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

  He watched her. She straightened, keeping her back to him, and adjusted the robe, then walked through the apartment to the kitchen. He followed her.

  It was an expensive apartment in an expensive building on an expensive block in the East Sixties. Inside the front door was a foyer, with a mirror and a table and a closet and an oriental rug. To the left, two steps led down between potted plants to the living room. More plants were spotted along the walls. There was other furniture, but the room was dominated by a long black coffee table and a longer white sofa.

  In the right-hand wall, glass-paned double doors led to a dining room. Of the very few dining rooms left in Manhattan, this was one of the last. It was done like a traditional dining room, with the warm, wood table and chairs, the side tables, the glass-doored shelving lined with tumblers and brandy snifters and pilsner glasses, even the yellow-bulbed chandelier hanging over the table.

  Another right turn from the dining room led to the kitchen. There was a swinging door. The girl pushed through it, and Parker followed her. He sat down at the table and looked up at the white-faced black-fingered clock on the white wall. Nearly five-thirty. The kitchen window showed black, but dawn wasn't too far away.

  The girl opened a cupboard door and took down an electric coffee maker. She had to hunt around for the cord. Her face was expressionless, her movements neither slow nor fast, but she carefully kept from looking at him, and when she found the cord she dropped it on the floor.

  Stooping to pick it up, she exposed her breasts to him. They were pale, like her belly, full, red tipped, soft looking. She didn't even know she'd done it. She was afraid for her life. She wasn't thinking about her body at all.

  While the coffee was making, she stood gazing unseeing at the pot. He had to tell her when it was ready.

  She got him a cup. He said, “Get two.” She did, and poured them coffee, and sat down across from him not looking at him.

  “Lynn,” he said. His voice was harsh, but soft.

  She raised her eyes, as though they were being hauled up by pulleys. She looked at him. “I had to,” she whispered.

  He said, “Where's Mal?”

  She shook her head. “Gone. Moved out.”

  “Where?”

  “I don't know. Honest to God.”

  “When?”

  “Three months ago.”

  He sipped at the coffee. It was stronger than he liked, but that was all right. He shouldn't have come here.

  Four in the morning, at the hotel, all of a sudden he'd been awake. And with the vodka still strong in him. So he'd come straight here.

  It was just as well Mal was gone. When he met up with Mal, he didn't want any vodka in him.

  He lit a cigarette, drank more coffee. He said, “Who pays the rent?”

  “Mal,” she said.

  He got to his feet without a word, stepped swiftly through the swinging door to the dining room. He looked to the left, through the glass doors into the living room, then moved to his right, and shoved open the other door. He reached quickly in and switched on the light.

  The bedroom was empty. He strode across and checked the bathroom, and it was empty, too.

  Back in the bedroom, he noticed Lynn standing in the door-way, looking at him. He opened the closet. Dresses and skirts and blouses and sweaters. Women's shoes on the floor. He went over to the dresser, looked quickly through the drawers. Only female things.

  He shook his head. He looked at her, still watching him from the doorway. “You live alone?”

  She nodded.

  “And Mal pays the rent?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Let's go back to the kitchen.”

  Again, she led the way. He switched off the bedroom light and followed.

  They finished their coffee in silence, and then he said, “Why?”

  She jumped, startled, as shaken up as if a firecracker had gone off next to her ear. She gaped at him, and slowly her eyes focused, and she said, “What? I don't—I don't know what you mean.”

  He waved a hand, impatiently. “The rent,” he said.

  “Oh.” She nodded, and brought her hands up to her face. They stayed there a few seconds, and then she inhaled shudderingly and lowered her hands again. Her face was no longer expressionless. Now it was ravaged. It was as though invisible weights were sewn to her cheeks, dragging the whole face down. “A payoff, I guess,” she said. Her tone was hopeless, like before.

  “Yeah,” he said. He sounded mad again. He flipped his cigarette across the room into the sink. It sputtered, and he lit another one.

  She said, “I'm glad you aren't dead. Isn't that stupid?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “You hate me. You got a right.”

  “I ought to slash you,” he told her. “I ought to slash your nostrils. I ought to make you look like a witch, like the witch you are.”

  “You ought to kill me,” she said hopelessly.

  “Maybe I will.”

  Her head sagged down toward her chest. Her voice was almost inaudible. “I keep taking pills,” she murmured. “Every night. If I don't take the pills, I don't sleep. I think about you.”

  “And how I'm coming for you?”

  “No, and how you're dead. And I wish it was me.”

  “Take too many pills,” he suggested.

  “I can't. I'm a coward.” She raised her head and looked at him again. “That's why I did it, Parker,” she said. “I'm a coward. It was you dead, or me dead.”

  “And Mal pays the rent.”

