Hot Pursuit

16

Stone cleared away the dinner plates and poured them both a glass of old Armagnac. She had been telling him the sorry details of her relationship with Kevin Keyes — his drinking, womanizing, and tendency to get physical when angry.

“Okay,” Pat said, “now you get to ask the question.”

“You mean the one about how a smart woman can get so involved with such a sorry shit?”

“That’s the one. Only he wasn’t a sorry shit all the time. We had fun together: he was smart and witty and had great charm, on his good days.”

“And I’ve already heard about the bad days. My concern is that you haven’t seen his worst days yet — those are yet to come.”

“Why do you think that?”

Stone’s cell phone rang, and he checked the caller ID before answering. “Excuse me, this is about you. Evening, Bob.”

“Sorry to call at dinnertime,” Cantor said, “but I thought you’d want to know.”

“Tell me.”

“I did a little under-the-table computer searching this evening, and Kevin Keyes is registered at a hotel in Times Square. He’s been here for three days, and he booked in for a week. He’s also got a rented Nissan Altima in the hotel’s garage.”

“Anything else?”

“That’s it for the moment. How did she take the lecture?”

“Better than I had hoped. You can go ahead and install the video equipment in the tenants’ apartments. You’d better drop them a note to let them know when you’re coming.”

“Will do. See ya.” Bob hung up.

“I’m sorry, you asked me a question,” Stone said.

“Why do you think Kevin’s worst days are yet to come?”

“Ah, yes, that question. Here’s your answer: old Kevin has checked into a Times Square hotel, booking in for a week, and he has a rental car at his disposal.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Exactly. Was he in the same armed pilots program as you?”

“Yes.”

“And he still has the gun.”

“He has several guns.”

“Swell.”

“Maybe he has some perfectly good reason for being in New York,” Pat suggested.

“Is that why he spent yesterday evening parked a couple of doors from your house? For some perfectly good reason?”

“Why must you put the worst possible slant on every little thing Kevin does? You don’t know him.”

“I know him better than you do,” Stone said.

“Oh? How’s that?”

“I’ve known half a dozen women with exes who didn’t like getting dumped, no matter how badly they had behaved. These men tended to think of themselves as being in the right, and the women, always, in the wrong. They thought of themselves not as husbands or boyfriends, but as owners of their women. Does that have a familiar ring?”

She said nothing.

“Do you think Kevin won’t harm you because he loves you?”

“I think that, yes.”

“Men like this, when they’re caught after harming a woman, nearly always give love as their motive. They seem to think that love is an exculpatory emotion for a serious felony, even for murder.”

“He’s completed an anger management course since I last saw him,” she said. “The judge made him. Maybe it took.”

“And you think he traveled all the way from Wichita to New York to tell you he’s not angry anymore?”

“He’s not going to tell me anything — I’m not going to see him.”

“He’s not going to give you a choice,” Stone said. “Tell me, does he have any money?”

“A tiny pension from the airline. He picks up an occasional charter flight.”

“So he’s just bought himself a week at an expensive hotel, when, more than likely, he can’t even afford the garage for his rented car. He’s probably maxed out his credit cards getting here, and I’m willing to bet he bought a one-way ticket.”

“He can’t carry a gun on an airplane,” she said.

“Yes he can, if he registers it and keeps it in his checked luggage. Or maybe he got a deadhead charter job to Teterboro. Nobody searches luggage at a general aviation airport.”

“You’re scaring me,” she said.

“Good, I’ve been trying hard to do just that. If I’m right, then he’s a man with nothing more to lose. And that makes him dangerous.”

“All right,” she said resignedly. “What do you want me to do?”

“Move in with me for a few days. I’ll have Fred, who has a carry license, take you home in the morning so you can pack a couple of bags.”

“I’ve got a new business to run,” she said.

“Have the phone company refer your calls here. We’ll dedicate a line to Pat Frank’s Flight Department. There’s even an office downstairs you can use.”

“All right, I surrender. I’ll take this seriously.”

“Hearing that is a great relief,” Stone said.