Occasionally a memory might turn him wistful, wishing he still had that essentially worthless collection that had filled so much of his time and turned his head into such a wonderland of trivia. But it never occurred to him to try to recapture those days. They were part of his youth, and they were gone.
Then, when the old man started slipping mentally, and when it was becoming clear that he was beginning to lose it big-time, Keller found himself contemplating retirement. He had some money saved up, and while it had amounted to less than 10 percent of what he’d eventually have in Dot’s online account, he’d managed to sell himself on the notion that it was enough.
But what would he do with his time? Play golf? Take up needlepoint? Start hanging out at the senior center? Dot pointed out that he would need a hobby, and a bunch of childhood memories popped into his head, and the first thing he did was buy a worldwide collection, 1840-to-1940, just to get himself started, and before he knew it he had a shelf full of albums and a subscription to Linn’s and dealers all over the country sending him price lists and approvals. And he’d also spent a surprisingly substantial portion of his retirement fund, so it was just as well when the old man was out of the picture entirely and he could go on working directly with Dot.
When he thought objectively about his stamps, he couldn’t avoid concluding that the whole enterprise was nuts. He was spending the greater portion of his discretionary income on little pieces of paper that were worth nothing except what he and other like-minded screwballs were willing to pay for them. And he was devoting the greater portion of his free time to acquiring those pieces of paper, and, having done so, to mounting them neatly and systematically in albums created for that purpose. He put a lot of effort into getting them to look just right on the page, this in spite of the fact that he never intended for any eyes but his to see them. He didn’t want to display his stamps at a show, or invite another collector over to have a look at them. He wanted them right there on the shelves in his apartment, where he and only he could look at them.
All of which, he had to admit, was at the very least irrational.
On the other hand, when he was working with his stamps, he was always entirely absorbed in what he was doing. He was expending considerable concentration on what was essentially an unimportant task, and that seemed to be something his spirit required. When he was in a bad mood, his stamps got him out of it. When he was anxious or irritable, his stamps took him to another realm where the anxiety or irritation ceased to matter. When the world seemed mad and out of control, his stamps provided a more orderly sphere where serenity ruled and logic prevailed.
If he wasn’t in the mood, the stamps could wait; if he was called out of town, he knew they’d be there when he got back. They weren’t pets that had to be fed and walked on a regular schedule, or plants that needed to be watered. They demanded his entire and absolute attention, but only when he had it to give.
He wondered sometimes if he was spending too much money on his collection, and perhaps he was, but his bills were always paid and he wasn’t carrying any debt, and he’d somehow managed to accumulate two and a half million dollars in investments, so why shouldn’t he spend what he wanted to on stamps?
Besides, decent philatelic material always increased in value over time. You couldn’t buy it one day and sell it the next and expect to come out ahead, but after you’d owned it awhile it would have appreciated enough to cover the dealer’s markup. And what other pastime worked that way? If you owned a boat, if you raced cars, if you went on safari, how much of what you spent could you expect to get back? What, for that matter, was your net return on bottles of Cristal and lines of cocaine?
And so he’d returned to New York for his stamps. There was nothing else to come back for, and ample reason to stay away. If he was a person of interest to the police, in addition to entering his apartment and sealing his bank accounts, they might very well have posted somebody to watch the place on the slim chance that he’d be fool enough to return.
If the cops weren’t waiting for him, what about Call-Me-Al? The people who’d pulled the strings in Des Moines weren’t willing to sit back and let nature take its course. They’d proved that in White Plains, because it wasn’t the old man’s chickens that had come home to roost, it was the turkeys on Al’s team who’d shot Dot dead and burned the place down around her.
They might have already known his name, and where he lived. If not, they’d have asked Dot, and he could only hope she’d answered right away, and that two quick bullets in the brain were all the punishment she’d been forced to endure. Because she’d have talked sooner or later, anyone would, and in this case sooner was better than later.
But maybe nobody had the place staked out, not the cops and not Al’s boys, either. Maybe all he had to do was figure out a way in and out without being spotted by the doorman.
It would probably take more than one trip, though. His collection was housed in ten good-sized albums, and the best plan he could come up with, sitting in the movie house in East Stroudsburg with his eyes on the screen, was to load up the oversize wheeled duffel that he’d bought on QVC a few years ago. He had never used it, it held far more stuff than he ever wanted to drag on any trip, business or pleasure, but the pitchman on the shopping channel had caught him at just the right moment, and before he knew what was happening he’d picked up the phone and bought the damn thing.
You could get four albums in it for sure, and possibly five, and the handle and wheels would enable him to get it to the car. Dump the albums in the trunk, go back for another load — two trips might do it, or three at the most.
There was some cash in the house, too, unless someone had found it by now. Not a fortune, just an emergency fund of somewhere between one and two thousand dollars. If this didn’t constitute an emergency he didn’t know what did, and he could definitely use the cash, but it wouldn’t have been enough to draw him back to the city, not if it had been ten or twenty times as much as it was.