  “I'm a coward,” she said.

  “Yeah. I know about that.”

  “I never gave him satisfaction, Parker. I never responded, no matter what he did.”

  “That why he moved out?”

  “I think so.”

  He grinned, mirthlessly. “You can turn it on and off,” he said bitterly. “A bed machine. None of it means a thing.”

  “Only with you, Parker.”

  He spat out a word like a slap. She recoiled from it, shaking her head. “It's the truth, Parker,” she said. “That's why I need the pills. That's why I didn't quit this place and find some other guy. Mal keeps me going and he doesn't ask anything I can't give.”

  The coffee was replacing the vodka. He laughed, slapping the table, and said, “Good thing the bastard wasn't here, huh? I come barging in, he'd have two, three guys in the living room, huh? All the time, just in case.”

  She nodded. “He never stayed here alone.”

  “He's worried, the bastard.” He nodded. He beat out a drum-roll on the table edge with the first two fingers of each hand. “He thinks maybe I'll come back from the grave,” he said. He laughed, and finished the drumroll with a rhythmic double crash of both hands on the table. “He's right, huh? Yeah. Back from the grave.”

  “What are you going to do, Parker?” she asked, and the quaver of fear had finally reached her voice.

  “I'm going to drink his blood,” he said. “I'm going to chew up his heart and spit it into the gutter for the dogs to raise a leg at. I'm going to peel the skin off him and rip out his veins and hang him with them.” He sat in the chair, his fists clenching and unclenching, his eyes glaring at her. He snatched up the coffee cup and hurled it. It caromed off the refrigerator and shattered on the edge of the sink, then sprayed onto the floor.

  She stared at him, mouth moving, but no sound coming out.

  He looked at her, and his eyes hardened again to onyx. One side of his mouth grinned, and he said, “To you? You mean to you? What am I going to do to you?”

  She didn't move.

  “I don't know yet,” he said. His voice was high and hard, like a tightrope walker out on the rope, knowing his balance was never better. High and hard and sharp. “It depends. It depends on you. Where's Mal?”

  “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered.

  “It depends on you,” he said again.

  She shook her head. “I don't know, Parker. I swear on the Cross. I haven't seen him for thr
ee months. I don't even know if he's in New York.”

  “How do you get your payoff?”

  “Messenger,” she said. “The first of every month. He brings me an envelope, with cash in it.”

  “How much cash?”

  “A thousand.”

  He smacked the table with stiff fingers. “Twelve grand a year. Tax free. The setup pays well, Lynn. The Judas ewe.” He laughed harshly, like a knife slashing through canvas. “The Judas ewe,” he repeated. “Wiggling her tail down the chute.”

  “I was afraid! They would have killed me, Parker. They would have hurt me and then they would have killed me.”

  “Yeah. Who is this messenger?”

  “It's a different one each time. I don't know any of them.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Mal don't trust you. Nobody trusts the Judas ewe.”

  “I didn't want to, Parker, I swear before all the saints! You were the only man I ever wanted. The only man I ever needed. But I had to.”

  “You'd do it again,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Not this time—not now. I couldn't go through this again.”

  “You're afraid to die,” he said. He held his hands out and flexed them, looking at her throat.

  She shrank away. “Yes. Yes, I'm afraid. I'm afraid to live, too. I couldn't go through it all over again.”

  “The first of the month,” he said, “you'll open your mouth to the messenger. You'll say, ‘Tell Mal to look out. Tell him Parker's in town.”’

  She shook her head violently. “I've got no reason,” she said desperately. “I'm going down to the core now, Parker. I'm telling you the bottom truth. If I had to, I would. I'd do it all over again, everything, if I had to. But I don't have to. Nobody knows you're here. Nobody knows you're alive. Nobody's threatening me, making me turn you up.”

  “Maybe you'll play it safe and volunteer,” he said.

  “No. That's no way to play it safe.”

  He laughed. “You been in the Army too? Or just nearby?”

  Surprisingly, she flushed, and her answer was sullen. “I was never a whore, Parker,” she said. “You know that.”

  “No. You sold my body instead.”

  He got to his feet and left the kitchen. She trailed after him, and he went into the living room. He stood for a minute glowering at the furniture, and then he sprawled on the sofa.

  “I'll take a chance,” he said. “I'll take a small chance. Mal can't trust you, so he didn't leave you any contacts. No phone numbers, no drops, nothing. So you can't play Judas ewe till the first of the month, when the messenger comes. Four days from now, when the messenger comes. Right?”

  “Not then, either,” she said, face and voice urgent. “I wouldn't, Parker—there's nobody forcing me.”

  He laughed again. “You won't get the chance,” he said. ”You won't have to make the choice.“ He got up with a suddenness that terrified her, but he made no move toward her. “I'll meet him for you.”

