Of course he had bank accounts, savings and checking. Maybe as much as fifteen thousand in his savings account, plus a thousand or so in checking. By now theyd have frozen his accounts, and theyd be just waiting for him to get his picture taken trying to use his ATM card. He couldnt use it now, anyway, because he hadnt brought it with him, so theyd probably confiscated it by now.
No money, then. And no apartment, either. Hed lived for years in an apartment on First Avenue that hed bought at the very reasonable insiders price back when the Art Deco building went co-op, and the monthly maintenance charges didnt come to much, and hed known hed spend the rest of his days there until they carried him out feet first. It had always been his refuge, and now he didnt even dare go back there. It was out of his reach forever, along with his big-screen TV with TiVo and his comfortable chair and his bathroom with the pulsing showerhead and the desk he worked at and
Oh, God. His stamps.
17
And if the usher had spotted him? What was he going to do, shoot his way out of it? Not likely, hed stashed the SIG automatic in the glove compartment, and he was surprised to discover how vulnerable he felt without it. Hed only been carrying a gun for a few
days, and it would be hard to imagine a less perilous venue than a darkened movie house on a weekday afternoon, with fewer than two dozen people in attendance and their median age somewhere around seventy-seven. He should have felt reasonably secure in such a setting, but it was beginning to dawn on him that he was never going to feel secure again, no matter where he went.
When the second feature ended, it was time to go. Head down, Homer Simpson leading the way, he returned to his car, and the first thing he did, before he fastened his seat belt or put the key in the ignition, was restore the gun to its place beneath his waistband. The pressure in the small of his back, hed discovered, had become comforting.
It was dark when he left the movie theater, which had been pretty much the point of the visit. It was close to midnight by the time he was circling the blocks in his own neighborhood, trying to figure out what to do with the car. While his fantasy was still functioning, before the Times had come along to kick holes in it, hed known just how to dispose of the Sentra. Hed drive it to some still-disreputable part of Brooklyn or the Bronx, and there hed park it with the doors unlocked and the key in the ignition. Hed take the license plates off first, but he didnt think their absence would dissuade some neighborhood youth from taking the car out for a spin. Where it wound up after that, in the NYPD impound lot or some chop shop in Bensonhurst, was of no concern to Keller. Hed be back home, living the good life, and taking a cab for any distance too far to walk.
Right.
Now that New York had become about as safe for him as Des Moines, he was going to need a car to get out of it. So hed have to stow this car, and hed have to put it where it wouldnt get towed. That probably meant a parking lot, which in turn meant giving one more person a look at his face, and would probably entail passing a security camera or two. But it was hell finding a legal spot in his neighborhood, and even the illegal parking spaces were hard to come by. The U.N. Building was just a couple of blocks away, and cars immunized by their DPL plates against towing and ticketing slouched arrogantly alongside each bus stop and fire hydrant.
He passed one, a gleaming Lincoln Town Car, three times. It was blocking a hydrant, and it was doing all it could to block traffic at the same time, because the diplomat whod parked it had been undiplomatic enough to leave it a full three feet from the curb. The third time around, Keller double-parked next to it, opened his trunk, rummaged around in his tool kit, and found what he needed.
Minutes later he was rounding the corner, and on the next block he found a space that left the Sentra sticking far enough into a bus stop to warrant a ticket, or possibly a tow. But it wouldnt get either, not with the DPL tags covering his own plates.
Bring the suitcase along? No, what for?
He left it and started walking toward his building. And, with a little luck, his stamp collection.
Keller and his stamps had a complicated history.
Hed collected as a boy, which was hardly remarkable. Many boys of his generation had childhood stamp collections, especially quiet introspective types like Keller. A neighbor whose business involved a lot of correspondence with firms in Latin America had brought him a batch to get him started, and Keller had learned to soak them from their paper backing, dry them between sheets of paper towel, and mount them with hinges in the album his mother had bought him at Lamstons. Hed eventually found other sources of stamps, buying mixtures and packets at Gimbels stamp department, and getting inexpensive stamps on approval from a dealer halfway across the country, picking out what he wanted, returning the rest along with his payment, and waiting for the dealer to send the next selection. Hed kept this up for a few years, never spending more than a dollar or two a week, and sometimes forgetting to return the approvals for weeks on end because other pursuits intruded. Eventually he lost interest in the collection, and eventually his mother sold it, or gave it away, as there wasnt enough there to interest a dealer.