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But, however ht prefer to think otherwise, New York was part of America New Yorkers watched the saht be better thantheir own business, and it was not uncommon for an apartment dweller to be unable to identify people in his own building by name, but that hardlyaround them

His picture had been all over TV and in every newspaper with the possible exception of Linn’s Staht even turn up there, if Jaht those Swedish reprints from him) How many people lived within a block or two of Keller? How , or had run into hi life he’d been idealizing just o?

That life to which he could never return

He went through the paper again, more carefully this time, and in a story he’d skimmed earlier he found evidence that at least one of Keller’s neighbors had noticed his rese on the itive, the journalist alluded to an unnamed Turtle Bay resident who’d become a person of interest to the police "only because of some apparent uncertainty as to the nature of his occupation, and his frequent trips out of town"

That would be enough to warrant a visit Would they turn up anything incri in his apart They’d find his laptop computer, and they’d turn his hard drive inside and out, but back when he bought the thing he’d known that eer than uraniuh the ether would leave a trail that could outlive the sender He and Dot had never sent each other an email, and vowed they never would

Well, that would be an easy promise to keep, wouldn’t it?

He’d used his co with dealers, surfing for infor in auctions He’d checked airline websites before his flight to Des Moines, but he hadn’t bought his ticket online because he was going to be flying as Holden Blankenship So he’d made the reservation over the phone, and there wouldn’t be any record of it on his computer

Could they tell what sites he’d visited, and when? He wasn’t sure, but figured the guiding principle -- that when it ca -- probably applied One thing he was pretty sure they could do was pull up his phone records and establish that he’d called an airline a day or two before Blankenship flew to Des Moines, but at this point it didn’t matter, at this point none of it ed to attract their attention, and that was all it took He’d coht, and noas in it, and that was the end of it

The end of John Paul Keller If he stayed alive, which seemed very iffy indeed, it would have to be somewhere else, and under some other name He wouldn’t miss the first two names; hardly anyone had ever used them, and he’d been called Keller by just about everybody since boyhood That ho he was, and when he filled soht they stood for Just Plain Keller

He couldn’t be Keller anyht about it, he realized that everything in Keller’s life was already gone, so what difference could itwith it?

Thein excess of two and a half million dollars in stocks and bonds, all of it in an Aed by Dot The money would still be there, it wouldn’t vanish with her death, but it ood it would do him He had no idea what nao about accessing it

Of course he had bank accounts, savings and checking Maybe as s account, plus a thousand or so in checking By now they’d have frozen his accounts, and they’d be just waiting for hi to use his ATM card He couldn’t use it now, anyway, because he hadn’t brought it with him, so they’d probably confiscated it by now

No money, then And no apartment, either He’d lived for years in an apartht at the very reasonable insider’s price back when the Art Deco building went co-op, and the es didn’t come to much, and he’d known he’d spend the rest of his days there until they carried hie, and now he didn’t even dare go back there It was out of his reach forever, along with his big-screen TV with TiVo and his co showerhead and the desk he worked at and--

Oh, God His stamps

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