He made the
call. No, todays no good, he was told. Give us a call first thing tomorrow morning.
And hed done just that, only to get the same message yet again. Tomorrow, the man told him. Tomorrows a sure bet. In fact tomorrow morning you dont even have to check with us, okay? Because its all set up. Anytime tomorrow, morning or afternoon, you can just go and do what you gotta do.
Were all set for tomorrow, he told Dot.
High time.
You said it. Ill be glad to get back.
Back to your own bed.
The beds okay. Tell you the truth, its better than my own. Im overdue for a new mattress.
The things you dont know about a person.
What I miss, he said, is my TV.
Fifty-inch, hi-def, plasma, flat panel. Did I forget anything?
No, and neither did the manufacturer. Its just about perfect.
Youve talked so much about the damn thing Im gonna have to get one myself. I feel for you, Keller, having to make do with motel TV.
Whats aggravating, he said, is theres no TiVo.
Now there I have to agree with you, she said. TiVo changed my life. And there you are, poor baby, stuck in Des Moines with all the commercials you used to be able to speed through.
And I cant pause the thing when I go to the bathroom, or back up when theres a line of dialogue I missed, and
For Gods sake, hurry up and come home, she said, or Im gonna have to tell Al you need a hardship bonus.
He rang off and started walking over to the TV, then stopped himself. Hed looked up stamp dealers in the Yellow Pages the previous afternoon, and he checked again, and called James McCue to make sure he was open for business. No reason to pack the suitcase this time, as he knew hed be coming back to the motel, so all hed done was grab up his Scott catalog and his tongs and head out the door.
That was what, a couple of hours ago? Now the governor of Ohio was dead, and he had to do something and wasnt sure what. If hed packed his bag and wiped his room down, he wouldnt have to go back to it. But hed probably be going there anyway, because where else could he go?
4
Inside, he turned on the television set. The assassination of Governor Longford was all over the dial, unless you wanted to watch QVC or the Food Channel. Keller chose CNN and heard a couple of experts trying to estimate the likelihood of riots in Cleveland. The weather, one of them pointed out, was a significant variable. Heat and humidity added up to riot weather, she said, while a cold snap and rain kept folks indoors.
That was sort of interesting, but Keller, stuck in Des Moines, couldnt bring himself to care about the weather in Cleveland. He hung in there while they talked the subject to death, but hit the Mute button in a hurry when they rang in a Nexium commercial.
At least the remote had a Mute button. You couldnt fast-forward, you couldnt pause, and you couldnt reverse, but the one thing you could do was make the damn thing shut up, and he did.
Should he pack?
He wasnt going to try leaving Des Moines, not yet. Whether all of this was coincidence or something a good deal more sinister, hed be safer holed up than running around in the open. He hadnt done anything, not even what hed come here to do, but that wouldnt matter to anybody who picked him up with bogus ID and an unregistered handgun just a matter of miles from where Longford had been shot dead.
By two shots from a handgun thats what someone had been saying, just before they got the weather report from Cleveland, and it just now registered. An unknown assailant brandishing a handgun whod fired twice at point-blank range and escaped how, for Gods sake? into the crowd.
A Glock, he thought. A Glock automatic, the gun hed been offered and turned down. The gun hed handled.
He could remember the way the grip had fit his hand. And how hed turned the gun over in his hands, deliberating, before handing it back to the man with the hairy ears. Hed be willing to bet that was the gun theyd used, and that it still had his prints on it. Thats why theyd offered him two guns, and the important gun wasnt the one hed chosen, it was the one hed touched and rejected.
Well, that really iced the cupcake. All they had to do was pick him up for anything at all, really and he was finished. Theyd match his prints to the prints on the Glock, and what could he possibly say?
I touched the gun, but I went for the revolver instead, because automatics tend to jam, although this one evidently didnt. And I didnt want to shoot a governor with it, just some mope weeding his lawn, and I never did shoot anybody, so what difference does it make?
Yeah, right.
If his prints were on file, if hed ever been arrested or ever held a government job, if hed ever done any of the innumerable things that move them to ink your fingers and record your prints, he wouldnt stand a chance. But hed led a charmed life thus far, so any prints on the Glock would lead them nowhere for the time being. Until they got their hands on him and got his hands on an ink pad, at which point it was pretty much all over.