The Hunter: A Parker Novel (Parker Novels) Page 14

  “It was your fault,” Parker said. “Don't make your bodyguards carry your suitcases.” He crossed over to the sofa, sat down where Fairfax had been sitting, and put the phone to his ear. “All right, what is it?”

  “You're an annoyance, Parker,” said Bronson's heavy angry voice. “You're an irritation, like a mosquito. All right. Forty-five thousand dollars is chickenfeed. It's a small account, for small punks with small minds. To get rid of the mosquito, all right—I'll swat you with forty-five thousand dollars. But let me tell you something, Parker.”

  “Tell me, then,” said Parker.

  “You're a marked man. You'll get your petty payoff, and after that you're dead whether you know it or not. I'm not going to send anybody out after you especially. I wouldn't spend the time or the money. I'm just going to spread the word around. A cheap penny-ante heister named Parker, I'm going to say. If you happen to see him, make him dead. That's all, just if you happen to see him. Do you get what I'm talking about, Parker?”

  “Sure,” said Parker. “Carter told me all about it. You're as big as the Post Office. You're coast to coast. I should look you up in the yellow pages.”

  “You can't go anywhere, Parker. Not anywhere. The organization will find you.”

  “The organization doesn't have three men in it from coast to coast who could make me dead. Send your Mal Resnicks after me, Bronson. Send your Carters and your Fairfaxes. Send their bodyguards. You'll have to hire a lot of new people, Bronson.”

  “All right, bush leaguer,” said Bronson angrily. “Keep talking big. Just tell me where to make the drop on your crummy forty-five thousand.”

  “There's a section of Brooklyn,” Parker said. “Canarsie. There's a BMT subway to it. Two men, carrying the cash in a briefcase, should hit there at two o'clock tomorrow morning. I'll be on the platform. No bill over a hundred, none under a ten. If it's stuff you printed yourself, you better send two expendable men. If you send more than two, the mosquito will drain your blood.”

  “Talk big, Parker,” said Bronson. “What's the name of this subway stop?”

  “It's the end of the line.”

  “For you too, Parker.” Bronson hung up.

  Parker put the phone back on its hook and got to his feet. The pounding still echoed dully from the bedroom. Fairfax was touching his mustache with the tips of his fingers. When Parker stood up, he seemed to suddenly notice he was doing it because his hand jerked down to his side and he looked embarrassed.

  Parker said, “You're lucky, Fairfax. Your boss gave in easier than I figured. And that's a pity. I would have enjoyed finishing you.” Then he smiled. “Maybe he'll cross me. Maybe he'll try for an ambush. Then I'll be able to come back.”

  Fairfax touched his mustache. “I'm going to fire those two,” he said.

  Parker shook his head. “It won't do any good.”

  3

  Momentum kept him rolling. He wasn't sure himself any more how much was a tough front to impress the organization and how much was himself. He knew he was hard, he knew that he worried less about emotion than other people. But he'd never enjoyed the idea of a killing. And now he wasn't sure himself whether he'd just been putting a scare into Fairfax or if he'd really meant it.

  It was momentum, that was all. Eighteen years in one business, doing one or two clean fast simple operations a year, living relaxed and easy in the resort hotels the rest of the time with a woman he liked, and then all of a sudden it all got twisted around. The woman was gone, the pattern was gone, the relaxation was gone, the clean swiftness was gone.

  He spent months as a vag in a prison farm; he spent over a month coming across the country like an O. Henry tramp; he devoted time and effort and thought on an operation that wasn't clean or fast or simple and that didn't net him a dime—the finding and killing of Mal Resnick. And more killing, and bucking the syndicate more for the mean hell of it than anything else, as though for eighteen years he'd been storing up all the meanness, all the viciousness, and now it had to come rushing out.

  He didn't know if he was going to make it, if he was going to hold up the syndicate and get away with it, and he didn't really care. He was doing it, and rolling along with the momentum, and that was all that mattered.

  And now, another killing. He stood leaning against a tree, in the darkness of Farragut Avenue, looking at the shack housing Stegman's cab company, waiting for Stegman to come back out. Stegman had lied: he'd known how to get in touch with Mal. He bad gotten in touch with Mal. There wasn't any other way Mal could have gotten spooked that way.

  So there was now a debt to settle with Stegman, too. That was the whole difference right there. From the easy known pattern to this new pattern, collecting on debts. Mal owed him, Lynn owed him, the syndicate owed him, Stegman owed him. He was owed; he collected. It was a new pattern, but it would be good to run at last to the end of it and get back to the old one again.

  He'd have to find another Lynn. There were plenty of them, around the resort-hotel swimming pools. And this time he'd know to watch her a little closer, and not to fall in love.

  It was after midnight. If Stegman didn't show pretty soon, he'd have to wait till after the payoff. Stegman was in there now with his poker cronies. Parker had watched them troop in, had seen the light go on in back, and now they were playing poker. But the game had to end sometime.

