The Hunter p-1 Read online

  She came back and said, “He’s there. I even got the room number.”

  “Fine,” he said, getting to his feet.

  She smiled, with a trace of sourness. “You aren’t a guy for small talk,” she said. “Get what you want, and go.”

  “One thing at a time,” he said, “that’s all I can think about. Maybe I’ll come back and see you later?”

  “The hell you will. Here, I wrote it down.”

  He took the paper from her and read her small careful script — Oakwood Arms, Park Avenue and 57th Street. Suite 361. He read it three times, then crumpled the paper and dropped it into a free-form glass ashtray. “Thanks.”

  “Anytime, dear heart. We’re friends, aren’t we?” The sarcasm twisted her mouth.

  He reached into his pocket, dragged out his wallet. “I meant it about the twenty bucks,” he said.

  She looked at the two tens he held out to her, hesitating.

  “Oh, go to hell, will you? Get yourself killed, you bastard. Seven years, and you don’t even ask me how I’ve been.”

  Parker put the tens back in the wallet, the wallet back in his pocket. “The next time,” he said, “I’ll bring slides.”

  She snatched up a frog, spun around to hurl it at him, and stopped. He stood waiting, looking at her. Her arm dropped. She muttered, “I ought to tell him you’re coming.”

  “You don’t want to do that,” he said. He walked to the door.

  Chapter 4

  The waitress kept asking him if he wanted anything else.

  It distracted him from looking out at the street. She had a band on her finger, so finally he said, “What’s the matter, don’t you get enough from your husband?” So after that she left him alone.

  She glared awhile from the other end of the counter, but he could ignore that. He could look out at the street, and let his fifteen-cent cup of coffee cool. It was a Park Avenue coffee shop, and expensive. Pastrami on rye, eighty-five cents, no butter. Like that.

  Directly across the street was the Oakwood Arms, a gray stone hulk with a modest marquee. A thin tall white-haired guy worked the front steps with a yellow-handled broom for a while, then went back inside. He and the doorman were both in blue uniforms with yellow trim.

  A cab pulled up and two hefty matrons got out, giggling at each other as they pawed through their pocketbooks to pay the cabby. A blue-uniformed bellboy trotted through the revolving door and down the clean steps and the cabby opened the trunk. One matron had light blue luggage, the other light gray.

  The cabby drove away, with a fifteen percent tip on the button, and as the matrons and bellboys were going in a guy in a pale gray suit came out, looking prosperous, followed by a younger guy in a black suit, looking cautious. Parker watched the two of them, ticking them off in his mind. Outfit wheel and bodyguard.

  The wheel flagged a cab, while the bodyguard looked all around, and then they got in and drove away.

  It was getting dark now. The hell of it was, he didn’t know whether Mal was out or in. If he was out, then he’d have to wait while he went in and then came back out again. If he was in, it would be simpler.

  Guests arrived, most of them obvious tourists, a few obvious Outfit people, a few others borderline. None of them Mal, and none of them he recognized. Aside from himself, there was no stakeout outside the building.

  But he knew what there’d be inside: two or three guys sitting around in lobby chairs, reading papers, glancing up whenever somebody came in. If the somebody was wrong, a somebody the Outfit didn’t want there, the two or three guys would put down their papers and saunter over and book-end him away through a door out of the lobby. They’d take him into a back room where they could ask him what they wanted to or tell him what they wanted to tell him.

  Mal had picked a good place to live. It would be tough to get in there without being spotted. To left and right of the lobby entrance were storefronts with street entrances, a cigar store to the left and a coffee shop to the right. There’d be entrances from them into the hotel, but that wasn’t any good. Those entrances would be watched, too.

  The waitress came back, still angry. “If you don’t want anything else,” she said, “let someone else sit down.”

  He looked down the counter. Half the stools were empty. “Another cup of coffee,” he said. “This one’s cold.”

  She was going to say something, but the owner was sitting at the cash register, looking over at them. She took the coffee cup away, brought it back refilled, and added another fifteen cents onto his check.

