Keller's Fedora (Kindle Single)

by Lawrence Block

  And now the last bag was in the trunk, and the lid closed, and Mrs. Overmont was reaching into her purse. She drew out a dollar, hesitated for a moment, then added another dollar.

  Was that a generous tip? A skimpy one? Keller, who carried his own groceries whenever he did the shopping, had no real frame of reference. The kid hadn’t had to carry anything, all he’d done was push a cart twenty or thirty yards from the door to where she’d parked her car. Moving her groceries a bag at a time from the cart to the trunk was hardly heavy labor, and the total time involved was what, five minutes? It seemed to Keller that a single dollar would have been plenty, but then you had to weigh in the fact that she was a rich woman driving an expensive car, and maybe that was enough to bump the tip to the two-dollar level.

  As if it mattered. Keller shook his head, marveling at his own propensity to overthink everything, and then Melania Overmont did something unusual. She looked around, to the left and to the right, as if to assure herself that she was not being observed.

  If she’d turned all the way around she’d have seen Keller. But she didn’t, and he went on watching her, because that little move of hers was definitively furtive, and he had to wonder why. All she was doing was tipping the kid, and what did she care who saw her give him a couple of bucks?

  And he watched, playing close attention, as she held out the two dollars in her left hand. The boy held out a hand to take the money, and Melania extended her other hand, her right hand, and reached for the boy’s crotch.

  Keller stared.

  And went on staring, because this wasn’t going to be a quick grope and goodbye. She’d stepped closer to the kid, so that he couldn’t see what she was doing with her hand, but it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. All he had to do was watch the boy’s face, as it ran the gamut of emotions from surprise to shock to excitement to what could only be satisfaction.

  “A HAND JOB, Pablo?”

  “I guess that’s the term.”

  “In a strip mall? In front of a supermarket? In the middle of Illinois?”

  “And then she put the two dollars in his hand,” he said, “and closed his fingers around it. And kissed her own fingers, and patted him on the check.”

  “And got in her car and drove away. I trust you followed her.”

  “Straight back to her house. She had to put away her groceries.”

  “And wash her hands,” Dot said. “And she’s there now?”

  “She’d have to be. She hasn’t gone anywhere. She left the garage door up while she dealt with her bags of groceries, but it’s down now, and as far as I can tell she’s still in the house.”

  “And you’re parked across the street. Well, I guess the thing to do is sit tight.”

  “For as long as it takes,” he said. “I’ve got the jar, so I’ll be fine.”

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  “It’s not important. Dot, am I supposed to do anything about the kid?”

  “The kid? What kid? Oh, you mean the grocery boy?”

  “Right. I mean, he’s a big kid, he’s got to be eighteen or nineteen.”

  “He could be a college graduate,” she said. “An English major, working away at the only job he could get.”

  “That’d make him what, twenty-one? Twenty-two?”

  “More, if he went to grad school.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Pablo, what difference does it make?”

  “Just that it’s not Buffalo all over again.”

  “He’s not a little kid with a stamp collection.”

  “No.”

  “In other words, he’s old enough to stop getting older.”

  “From an ethical standpoint,” he said, “I don’t see it as a problem. But is this what the client wants?”

  “Pablo, do you figure the Hand Job Kid is her steady squeeze?”

  “Well—”

  “So to speak. You did say he looked surprised, didn’t you?”

  “Astonished. She was driving away and he was standing there with his mouth hanging open, like he couldn’t believe what just happened to him.”

  “I’d say he gets to live another day, Pablo.”

  “That’s what I thought, but—”

  “But the possibility had to be raised. I agree with you there. But this was just her way of saying thank you. ‘Here’s two bucks and a hand job, young man, because I’m not the type to blow you off with a mere dollar.’”

  “So to speak,” he said.

  “Fair enough. She’s a piece of work, our Mrs. Overmont. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  “You say something, Pablo?”

