He was ready when the knock came. The pizza and Coke came to twelve dollars and change, and he had a ten and a five in hand. “Just leave it outside the door,” he told the delivery man. “We’re, uh, a little on the informal side at the moment. Here you go, fifteen bucks, keep the change.”
He slid the bills under the door and watched them disappear. There was a peephole in the door, and he saw the delivery guy straighten up, hesitate for a long moment, and then walk away. Keller waited a couple of minutes, then opened the door and retrieved his meal.
He wasn’t hungry, but he made himself eat just as he’d made himself shower and shave, and for a similar reason, because who knew when he’d get the chance again? His face was appearing on every TV screen in America, and when the paper came out it would be there, too. It wasn’t a very good likeness, and he’d been blessed with a fairly generic face, with no outstanding features to grab onto, but when a few hundred million people had been exposed to that picture, it stood to reason that one of them would recognize him.
So it wouldn’t be a good idea to go to Denny’s, say, and treat himself to another of those patty melts.
No, he’d have to stick to food he could have delivered, and that would only work so long as he had a place for them to deliver it to. The only person who’d seen his face at the Days Inn was the clerk on duty when he’d registered, and that had been quick and easy and he doubted he’d made much of an impression. Desk clerks saw hundreds of people every day, and barely looked at them. He himself had only seen one desk clerk this trip, and had entirely forgotten what she looked like, so why shouldn’t she have forgotten him as completely?
On the other hand, suppose he were to see her picture, over and over and over. How long would it take before she started looking curiously familiar to him? How long before he remembered who she was?
He ate some of the pizza, drank half of the Coke. The four bullets were still on the bed where he’d put them, and he scooped them up and loaded them back into the gun, leaving an empty chamber under the firing pin. He tried the gun in a pocket, then slipped it under the waistband of his trousers, then put it in the suitcase. And if he needed it in a hurry? What was he going to do, open the suitcase for a quick draw? He got it out of the suitcase and returned it to its place under his waistband.
He didn’t want to watch television, but what else could he do? How else would he know when it was time to cut and run?
They kept showing his picture, and he began studying it, no longer interested in what his facial expression suggested or how good a likeness it was, but instead trying to figure out when and where they’d taken it. Not this past week, not here in Des Moines, because he was wearing a khaki poplin windbreaker in the photo, and he hadn’t even brought it along this trip, choosing a navy blue blazer instead. He recognized that windbreaker, he’d bought it from a Lands’ End catalog two years ago and, while there was nothing wrong with it, he hadn’t worn it much.
Albuquerque, he thought. He’d worn it to Albuquerque.
And had he been wearing that burnt-orange polo shirt? That’s what he seemed to be wearing in the photo, although it was a little hard to be sure of the color. Had he worn it when he did that other job for Al, when he’d shuttled a man named Warren Heggman out of this world and into the next?
Maybe, maybe not. That wasn’t the sort of thing he could remember. But he was pretty sure he’d worn the windbreaker to Albuquerque, and he’d have still had it on when he rang Heggman’s bell and punched Heggman’s ticket, because he hadn’t had time to unpack and change. He’d checked into three different rooms under three different names, but never left his bag in any of them, never even opened it until he was back in New York.
So they were setting him up even then. Taking his picture. They’d probably have done more if he’d given them more time, but he was in and out in nothing flat, so all they had was that one picture of him.
And they’d managed to give it to the authorities. With what sort of story? “I saw this man running away, and then he stopped and turned and I got this picture of him.” It might not make much sense, but a picture was a picture, and it was something to hand to the media so they could plaster it all over the public consciousness, and maybe it would lead to something.
Did the bastards know his name? They wouldn’t have learned it from Dot, and he couldn’t think how else they might have found it out. If he’d taken his time in Albuquerque it might have been different, they might have searched his room, might have even tailed him back to New York. He’d flown to Albuquerque via Dallas but took the long way home, through Los Angeles, and it didn’t seem likely anyone could have followed him.
If they didn’t know his name, or where he lived—
But then the TV caught his attention again, and he found out that they — the authorities, not Al and his hairy-eared associate — knew a little more than they had a few minutes ago.
They had a name to go with the photo.
“Leroy Montrose,” the announcer said. The screen showed his photograph, then cut to an exterior shot of the Laurel Inn, then to a shot of Room 204, where a forensics unit looked to be hard at work, dredging the carpet for traces of the elusive Mr. Montrose.
While they kept at it, the off-camera voice informed Keller that a member of the Laurel Inn’s staff had recognized the photo as that of a patron who had checked in several days earlier — a neat trick, in Keller’s opinion, since he’d never checked in at all, or even passed the desk. He’d gone straight to his room from the parking lot in back via a flight of outside stairs, and he’d left the same way. He’d never passed Go, never collected two hundred dollars, and had never spotted or been spotted by anyone who worked for the hotel, or anyone who was staying there, either.
But then anyone could make a phone call. Anyone could claim to be a hotel employee with a good memory. The saving grace, it seemed to Keller, was that it wasn’t going to lead anywhere. They wouldn’t find his fingerprints in Room 204, or his DNA, or indeed anything of his other than the cell phone he’d left under the mattress, and who knew if they’d even get that far? And if they did, so what? He’d never used the phone, and had wiped his prints from it, so where could it lead them?
Across the street, he thought.
Across the street to Denny’s, where he’d sat at a well-lighted table eating that silly sandwich and fries. He could have used his credit card at Denny’s, which would have made things a little bit easier for them, but he’d paid cash, and then what had he done?
He’d called a cab from the pay phone inside the restaurant. And waited inside until the cab pulled up. And got in it and told the driver to take him to the airport.
By now they’d be canvassing stores and restaurants in the immediate vicinity of the Laurel Inn. By now, or within a matter of minutes, they’d have shown his picture to the waitresses and cashiers in Denny’s, and somebody would have identified it, and somebody would have remembered that he’d called a taxi. They’d check all the cab companies — they were the government, for Christ’s sake, they were the state and local cops and the FBI, they had enough manpower on the case to check everything — and they’d find the driver and know he’d gone to the airport, and they’d hit the car rental desks, and if they’d checked with them earlier they’d check them again, and they’d have the credit card and driver’s license he’d used, and they’d lighten up on Leroy Montrose and start looking real hard for Holden Blankenship. That was the name they’d be flashing on TV screens and shouting out over the radio, and the name they’d try on motel clerks throughout the Greater Des Moines metropolitan area.
How long before they got to his Days Inn? How long before they kicked his door in?
By the time they did, he’d better be someplace else.
But where?