Keller's Fedora (Kindle Single) Read Online Free PDF Page B

retail plumbing supplies.
    Which figured, because the van had the name and address of that very firm lettered on its side panels. And that set it apart from the unmarked white van Keller had been following.
    Jesus, had he lost the son of a bitch? He’d had the sense to memorize the license plate, and that’d be great if he had Jake Dagger’s ring of friends on and off the police force. (“I used to be a cop, but when you carry a badge you’ve got to do things by the book. And sometimes a man just has to throw the book away.”) Or the kind of charm that would win him a favor from a chirpy girl at the local Bureau of Motor Vehicles. (“I’m not supposed to do this, Jake. But shucks, just this once…”) Right. But Keller wouldn’t know whom to call, or what to say if he reached the appropriate person.
    Hell.
    He’d never really noticed how many white vans there were. And you couldn’t quit on a parking lot just because you found a van that turned out to be the wrong one, because there might well be another white van in the next aisle or the one after that, and it could be the right one.
    Or it could be another wrong one.
    Finally, at the back of a freestanding frame building that could have used a coat of paint, he found three white vans parked side by side. And the one in the middle, by God, was the Marlboro Man’s.
    Keller, parking his car, realized just how long it had been since that gas station rest room. He glanced at the iced tea jar, glanced at the fedora, and left them both where they were.
    He got out of the car, and just as he was closing the door he changed his mind, reached for the fedora, placed it on his head and adjusted the brim.
    But never mind the jar. There’d be a men’s room. Any place called the Wet Spot, any place with a jukebox that loud, really had to have a men’s room.
    T HE M ARLBORO M AN was standing at the bar, hoisting a beer with a couple of buddies. Keller saw him when he walked in, went straight to the men’s room, then spotted the guy again a few minutes later—still at the bar, still on his feet, still holding what might have been the same beer, which he was drinking straight from its long-necked bottle.
    There was an unoccupied stool at the bar, and Keller took it. To his left were two men wearing White Sox caps, and to his right, on the other side of a second unoccupied stool, was a man with a plaid shirt and a cowboy hat.
    Keller felt vindicated. He was right to have worn the fedora. Around here an uncovered head would stick out like a sore thumb.
    The man in the cowboy hat was one of the Marlboro Man’s two buddies, and looked enough like him to be, well, a stunt double, say. In fact they both looked like Hollywood stunt men, or what he assumed Hollywood stunt men would look like. Big men, rangy men, physical men.
    Buddy Number Two was smaller, but wiry. He was wearing a railroad cap, striped blue denim with a short bill. Keller wasn’t sure why they called it that, he took a lot of trains himself and had never seen a railroad employee wearing one, but maybe you were more apt to encounter them on freight trains. Maybe engineers wore them.
    The cap’s wearer could have been a stunt double himself, Keller decided, but for a smaller hero. Tom Cruise’s stunt double, say.
    Keller ordered a beer, took a preliminary sip from it when it came. The bartender was a woman with too many tattoos, and Keller realized she was the only woman in the place.
    Jesus, was it a gay bar? It had the kind of aggressively masculine vibe you ran across in places with names like Rawhide and Boots & Saddle. This one was called the Wet Spot, but that could be some kind of gay double entendre, couldn’t it?
    Was any of that possible? Was the Marlboro Man Melania’s interior decorator after all?
    “Man, you’re too much. Has she got a sister? That’s what I want to know.”
    That was the man on Keller’s right, the cowboy hat. The Marlboro Man replied that, if she had a sister, well, don’t