  “Are you going to stay?” she asked him. Fear and desire were mixed up together in her expression. “Will you stay?”

  “I'll stay.”

  He turned away from her, crossed the living room and pushed into the bedroom again. She followed, the tip of her tongue trembling between her lips, her eyes darting from him to the bed.

  He circled the bed, knelt beside it, in front of the nightstand. He reached in under the nightstand and ripped the telephone wires loose. Then he straightened again.

  She had opened her robe. He looked at her, and the desire stabbed him once more, stronger than the last time. He remembered her now.

  She said, “Will you stay in here?”

  He shook his head. “For you, that tree is dead.”

  He went over to the window, pushed the drapes aside and looked out. There was no fire escape, and no ledge.

  She whispered his name.

  He crossed the room again, headed toward the door. She took a step toward him, her arms coming up. He stepped around her, and went on to the door.

  The key was in the lock on the inside. He took it out, stepped through the doorway, closed and locked the door.

  On the other side, she called his name, just once.

  He switched out the living room and kitchen lights, and lay down on the sofa. In the dark, he stared at the window. He had lied. The tree wasn't dead: he was afraid of her.

  3

  She was a corpse naked on the bed. He stood in the doorway a minute, looking at her. The drapes were drawn against the noon sun, leaving the room as cool and dark as a funeral parlor. An odor of perfume and cosmetics and cologne was vaguely flower-like. Where a faint breeze rippled the separation of the drapes, sunlight flickered like a candle flame. Far away there was the hum of traffic.

  She lay on her back, breasts and belly flattened. She had apparently composed herself for death, legs together, hands crossed at the waist, elbows close to her sides. But, in falling asleep, she had moved, destroying the symmetry.

  One knee had bent, the right leg now lying awkwardly L-shaped, the wrinkled sole of her right foot against the side of the left knee, in a kind of graceless parody of ballet. Her left hand was still reposed, palm down, over her navel, but her right arm had fallen away and lay now outstretched, palm up and fingers curled. Her head was canted at an angle to the right, and her mouth had fallen open.

  Parker came into the room, strode around the bed, and picked up the empty pill bottle from the nightstand. Printed on the label was the name and address and phone number of the drug store. Typed in the white space below were Lynn's name, the name of a doctor, a number, and the message: “One on retiring as necessary. Do not exceed dosage.”

  Parker moved his lips as he read.

  He read the whole thing twice, the name of the drug store and the address and the phone number and his dead wife's name and the name of the doctor and the number and the message. Then he dropped the pill bottle into the half-full wastebasket beside the nightstand, and turned to look at the corpse again.

  He moved as though to touch her wrist, to feel for a pulse, but then he checked the motion. A corpse is a corpse; there can be no mistake. The skin is too waxlike, the chest too still, the lips too dry, the eyes too sunken behind the closed lids.

  He had to get rid of her. He had three days to stay here, and she couldn't be here with him. In all his rages, six months on the prison farm, he had never planned to kill her. To beat her, yes, to mutilate her, to give her pain and scars, but not to see her dead.

  In the closet, he found a dress with a zipper all the way down the back. He put it on her, forcing her stiffening arms through the sleeves, then rolled her over and zipped it closed and rolled her back again. He forced shoes onto her feet. They were too small. Either the feet had started to swell or she had gone in for shoes more flattering than comfortable.

  Dressed, she looked less dead. Not asleep, though. Unconscious. As though she'd been clipped. He closed her mouth, and it stayed closed.

  At the doorway, he looked at her for a long minute. Then he said, “You were always dumb. You never changed.”

  He shut the door.

  There was a television set in the living room. He found a bottle of blended whiskey in a kitchen cupboard, broke the seal, and watched cartoons on television. Then he watched situation comedy reruns and children's shows.

  The living room drapes were closed, but he could tell by the clock over the television set when the sun was going down. He watched dinner-hour news broadcasts, and they didn't mention him. They wouldn't. The break was three weeks ago. A continent ago. A dead guard and a runaway vag don't make the news a continent away.

  It should never have happened. Another result of her dumbness. Sixty days as a vag, and now they had his prints on file, the marks of his fingers. The name that went with the marks was Ronald Casper, but it didn't matter. He could call himself anything, even his true name, and the marks of his fingers would never change. Sixty days they gave him. Twenty days, and he fought a guard, and t
hey added six more months. Eight months out of his life, weeding on the prison farm. He lasted six and found his break, and took it—and left behind a stupid guard with his head half twisted from his shoulders.

  She had caused that, just one of the things she'd done to him. Crossed him and cuckolded him and jailed him and put his prints on file in Washington, D.C. Given him a continent to cross. She had done it.