  “The garage door’s going up,” he reported.

  “In a minute she’ll be on her way.”

  “I don’t see her. Oh, there she is, at the front door. She’s standing on the stoop.”

  “Clutching a small bottle of hand lotion.”

  “No,” he said.

  “On her way to the car.”

  “I don’t think so, because she’s not carrying her purse. Would she go out without it? Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “A white car turning into the driveway,” he said. “Except it’s more of a van. There’s a man driving, has a sort of Marlboro Man look to him.”

  “That’s going back a ways, the Marlboro Man. Didn’t they all die of lung cancer?”

  “She’s waving. I think she’s glad to see him.”

  “You don’t figure that’s a gun in her pocket?”

  “And now she’s back inside the house. She just closed the door.”

  “You know, this is wonderful, Pablo. Getting a play-by-play like this, it’s almost like I’m watching it with my own two eyes. Why’d you stop?”

  “Because nothing’s happening,” he said. “Oh, there you go.”

  “What?”

  “The garage door’s closing. I guess she walked over and pressed the button. The garage is attached, he can go in straight from there, the way she did with the groceries.”

  “So it’s closed and his van’s in there.”

  “Right.”

  “He could be the gardener,” she said, “or the electrician, or the guy who takes care of the pool. The pool guy, I guess you call him.”

  “Is there a pool?”

  “How would I know? You’re the one who’s sitting there. If you can’t see whether or not there’s a pool in the backyard—”

  “If there is, I couldn’t see it from here. The house is in the way.”

  “My guess,” she said, “is it’s probably not the pool guy. Or the cable guy, or the guy to fix the furnace or change the filters on the air-conditioners. What do you figure, central air or window units?”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind, because if it was any of those guys his car would be parked in plain sight in the driveway, not stashed away in the garage next to her Mercedes.”

  “Lexus.”

  “Whatever. I think you’re done with the detecting part, Pablo. Now it’s time to switch hats.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “That you can quit being Sherlock Holmes and do what you were born to do.”

  “You said something about hats.”

  “It’s an expression, for God’s sake. Switching hats, meaning playing a different role.”

  He took the fedora from his head, looked at it, put it back on again. “Never mind,” he said. “I was confused for a minute there.” Something occurred to him. “Dot, do I need to get into the house and take pictures?”

  “What, of the two of them in a compromising position?”

  “Well, do I?”

  There was a pause, and he wondered if perhaps the Pablo phone had gone dead. Then she said, “Maybe I didn’t make this clear. He’s not looking to divorce the woman.”

  “I know that, but—”

  “In fact he’s very clear that he doesn’t want anything to happen to her.”

/>   “I got that, but—”

  “All the man wants,” she said, “is for the other man in her life to stop being in her life. Or in anybody’s life, including his own.”

  “I just thought he might want proof,” he said, “that we didn’t, you know, just pick somebody at random.”

  She thought it over. She said, “Okay, our client doesn’t know who the guy is, so how does he know we’ve picked the right man. Is that what you mean?”

  “I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

  “So it would appear. And you have a point.”

  There was a pause, but this time he knew the line was intact. He could tell she was thinking.

  She said, “Okay, he’s gonna have to take our word for it. The thing is, you have to be positive. Because if the Marlboro Man turns out to be her brother Charlie, or some butch queen who dropped in to give her some advice on where to put the sofa—”

  “That wouldn’t be good.”

  “So check him out,” she said. “You don’t need evidence to show the client, just so long as you’re convinced. After that, you know what you have to do.”

  “Right.”

  “And you’re okay? Because it might be a while before he’s done in there.”

  His hand reached for the empty iced tea jar. “No problem,” he said. “I’m set.”

