Keller 05 - Hit Me Read Online Free PDF

package with the first installment of his fee. Instead, he’d booted up his computer, clicked on Google Images, typed in “Portia Walmsley,” and clicked again, whereupon Google served up a banquet of pictures of the oh-so-social Mrs. Walmsley, sometimes alone, sometimes with others, but all of them showing a big-haired full-figured blonde with what Keller had once heard called a Pepsodent smile. Or was it an Ipana smile? Keller couldn’t remember, and decided he didn’t care.
    Sitting alone in a room, with only one’s own mind and an abandoned crucifix for company, wasn’t the most fun Keller had ever had in his life. There was nothing in the room he could read, and nothing to look at but suffering Jesus, and that was the last place Keller wanted to aim his eyes.
    Which, no matter where he pointed them, he was finding it increasingly difficult to keep open. They kept closing of their own accord. He kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the bed, just for comfort, not because he intended to sleep, and—
    And the next thing he knew he was in an auction room, with one lot after another hammered down before he could get his hand in the air to bid. And a man and a woman were sitting on either side of him, talking furiously in a language he couldn’t understand, and making it impossible for him to focus on the auction. And—
    “Where is that damn girl? For what I pay her you’d think she could do what she’s supposed to. Margarita! ”
    “Maybe she’s in her room.”
    “At this hour?”
    His eyes snapped open. A man and a woman, but now they were speaking English, and he could hear them on the stairs. He sprang from the bed, crossed to the door, worked the bolt. No sooner had it slid home than they had reached the door, and the woman was calling the maid’s name—Margarita, evidently—at the top of her brassy voice.
    “Give it up,” the man said. “Ain’t nobody home.”
    A hand took hold of the doorknob, turned, pushed. The bolt held.
    “She’s in there. The lazy bitch is sleeping.”
    “Oh, come on, Portsie.” Portsie? “Couldn’t nobody sleep through the racket you’re making.”
    “Then why’s the door locked?”
    “Maybe she don’t want you rummaging through her underwear.”
    “As if,” Portia said, and rattled the doorknob. “This is something new, locking the door. I don’t think you can lock it, except from inside. You slide a bolt and it goes through a little loop, but how can you do that from outside?”
    “Maybe she’s in there with a boyfriend.”
    “My God, maybe she is. Margarita! God damn you, open the fucking door or I’ll call the fucking INS on you.” There was a pause, and then Keller heard them moving around, and some heavy breathing.
    “Hey,” the woman said. “And what do you think you’re doing, sport?”
    “Rummaging through your underwear, Portsie.”
    “It’s distracting me.”
    “That’s the general idea.”
    “If she’s in there fucking some pint-sized cholo —”
    “She’s not. She was in there, all by herself, and she locked the door.”
    “So where is she now?”
    “Out.”
    “Out? How’d she get out?”
    “Through the keyhole.”
    “You’re terrible, baby.”
    “C’mon,” he said. “I need a drink, and so do you. And that’s not all we need.”
    And Keller stood there while their footsteps receded.
      
    Once he’d had time to think about it, Keller realized he’d missed an opportunity. There they were, the target and the bonus, all ready to walk right into the room where he was waiting for them. And what had he done? He’d locked the door, as if he were not a hired assassin but the timid little chambermaid who’d been the room’s rightful if unlawful occupant.
    He was half asleep, and unprepared, and that’s why he’d been so quick to lock the door. Alert and prepared, he’d have flung it open and yanked them inside, and in no time at all he’d have been around the block and out of the neighborhood, and they’d be