Stamp collecting, except for a few moments now and then in a heated auction, was not an exciting hobby. It didn’t provide much in the way of edge-of-the-chair suspense, and that was fine with Keller. That really wasn’t what he wanted from it. He got enough of that in his work, or in what Len Horvath might categorize as his quotidian life.

What it did offer, and what Keller appreciated, was total absorption. Seated at his table with his albums and a selection of approvals, or sprawled on his couch with the latest issue of Linn’s, Keller’s attention was entirely occupied by something which was, all things considered, essentially trivial. Trimming a mount with his guillotine-style mount cutter, dipping a British colonial issue in watermark detection fluid, checking another with his perforation gauge, Keller was completely caught up in the moment. Hours could fly by, with Keller quite unaware of their passage.

Over the past month, he’d spent quite a few hours with the Halliday amp; Okun catalog, putting a little check mark next to those lots in which he had any interest. There were half a dozen items that interested him enough to bring him to San Francisco, high-ticket stamps, five of them from various French colonies, one an early stamp from Great Britain. He could afford to buy two or three of the six, depending on how the bidding went, and by careful examination he managed to reduce his list from six to four. (He didn’t care for the color of the stamp from Gabon, which seemed to him to have faded as a result of exposure to sunlight, and the British issue, nicely centered and with a wing margin, had a couple of raggedy perforations. He was partial to wing margins, but he decided the perfs bothered him.)

Besides those six stamps, though, there were thirty or forty other lots, ranging in estimated value from ten to two hundred dollars. They would fill spaces in his collection, and he might or might not bid on them, depending on how they looked on close inspection and how the bidding proceeded. So he had all of those lots to look at as well, and notes to make in his catalog, and he gave himself up completely to the task at hand.

He was not the only prospective bidder in the room. There were eight chairs positioned at the bank of tables, and at no time was his the only one occupied. Others came and went, with Keller never more than marginally aware of their coming and going. The conversation in the room was subdued, and largely limited to men (and at least one woman) calling the lots they wanted to examine. But occasionally some small talk crept into the conversation, most of it dealing with sports or the weather, or an inquiry about a mutual acquaintance. One man talked about airport security and what a nuisance it was, and Keller expressed his agreement without looking up or having any idea whose opinion he was seconding. Or caring, because his concentration remained centered upon the stamp he was holding to the light, to determine if the paper had thinned where a previous collector’s hinge had been removed. It hadn’t, and he made a note to that effect in his catalog.

“Thurn and Taxis,” someone said. There’d been words preceding those, but Keller hadn’t noted them. His mind registered the phrase, Thurn and Taxis, and Dot’s wordplay popped into his head, and out of his mouth.

“The only certainties,” he said.

He spoke almost without realizing he’d done so, but the words echoed in the room, and an attention-getting silence followed them.

“Say again?”

“Oh,” Keller said. “Well, you know what they say. Nothing’s inevitable in this life besides Thurn and Taxis.”

“Well, I’m damned,” a man said. He had a shock of iron gray hair, and wore a well-tailored suit. A wafer-thin watch contrasted with a surprisingly gaudy ring. “All the years I’ve been collecting the damned stamps, and there’s a connection I never made. Do I know you? You’re not a German states guy, are you?”

Keller shook his head. “Worldwide before 1940,” he said. “Well, through ’49, actually. British Empire through ’52.”

“To include all of George the Sixth.”

“Right.”

“Never had the urge to specialize?”

“Not really. Although there are some areas I’m more interested in than others.”

“Like?”

“Well, French colonies.”

“Pretty interesting,” the fellow acknowledged. “And you don’t go crazy with watermarks and perf varieties. Of course you’ve got to watch out for counterfeit overprints.”

“I know.”

“Tons of counterfeits in the German states issues. And then there are all the stamps that are worth more used than mint, so you’ve got fake cancellations to worry about. It’s almost as bad as early Italy, where something like ninety-five percent of the used stamps have fake cancels.”

“I’d rather have mint anyway,” Keller said.

“If you can find them, what with all the counterfeiters buying up the mint stamps and hitting ’em with fake cancellations. But, see, I want mint and used. And cancellation varieties. And multiples, mint and used, and covers. That’s what happens when you specialize. You want everything, and there’s just no end to it.”

Keller just nodded. He should never have piped up in the first place, he thought, and now if he just let the conversation die maybe he could get out of this.

No such luck.

“Say, can I buy you a drink? Seems like the least I can do, since you were kind enough to point out the inevitability of Thurn and Taxis.”

And that wasn’t all that was inevitable, Keller thought, and raised his eyes to meet those of the man in the newspaper photograph.

44

At least the hotel bar was dimly lit, and the table he shared with Bingham was off to the side. Even so, it was a terrible idea for the two of them to be sitting together. Anything that connected them would give the authorities a reason to talk to Keller after Bingham’s death, and the last thing Keller wanted was to draw the attention of the police. His edge professionally lay in his professionalism. When his job was done, there was nothing to tie him to the deceased.

