Yes, it was a risk.
On the other hand, could he really drive all the way to New Orleans, then turn around and drive out again, only to sustain himself with prefabricated burgers and fries from
yet another soul-deadening fast-food joint? That hadnt been so bad in Tie Plant, Mississippi, or White Pine, Tennessee, where ones choices were limited, but Keller had been in New Orleans a few times over the years, and he could still remember the beignets and chicory coffee at Café du Monde. And that was just the tip of the Tabasco bottle could he really leave this city without a bowl of gumbo, or a plate of red beans and rice, or an oyster poboy sandwich, or jambalaya, or crawfish étouffée, or any of the spectacular dishes you could get virtually anywhere in New Orleans, and nowhere else in the world?
Of course he could. He could walk away from all of it or drive away, actually but he wasnt sure it would be a good idea.
Over the years, when he was working for the old man, hed been dispatched on several occasions to deal with men whod gone into hiding, generally as part of the governments Witness Protection Program. Furnished with new identities and set up in a new environment, all these individuals had needed to do was keep a low profile and stay out of the limelight.
One of them was the man Keller had pursued to Roseburg, Oregon, and up until then he was a Witness Protection Program success story, a client who had adapted readily to his new life in the Pacific Northwest. Hed been an accountant originally, with no criminal background, and had wound up knowing too much and, when the feds leaned on him, telling what he knew. But he remained a mild-mannered accountant at heart, and hed done just fine in Roseburg, running a quick-print franchise and mowing his front lawn every Saturday morning, and could have gone on that way forever if someone hadnt happened to recognize him on an ill-advised family outing in San Francisco. But someone did, and Keller came calling, and that was that.
The others, however, werent constitutionally capable of settling forever into the quiet life the federal agents arranged for them. One couldnt stay away from the racetrack, and another became inexplicably homesick for Elizabeth, New Jersey. Another got drunk periodically and told his business to strangers, and it didnt take too long for him to pick the wrong stranger. And then there was the paragon whod turned federal witness to get out from under a child molestation charge; spirited away to Hays, Kansas, hed been picked up for loitering outside a school playground in Topeka. The feds managed to get the charges dropped, but not before the word got back east, and Keller was scouting around, looking for the guy, when he got arrested right there in Hays for willful abduction and unnatural sexual conduct with a minor. The old man shook his head and said something about doing the world a favor; then he called Keller back to New York, having arranged for a fellow prisoner to strangle the pervert in his cell.
Boredom was the enemy, and if the new life you created for yourself was unendurably monotonous, how could you stay with it?
So hed treat himself to a day in New Orleans. A few hours, anyway. He wouldnt get drunk and run his mouth, wouldnt throw his money around at the racetrack or Harrahs casino, wouldnt haunt schoolyards or carouse on Bourbon Street. A couple of meals, a walk through streets shaded by live oaks. Then back in the car and back to the highway, and New Orleans, like everything else, could slip from the present into the past.
Knowing it couldnt last, knowing one afternoon was all hed have in New Orleans, Keller made the most of it. He walked down streets at random, taking in the older homes, some of them virtual mansions, others quite modest. They all looked good to him, and he did something he hadnt done in years, let himself imagine what it would be like to live here, what sort of life he might lead if he bought one of these houses and spent the rest of his days in and around it. It wasnt a terribly exotic fantasy, and a month ago he could have achieved it readily enough. But a month ago all hed wanted to do was live out his days in New York, and that was out of the question, and so was this. His net worth was now limited to the cash in his pocket and five Swedish stamps he couldnt sell, and he could no more afford to buy one of these houses than he could risk giving up the highway and settling down.
Still, it was something for his mind to play with while he walked these streets and looked at these houses. Hed want one with an upstairs porch, he decided. He could easily picture himself sitting in a white wooden rocking chair on just such a porch, looking out over the street, maybe sipping at a glass of what?
Iced tea?
He pushed aside thoughts of Dot her porch, her iced tea and walked on. On St. Charles Avenue, where the streetcar used to run in the days before Katrina, he stopped at one small restaurant
for a cup of coffee and a bowl of seafood gumbo. He sat in a booth, and the waitress who brought him his meal commented cheerfully on his Homer Simpson cap. After shed left his table he took the cap off and set it on the seat beside him. He was tiring of Homer, and wondered if the cap had outlived its usefulness. Kellers picture had stopped showing up on the newscasts, and the papers had tired of running it, so maybe his face was less likely now to set off alarms in peoples head. But they still noticed Homer, you couldnt help noticing Homer, and after theyd noticed the vivid yellow embroidery, maybe their eyes would be drawn to a face theyd otherwise glide right past.