Keller 1 - Hit Man by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-03-12T06:00:00+00:00

‘‘The name of the firm is Loud & Clear Software,’’

she said. ‘‘On Tyler Boulevard just beyond Five Mile Road. He’s a computer programmer or technician, something like that.’’

‘‘That’s how he keeps getting your phone number,’’ Keller said.

‘‘I beg your pardon?’’

‘‘He doesn’t need a confederate at the phone company. If he knows his way around computers, he can hack his way into the phone company system and get unlisted numbers that way.’’

‘‘It’s possible to do that?’’

‘‘So they tell me.’’

‘‘Well, I’m hopelessly old-fashioned,’’ she said. ‘‘I still do all my writing on a typewriter. But it’s an electric typewriter, at least.’’

He had the name, the address, the car, and a pre-cise description. Did he need anything else? He couldn’t think of anything.

‘‘This probably won’t take long,’’ he said.

He found Tyler Boulevard, found Five Mile Road, found Loud & Clear Software. The company occupied a squat concrete-block building with its own little parking lot. There were ten or a dozen cars in the lot, many of them Japanese, two of them white.

H I T

M A N

161

No white Subaru squareback, no plate number to match the one Cressida Wallace had given him.

If Stephen Lauderheim wasn’t working today, maybe he was stalking. Keller drove back into town and got directions to Fairview Avenue. He found it in a pleasant neighborhood of prewar houses and big shade trees. Driving slowly past number 411, he looked around unsuccessfully for a white Subaru, then circled the block and parked just down the street from Cressida Wallace’s house. It was a sprawling structure, three stories tall, with over-grown shrubbery obscuring the lower half of the first-floor windows. A light burned in a window on the third floor, and Keller decided that was where Cressida was, typing up happy and instructive tales of woodland creatures on her electric typewriter.

He had lunch and drove back to Loud & Clear.

No white Subaru. He hung around for a while, found his way to Fairview Avenue again. No white Subaru, and no light on the third floor. He returned to his motel.

That night there was a movie he wanted to see on HBO, but the channel wasn’t available on his motel TV. He was irritated, and thought about moving to another motel a few hundred yards down the road, where the signboard promised HBO, as well as wa-terbeds in selected units. He decided that was ridiculous, and that he was mature enough to postpone gratification in this area, even as he had to postpone the gratification of dispatching Stephen Lauderheim and getting the hell out of Muscatine.

He leafed through the phone book, looking for Lauderheim. There was no listing, which didn’t surprise him. He tried Cressida Wallace, knowing she 162

L A W R E N C E

B L O C K

wouldn’t be listed. There were several Wallaces, but none on Fairview and none named Cressida.

There were Kellers, one of them with the initial J, another with the initials JD. Either one could be John.

He did that sometimes. Looked up his name in the phone books of strange cities, as if he might actually find himself there.

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