Free Keller 05 - Hit Me by Lawrence Block Page B

better after breakfast. A good night’s sleep had rid him of most of last night’s mood, and the meal had finished the job.
    And, speaking of jobs, it was time he got to work on his.
    Abbot O’Herlihy, Paul Vincent O’Herlihy, was tucked away in the Thessalonian residence in Murray Hill. There were, as far as Keller could make out, only two ways to carry out his assignment. He could get the man to leave the building, or he could contrive to get himself inside it.
    The first way was better, he decided, if he could find a way to manage it. The second way had two parts to it, getting in and getting out, and both of them could present problems. Not that getting O’Herlihy out of his refuge was a piece of cake, but there ought to be a way to manage it.
    It was Tuesday morning, and, according to his watch, not quite a quarter to ten. The Peachpit auction would take the form of morning and afternoon sessions Wednesday and Thursday. All of Wednesday was given over to general foreign, with British Commonwealth in the morning and the rest of the world in the afternoon. Thursday morning was a specialized offering of U.S. issues, and the final session on Thursday afternoon was devoted to a remarkable collection of German offices and colonies, including that stamp from Kiauchau he’d pointed out to his daughter.
    So he had all of Tuesday, and Wednesday night and Thursday morning. And he could miss one or both of the Wednesday sessions if he had to, but he really wanted to be in the room Thursday afternoon when they sold the German collection.
    And Thursday night he wanted to be on his way to New Orleans. The last flight out was JetBlue’s, at 8:59, and with luck he’d be on it.
    He walked all the way to Thessalonian House, and it looked no different than it had the previous afternoon. The brass knocker was just as inviting, the heavy door just as forbidding. He looked over at it from the uptown side of the street, and barely slowed as he passed on by.
    He didn’t see a pay phone at the corner of 36th and Park, and walked another block to Lexington. No pay phones there, either, and he walked a block uptown before he found one, and it didn’t work. He had a prepaid cell phone in his pocket, which he’d bought at the New Orleans airport, and he’d hoped he could use it to call Julia, but it looked as though he was only going to be able to get one call out of it.
    Well, too bad.
    He punched in 911, spoke briefly, and disconnected. Then he walked over to the curb and slipped the inoffensive phone down a storm drain.
      
    He retraced his steps slowly, south to 36th Street, west toward Thessalonian House. He was halfway to Park Avenue when he heard the first siren, but maintained his measured pace. By the time he reached the scene, three city vehicles had already arrived, two NYPD squad cars and an FDNY hook and ladder.
    Not surprisingly, a crowd was gathering, with a couple of uniformed cops moving spectators to the uptown side of the street, and firefighters setting up barricades to block the sidewalk on either side of the monastery.
    Keller picked out one of the cops and asked him what was going on. The man didn’t answer, but a fellow spectator chimed in. “Guy broke in, shot two nuns, and he’s holding the rest of ’em hostage.”
    The doors opened, and the monastery began to empty out, the sidewalk filling up with men, some of them in robes, some in business suits. The man who’d just spoken said he might have been wrong about the nuns, and a woman said you didn’t have nuns in a monastery, and another man said, “What meat can a priest eat on Friday? None. Get it?”
    Keller was the first to spot the bomb squad truck, but he let somebody else point it out. It looked like one of the Brink’s armored cars used to transport large amounts of cash, but it said BOMB SQUAD on the side, in letters large enough to command attention. “Oh, it must be a bomb,” someone said, and everyone immediately moved one step in from the