The Hunter p-1 Page 3

  Parker held his hand out. “Give me the dough.”

  “I must not! I must, I must see Miss Parker.”

  “I’m her husband.”

  The fact meant nothing to the butterball, that was obvious. “I was told — they told me only to see Miss Parker.”

  “Who told you?” Parker asked.

  “Where is Miss Parker? I must, I must see Miss Parker.”

  “I’ve taken over the route. Give me the dough.”

  “I must, I must telephone. May I telephone?” He peeked around the room, then his eyes flickered warily to Parker.

  Parker stepped quickly over in front of him and yanked on the jacket lapel. The one button holding the jacket closed came off with a pop, and Parker took the bulky envelope out of the inside pocket. He tossed it at the armchair to his left.

  The butterball fluttered his arms, crying, “You must not! You must not!”

  Parker held his left hand rigid, fingers together and extended, and chopped the butterball in the midsection, just above the gold monogrammed belt buckle. The butterball opened his mouth, but neither sound nor air came out. In slow motion, his hands folded across his stomach, his knees buckled, and he fell forward into Parker’s right fist. Then he hit the floor cold.

  Parker emptied his pockets, searching every item. The wallet contained a driver’s license, a library card, a numbers slip with 342 on it, and fourteen dollars. The license and library card agreed that the butterball was named Sidney Chalmers, and that he lived on West 92nd Street.

  Another pocket produced seventy-three cents in change and a Zippo lighter with S.C. inscribed on its side in Gothic script. A slip of paper with Lynn’s name arid address on it was in the side pocket of the jacket. There was nothing anywhere to tell where he’d picked up the envelope for Lynn.

  Parker left him sprawled on the carpet and went into the kitchen. A search of the drawers resulted in a roll of slender but strong twine. Going back to the living room, Parker lashed the butterball’s wrists and ankles securely, then propped him up with his back against the sofa, his head lolling back on the cushion. Then Parker slapped him and pinched him till he groaned and squirmed and his eyelids fluttered open.

  Parker straightened, standing tall and ominous, gazing deadpan down at the terrified butterball. “Tell me where Mal Resnick is.”

  The butterball licked trembling lips. “Hu-who?”

  Parker bent, slapped him backhanded across the face, straightened, and repeated his question.

  The butterball blinked like a metronome. His chin quivered. Fat tears squiggled down his cheeks. “I don’t know,” he pleaded. “I don’t know who you mean.”

  “The guy who gave you the envelope.”

  “Oh, I must not!”

  “Oh, you must,” Parker mimicked. He put his right foot on the butterball’s crossed, tied ankles, and gradually added weight. “You sure as hell must.”

  “Help!” sobbed the butterball. “Help! Help!”

  Parker kicked him in the stomach. “Wrong words,” he said. “Don’t do that again.” He waited till the butterball had air in his lungs again. “Give me his name.”

  “Please — they’ll kill me.”

  “I’ll kill you. Worry about me.”

  The butterball closed his eyes, and his whole face sagged in an expression of complete and comic despair. Parker waited, and at last the butterball said, without opening his eyes, “Mr. Stegman. Mr. Arthur Stegman.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “In — in Brooklyn. The Rockaway Car Rental. Farragut Road near Rockaway Parkway.”

  “Fine. You should have saved yourself some trouble.”

  “They’ll kill me,” he sobbed. “They’ll kill me.”

  Parker went down on one knee, untied the twine around the butterball’s ankles, straightened up and said, “Get to your feet.”

  He couldn’t do it by himself; Parker had to help him.

  The butterball stood weaving, breathing like a bellows. Parker turned him around, shoved him across the living room into the bedroom, tripped him up and sent him crashing to the floor. He tied his ankles again, then went out and locked the bedroom door behind him.

  He gathered up the envelope full of money, slipped it into his jacket pocket, and left the apartment.

  Chapter 5

  The subway line ended at Rockaway Parkway and Glenwood Road, in Canarsie. Parker asked directions of the old woman in the change booth. Farragut Road was one block to the right.

  The Rockaway Car Rental was a small shack on a lot between two private houses. The lot was sandy and weed scraggled, with three elderly white-painted Checker cabs parked on it. The shack was small, of white clapboard, with a plate-glass window in front.

  Inside, there was a railing around the guy at the two-way radio. A bedraggled sofa was along the other wall, and a closed door led to the room in back.

  Parker leaned on the chest-high railing and said, “I’m looking for Arthur Stegman.”

  The radioman put down his Daily News and said, “He ain’t here right now. Maybe I can help you.”

  “You can’t. Where do I find him?”

  “I’m not sure. If you’d leave your — “

  “Take a guess.”

  “What?”

  “About where he is. Take a guess.”

