The Hunter: A Parker Novel (Parker Novels) Read online

  He walked down by the Coke machine and set the suitcase down. He transferred the Luger from the lunch bucket to his side pants pocket and the target pistol from the briefcase to under his belt by the right hip pocket. He still had Mr. Carter's pistol, and this he held in his left hand.

  He picked up the suitcase again, walked to the outer end of the platform and down the steps past the sign saying TRANSIT EMPLOYEES ONLY. There was a wooden strip raised over the third rail.

  Parker stepped carefully over this and over the track and toward the yards. It was dark out here and no one paid any attention to him.

  He moved carefully across the yard, stepping high over each third rail, not wanting even to touch the wooden cover, and finally got past them all to a wide grass-grown gravel driveway. There was more light here, along the driveway, and he walked carefully, keeping to the darkest side. Glenwood Road was ahead, with cars parked along it and the row of houses stretching away down the cross streets. He couldn't see if there was anyone in the cars.

  The driveway went through an opening in the fence around the yard. Parker paused at the fence, watched, listened, then stepped through and turned left, away from Rockaway Parkway and the subway entrance. The suitcase was heavy in his right hand, the pistol comforting in his left, held close against his side.

  He crossed the street, because three colored boys were walking in his direction on this side, wearing raincoats and porkpie hats and singing in falsetto. He went on down two blocks and turned right where the project began, and tossed Mr. Carter's gun into a litter basket. Whoever fished it out in this neighbor-hood, it would be a long while before it got to the law.

  He transferred the suitcase to his left hand, and walked along with his right hand close to the Luger in his pants pocket. A car squealed around the corner behind him, headed his way.

  There was a bulldozed field to his right, where the row houses hadn't been put in yet. He ducked across that, pulling the Luger out of his pocket, and somebody in the car fired too early. He dropped to the ground, and the car raced on, screaming around the far corner and away.

  He got to his feet and strode deeper across the field. A high wooden wall separated the field from the backyards of row houses facing on the next street. He crouched down by the wall, the Luger in his hand, and waited.

  The same car came around the block again, moving more slowly now, and stopped opposite him. He was in pitch blackness against the wall and couldn't be seen. After a minute, the back door of the car opened and two men got out. They strolled across the field to where he had dropped, wandered around in a small circle, and strolled back.

  They stood by the car, and after a minute two more cars came down the street and parked. Men got out of them, and they had a conference. Then two of the cars took off again, going down to the corner, at Flatlands Avenue, both moving slowly. One turned right, and the other turned left.

  The third car stayed where it was. Three men got out of it and strolled across the street to the project and disappeared in the darkness among the buildings. The driver stayed in the car, his cigarette glowing faintly from time to time, and watched the field.

  Parker moved along the fence back to Glenwood Road, leaving the suitcase behind. The Luger was in his right hand, the target pistol in his left. He kept his hands close to his body as he moved. When he got to Glenwood Road, he stepped out onto the sidewalk and started to whistle.

  He walked along, still whistling, and turned at the corner and walked down the block toward the car. The driver watched him in the rearview mirror, but he wasn't carrying a suitcase, and he was whistling.

  The car window was open. When Parker reached it, he turned and set both gun barrels on the sill, pointing at the driver, and murmured, “One word.”

  The driver froze, both hands clenched on the wheel.

  Parker said, “Slide over and get out on this side.” He stepped back, and the driver obeyed. “Now walk out across the field there.”

  The two of them walked back to where he'd left the suitcase. He reversed the Luger and swung it, and the driver went down. He left the target pistol with him, picked up the suitcase, and hurried back to the car.

  He slid in, started the engine, and roared away. As he was turning the corner, a man came running out from one of the project buildings half a block back.

  He parked the car off Flatbush Avenue near Grand Army Plaza and took a cab into Manhattan.

  4

  On the bed were sixteen hundred slips of green paper, banded in stacks of fifty. There were twenty stacks marked ten, ten stacks marked fifty, two stacks marked one hundred. The numbers on all the slips of paper added up to forty-five thousand.

  Parker sat on the chair beside the bed and looked at the money. The suitcase, empty now, lay on the floor at his feet. He had counted the money and it was all there, and now he sat and looked at it and wondered how he had happened to get it.

  But it wasn't really that hard to figure out. He could follow Bronson's reasoning with no trouble at all. There was this mosquito, this Parker, causing trouble and disruptions. He wants forty-five thousand dollars. All right, give him the forty-five thousand dollars.

  Try to get him when the delivery is made, but if you don't get him the hell with it, he's got forty-five thousand dollars. So then he won't cause any more trouble and disruptions. And the organization has all the time and all the facilities to get him later on. He won't be bothering the organization any more, and the organization can take care of him at its leisure. Forty-five thousand isn't so much, when you consider the benefits.