  He was going to have to find someplace else to watch from. Next door on one side was a florist and then the corner, on the other side an antique store and a shoe store and other impossibilities all the way down to the next corner. But this place would close eventually, and the waitress irritated him.

  Maybe the second floor of something. He left the new cup of coffee but no tip, paid the owner his thirty cents, and walked out to the street. Across the way, an Outfit girl got out of a cab and hip-swiveled up the steps. The doorman grinned at her and she grinned back.

  Parker stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the things printed on second-story windows. A dentist, a beauty parlor, a secondhand clothing store, a stamp and coin store, another dentist. It was getting dark and the lights were out behind all the windows except the clothing store. He glanced across the street, but nothing was happening.

  The door beside the coffee shop said it was the entrance to the dentist and the beauty shop. It also said there was a wig store and a lawyer on the third floor. Parker went in and up the stairs. Mal might be coming out right now, while he was on the stairs.

  He went up the stairs mad and came to the landing. Dentist to the right, beauty parlor to the left, frosted glass in the upper half of the doors. There was light against the glass of the beauty parlor door. He knocked, clenching his other fist impatiently, and after a minute a shadow showed on the glass and a woman’s voice called, “Who is it?”

  “I’ve got the coffee.”

  After a puzzled second, she said, “What coffee? I didn’t order any coffee.”

  “From the shop downstairs,” he said. “The boss said the beauty parlor.”

  “But I didn’t order any coffee.”

  “Lady,” he said, “they give me the order for the beauty shop.”

  She opened the door to argue with him, a small woman with too much makeup on, and as her eyes were widening he clipped her, base-joint knuckles against the tip of her chin. Her eyes rolled back and she fell like glass.

  He went in, closing the door fast, stepping over her. It was an anteroom. A gooseneck lamp lit the money on the desk. She’d been counting the day’s take.

  He went through the other door to the darkened room where all the machinery was, the dryers looking like big-headed praying mantises. He looked down through the word Beauty on the window. Nothing was happening. Maybe Mal came out while he was on the stairs. All right, he’d be back before morning.

  Maybe that Outfit girl was for him. Maybe he wouldn’t be going out at all. All right, all right, he had time. He had nothing but time.

  In the dark, he unplugged two dryers, ripped the cords loose at the bases, carried them back to the other room. The woman hadn’t moved. He used one cord to tie her hands behind her, the other to tie her ankles. He found scissors in a desk drawer next to an inhaler, snipped off part of her slip and used it for a gag. She had good legs — But not now. After it was over, after Mal was dead, he’d want somebody then.

  He went back to the other room, dragged a chair over to the window, sat down and smoked. People went in, people went out.

  It was a bad position. If Mal came out and flagged a cab, then what? He might have to wait a few minutes for the cab, time for Parker to get downstairs, but maybe not. If he came out and walked, that would be better. If he didn’t come out at all, that would be worse.

  There had to be a way in there. The hotel wasn’t right on the corner. There was a slender office buildi
ng next to it on that side. Another hotel on the other side. The Oakwood Arms went eleven stories, the hotel on its left only nine. The office building went twenty-some.

  In from the roof? Then he’d have to get down to the third floor. He didn’t like that way. But if nothing happened before two o’clock, he’d have to try it.

  People went in, people came out. He recognized one guy; he’d seen him around Chicago. An Outfit man. But no Mal.

  He finished his last cigarette, and that made him nervous. He didn’t want to leave the window, but he did. The woman’s purse was on the desk, shoved back out of the way of the money. She had half a pack of filters. He slipped them in his shirt pocket.

  He looked over at her; she was still out. That bothered him. She was on her side, her face in shadow. He went over and looked more closely, and her eyes were bugged halfway out of their sockets, her throat and face bluish red and mottled. He remembered the inhaler that had been in the drawer with the scissors. She’d had sinus trouble or something like that, and her nose clogged up.

