Read Keller's Fedora (Kindle Single) for Free Online

get any ideas, good buddy, because all that would mean was a three-way.
    “Oh, man,” said Tom Cruise’s stunt double. “Oh man, oh man, oh man.”
    Cowboy Hat: “Like she’d be up for it.”
    Marlboro Man: “Melania? Haven’t found anything yet she’s not up for.”
    Tom Cruise (sounding a little drunk): “But with her own sister?”
    Marlboro Man: “Dude, she hasn’t got a sister.”
    Cowboy Hat: “Thing about a three-way, it’s never everything you want it to be.”
    Tom Cruise: “If she hasn’t got a sister—”
    Marlboro Man: “You saying there’s something wrong with a three-way?”
    Tom Cruise: “—how are you gonna fuck her?”
    Cowboy Hat: “Just that it’s not as good as you hope.”
    Marlboro Man: “Well, shit, what is?”
    Tom Cruise: “What I wanna know—”
    Marlboro Man: “Dude, shut up. What I am is lucky she hasn’t got a sister, or anybody else who wants to play, because that woman wears me out all by her lonesome.”
    Tom Cruise: “All I’m trying to say—”
    But Keller didn’t wait to find out what he was trying to say. He’d heard enough.
    T HREE WHITE VANS , side by side by side, and it was a good thing he’d taken note of the license number. Still, he could have ruled out the one on the right, which bore a generic company name (“R & D Assoc.”) along with a phone number. And the one on the left, unmarked by paint, had a damaged rear bumper and a broken taillight.
    The one in the middle, the Marlboro Man’s van, had its doors locked. That figured, and Keller had tried the doors with no real hope they’d be open. You went through the motions, that’s all, and he stepped to the rear of the van and went through them again with the hatch at the back, and what do you know?
    Open.
    First, Keller went to his Subaru, unlocked it, transferred the fedora from his head to the seat. He felt a little silly doing so, he was wasting valuable time, but he didn’t want anything to happen to the hat—or, worse by far, for it to be left behind. He thought about putting it on the floor, where it would be out of sight and no temptation to passing thieves, and then decided he was being ridiculous.
    He locked the car and went back to the three vans, and the middle van’s hatch was still unlocked. He raised it and climbed in, clambering over all the gear you’d expect to find in the back of the guy’s van—golf clubs, fishing tackle, a tool box, an array of unboxed tools, an old denim jacket, a tire iron, a hammer, a set of Allen wrenches—
    There were almost too many options.
    And way too much time to weigh them. Keller picked up the hammer and hunkered down on the left, right behind where the driver would sit. This wasn’t the first time he’d waited in an unoccupied vehicle, and on one previous occasion he’d had an improvised garrote. Which, now that he thought about it, was really the only kind there was, because you couldn’t go into a store and buy a ready-made garrote.
    Though he supposed that could change overnight. All you needed was a powerful lobby, a group calling itself the National Garrote Association, say, and funded by an international cartel of garrote manufacturers, fully prepared to throw a lot of money at legislators while citing the relevant constitutional amendment. Probably not the one guaranteeing freedom of speech, because speech was difficult with a wire around your throat, and anyway nobody had the right to cry “Garrote!” in a crowded vehicle, and—
    He never expected to drift off, not in such an uncomfortable position, but his thoughts drifted and his mind ambled along after them, and if he wasn’t technically asleep, he was anything but bright-eyed and alert.
    Until the argument woke him.
    His immediate reaction to the three voices, three vaguely familiar voices at that, was an attempt to incorporate them into his dream. Then one of them said, “He can’t drive, the sonofabitch is shitfaced,” and another said, “Who you callin’ a