  So. That was Bronson's side. His own side was simple, too; he had eighteen years of a pattern, and the pattern had been ripped apart. One job, the island job, had gone wrong and ripped the pattern apart. Now they were both dead, Lynn and Mal, the two who had done it to him. And he had made the job right again by getting his share back. He couldn't go back to the pattern while that one job was still wrong.

  Now he could go back. He had money to last him two or three years of the old life, and a plastic surgery. He'd have to go out to Omaha, to Joe Sheer, and find out the name of that doctor that had done the job on him. That was when Joe had retired, three years ago. He'd had his face changed because you never knew when you'd run into somebody who saw your face on a job ten years ago and still remembered.

  With a new face, with forty-five thousand dollars, the organization could look forever and never find him. He'd have to be a little more careful than before about the people he worked with on jobs, but that was no problem. He liked to pick and choose his jobs and his partners anyway.

  A job had soured and now it was straight again. It was as simple as that.

  He roused himself, putting out his cigarette, and picked up the suitcase from the floor. He carefully packed the bundles of money back into it, closed it, slid it under his bed. Then he picked up the phone and asked for American Airlines, and made a reservation on the 3:26 P.M. plane for Omaha.

  After that he left a call for noon, took a leisurely shower, and opened the pint of vodka he'd bought on the way back. He could drink it now; he was finished and he could relax. In Omaha, maybe Joe could set him up with a woman. If not, it could wait till Miami.

  He woke to the jangling of the telephone, telling him it was noon, the first day of the new-old pattern. The hotel wasn't as good as he was used to, but it didn't matter. He was on his way back, starting now.

  He took another shower, and dressed, and packed. He left the room carrying the two suitcases, his own and the one full of money. He rode down in the elevator and started across the lobby, and the desk clerk pointed him out to two men in rumpled suits.

  They came toward him, and he hesitated, not believing they'd dare try anything here. And how could they find him here anyway? They couldn't. But he was unarmed, the Luger thrown away last night on Flatbush Avenue.

  The two men came over, and one reached to his hip pocket, and Parker tensed, ready to throw the suitcase with the clothing in it. But all that ca
me out of the pocket was a wallet. It flipped open, showing the badge pinned to the leather. The owner of the wallet said, “Mr. Edward Johnson?”

  What is this? What is this? “Yes,” he said, because the desk clerk had pointed him out. “What is it?”

  “We want to talk to you.” The plainclothesman looked around at the lobby. “In private,” he said. “We'll go to the manager's office.”

  “What is it? What's it all about?”

  “There are some questions. If you'll come with us?”

  One of them had his left arm, gently. It was only to the manager's office, so he didn't fight it. He didn't try to guess what it was all about. He went along, ready, waiting to find out the score before making any kind of move.

  The three employees behind the desk watched out of the corners of their eyes as the detectives took him through a door marked Private into a small empty office. The door to the next room, the manager's office, was open, and the manager peered at them from his desk.

  One of the detectives went over and said through the door, “We won't be long, sir. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  “That's perfectly all right,” the manager said. He seemed embarrassed.

  The detective smiled and closed the door. Then he turned the smile off again and said, “Sit down, Mr. Johnson.”

  Parker sat down on the corner of the sofa nearest the door, ready, waiting for them to tell him what it was all about.

  The silent one stood by the door. The other one pulled a chair over and sat on it backwards, facing Parker, his forearms folded on the chair back, his bent knees jutting out at the sides.

  “Two days ago,” he said, “you were in a grocery store on West 104th Street between Central Park West and Manhattan Avenue. You spent some time in the back room of the store, talking with Manuel Delgardo, the proprietor. When two patrolmen entered the store, you stated that you were having a soft drink with Mr. Delgardo in the back of the store, and that you were there looking for Mr. Delgardo's son, Jimmy. You stated that you and Jimmy Delgardo once worked for the same trucking company in Buffalo. You also brought up the subject of narcotics, although neither of the patrolmen had given any indication that they were thinking of narcotics or suspected you of having anything to do with junk. Is this all substantially correct, as you remember it?”

  “Yes,” said Parker. Don't explain, don't justify, don't argue. Wait till you find out the score.

  The detective nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Now, you also stated that you were recently laid off from a General Electric Company plant on Long Island. Is that correct?”

  “That's what I said,” Parker answered.

  The detective caught it. “But is it correct?”

  So they'd checked that part. Change stories. “No,” said Parker.

  The detective nodded again. “That's right, we checked you out. The California address you gave the hotel is also incorrect, isn't it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you like to explain those lies?”

