, but as far as Keller could make out there was nothing else familiar about him. It had been a couple of years, and a certain amount of staff turnover was to be expected. And if Keller didn’t recognize the guy, why should the guy recognize Keller?
    He probably wouldn’t. That didn’t necessarily mean Keller could get past him, but it seemed likely Keller could at the very least get close to him, close enough to get his hands on him. And there was the package room, right off the lobby. He could put the guy in the package room and they wouldn’t find him until morning.
    And then all he’d have to do was go upstairs, and give the doorbell a poke—no knocker on his door, not unless the new tenant had added one. “Hi, I’m your neighbor from downstairs, I don’t mean to disturb you but I’ve got water coming through my bathroom ceiling—”
    Then the door would open, and there’d be a man or a woman standing there—or a man and a woman, or two men, or two women, it hardly mattered. And he didn’t have a weapon, but he had his hands, and that was all he’d need.
    He drew back into the shadows, flattened himself against the brick wall of the building behind him. Across the street, the doorman stepped out onto the street for a quick cigarette break. He still didn’t look familiar to Keller, who found himself wondering why he’d been contemplating snapping the guy’s neck and sticking him in the package room.
    Just so he could go upstairs and kill some stranger for no good reason at all.
    The impulse—or fantasy, or whatever you might want to call it—was gone now. Go home, he told himself sternly.
    He stepped over to the curb, held up a hand for a cab. One came along, its dome light lit, and headed his way, whereupon Keller shook his head and waved him off. Keller wasn’t able to see the expression on the driver’s face, but he could imagine it.
    He started walking.
    He walked all the way back to his hotel, and he took his time getting there. On the way, he stopped for a slice of pizza and ate it standing at the counter, drank a cup of coffee at the diner that had been his regular breakfast place. He bought a newspaper at a deli, dropped it unread into the next trash can he came to.
    And wondered throughout just what he was doing.
    He wasn’t entirely certain whether or not he recognized anybody. There were faces that looked familiar, but the waitress at the diner wasn’t the one who’d served him all those breakfasts. She’d have finished her shift hours ago.
    There’d been changes in the neighborhood. He saw a bank that hadn’t been there before, and a chain drugstore. What was missing? It seemed to him that a Chinese restaurant was gone, and a dry cleaner, and what happened to the shoe-repair guy? Or was he over on the next block?
    He was exhausted by the time he got back to his hotel. He took a shower, drank a bottle of water from the minibar. And went to bed.

Thirteen
    K eller’s first thought was to have breakfast in the hotel. They had a huge buffet, but they charged $35 for it, and he couldn’t see starting the day with $35 worth of food in his stomach. He went across the street to an imitation French bistro, where an Asian girl with her hair in pigtails brought him a croque madame, which was essentially a grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich with a fried egg on top. He had orange juice, and a side of home fries, and finished up with a two-cup pot of filtered coffee, and the check came to $31.25, plus tip.
    But it was money well spent, he decided, because his attitude was