  Parker had walked a block to a luncheonette around ten o'clock for a hamburger and coffee, and when he'd come back the light was still on back there, the players' cars were still parked on Farragut Avenue: the game was still in progress.

  Parker lit another cigarette and walked around the tree. There were trees on both sides of the street out here, and private homes, one or two families. It was like a town somewhere, or the residential part of a medium-sized city. It wasn't like New York at all.

  Parker walked around the tree and looked down the block into the darkness where the teenaged couple had walked half an hour ago. They'd gone up onto a porch and a glider had squeaked for a while, and now it was quiet. They couldn't see him, and he couldn't see them.

  Everybody had a pattern. They had a pattern too, a quiet simple pattern, but it would change. He had a pattern, a messy complicated pattern, but it would change. Soon, now.

  The door of the shack opened and the poker players came out. Parker strolled down the block, away from the shack, looking over his shoulder. Stegman stood in the doorway a minute, talking to two of them, and then went back into the shack. The rear room lights stayed on. The poker players got into their cars and drove away.

  A cab pulled up, and the driver went into the shack, and then came right back out again and into his car and drove off. There was a radio operator in the front room, Stegman in the back room, and that was all.

  Parker walked across the street. He went around to the back and looked through the window. Stegman sat at the table, dealing out poker hands, making imaginary bets. He must have lost tonight.

  Parker went around front again. The radio operator sat at his board, reading a paperback book. Parker went in and showed the radio operator his gun, and said, “Be very quiet now.”

  It was a different operator from last time.

  “We don't have any dough here,” the radioman said. “It isn't kept here.”

  “Just be quiet,” Parker told him. He went over to the other door and opened it. “Come on out, Stegman.”

  Stegman jumped, the cards falling out of his hands. “Oh my God,” he said. “Oh my God.”

  “You'll see Him soon,” Parker said. “Come on out here.” He motioned with the gun.

  Stegman came out, trembling, unsteady on his feet. Lies quivered on his lips, but he didn't tell any of them.

  Parker stood behind him. “We're going for a ride,” he said. “We'll take the same car as last time.” He prodded Stegman in the small of the back with the gun.

  They went out to the car. Stegman slid behind the wheel, and looked at the radio under the dashboard, licking his lips. Parker sai
d, “Do you think he's calling the cops? Or maybe the other drivers. Turn it on, let's hear what he's saying.”

  Stegman switched the radio on. His fingers were damp with sweat: he had trouble turning the knob. Only static came from the radio, so the operator must have been on the phone instead, calling the police.

  “We'll go that way,” said Parker, pointing with the gun toward Rockaway Parkway.

  Stegman started the car. He stalled it right away because his foot was nervous on the clutch. The second time, he got it moving. They bumped over the sidewalk to the street and drove across Rockaway Parkway into the darkness on the other side.

  Parker said, “Make the first left.”

  Stegman made the left, onto East 96th Street, a side street off a side street, somnolent and dark, and Parker said, “Pull over to the curb. Turn the engine off.”

  Stegman did as he was told. Parker put the gun in his lap and rabbit-punched Stegman in the Adam's apple. Stegman gasped, his head ducking forward, chin tucked against his chest, and he gurgled when he tried to breathe.

  “You told me no more favors,” Parker reminded him. “You should have meant it.” He grabbed Stegman by the hair and rammed his face into the steering wheel. Then he rabbit-punched again, the side of his hand slicing up, jolting into the underpart of Stegman's nose, snapping his head back. Hard enough, that meant blinding pain. A little harder, it meant death. This wasn't quite hard enough to kill.

  Stegman moaned, spittle bubbling at the corners of his mouth. Parker was suddenly disgusted. He didn't want any more of this, only to get it over. He picked up the gun by the barrel, swung four times, and Stegman was dead.

  Parker wiped the gun butt on Stegman's coat and got out of the car. He tucked the gun in under his belt and walked the rest of the way down the block to Glenwood Road and up to Rockaway Parkway and across the street to the subway entrance.

  This was a strange stretch of subway, neither subway nor el. The tracks rode at ground level, with the station platform like a commuter-town railroad depot, except that the tracks came only as far as this platform, one set on either side, and then stopped. End of the line.

  Off to the right were the yards, lined with strings of grimy subway cars. Beyond were new row houses, brick, two stories high, where the cab drivers lived, and farther away a bulky city project, seven stories high, where the elevator operators lived. The land was flat out here, all flat.

  Two trains flanked the platform now, their doors open. A lit sign under the platform's shed roof said NEXT TRAIN, with an arrow pointing to the left. A heavy man in a corduroy jacket sat on the platform bench, reading the News, with a lunch bucket beside him.

  Parker went over and sat next to the man. He picked up the lunch bucket and snapped it open and looked at the Luger nestled inside. The man dropped his News and reached for the bucket.

  Parker shook his head, put the bucket on the bench on the side away from the Outfit man, and said, “You better get on your train before it pulls out.”