  “You've got to give a cop a background,” said Parker. “You tell him you're just drifting, he pulls you in on general principles. You give him some kind of background, he leaves you alone. Same with the hotel. I put down no permanent address, then I get a lot of static from the hotel.”

  “I see.” The detective nodded once more. “Then the truth is that you're a drifter, that you don't really have any background or address or job or anything else, is that it?”

  “That's right.”

  “And where did you get the money to afford this hotel?”

  “I won it in a crap game.”

  “Where?”

  Parker shook his head.

  The detective reddened. “Don't shake your head at me, punk! There wasn't any crap game!”

  Parker waited, ready. There wasn't any reason to do anything yet. Maybe later he'd have to pay this one back for the bad name.

  The detective controlled himself. “All right,” he said. “Get on your feet. Turn around. Touch the wall over the sofa, palms of your hands.”

  The other detective came over from the door and emptied his pockets. Then they let him sit down again.

  The first one looked at his driver's license. He looked at it more closely than anyone had before, and frowned. He turned it over, and studied different parts of it, and then he licked the ball of his thumb and rubbed it against the state seal. He looked up at his partner and grinned. “A phony,” he said. “Not even a good one. Here, look.”

  The other detective looked at the license and chuckled over it too, then handed it back. The first cop offered it to Parker, saying, “Want it back, Mr. Johnson?”

  “No, thanks,” said Parker. “You spoiled it.”

  “I'm sorry about that. What trucking firm in Buffalo did you and Jimmy Delgardo work for together?”

  Parker grabbed a name out of the air. “Lester Brothers.”

  The detective took a notebook out of his pocket, opened it, read something, and shook his head. “Wrong.”

  Parker said, “Do you mind telling me what it's all about?”

  “I don't mind at all,” said the detective. “Because then you'll tell me what it's all about. A man interested in narcotics, like you.”

  “Wrong,” Parker said.

  “Jimmy Delgardo,” said the detective, “was picked up at the Canadian border this morning at five o'clock coming down from Montreal. He was trying to enter the United States with a carload of liquor and marijuana.” He smiled from his corner of the web. “Now, Mr. Johnson,” he said, “you tell me what it's all about. You tell me what your right name is and what you do for a living and what connection you have with that carload Jimmy Delgardo was driving into this country.”

  Parker clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back on the sofa. He started to cross one leg over the other, but instead rammed his heel into the detective's face, just above the nose. Detective and chair clattered over backward, and Parker surged out of the sofa, coming in low on the other one, who was pawing at his hip for his gun. Parker butted him in the stomach and brought his head up sharply, the crown cracking into the detective's chin. His fist came up after, catching him in the throat.

  Parker stepped back, yanking the detective by the tie. The detective stumbled, falling away from the door, and Parker grabbed the suitcase full of money, pulled open the door, and ran.

  As he hit the revolving door, there were shouts behind him. The glass of the door starred, higher than his head, and something tugged at the shoulder of his coat.

  He got through to the street, and there was a cab waiting at the backstand outside the hotel, waiting for a fare. He pulled open the door, tossed the suitcase in and dove in after it. “Grand Central!” he shouted. “A fin if I make my train!”

  There wasn't time now to get to Idlewild. The alarm would be out first.

  “We're off!” cried the driver. They jolted away from the curb, squealed around the corner as the light was turning red, and weaved erratically through the traffic. Parker reached up with his left hand to touch his right shoulder. The coat was ripped there, by the seam, but the bullet hadn't touched him.

  He reached out and patted the suitcase, and it was the wrong one. He looked at it, and turned his head to look out the back window. The detectives had the suitcase with the forty-five thousand. He had the suitcase with the socks and the shirts.

  The cabby said, “What time's your train?”

  “It just left,” said Parker.

  “Jeez,” said the cabby. “You didn't leave yourself no time at all.”

  “I was kidding. There's still time.” Parker smiled, showing his teeth, thinking, What do I do now? Go to the Mayor of the City of New York? Tell him the city owes me forty-five Gs?

  When the cab stopped, he gave the driver a ten. He dragged the suitcase along into Grand Central Station. The clock over the rotunda said 12:53. He walked along the gates, looking at the times of departure until he came to one that said 12:58.

  On
e of the places it was going was Albany. He went through the gate and down along the concrete platform. He said to the conductor standing by the entrance to the first passenger car, “I didn't have time to buy a ticket. I'll get it on the train.”

  “Wait here.”

  He stood there, watching back to where the cops would come if they came, and five minutes occurred one by one. Then the conductor let him board the train and asked where he wanted a ticket for.

  He said, “Albany,” and the conductor wrote interminably on ticket and papers, accepted his money and allowed him to go sit down.

  The car was nearly empty.