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The answering h his drawers and closets, and the contents of several dresser drawers had been dumped out, but as far as he could s, shirts and socks and underwear, a pair of sneakers, things he o next Now, he thought, sta duffel bag, and he went to the closet where he kept it and the daht The bastards had needed so to hold the sta because they’d only have found out about the sta until they found the duffel

He’d have been unable to fill it, anyway A shopping bag held what little he felt like taking

He set the bag down and found a small screwdriver in the hardware drawer in the kitchen, used it to reo, before Kellerfixture in the bedroom, but a previous tenant had remodeled it out of existence The wall switch re, a fact Keller de the thing to no purpose

When he bought the apartment and became a property owner instead of a tenant, it seemed to him that some sort of home improvement was in order toto stuff the cavity with steel wool, spackle over it, and paint it to nized it for the ideal hiding place it was, and it had held his eency cash fund ever since

The money was still there, just over twelve hundred dollars He replaced the switch plate, wondering why he asting ti back to this apart the dresser drawers, or straightening the erprints It was his apartment, he’d lived in it for years, and his prints were all over it, and what difference did itot to the lobby, Neil was standing on the sidewalk to the left of the entrance, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes ai across the street Keller looked, and the only lighted s had their shades drawn, so it was hard to guess as over there to hold such interest for the door, it hat he was taking care not to look at, which in this case was Keller

Sure, Officer, and I never set eyes on the man

The man’s stance didn’t invite speech, so Keller passed hi in one hand, feeling the pressure of the SIG Sauer in the small of his back He walked to the corner and put on his Homer Simpson cap even as he disappeared forever from Neil’s field of vision

On the next block, he stopped for atheir preparations for the reer shielded by its DPL plates, or any plates at all, and being at once too far froht in front of a hydrant, it was an outstanding candidate for a tow, and would soon be on its way to the iladdened Keller beyond all reason There was, he knew, a Ger; it h the pain of another, and Keller didn’t suppose it was the noblest of e broadly all the way to his car, and just o he would have deeain Schadenfreude, he could only conclude, was better than no Freude at all

The bridge and tunnel tolls were only collected fro Manhattan It cost you six dollars to coents required to collect the ured there was a further underpinning of logic to the sche bad city, how h money left to buy their way out?

What it et a look at his face He left the city via the Lincoln Tunnel and stopped at the first convenient place on the Jersey side to unfasten the DPL tags, which could draelcome attention outside of the city He didn’t foresee any further use for them, but it seemed a waste to toss them, and he put them in the trunk, next to the spare tire

He wondered if the Lincoln’s oould ever be reunited with his car, and if its disappearance ht touch off an international incident Maybe there’d be so about it in the papers

He drove at first with no destination in , all he could think of was the Gujarati ht "Me again," he’d say, and the slietup would check him in with as little interest as she’d shown the first time But could he even find the place? It was off Route 80, he knew that ot to it, but--

But it was a bad idea, he realized

It was familiarity that made it attractive He’d stayed there once, without incident, and that led hiirl who’d paid so little attention to hiraph oncea little bell, barely more audible than the rustle of that beaded curtain She wouldn’t bother to call the authorities, after all the man had checked out by then, and maybe she only fancied his reseht o