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When he was done eating he went to the restroom, and on his way back he
finally remembered to buy a paper. USA Today was seventy-five cents, and he
fed in three quarters before he noticed that the coin box right next to it
held that morning s New York Times. He pressed the coin return, got his three
quarters back, added a fourth quarter and bought the Times. On the way back to
the car he was already planning his approach to the paper. First the local and
national news, then the sports, and finally the crossword puzzle. What day was
it, anyway? Thursday? The puzzles increased daily in difficulty, from Monday,
not much of a challenge to a bright ten-year-old, to Saturday, which often
left Keller feeling slightly retarded. Thursday was usually just about right.
He could generally fill in a Thursday puzzle, all right, but it took some
thought.
He settled in behind the wheel, made himself comfortable, and started in on
the paper. He never did get to the crossword puzzle.
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The paper Keller bought every morning came in four sections, but the edition
the Times distributed outside of the immediate New York metropolitan area fit
into just two. There was an assassination story on the front page, dealing
primarily with its evolving political implications, and another story further
on about the hunt for the killer, which seemed to have trailed off in several
directions, none of which had thus far panned out. There was nothing about
Miller Remsen, which came as no surprise to Keller; even if they d found the
body, which seemed unlikely at this stage, the only way it would interest
anybody outside of Indiana would be if he d scrawled Catch me before I kill
more governors in lipstick on the mirror.
He almost missed the real story.
It was on the third page of the second section.  Arson, Murder Found in White
Plains Fire, the headline announced, and it was White Plains that caught his
eye. If it had been less specific and said Westchester instead he might have
skipped right past it, but he d been to White Plains countless times, first to
see the old man and then to see Dot. He d catch the train at Grand Central and
a cab from the station, and he d sit drinking iced tea on the wraparound front
porch of the big old house on Taunton Place, or in the cozy kitchen. So he
read about the fire in White Plains, and knew shortly that he wouldn t be
going there again, because there was no more house, no more porch, no more
kitchen. No more Dot.
Evidently there had been a story in yesterday s paper, which of course he
hadn t seen. But earlier  Monday, he thought, though it could have been
Sunday, it wasn t all that clear  earlier, he read, a fire had broken out in
the early morning hours, raging out of control before firefighters could
arrive on the scene, and consuming virtually all of the century-old house
right down to its foundation.
The fire had begun in the kitchen, which was where they d found the charred
body of the householder and sole resident, identified by neighbors as Dorothea
Harbison. Investigators had suspected arson immediately, attributing the
all-consuming fury of the blaze to the liberal use of an accelerant throughout
the residence. Initially it seemed at least possible that Ms. Harbison had set
the fire herself; neighbors described her as quiet and reclusive and thought
she d shown signs of depression in recent months.
Keller wanted to argue with them, whoever they were. Reclusive? She didn t
suffer fools or share her personal business with the world, but that didn t
make her some goddam cat lady, wearing the same old flannel nightgown until it
fell apart. Signs of depression? What signs of depression? She didn t go
around giggling, but he d never known her to be genuinely depressed, and she
was about as suicidal as Mary Fucking Poppins.
But there was no longer a question of suicide, the story continued, because a
medical examination revealed that the woman had been shot twice in the head
with a small-caliber handgun. The wounds were not consistent with suicide  no
kidding, thought Keller  nor was the handgun found at the scene, which led
investigators to conclude that the woman had been shot to death and the fire
set to conceal the crime.
 But it didn t work, did it? Keller said out loud.  Fucking idiots.
He forced himself to read the rest of it. The motive for the murder was
obscure, according to the Times, although police were not ready to rule out
robbery. An unnamed police source was able to identify Dorothea Harbison as
the former companion and caretaker of the late Giuseppe Ragone, aka Joe the
Dragon, during the long years of his retirement from the world of organized
crime.
As far as Keller knew, no one outside of the tabloid press had ever called the
old man Joe the Dragon. There were people who referred to him, though never to
his face, as Joey Rags, or the Ragman, because of the coincidence of his
surname combined with his one-time involvement with a Garment District
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trucking local. Keller himself never thought of him or referred to him as
anything other than the old man.
And the old man had never retired. He d let go of a lot of his interests
toward the end, but he was still brokering jobs and sending Keller out to take
care of them right up to the very end.
 As Joe the Dragon s live-in companion and presumed confidante, the unnamed
source went on,  Harbison would have been privy to a lot of O.C. information.
Maybe someone was afraid she d tell what she knew. Ragone s been gone a long
time, but what is it they say? Sooner or later the chickens come home to
roost.
It was as pointless as anything he might have done, but he couldn t help
himself. He dropped coins in a pay phone and dialed Dot s number.
Coo-wheeeet!
Not a working number. Well, that was the truth, wasn t it? Burn a house to the
ground and you had to expect an interruption in telephone service.
He got his quarters back and used them to call his own phone number, half
expecting the same coo-wheeeet and the same recording. Instead he got a ring.
His machine was set to pick up after two rings if he had messages and after
four if he didn t, so that he could retrieve them from a distance while
avoiding the toll if there were none to retrieve. He was surprised when it
rang a third time, he d expected messages after this long an absence, and he
was even more surprised when the phone went on to ring a fourth and a fifth
and a sixth time, and might have gone on ringing forever if he hadn t ended
the connection.
Why would it do that? He didn t have call-waiting, so it couldn t be that the
machine was already handling a call. If that happened he d just get a busy
signal.
He wondered why he was even bothering to dig his quarters out of the coin
return chute. Who would he ever have occasion to call?
It was over, he saw now. That s what he d been on the verge of realizing, that
was the nasty little thought he d kept at bay. And the pipe dream that had
sustained him all the way back from Iowa, the mad fantasy that everything
would be peaches and cream the minute he got back to his own apartment, was
now so clearly impossible he wondered how he d ever been dim enough to
entertain it, let alone take it as gospel. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]