  The man looked back toward the turnstiles and the change booth and the rest rooms, then shrugged and got to his feet. He folded his paper and put it under his arm and stepped onto the train.

  Parker stood and walked down the platform, carrying the lunch bucket. The rest rooms were in a little separate clapboard shack on the platform, beyond the end of the tracks. There was an anteroom with a radiator, for waiting in wintertime, and the two green doors.

  Parker went on into the men's room. Two cowboys in flannel shirts and khaki pants stood there, doing nothing. Their shirttails hung outside their pants.

  Parker opened the lunch bucket and took the Luger out and showed it to them. “Take off your shirts,” he said. “Don't reach under them.”

  One started to do it, but the other one blinked and smiled and said, “What's going on?”

  Parker waited, ignoring the opening. The one who had started on the top button hesitated, looking at his partner. The partner's smile flickered and he said, “I don't know what you want, buddy. What's the problem?”

  “No problem,” Parker told him. “Take off your shirt.”

  “But I don't want to take off my shirt.”

  “I'll pull the trigger when the train starts,” Parker told him. “If you want noise before that, jump me.”

  The hesitant one said, “The hell with it. Do like he says, Artie. What's the percentages?”

  Artie considered, and shrugged, and started unbuttoning his shirt. They took off their shirts and stood holding them in their hands. They each had two small revolvers tucked into their trousers, in under their belts.

  Parker said, “Turn around.” They did so, and he reached around them, taking the guns away, putting them in the sink. Then he said, “Your train's going to leave in a minute. Better hurry.”

  They put their shirts back on wordlessly and left the room. Parker dropped the four guns in a water closet and went back outside. He walked along the train that was to leave next and saw the two cowboys with the man in the corduroy jacket. The three were sitting hunched together, talking. They looked up and watched him go by.

  Down at the other end of the platform was the dispatcher's building, tall and narrow. Beside it was a Coke machine, and a man in a business suit carrying a briefcase and holding a bottle of Coke. He'd been there when Parker had put his token in the turnstile, and he was still there. Parker hadn't yet seen him drink any of the Coke. He was looking out toward the trains in the yards.

  Parker walked the length of the platform and stopped by the Coke machine. He said, “You got change of a quarter?”

  “Of course,” said the man. He put his bottle of warm Coke on top of the machine, switched the briefcase to his other hand, and reached into his trouser pocket.

  Parker opened the lunch bucket and took the Luger out. His back was to the platform. He said, “Show me what's in your briefcase.”

  “Of course,” the man said again. He seemed unsurprised. He released the two straps and turned the flap back. He started to reach inside, and Parker shook his head. The man smiled and pulled the briefcase lips apart instead. There was a long-barreled .25 target pistol inside.

  “Close it up again,” Parker said. The man did so. “Put it down beside the machine, and go get on your train.”

  He watched as the man walked down the platform and got on the same car as the other three. A few minutes later, the conductor and the engineer clattered down the metal outside stair-case from the second floor of the dispatcher's building and boarded the train.

  The doors slid shut and the train pulled out. The lit sign switched, showing that the train on the other side was now next.

  Half an hour later, at twenty past one, five more of them arrived, wearing flashy suits and carrying musical instrument cases. They got off their train and stood around laughing and talking loudly, and Parker waited for ten minutes by the Coke machine, wanting to be sure. When they still had made no move to leave, he was sure.

  He went over and introduced himself and said, “You better hurry if you want to make your gig. Or you can make your play instead, right now.”

  The other four looked at the one with the trombone case. That one looked at the train beside him, with the people on it, and the woman in the distant change booth, and the dispatcher's building. Their car wasn't outside yet, so they didn't make their play.

  At quarter to two, a woman got off a train and left an overnight bag on the platform bench. Parker caught up with her and gave her the bag back. She looked frightened when he handed it to her and hurried away toward the street.

  When she left, Parker went into the phone booth on the platform and called Fairfax's apartment. Fairfax answered, and Parker recognized the voice. He said, “I just got rid of the woman with the overnight bag. I haven't killed any of these jokers yet, but the next one I will. And if the money doesn't show, I'll come back for you.”

  Fairfax said, “Just a moment.” The line hummed for a little, and then Fairfax came back on. “It'll be a little
late.”

  “That's all right,” said Parker.

  There weren't any more of them. At twenty to three, a train pulled in and two men got off it together, one carrying a suitcase. They came over to Parker, sitting on the bench, and put the suitcase down on the bench beside him. They started away again, without a word, but Parker said, “Wait.”

  They turned around and he motioned at the suitcase. “Open it.”

  They looked at each other and licked their lips. They didn't know if it was bugged or not. Finally, one of them opened the two catches and lifted the top. There was nothing inside but money.

  They sighed with relief, and Parker said, “Fine. Close it again.” They did so, and walked away down the platform and through the exit and out to the street.

  There were three ways away from here. There was the subway. There was the bus that came in at the end of the platform by the turnstiles, free transfer from and to the subway. There was the exit and the walk to the street. They would be ready for him whichever way he went.