Free Hit List by Lawrence Block Page B

attention to them in years. The poster was different, he enjoyed looking at it, but it was just a poster. What it did, really, was refresh his memory of the original oil painting it depicted. If he’d never seen the painting itself, well, he’d probably still respond to the poster, but it wouldn’t have anywhere near the same impact on him.
    As far as owning an original Hopper, well, that was out of the question. Keller’s work was profitable, he could afford to live comfortably and still sink a good deal of money into his stamp collection, but he was light-years away from being able to hang Edward Hopper on his wall. The painting shown on his poster—well, it wasn’t for sale, but if it ever did come up at auction it would bring a seven-figure price. Keller figured he might be able to pay seven figures for a piece of art, but only if two of those figures came after the decimal point.
    * * *
    Keller had lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant on Third Avenue, then stopped at a florist. From there he walked up to Fifty-seventh Street, where he found a building he’d noticed in passing, with one or more art galleries on each of its ten floors. All but a couple were open, and he walked through them in turn, having a look at the works on display. At first he was wary that the gallery attendants would give him a sales pitch, or that he’d feel like an interloper, looking at work he had no intention of buying. But nobody even nodded at him, or gave any sign of caring what he looked at or how long he looked at it, and by the time he’d walked in and out of three galleries he was entirely at ease.
    It was like going to a museum, he realized. It was exactly like going to a museum, except for two things. You didn’t have to pay to get in, and there were no groups of restless children, with their teachers desperate to explain things to them.
    How were you supposed to know how much the stuff cost? There was a number stuck to the wall beside each painting, but there were no dollar signs, and the numbers ran in sequence, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, and couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the price. Evidently it was considered loutish to post the price publicly, but didn’t they want sales? What were you supposed to do, ask the price of anything that caught your eye?
    Then at one gallery he noticed another patron carrying a plastic-laminated sheet of paper, referring to it occasionally, dropping it at the front table on her way out. Keller retrieved it, and damned if it didn’t contain a numbered list of all the works on display, along with the title, the dimensions, the medium (oil, watercolor, acrylic, and gouache, whatever that was), and the year it was completed.
    One work had NFS for a price, which he supposed meant Not For Sale. And two had little red dots next to the price, and he remembered that some of the paintings had displayed similar red dots alongside their numbers. Of course—the red dots meant the paintings had been sold! They wouldn’t just wrap one up and send you home with it. The paintings had to hang for the duration of the show, so when you bought something, they tagged it with a red dot and left it right where it was.
    He congratulated himself for figuring it all out, then was taken aback by the thought that everyone else no doubt already knew it. In all the galleries in New York, he was probably the only person who’d lacked this particular bit of knowledge. Well, at least he’d been able to work it out on his own. He hadn’t made a fool of himself, asking what the dots were for.
    By the time he got home the mail was in. Keller had never cared much about the mail, collecting it and dealing with it as it came, tossing the junk mail and paying the bills. Then he took up stamp collecting, and now every day’s mail held treasures.
    Dealers throughout the country, and a few overseas, sent him the stamps he’d ordered from their lists, or won in mail auctions. Others sent him selections on approval, to examine at