The Hunter p-1 Page 2

  “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 drumroll 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 it tightrope walker out on the rope, knowing his balance was never better. High and hard and sharp. “It depend 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 three 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 liim 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.

  Chapter 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 coo] 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 T-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 h
ad 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 w.iiched 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 i lock over the television set when the sun was going down. He w.iiched dinner-hour news broadcasts, and they didn’t mention liim. They wouldn’t. The break was three weeks ago. A continent ago. A dead guard and a runaway vag don’t make the news it i ontinent 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 m.irks of his fingers. The name that went with the marks was Ronald Casper, but it didn’t matter. He could call himself any-(lung, even his true name, and the marks of his fingers would never change. Sixty days they gave him. Twenty days, and he liiught a guard, and they added six more months. Eight months nut of his life, weeding on the prison farm. He lasted six and Iniind 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. < rossed him and cuckolded him and jailed him and put his 1’iinrs on file in Washington, D.C. Given him a continent to i kiss. She had done it.

  No other woman could have. There had never been a woman .inywhere in the world to trouble him, till her. There never would be again.

  And now she had left him a body to dispose of. He couldn’t leave her here, he had a messenger to meet. He couldn’t keep her here, he wouldn’t be able to stand that. He couldn’t call for the law to come take her away, like a solid citizen, because one hard look would tell them he wasn’t a solid citizen.

  He hated her. He hated her and he loved her, and he’d never felt either emotion for anyone before. Never love, never hate, never for anyone. Mal, now. Mal he would kill, but that wasn’t hate. There was a score to settle; there were accounts to balance. That was rage, that was fury and pride, but it wasn’t hate.

  The level lowered in the whiskey bottle, and the prime-time panel shows and westerns came on the television set. He sat and watched, the blue-white light gleaming on his face, outlining the ridges of his cheekbones. Prime time went by, and the old movies started, and he watched them. The movies finished, and a minister said a prayer, and a choir sang the “Star-Spangled Banner” while a flag fluttered on the screen, and then the station went off the air. The speaker emitted only a heavy hissing; the screen was full of a trembling of black and white spots.

  He roused himself, switched the set off, turned on lights. The bottle was empty. He felt a little high, and that was bad. That was something else she’d done, made him drink himself a little high when he shouldn’t.

  He went out to the kitchen and made a sandwich, and washed it down with half a quart of milk. He was tired then, so he made coffee and drank three cups black, and doused his face at the kitchen sink.

  The bedroom was dark. Light spilled in from the living room, across her shod feet. He switched on the ceiling light, and she had moved. Her arms and legs had twisted in toward her torso; her head was back, her eyes were open and staring at the closed drapes.

  He pushed down the eyelids, and they stayed down. Her limbs resisted when he straightened them out. He picked her up, like a groom about to carry his bride across the threshold, and bore her out of the bedroom, across the living room to the front door.

  The hall was empty. He pushed the button and the elevator came up from the first floor. He took it down to the basement, carrying her, and found the back way out of the building.

  An alley took him to the street a block from the front of her building. He turned right and walked down the half-block to Fifth Avenue and Central Park. On the way, a man passed him, hurrying by, giving him scarcely a look. At the corner, a cruising cab sidled close, the driver leaning over to call out, “You want a cab, mister?”

  “We live just down the block.”

  The cabby grinned. “Got a load on, huh?”

  “She isn’t used to vodka,” he said.

  The cab cruised on. There were no pedestrians. He waited for ii Jaguar sedan to pass, going uptown, and the couple in it ^hmced at him and grinned and looked away. He crossed the m rret and stepped over the low stone wall into the park.

  In a blackness of shrubbery, he laid her down. Working by (eel, unable to see what he was doing, he stripped off the dress ii ik I the shoes again. He took out his pen knife. Holding her jaw in his left hand to guide him in the darkness, he stroked the kmfr across her face. Otherwise, the law would try to have her identified by running a photo in the papers. Mal would read the papers.

  There was no blood on his hands, very little on the knife. A corpse doesn’t bleed much. He wiped the knife on the dress, closed it, put it back in his pocket. He rolled the shoes in the dress, tucked the bundle under his left arm and walked out of the park and back to the apartment.

  He was very tired now, and he was moving unsteadily by the time he entered the apartment. He switched off all the lights and stretched out on the couch? He fell asleep at once.

  Chapter 4

  Three days of no sound but what droned from the television set. The apartment smelled stale, as though she were still in it. He didn’t wait well.

  There was a calendar on the kitchen wall, with a photograph of two cocker spaniels in front of a rose bush. He spent a lot of time looking at the dates, sitting at the kitchen table with a coffee cup in his hand.

  The third day began the new month. Parker roamed the living room, drawn constantly to the front door. He would spend five minutes at a time standing in front of the door, listening, waiting for the sound of the bell. Twice he reached out and touched the knob, but he didn’t open the door.

  There were still two bottles of whiskey in the cupboard, but he didn’t touch them. She wouldn’t do that to him, not again. She had troubled him for the last time.

  As it turned out, he was making fresh coffee when the bell rang. He stopped, holding the spoon, head raised, and turned toward the sound. Then he f
inished what he was doing and went through the apartment to the front door. He opened the peephole and studied the face of the messenger. He had never seen it before.

  The messenger was a short butterball and a cracked fashion plate. He wore a narrow-lapeled suit of a bright garish blue that had never been in style, and only the middle button of the coat was fastened. His shirt was the harsh white of snow in sunlight and at the collar was a multi-colored bow tie. The shirt seemed to be starched; not just the collar, the whole shirt.

  The face above this elegance was chubby and cheerful. The eyes were blue and small, set wide apart in fat. An inane half-smile curved the lips. The ears were pink and large and soft. And atop the head perched a straw hat, at a jaunty angle.

  The messenger’s suitcoat was so tight Parker could see the outline of the money envelope in the inside pocket. Mal must be sure of himself to send a thing like this.

  Parker opened the door. The butterball blinked at him, and the half-smile faded. A delicate frown puckered the brows, and he said in a tiny high voice, “Do I have the wrong apartment? I must, I must have the wrong apartment.”

  “You want Lynn Parker?”

  “Yes. Yes.” The butterball bent at the waist, peering past Parker. “Is she here?”

  “Come on in,” said Parker.

  “No, no. I must not. Is she here?”

  Parker reached out and clutched a handful of shirtfront. He pulled, and the butterball stumbled inside, eyes and mouth wide open, hands splayed out in front of him as though he’d fall. Parker looked out into the hall, saw that it was empty, and came back inside, slamming the door.

  The butterball was recovering his balance, and Parker shoved him again, sending him reeling into the living room. One way or another he managed not to land on his face.

  Parker followed him into the living room, noticing details he hadn’t been able to see through the peephole, like the shoes, which were a light russet tan with perforated curlicues over the toe. And between the top of the shoes and the cuffless bottom of the trouser legs there was at least an inch of space, occupied by canary yellow socks.

  The butterball stood all aquiver in the middle of the living room. His hands were pressed to his chest, fingers spread, either to protect himself or the envelope he was supposed to deliver.