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On the other hand, when he was working with his stamps, he was always entirely
absorbed in what he was doing. He was expending considerable concentration on
what was essentially an unimportant task, and that seemed to be something his
spirit required. When he was in a bad mood, his stamps got him out of it. When
he was anxious or irritable, his stamps took him to another realm where the
anxiety or irritation ceased to matter. When the world seemed mad and out of
control, his stamps provided a more orderly sphere where serenity ruled and
logic prevailed.
If he wasn t in the mood, the stamps could wait; if he was called out of town,
he knew they d be there when he got back. They weren t pets that had to be fed
and walked on a regular schedule, or plants that needed to be watered. They
demanded his entire and absolute attention, but only when he had it to give.
He wondered sometimes if he was spending too much money on his collection, and
perhaps he was, but his bills were always paid and he wasn t carrying any
debt, and he d somehow managed to accumulate two and a half million dollars in
investments, so why shouldn t he spend what he wanted to on stamps?
Besides, decent philatelic material always increased in value over time. You
couldn t buy it one day and sell it the next and expect to come out ahead, but
after you d owned it awhile it would have appreciated enough to cover the
dealer s markup. And what other pastime worked that way? If you owned a boat,
if you raced cars, if you went on safari, how much of what you spent could you
expect to get back? What, for that matter, was your net return on bottles of
Cristal and lines of cocaine?
And so he d returned to New York for his stamps. There was nothing else to
come back for, and ample reason to stay away. If he was a person of interest
to the police, in addition to entering his apartment and sealing his bank
accounts, they might very well have posted somebody to watch the place on the
slim chance that he d be fool enough to return.
If the cops weren t waiting for him, what about Call-Me-Al? The people who d
pulled the strings in Des Moines weren t willing to sit back and let nature
take its course. They d proved that in White Plains, because it wasn t the old
man s chickens that had come home to roost, it was the turkeys on Al s team
who d shot Dot dead and burned the place down around her.
They might have already known his name, and where he lived. If not, they d
have asked Dot, and he could only hope she d answered right away, and that two
quick bullets in the brain were all the punishment she d been forced to
endure. Because she d have talked sooner or later, anyone would, and in this
case sooner was better than later.
But maybe nobody had the place staked out, not the cops and not Al s boys,
either. Maybe all he had to do was figure out a way in and out without being
spotted by the doorman.
It would probably take more than one trip, though. His collection was housed
in ten good-sized albums, and the best plan he could come up with, sitting in
the movie house in East Stroudsburg with his eyes on the screen, was to load
up the oversize wheeled duffel that he d bought on QVC a few years ago. He had
never used it, it held far more stuff than he ever wanted to drag on any trip,
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business or pleasure, but the pitchman on the shopping channel had caught him
at just the right moment, and before he knew what was happening he d picked up
the phone and bought the damn thing.
You could get four albums in it for sure, and possibly five, and the handle
and wheels would enable him to get it to the car. Dump the albums in the
trunk, go back for another load two trips might do it, or three at the most.
There was some cash in the house, too, unless someone had found it by now. Not
a fortune, just an emergency fund of somewhere between one and two thousand
dollars. If this didn t constitute an emergency he didn t know what did, and
he could definitely use the cash, but it wouldn t have been enough to draw him
back to the city, not if it had been ten or twenty times as much as it was.
The stamp collection was something else. He d lost his first collection all
those years ago. He didn t want to lose this one.
18
If anyone was watching the place, Keller couldn t spot him. He spent a full
half-hour looking and never saw anybody suspicious. Nor could he find any
route into his building that didn t lead past the doorman. The closest thing
to a possibility would involve finding a six-foot ladder somewhere and using
it to reach the fire escape in the rear, from which he might be able to break
into one of his fellow tenants apartments. He d have to be awfully lucky to
pick an empty apartment, and even if he did, how was he going to get back down
the fire escape with a king-size suitcase loaded with stamp albums?
The hell with it. The first thing he did was take off the Homer Simpson cap,
which was all wrong for what he had in mind. He might need Homer soon enough,
so he didn t just toss the cap but folded it as best he could and put it in
his pocket. Then he crossed the street, shoulders back, arms swinging slightly
at his sides, and walked right up to the doorman and into the lobby.
Evening, Neil, he said as he entered.
Evening, Mr. Keller, the doorman said, and Keller saw his blue eyes widen.
He gave the fellow a quick smile. Neil, he said, I bet I ve had a few
visitors, haven t I?
Uh
Nothing to worry about, Keller assured him. Nothing that won t get itself
straightened out in a day or two, but right now it adds up to a lot of
aggravation for me and a batch of other people. He dipped a hand into his
breast pocket, where he d put aside Miller Remsen s two fifties. I have to
see to a few things, he said, palming the folded bills into Neil s hand, and
nobody needs to know I was here, if you follow me.
There was nothing like the air of self-assurance, especially when it was
coupled with a hundred dollars. Sure, and I never saw you, sir, said Neil,
with that slight Irish lilt to his speech that was rarely present outside of
moments like this one.
He rode up in the elevator, wondering if there d be one of those seals on his
door, proclaiming it a crime scene. But there was nothing like that, not even
a paper band assuring him that the apartment had been sanitized for his
protection. Nor had anyone changed the locks; he used his key and the door
opened. Things were not as he d left them, he saw that right away, but he
didn t waste time on any of the unimportant stuff. He went straight to the
bookcase where he kept his stamps.
19
Gone, all of them.
It wasn t as though it took him entirely by surprise. He d known there was a
good possibility he d come home to find his stamps missing, carried away by
one or another of his visitors. The cops might very well have confiscated the
stamps, but he thought it was more likely that Al, or whoever Al dispatched,
had spotted the albums and knew enough about the market in collectibles to
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recognize their value. Whoever took them would be lucky to realize ten cents
on the dollar, but even so he might regard it as worth risking a hernia to
haul the ten big books out of there and find a stamp dealer who wasn t too
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