He had a dead mans gun pressing into the small of his back and a dead mans money and credit card in his pocket, and hed filled his tank with a dead mans gas. And now he had a dead mans baseball cap on his head.
It was a curious development, all in all. But now it was beginning to look as though he might make it back to New York after all.
The drive-up window at Wendys was even less threatening than the one at Burger King. He ordered a couple of burgers and a green salad, and ate them in the car a few miles down the road. He drove through the rest of Indiana and all the way through Ohio and a couple of miles of West Virginia, and he was across another state line and into Pennsylvania before he needed to stop for gas. He picked a big truck stop, pulled up to a self-service pump, and used Remsens credit card.
There was a moment when he realized another motorist was looking at him with interest, and he didnt know what he would do; there were people all over the place, and he couldnt shoot the guy and take off. He looked back at him, and the fellow he couldnt have been more than twenty-five gave him a big grin and a thumbs-up.
Why, for Gods sake?
Man, Homers the bomb, the guy said, and Keller realized hed been looking not at his face but at his baseball cap, and was expressing his approval of Homer Simpson, or endorsing Homers enthusiasm for beer, or whatever.
Until that moment Keller had been having mixed feelings about the cap. It unquestionably served to render him less identifiable, which was good, but at the same time it drew attention all by itself, which wasnt. A John Deere cap, a Bud Light cap, a Dallas Cowboys cap any of those would have offered a degree of invisibility which Homer, embroidered in Day-Glo yellow on a royal blue field, did not begin to provide. Hed even thought about cutting the threads and picking out the embroidery, taking Homer and his mug of suds out of the picture altogether.
But now he was beginning to be just as glad hed held off. Homer drew attention, as hed feared he might, but in this instance hed
drawn that attention not to Kellers face but away from it. The more people noticed Homer, the less attention they paid to Keller. He was just a dude with Homer on his cap, and hed be sending out the subliminal message that he was safe and unthreatening, because how dangerous was the sort of yokel whod walk around with Homer Simpson an inch or two north of his eyebrows?
14
Before his encounter with Remsen, hed have had a more compelling reason to pick I-80. It was free in Pennsylvania, while the Pennsylvania Turnpike was a toll road. When hed been hoping to stretch his gas money so that it would get him home, it was worth driving out of ones way to escape a highway toll. But now he had money in his pocket, and the worst thing you could say about a toll booth was that it would give one more person a quick look at his face.
It took him longer than hed expected to get to the interstate, and he was glad when a rest area provided a chance to stop. He needed a restroom, and while he was there he checked his reflection in the mirror and couldnt take his eyes off Homer Simpson. Did the image have to be so bright? Maybe he could rub a little dirt on it, tone it down some.
He left it alone, had a look at the map mounted on the wall outside, then returned to his car and sat there, trying to decide if he could make it all the way back to the city in one shot. He probably had enough gas, though there was no point in taking the chance of running out, say, in the middle of the George Washington Bridge, not when Miller Remsen was ready and willing to fill up the tank for him.
What he had to decide was whether to spend another night on the road. A few hours in a real bed had spoiled him, and the idea of trying to sleep in the car was unappealing now. How far was he from the city? Seven, eight hours? More, with stops for gas and food?
At a rough estimate, he calculated that hed hit the city around three or four in the morning if he drove straight through. That might not be a bad time to turn up at his apartment. Thered be fewer people on the streets, and the ones who were out and about at that hour were apt to be too drunk to notice him, or to remember if they did.
A line of thought tried to intrude, and his mind deliberately pushed it aside
If he drove straight through, he thought, hed arrive tired and worn out, and was that the best way to land on his own doorstep? Hed want to crawl into bed the minute he got through the door, and he wouldnt be able to, because hed have tons of things to do. Never mind the mail, which always piled up when he took a trip. Thered be plenty of other things demanding his immediate attention. There always were.
That thought again, and again he never let himself become entirely conscious of it, warding it off almost without effort.
He switched on the radio for the first time since hed left Remsens place, but he was in the mountains now and the reception was bad. The only station he could pick up was playing music, and the static was so heavy he couldnt even tell what kind of music it was.