Keller 05 - Hit Me by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online

attempted to conceal. Portions of it, of course, were off the record—the car rental, the visit to Caruth Boulevard—but he had no reason to hide the fact that he’d been to Dallas, and had the stamps to prove it.
    He ate next door at a Bob’s Big Boy, and it seemed to him that half the men in the room had mustaches. Like his philatelic friend Michael, and like the man whose fingers he’d curled around the hilt of Portia Walmsley’s kitchen knife.
    They’d found him like that, Keller had learned on page one of the Dallas Morning News . Still in a drunken stupor, still holding the knife, and still sprawled out next to the dead body of a woman.
    Reading the paper, Keller had learned why the sonofabitch looked familiar. Keller had seen him before, and not in the auction room, or around the Lombardy. He hadn’t seen the man himself, not really. He’d seen the guy’s picture—online, in some of the photos that popped up when he asked Google Images for a peek at Portia. And it was entirely natural that he be photographed at her side. After all, he was her husband.
    Charles Walmsley. The client.
    A reconciliation, Dot had explained. Charles Walmsley had gone over to his wife’s house, perhaps in the hope of getting one last look at her before he got to see her in her coffin. And evidently the old magic was still there, and, well, one thing led to another. And somewhere along the way he remembered that he’d better call off the hit.
    So he made a phone call and figured that was that. A single phone call had put the operation in motion, so wouldn’t a second phone call nip it in the bud?
    Absolutely. But the person Walmsley called had to make a call of his own, and the person he called had to call Dot, and the new directive took its time working its way through the system. By the time Dot got the word, it was already too late.
      
    Back home, Keller held his daughter high in the air. “Tummy!” she demanded, and he put his lips to her stomach and blew, making an indelicate sound. Jenny laughed with delight and insisted he do it again.
    It was good to be home.
    Later that evening, Keller went upstairs and settled in with his stamps. After he’d mounted Obock J1, he called Julia in and showed it to her, and she admired it extravagantly.
    “It’s like when somebody shows you their new baby,” Keller said. “You have to say it’s beautiful, because what else are you going to say?”
    “All babies are beautiful.”
    “And all stamps, I suppose. That’s the original on the right and the reprint next to it. They look the same, don’t they?”
    “I bet their mother could tell the difference,” she said.
         
    Two days later, Keller bought a new phone and called Dot. “Take down this number,” he said, and read it off to her. She read it back and asked what was wrong with the old number. “It’s no good anymore,” he said, “because I smashed the phone and threw the pieces down a storm drain.”
    “I smashed a pay phone once,” she said, “when it flat-out refused to give me my dime back. What did this phone do to piss you off?”
    “I figured it would be safer to get a new phone.”
    “And I figure you’re probably right. You okay, Keller? Last time we talked you were a little shaky.”
    “I’m all right.”
    “Because you didn’t do anything wrong.”
    “Our client fell in love with his wife all over again,” he said, “and I killed her and framed him for it. If I’d known what was going on, you can bet I’d have handled it differently.”
    “Keller, if you’d known, you wouldn’t have handled it at all. You’d have bought some stamps and come home.”
    “Well, that’s true,” he allowed. “Obviously. But I still wish I hadn’t made the phone call.”
    “To me?”
    “To the cops, after I got out of there. I wanted to make sure they showed up before he could come to his senses and head for the hills.”
    “Hills would be hard to find,” she said, “in that part of the