Seaver sat in the chair, helpless.
Foley scribbled on the pad at his elbow. “Give this to Eddie downstairs.” He tore off the sheet and held it out.
Seaver glanced at the small note. “Give Seaver whatever he wants. M.F.” Seaver stood up. He took a step, then paused and looked at the three men. He knew that there must be an answer, but he could not bring his mind to stop racing long enough to concentrate and find it.
“Good luck,” said Buckley. His cheeks constricted to bring up the corners of his lips in a false smile, then went slack again.
“Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out,” Salateri muttered.
11
Tonight was a sort of birthday, because David Keller was three months old. He had spent the time cautiously, patiently finding out who that was. He had spent the previous thirty-three years acquiring a working knowledge of Pete Hatcher, and now most of that work had been wasted. Any quality that David Keller shared with Pete Hatcher would probably get him killed. That was the most distinctive characteristic that David Keller had been able to establish about himself, and it determined all of the others. David Keller was a suspicious, fearful person. He lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor of an old brick building in downtown Denver that had no elevator and overlooked a triangle of grass that wasn’t big enough to be called a park. It looked like a spot where the surveyors had not been able to make three roads intersect and had to leave a scrap.
In the evening, when David Keller cooked his simple dinner and washed the dishes at the small, scratched porcelain sink, he could look out the window, across the tops of trees, and see the side of a topless bar with a turntable contraption over the door that had a female mannequin dressed in a sequined outfit revolving around and around like a mechanical dervish. The apartment was small and dark, built at a time when lumber must have been cheap, because everything was old, varnished wood—a built-in sideboard in the dining room and cabinets in the living room and, everywhere, ten-inch baseboards.
David Keller lived in his little apartment like a man holding his breath under water. In the two conversations that Pete Hatcher had with Jane Whitefield he had memorized a few lessons that David Keller now followed mechanically. “Most people who don’t make it get caught right away,” she had said. “If you can put a break in the trail that lasts three months, they won’t have much to work with, and there won’t be as many people looking.”
He had asked, “If I last for three months I’ll be okay?” and she had shaken her head. “I’m just saying, if you’re going to make a mistake, don’t do it before then.” Pete Hatcher had been the kind of person who had wanted to know all of the limits—where can I go and what can I do?—but David Keller was not.
David Keller carried the limits in his mind with a shuddering sense of awe that he should ever have considered going near them. It was lucky for him that he had somehow come to his senses before he had made some impulsive mistake.
Women had always taken up an enormous portion of Pete Hatcher’s thoughts. He loved to look at them, to smell the scents that hung in the air close to their hair, to touch their smooth skin, to hear their soft, high voices. He savored the unconsciously graceful little movements they made with their hands. But Pete Hatcher had no philosophy. He had never set aside the time to sit by himself, wondering why things were the way they were. That never seemed to get anybody else anywhere, so how could he be so unrealistic as to think he, of all people, could figure it all out? He had simply known the obvious—that the standard, plain, no-frills human being was a man. There could be no purpose for women to be so radically different from men unless they were created to be enjoyed and cherished.
One afternoon nearly two months after David Keller had arrived in town he had gone to a supermarket on a Sunday afternoon. A pretty woman in her early thirties wearing a Denver Nuggets baseball cap with a long chestnut ponytail stuck out through the back walked past him, and their eyes met. A couple of times after that, when he went up an aisle, his eyes lingered on her again—on the black, skin-tight spandex bicycle shorts that the oversized sweatshirt didn’t hang low enough to cover the way she pretended to think it did, because women bent at the waist to reach the lower shelves, instead of at the knees. Once, she had caught him appreciating her, and she gave a little smile of acknowledgment.
Suddenly, without warning, Pete Hatcher had struggled to come to life. The opening lines had begun to rise to his throat automatically: “Do you ride a bike?” he would say, just in case she didn’t, and he had to talk about something else. “Riding in Denver traffic is taking your life in your hands. I guess I’m not as good as you are.” She had been reading the label on a jar of wheat germ, so he could say, “I heard that stuff is good for you, but is there any way to get around the taste? What do you put it on?” There was nothing to saying the first words. It usually took him five or six syllables to see in the woman’s eyes whether she was pleased that she had attracted him or startled that some creep had been drawn to her. He had never made a mistake after a whole sentence, because women were much more alert and aware of the people around them than men were. He knew that if he noticed a woman, she had noticed him first. She had already decided what she would do if he spoke.
He knew he had to push Pete Hatcher down, strangle him before he got David Keller into some kind of trouble. Then he met the woman again on the far aisle, which was lined with wine bottles. It was a bad place, because it was out of the way, almost private. He had to look at some labels and put a bottle in his cart to assert his right to be here.
But she came to him. She said happily, “I guess you don’t like football either.”
David Keller was startled. Football? Then he remembered. It was late summer, and preseason games must be on television already. He hadn’t owned a television set in months, and what might be on it had slipped his mind. He smiled and shrugged. “I’ve been known to watch a game now and then, but it’s such a beautiful day.”
“Yeah, it’s great, isn’t it? I’ve been out riding my bike.” Her voice was high and cute, and she moved in little explosions of excess energy that reminded him of the quick, abrupt dartings of a little bird. He was fascinated. He caught himself wanting to see her do things—any things, but he was already allowing his imagination to form preferences as to what they might be.
“Riding a bike?” he said. “Riding in the traffic around here is too much for me. I guess I’m not as good as you are. You’re in better shape, too.”
She gave him the hint of a smile. It said, “That already? Be patient.” But her voice said, “It’s not bad on Sundays. If you like off-road, you’ve got Bear Creek, Cherry Creek, Chatfield …” Her bright brown eyes narrowed. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
He felt suddenly scared. “Yes.”
“One more southern California refugee, right? Someplace hot and low altitude.”
“Los Angeles.” He lied with the best smile he could manage. She had instantly known he was a stranger and picked up the quarter of the country he had come from. What was wrong? What was he doing wrong?
She lifted her sweatshirt a few inches so she could reach the pen stuck in the waistband of the tight pants. The flash of white skin forced him to weather a flood of wishes. “Here,” she said as she wrote something on her shopping list and tore it off. “If you need directions, just give me a call.”
It was all right. She could hardly be less threatening. He took the paper. Above the phone number it said “Kathy.” He smiled again and said, “Thanks, Kathy. I’m David … David Keller.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t look like a David.”
His heart stopped.
“Maybe a Mike … maybe a Jim.”
He desperately reminded himself of all of the times when women had said things like this. She thought it was fun to nudge men off balance just a little. He smiled. “I’ll give my mother a call and see what she can do.”
“You might give it a try,” she said. “I guess moms all want their babies to grow up to be Davids. Most of them grow up to be Buck or Ace or something.” She was giving him a chance, buying him time to notice that he liked her and think of a way she could be with him that would preserve her self-respect.
It wasn’t difficult for Pete Hatcher to think of an invitation. She would like to go pay for her groceries and meet him next door at the health-food place for one of those fruit drinks they made in blenders. She could even