  It was stupid. He didn’t like it, it was stupid. There wasn’t any reason for her to be dead. There wasn’t any reason for a gag across the mouth to make her dead. Angry at the stupidity, he went back into the other room and sat down at the window again. He smoked the filters, but they were too mild. He couldn’t taste a thing, so he dragged too deeply and smoked too frequently and his throat got sore. And it waq getting close in there.

  He waited and he watched. And no Mal. At two o’clock, there was one Newport left. He left it in its crush-proof box on her desk, with the money. His prints were all over everything. Ronald Casper, the vag who killed the guard out in California, had killed again. It wasn’t worth it to try to wipe all the prints away. If they ever got him, the California guard would be enough. They wouldn’t need this broad with congestion trouble.

  He went down the stairs to the street, and into the coffee shop. They were just closing up; a colored boy was mopping the floor, the chairs were all upended on the tables.

  The owner was behind the counter now, two customers sat on stools. Parker said, “A pack of Luckies, and eight coffees to go. Five regular, two with sugar, one black.”

  “You just made it,” the owner told him. “I’m just closing up. Two o’clock — closing up.”

  “If you got a little cardboard box,” Parker said, “it’ll be easier to carry than a bag.”

  “Five minutes later,” the owner told him, “you’d of been out of luck.”

  He opened the Luckies right away and lit one. Then he paid for the coffees, which were in a shallow gray cardboard box, and the owner held the door open for him.

  He went diagonally across the street to the office building. If Mal came out right now, it would be another stupidity. He would see Parker, and duck back inside and stay there. And make the whole thing tougher.

  But Mal didn’t come out. And the office building on the corner was open twenty-four hours. That meant there was an employee on all night to run the elevator and open and shut the door for late-working tenants. Watching from the beauty shop window, Parker had seen three men come out of there a little after midnight and the employee lock up again after them. And on a few floors there were still lights on.

  There were four glass doors in a row. Looking through them, he could see two elevators and a guy in a gray uniform sitting on a kitchen chair beside a wooden podium with a sign-in book on it. The guy was reading the News.

  Parker kicked the door down at the bottom where the metal was, and the guy put down his News and strolled across the shiny geometric floor. He studied Parker and then noticed the carton of coffee, then nodded and knelt on one knee to unlock the door. The lock was down next to the floor in the metal strip along the bottom of the door.

  Parker went in, and the employee locked the door again. He straightened arthritically and said, “Nice night.”

  “Uh huh.”

  They went back to the elevators. Both were at ground floor, but only one had a light on inside. They got into that one and Parker said, “Twelve.”

  “Right.”

  On the way up, the operator wanted to know if Parker had read that thing in the paper about them two kids, and Parker said no he hadn’t. They got to the twelfth floor and he said, “You want me to wait?”

  “No,” Parker said. “I got five here, and three on the tenth. I can walk down to the tenth and then I’ll buzz you.”

  “Okay by me.”

  The doors slid shut, and Parker dropped the carton, not caring where it went. It hit the floor and the coffin containers rolled and spilled, making a mess. He went down to the end of the corridor, turned right and came to a door with lettering on it about accountants. He took off his shoe and smashed a hole in the frosted glass near the knob. Then he put his shoe back on, reached through the hole and unlocked the door.

  There were air conditioners in all the windows. Looking out over one of them, he could see the hotel roof half a floor down, six or seven feet. An easy jump.

  He knocked out the glass over the air conditioner and climbed through, dropping onto the hotel roof. Ahead of him was the door to the stairs. He went over and tried it; it was locked, the way he’d expected, so he went over to the edge of the roof overlooking the rear wall where the fire escape was. The back of another building was crowded in close, and down between them was utter blackness.

  The first part of the fire escape was a metal ladder, down to the top floor landing. The window there was wide and low-silled, and opened into the hallway. The hall was dimly lit and empty, but the window was locked.