  KELLER HAPPENED TO be looking at the garage door when it began its ascent. By then it was getting on for five in the afternoon, and he’d found himself thinking about the empty jar. It was a comfort to have it there, but the actual business of peeing in it was something he thought he’d put off as long as he could. He already felt conspicuous, sitting in a parked car on a street where few cars were parked. It helped that there was very little traffic, and no pedestrian traffic except for two boys, one of them dribbling a basketball, the other making a half-hearted attempt to get it away from him. They dribbled off down the street and turned at the corner, and neither of them gave Keller any notice.

  Still, there he was, with his license plate visible to any citizen who cared to make a note of it. Part of the time he wore the hat and part of the time he didn’t, but what difference did that make? It was off his head and on the seat beside him when the Overmont garage door went up, and that got his full attention. He waited for a glimpse of either or both of them, wishing they’d walk out arm in arm, pausing for a warm embrace and a quick grope before the guy got behind the wheel.

  But if that happened he never saw it, because all he could see from where he sat was the rear end of the white van, and it was too deep in the shadows for him to make out a license plate. Then the engine started up and the van backed out of the garage.

  By the time Keller got his engine started, the van had pulled out into the street, then turned and headed off in a direction opposite to the one Keller was facing. He had to turn around, and his quarry was already vanishing from sight, taking a left two blocks away.

  Keller set off after him.

  WHATEVER MELANIA OVERMONT and her presumed lover had in common, it wasn’t a shared attitude toward traffic laws. She’d been a cinch to follow, always under the speed limit, pausing to give other drivers the right away, and acting at all times like a teenager determined to pass a driving test.

  Mr. Marlboro, on the other hand, was given to quick starts, sudden bursts of acceleration, abrupt left turns that forced oncoming drivers to hit the brakes, and showed a tendency to regard the speed limit as a minimum.

  On the highway, it was hard to keep up with the van. On Harding Boulevard, in rush-hour traffic, how were you supposed to distinguish one white van from all the others? A couple of times he thought he’d lost the trail, but then he’d pick it up again. After forty-five minutes of this, the white van sailed through an intersection even as the light was turning from amber to red. Keller, three cars back, didn’t even have a chance to run the red light, but did what he could to keep his man in sight.

  Was that him? Was he making a right turn?

  The light turned, finally, and the car immediately in front of Keller moved forward, finally, and Keller set off in search of the white van. A quarter of a mile along he turned where he thought the van might have turned, and found it parked in front of an establishment that sold wholesale and retail plumbing supplies.

  Which figured, because the van had the name and address of that very firm lettered on its side panels. And that set it apart from the unmarked white van Keller had been following.

  Jesus, had he lost the son of a bitch? He’d had the sense to memorize the license plate, and that’d be great if he had Jake Dagger’s ring of friends on and off the police force. (“I used to be a cop, but when you carry a badge you’ve got to do things by the book. And sometimes a man just has to throw the book away.”) Or the kind of charm that would win him a favor from a chirpy girl at the local Bureau of Motor Vehicles. (“I’m not supposed to do this, Jake. But shucks, just this once…”) Right. But Keller wouldn’t know whom to call, or what to say if he reached the appropriate person.

  Hell.

  He’d never really noticed how many white vans there were. And you couldn’t quit on a parking lot just because you found a van that turned out to be the wrong one, because there might well be another white van in the next aisle or the one after that, and it could be the right one.

  Or it could be another wrong one.

  Finally, at the back of a freestanding frame building that could have used a coat of paint, he found three white vans parked side by side. And the one in the middle, by God, was the Marlboro Man’s.

  Keller, parking his car, realized just how long it had been since that gas station rest room. He glanced at the iced tea jar, glanced at the fedora, and left them both where they were.

  He got out of the car, and just as he was closing the door he changed his mind, reached for the fedora, placed it on his head and adjusted the brim.

  But never mind the jar. There’d be a men’s room. Any place called the Wet Spot, any place with a jukebox that loud, really had to have a men’s room.