If that was the last thing Keller wanted, getting to know the man he had come to kill was a close runner-up. When he got to know somebody, the person became a human being instead of an impersonal target, and that made for complications. There was a time when Keller had worried that he might be a sociopath, and now it struck him that there were certain advantages to sociopathy. A true sociopath could befriend a potential victim without being conflicted. He could enjoy the man’s company and then enjoy killing him; he wouldn’t have to perform mental gymnastics in order to depersonalize the man.

What Keller hoped, raising his glass in acknowledgment of Bingham’s toast-“To philately, the king of hobbies and the hobby of kings!”-was that the man would turn out to be loutish and obnoxious. A passion for postage stamps, he knew, was no guarantee of a noble character or a congenial personality, and with any luck at all Sheridan Bingham would turn out to be a greedy and purse-proud type, gobbling up German states issues like a glutton gorging himself at a buffet.

“You ever exhibit at these clambakes, Jackie?”

Call me Sherry, Bingham had urged, which more or less compelled Keller to invite Bingham to call him by name. His name was John, but nobody ever called him that. Virtually everyone called him Keller, but Call me Keller seemed an inadequate response to Call me Sherry.

His name was John, he’d told Bingham, and started to say what everybody called him, and veered in midsentence, claiming that everybody called him Jack. As far as Keller could recall, no one had ever called him Jack. Nor did Sheridan Bingham, who immediately converted Jack to Jackie.

He shook his head. “Never even considered it,” he said. “When you’re a general collector, you don’t wind up with anything exhibit-worthy. Except…”

“Except what?”

“Well, my collection of Martinique is complete, and I’ve been adding minor varieties when I run across them.”

“Sounds as though you’re specializing in spite of yourself.”

“Well…”

“And aren’t there a couple of high-ticket items from Martinique? One or two genuine rarities? My friend, you could exhibit if you wanted to.”

“I suppose I could. I never thought of it.”

“And now that you think of it?”

“I don’t think it’s my style,” he said. “Not that I don’t like to look at what other collectors exhibit.”

“You been to the exhibit room yet?”

“No, I went straight to the auction room.”

“Well, when you get there, you’ll see a couple of frames of my stuff.” Keller said he looked forward to it, and Bingham made a dismissing gesture. “Nothing to make a special trip for,” he said. “Decent material, and well displayed, if I say so myself. And why shouldn’t I? It’s not as though I had anything to do with it.”

“How’s that?”

“There’s a fellow who prepares my exhibits for me. Does the layout and lettering, decides what should or shouldn’t go on display. You ever raise show dogs, Jackie?”

Dogs? How did dogs get into this?

“Never,” he said.

“Well, neither have I, but a cousin of mine wins prizes more often than not at the Westminster Kennel Club show. Got a wall full of blue ribbons. He’s got a guy who tells him what dogs to buy, and a woman who grooms the animals and gets them in peak condition for each show, and a handler who parades around the ring with the dog and makes sure the judges are properly impressed. My cousin’s involvement is pretty much limited to writing a bunch of checks every month, which is something he does reasonably well. And in return he gets the ribbons and the trophies, and he’s so proud of them you’d think he was the one who taught the dog to raise his leg when he needs to pee.”

“I thought it was instinctive.”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Anyway, I do pretty much the same thing as my cousin, with stamps instead of dogs. I write the checks and I take home the ribbons. I don’t know why the hell I bother.”

“It’s a contribution to the hobby.”

“You think so? I think it’s a contribution to my own ego and that’s about all. My glass is empty, Jackie, and my throat’s still dry. You’ve hardly touched yours.”

“You go ahead,” Keller said. “One’s my limit, this early in the day.”

Bingham caught the waiter’s eye, motioned for another round. “Easier this way,” he told Keller. “Just leave it on the table if you don’t want to drink it. You know what I’m beginning to do? I’m beginning to relax.”

“Well, that’s what the drinks are for.”

“That’s what stamps are for,” Bingham said. “They take you out of where you are and put you in a nice peaceful place. Lately it hasn’t been working.”

“You’re losing interest in your collection?”

“No, but it’s harder to get away from what’s on my mind.” He fell silent while the waiter brought the drinks, then picked up his glass and stared into it. “I didn’t begin to relax,” he said, “until I got on the plane this morning. I had a shorter flight than you, flew nonstop on Northwest from Detroit, and I started to unwind when we pulled away from the gate.” He took a sip from the new drink. “And this helps the process along. If your limit’s one, well, my limit’s going to be two, because I don’t want to get sloshed. I just want to reach that state where I know everything’s going to be okay.” He managed a twisted smile. “Because,” he said, “it’s not.”