  He went back up the fire escape and over the roof again and up through the window into the accountants’ office. He searched through drawers, and in a kind of big closet full of supplies and a mimeograph machine he found a large screwdriver and a hammer and an uninked stamp pad. He took these and went back out and across the roof and down to the window. It would be easier just to break the window, but he didn’t want any noise.

  He shoved the screwdriver up into the crack between the two parts of the window, by the lock. Then he took the soft pad out of its metal box and held it against the top part of the screwdriver to muffle the sound when he hit it with the hammer.

  The screwdriver went in slowly, spreading the two parts of the window apart, straining the lock until finally it snapped. Then the screwdriver fell out, clattering against the metal of the fire escape, and he hunched unbreathing by the window after he retrieved it until he was sure no one had heard the sound.

  He pushed the window up, climbed through, slid the window closed again. The red bulb over the window stained his face and hands with color.

  He found the stairs and went down them quickly, pausing at each landing to listen. He met no one, and at the third floor he stood for a long moment at the door before cautiously pulling it open.

  The hall was empty.

  He found 361 around to the right. It was easy to get in — the screwdriver slipped between door and jamb with no trouble, clicking back the tumbler.

  He went in cautiously, alert for any sound, any movement. The suite was dark. Not home, or asleep? He went across the living room in the darkness, grateful for the quiet thickness of the rug, and looked through the bedroom door.

  The bed was empty and unmade — no sheets, no blankets, no pillow. The mattress was striped gray and white, shining dimly in the faint light from the window.

  Startled, he went into the room, looked around and hurried over to the closet and pulled the door open.

  It was empty. Nobody lived here any more.

  Chapter 5

  As she was turning the knob, he shoved against the door, knocking her backward. She nearly fell down the three steps into the living room, but caught her balance just in time. He pushed into the apartment, angry and hard, slamming the door behind him.

  “He’s moved,” he said. “The bastard moved out.”

  “You almost knocked me down the steps,” she said. She was wearing a pa
le blue silk robe now, and slippers with blue puffs. In the living room, the late movie was finishing on television.

  “He’s moved out, I told you. Clothes, everything. Nobody lives in that damn room.”

  She heard him that time. “Mal?”

  “Who else would I be talking about? Wanda, you better come straight with me.”

  “Call me Rose,” she said automatically. “I’m not used to answering to the other name any more.”

  “I don’t care what you’re used to, Wanda.” Parker advanced on her, grim faced, and she backed down the steps into the living room. Her face was at the level of his chest. He reached out a hand and grabbed her by the hair, twisting his hand in it and pulling her close. “He isn’t there,” he said, “and I want you to tell me, Wanda. Was he ever there?”

  “Parker, I swear to you — ” She was terrified now, knowing him from old times, and she was babbling. “I swear to you, I swear — “

  “He isn’t there, Wanda,” he said again, as though she hadn’t yet understood him. “The bed isn’t made, the closet is empty, there’s nothing around that belongs to anybody. He isn’t there, and I want to know if he ever was there.”

  “Parker, Puh-Parker — ” His hand twisted in her hair, and she stood on tiptoe, trying to stop the pain. “I wouldn’t lie to you,” she babbled. “I wouldn’t have any reason to lie to you.”

  “One reason,” he said. He twisted harder, lifted her higher so her toes barely touched the floor. “If you thought maybe you had a grudge against me, Wanda, that could be a reason. Send me to the Outfit hotel, let me barge in looking for a guy who isn’t there, let the Outfit grab me and take care of me. That could be a reason.”

  “No grudge, Parker!” she cried. “I don’t have any grudge — what grudge could I have against you?”

  “You tell me, Wanda.”

  “Parker, please!”

  He let her go so suddenly she lost her balance and fell to the floor. Her red hair was a tangle around her face. She looked up at him, not knowing what he was going to do next, and he said, “For just a little while, Wanda, I’m going to believe you. For just a little while. I’m going to believe that Mal used to live in that room, and that for some reason he moved out. He got spooked or something and — “