  THE MARLBORO MAN was standing at the bar, hoisting a beer with a couple of buddies. Keller saw him when he walked in, went straight to the men’s room, then spotted the guy again a few minutes later—still at the bar, still on his feet, still holding what might have been the same beer, which he was drinking straight from its long-necked bottle.

  There was an unoccupied stool at the bar, and Keller took it. To his left were two men wearing White Sox caps, and to his right, on the other side of a second unoccupied stool, was a man with a plaid shirt and a cowboy hat.

  Keller felt vindicated. He was right to have worn the fedora. Around here an uncovered head would stick out like a sore thumb.

  The man in the cowboy hat was one of the Marlboro Man’s two buddies, and looked enough like him to be, well, a stunt double, say. In fact they both looked like Hollywood stunt men, or what he assumed Hollywood stunt men would look like. Big men, rangy men, physical men.

  Buddy Number Two was smaller, but wiry. He was wearing a railroad cap, striped blue denim with a short bill. Keller wasn’t sure why they called it that, he took a lot of trains himself and had never seen a railroad employee wearing one, but maybe you were more apt to encounter them on freight trains. Maybe engineers wore them.

  The cap’s wearer could have been a stunt double himself, Keller decided, but for a smaller hero. Tom Cruise’s stunt double, say.

  Keller ordered a beer, took a preliminary sip from it when it came. The bartender was a woman with too many tattoos, and Keller realized she was the only woman in the place.

  Jesus, was it a gay bar? It had the kind of aggressively masculine vibe you ran across in places with names like Rawhide and Boots & Saddle. This one was called the Wet Spot, but that could be some kind of gay double entendre, couldn’t it?

  Was any of that possible? Was the Marlboro Man Melania’s interior decorator after all?

  “Man, you’re too much. Has she got a sister? That’s what I
want to know.”

  That was the man on Keller’s right, the cowboy hat. The Marlboro Man replied that, if she had a sister, well, don’t get any ideas, good buddy, because all that would mean was a three-way.

  “Oh, man,” said Tom Cruise’s stunt double. “Oh man, oh man, oh man.”

  Cowboy Hat: “Like she’d be up for it.”

  Marlboro Man: “Melania? Haven’t found anything yet she’s not up for.”

  Tom Cruise (sounding a little drunk): “But with her own sister?”

  Marlboro Man: “Dude, she hasn’t got a sister.”

  Cowboy Hat: “Thing about a three-way, it’s never everything you want it to be.”

  Tom Cruise: “If she hasn’t got a sister—”

  Marlboro Man: “You saying there’s something wrong with a three-way?”

  Tom Cruise: “—how are you gonna fuck her?”

  Cowboy Hat: “Just that it’s not as good as you hope.”

  Marlboro Man: “Well, shit, what is?”

  Tom Cruise: “What I wanna know—”

  Marlboro Man: “Dude, shut up. What I am is lucky she hasn’t got a sister, or anybody else who wants to play, because that woman wears me out all by her lonesome.”

  Tom Cruise: “All I’m trying to say—”

  But Keller didn’t wait to find out what he was trying to say. He’d heard enough.

  THREE WHITE VANS, side by side by side, and it was a good thing he’d taken note of the license number. Still, he could have ruled out the one on the right, which bore a generic company name (“R & D Assoc.”) along with a phone number. And the one on the left, unmarked by paint, had a damaged rear bumper and a broken taillight.

  The one in the middle, the Marlboro Man’s van, had its doors locked. That figured, and Keller had tried the doors with no real hope they’d be open. You went through the motions, that’s all, and he stepped to the rear of the van and went through them again with the hatch at the back, and what do you know?

  Open.

  First, Keller went to his Subaru, unlocked it, transferred the fedora from his head to the seat. He felt a little silly doing so, he was wasting valuable time, but he didn’t want anything to happen to the hat—or, worse by far, for it to be left behind. He thought about putting it on the floor, where it would be out of sight and no temptation to passing thieves, and then decided he was being ridiculous.