He called from a pay phone, even though it didn’t matter, and he was careful not to overreact when Dot told him to come home, the mission was aborted.
“You told me I had all the time in the world,” he said. “If I’d known the guy was in such a rush-”
“Keller,” she said, “it’s a good thing you waited. What he did, he changed his mind.”
“He changed his mind?”
“It used to be a woman’s prerogative,” Dot said, “but now we’ve got equality between the sexes, so that means anyone can do it. It works out fine because we’re getting paid in full. So kick the dust of Texas off your feet and come on home.”
“I’ll do that,” he said, “but I may hang out here for a few more days.”
“Oh?”
“Or even a week,” he said. “It’s a pretty nice town.”
“Don’t tell me you’re itching to move there, Keller. We’ve been through this before.”
“Nothing like that,” he said, “but there’s this girl I met.”
“Oh, Keller.”
“Well, she’s nice,” he said. “And if I’m off the job there’s no reason not to have a date or two with her, is there?”
“As long as you don’t decide to move in.”
“She’s not that nice,” he said, and Dot laughed and told him not to change.
He hung up and drove around and found a movie he’d been meaning to see. The next morning he packed and checked out of his hotel.
He drove across town and got a room on the motel strip, paying cash for four nights in advance and registering as J. D. Smith from Los Angeles.
There was no girl he’d met, no girl he wanted to meet. But it wasn’t time to go home yet.
He had unfinished business, and four days should give him time to do it. Time for Wallace Garrity to get used to the idea of not feeling those imaginary crosshairs on his shoulder blades.
But not so much time that the pain would be too much to bear.
And, sometime in those four days, Keller would give him a gift. If he could, he’d make it look natural-a heart attack, say, or an accident. In any event it would be swift and without warning, and as close as he could make it to painless.
And it would be unexpected. Garrity would never see it coming.
Keller frowned, trying to figure out how he would manage it. It would be a lot trickier than the task that had drawn him to town originally, but he’d brought it on himself. Getting involved, fishing the boy out of the pool. He’d interfered with the natural order of things. He was under an obligation.
It was the least he could do.
9 Keller's Last Refuge
K eller, reaching fora red carnation, paused to finger one of the green ones. Kelly green it was, and vivid. Maybe it was an autumnal phenomenon, he thought. The leaves turned red and gold, the flowers turned green.
“It’s dyed,” said the florist, reading his mind. “They started dyeing them for St. Patrick’s Day, and that’s when I sell the most of them, but they caught on in a small way year-round. Would you like to wear one?”
Would he? Keller found himself weighing the move, then reminded himself it wasn’t an option. “No,” he said. “It has to be red.”
“I quite agree,” the little man said, selecting one of the blood-red blooms. “I’m a traditionalist myself. Green flowers. Why, how could the bees tell the blooms from the foliage?”
Keller said it was a good question.
“And here’s another. Shall we lay itacross the buttonhole and pin it to the lapel, or shall we insert itinto the buttonhole?”
It was a poser, all right. Keller asked the man for his recommendation.
“It’s controversial,” the florist said. “But I look at it this way. Whyhave a buttonhole if you’re not going touse it?”
Keller, suit pressed and shoes shined and a red carnation in his lapel, boarded the Metroliner at Penn Station. He’d picked up a copy ofGQ at a newsstand in the station, and he made it last all the way to Washington. Now and then his eyes strayed from the page to his boutonniere.
It would have been nice to know where the magazine stood on the buttonhole issue, but they had nothing to say on the subject. According to the florist, who admittedly had a small stake in the matter, Keller had nothing to worry about.
“Not every man can wear a flower,” the man had told him. “On one it will look frivolous, on another foppish. But with you-”
“It looks okay?”
“More than okay,” the man said. “You wear it with a certain flair. Or dare I say panache?”
Panache, Keller thought.
Panache had not been the object. Keller was just following directions. Wear a particular flower, board a particular train, stand in front of the B. Dalton bookstore in Union Station with a particular magazine until the client-a particular man himself, from the sound of it-took the opportunity to make contact.
It struck Keller as a pretty Mickey Mouse way to do things, and in the old days the old man would have shot it down. But the old man wasn’t himself these days, and something like this, with props and recognition signals, was the least of it.
“Wear the flower,” Dot had told him in the kitchen of the big old house in White Plains. “Wear the flower, carry the magazine-”
“Tote the barge, lift the bale… ”
“-and do the job, Keller. At least he’s not turning everything down. What’s wrong with a flower, anyway? Don’t tell me you’ve got Thoreau on the brain.”
“Thoreau?”