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Speak of the devil.
There he was, Stephen Fucking Lauderheim, holding the door open for a nerdy fellow wearing a lab coat and a wispy mustache. Not heading for the same car, please God? No, separate cars, with Lauderheim pausing after unlocking the Subaru to exchange a final pleasantry with the nerd in the lab coat.
Good he hadn’t counted on waylaying him in the parking lot.
The nerd drove off first. Keller sat, glaring at the Subaru, until Lauderheim started it up, pulled out of the parking lot, and headed back toward town.
Keller gave him a two-block lead, then took off after him.
Just the other side of Four Mile Road, Keller pulled up right behind the disabled Subaru. Lauderheim already had the hood up and was frowning at the engine.
Keller got out of the car and trotted over to him.
“Heard the sound you were making,” he said. “I think I know what’s wrong.”
“It’s got to be the engine,” Lauderheim said, “but I don’t understand it. It never did anything like this before.”
“I can fix it.”
“Seriously? You mean it?”
“You got a tire iron?”
“Yeah, I suppose so,” Lauderheim said, and went around to open the rear of the squareback. He found the tire iron, extended it to Keller, then drew it back. “There’s nothing wrong with the tires,” he said.
“No kidding,” Keller said. “Give me the tire iron, will you?”
“Sure, but-”
“Say, don’t I know you? You’re Steve Lauderheim, aren’t you?”
“That’s right. Have we met?”
Keller looked at him, at the cute little chin dimple, at the big white teeth. Of course he was Lauderheim, who else could he be? But a professional made sure. Besides, it wasn’t too long ago that he’d failed to make sure, and he wasn’t eager to let that happen again.
“Cressida says hello,” Keller said.
“Huh?”
Keller buried the tire iron in his solar plexus.
The results were encouraging. Lauderheim let out an awful sound, clapped both hands to his middle, and fell to his knees. Keller grabbed him by the front of his shirt, dragged him along the gravel until the Subaru screened the two of them from view. Then he raised the tire iron high overhead and brought it down on Lauderheim’s head.
The man sprawled on the ground, still conscious, moaning softly. A few more blows to finish it?
No. Stick to the script. Keller drew the extension cord from his pocket, unwound a two-foot length of it, and looped it around Lauderheim’s throat. He straddled the man, pi
The Mississippi, legendary Father of Waters, swallowed the tire iron, the hammer, the screwdriver, the fu
From a pay phone, Keller called his client. “Toxic Shock,” he said, feeling like an idiot. No answer. He hung up.
He went back to his motel room, packed, carried his bag to the car. He didn’t have to check out. He’d paid a week in advance, and when his week was up they’d take the room back.
He had to force himself to drive over to the Pizza Hut and get something to eat. All he wanted to do was drive straight to O’Hare and grab the first plane back to New York, but he knew he had to get some food into his system. Otherwise he’d start seeing things on the road north, swing the wheel to dodge something that wasn’t there, and wind up putting the car in a ditch. Professionalism, he told himself, and ate an individual pan pizza and drank a medium Pepsi.
And placed the call again. “Toxic Shock”-and this time she was there, and picked up.
“It’s all taken care of,” he said.
“You mean-”
“I mean it’s all taken care of.”
“I can’t believe it. My God, I can’t believe it.”
You’re safe now, he wanted to say. You’ve got your life back.
Instead, cool and professional, he told her how to make the final payment. Cash, same as before, sent by Federal Express to Mary Jones, at another Mail Boxes Etc. location, this one in Peekskill.
“I can’t thank you enough,” the woman said. Keller said nothing, just smiled and rang off.
Driving north and east through Illinois, Keller went over it in his mind. He thought,Cressida says hello. Jesus, he couldn’t believe he’d said that. What did he think he was, some kind of avenging angel? A knight in shining armor?
Jesus.
Well, nothing all day but two doughnuts and a cup of coffee. That was as far as you had to look for an explanation. Got him irritable and angry, made him take it personally.
Still, he thought, after he’d turned in the car and bought his ticket, Lauderheim was unquestionably one thoroughgoing son of a bitch. No loss to anyone.
And he could still hear her saying she couldn’t thank him enough, and what was so wrong with enjoying that?
“I was thinking,” Andria said. “About looking up your name in phone books?”
“And?”
“At first I thought it was a way of looking for yourself. But then I had another idea. I think it’s a way of making sure there’s room for you.”
“Room for me?”
“Well,” she said, “if you’re not already there, then there’s room for you.”
Eight, nine days later, Dot called. Coincidentally enough, he was doing the crossword puzzle at the time.
“Keller,” she said, “guess what Mary Jones didn’t find in her mailbox?”
“That’s strange,” he said. “It’s still not here? Maybe you ought to call her. Maybe FedEx lost it and it’s in a back office somewhere.”
“I’m way ahead of you, boy. I called her.”
“And?”
“Line’s been disco
“I’m trying to think. You’re sure that-”
“I called back, got the same recording. ‘The number you have reached, blah blah blah, has been disco
“No.”
“The money doesn’t show up, and now the line’s been disco
“Maybe they arrested her,” he said. “Before she could send the money.”
“And stuck her in a cell and left her there? A quiet lady who writes about deaf rabbits?”
“Well-”
“Let me pull out and pass a few slow-moving vehicles,” she said. “What I did, I called Information in St. Louis.”
“ St. Louis?”
“ Webster Groves is a suburb of St. Louis.”
“ Webster Groves.”
“Where Cressida Wallace lives, according to that reference book in the library.”
“But she moved,” Keller said.
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But the Information operator had a listing for her. So I called the number. Guess what?”
“Come on, Dot.”
“A woman answered. No answering machine, no computer-generated horseshit. ‘Hello?’ ‘Cressida Wallace, please.’ ‘This is she.’ Well, it wasn’t the voice I remembered. ‘Is this Cressida Wallace, the author?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘The author ofHow the Bu
“And she said it was?”
“Well, how many Cressida Wallaces do you figure there are? I didn’t know what the hell to say next. I told her I was from the Muscatine paper, I wanted to know her impressions of the town. Keller, she didn’t know what I was talking about. I had to tell her what state Muscatine was in.”
“You’d think she’d have at least heard of it,” he said. “It’s not that far from St. Louis.”
“I don’t think she gets out much. I think she sits in her house and writes her stories. I found out this much. She’s lived in the same house in Webster Groves for thirty years.”
He took a deep breath. He said, “Where are you, Dot?”
“Where am I? I’m at an outdoor pay phone half a mile from the house. I’m getting rained on.”
“Go on home,” he said. “Give me an hour or so and I’ll call you back.”