  The radioman frowned. “Now hold on a second, buddy. You want to — “

  “Is he home?”

  The radioman gnawed his cheek a few seconds, then said, “Why don’t you go ask him?”

  He picked up his News again.

  “I’ll be glad to,” said Parker. “Where’s he live?”

  “We don’t give that information out,” said the radioman. He swiveled around in his chair and studied the News.

  Parker tapped a thumbnail on the top of the railing. “You’re making a mistake, employee,” he said. “Sidney run off.”

  The radioman looked up and frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “To you, maybe, nothing. To Stegman, plenty.”

  The radioman frowned harder, thinking it over. Then he shook his head. “No,” he said. “If Art wanted to see you, he’d of told you where to find him.”

  “Right here,” Parker said.

  “For that, all you need is a phone book. No sale.” He went back to his News again.

  Parker shook his head angrily, and strode toward the door at the back of the room. Behind him, the radioman jumped up, shouting something, but Parker ignored him. He pushed open the door and walked in.

  Six men were sitting around a round table, playing seven-card stud. They looked up, and Parker said, “I’m looking for Stegman.”

  A florid-faced guy with his hat jammed far back on his head said, “Who the hell invited you?”

  The one in the police uniform said, “Get lost.”

  The radioman came in then, and said to the florid-faced guy, “He just won’t take no for an answer.” He reached for Parker. “Come on, bum. Enough is enough.”

  Parker knocked away the reaching hand, and brought up his knee. The radioman grunted and rested his brow on Parker’s shoulder. Parker sidestepped, ignoring the radioman, who sagged in a half-crouch against the wall. “I’m still looking for Stegman.”

  The one in the police uniform threw down his cards and got to his feet. “That looks to me like assault,” he said.

  The florid-faced guy said, “Willy will sign the complaint, Ben. Don’t you worry.”

  Another of the players, a tall hard-faced man in a white shirt and no tie, said, “This bird looks to me like the kind resists arrest. What do you think, Ben?”

  “Maybe you ought to help me, Sal,” the cop said.

  Parker shook his head. “You don’t want to play around. I got a message for Stegman.”

  “Hold it,” said the florid-faced guy. Ben and Sal stopped where they were. “What’s the message?”

  “You Stegman?”

  “I’ll tell him when I see him.”

 
“Yeah. You’re Stegman, all right. I come to tell you Sidney’s run off.”

  Stegman sat forward in his chair. “What?”

  “You heard me. He run off with the thousand. He never even went to see the girl.”

  “You’re crazy. Sidney wouldn’t dare do — ” He stopped, looked quickly at the other players, and got to his feet. “Deal me out. Come on, you, we’ll talk outside.”

  “What about this assault?” the cop, Ben, said.

  Stegman made an angry gesture. “The hell with that. Go on back to the game.”

  “What if Willy wants to sign a complaint?”

  “He don’t. Do you, Willy?”

  Willy, upright now, but still ashen faced, said, “No. All I want’s a return bout.”

  Stegman shook his head. “On your own time, Willy,” he said. “Come on, you.”

  Parker followed him to the front office, where Stegman went behind the railing and took one of the keys from the rack on the wall. “I’m taking the Chrysler, Willy,” he called into the back room. “I’m going down to the beach. Be gone twenty minutes.”

  “Twenty minutes. Okay.” Willy came to the door and looked at Parker. “I’m on my own time startin’ six o’clock,” he said.

  Parker turned his back and walked out the shack after Stegman. Stegman pointed at a black nine-passenger Chrysler limousine. “We’ll take that. We can’t talk in the office. No privacy. Those guys don’t know nothin’ about this stuff.”

  They got into the limousine, and Stegman drove it out around the shack to the street. Looking out the rear window, Parker saw the cop standing in the shack doorway, frowning.

  Stegman drove up to the corner of Rockaway Parkway and turned left. “You can start talking any time,” he said.

  Parker pointed at the two-way radio under the dashboard. “If you’re not back in twenty minutes, Sparks calls you, is that it?”

  “And if I don’t answer,” Stegman answered, “he calls every other car I’ve got. How come you know about Sidney?”

  “I was with the girl. Lynn Parker.”

  Stegman glanced at him, then back at the traffic. “You know a lot. How come I don’t recognize you?”

  “I just got in town. Watch your driving, there’s a lot of kids.”

  “I know how to drive.”

  “Maybe we better wait till we get to this beach.”

  Stegman shrugged.

  They drove nine blocks down Rockaway Parkway, then through an underpass under the Belt Parkway and around a circle to a broad cobblestone pier sticking out into Jamaica Bay. There were a couple of Parks Department — type buildings out at the far end of the pier. The rest was parking lot, with a few small skinny trees, the whole surrounded by a railed concrete walk and benches.

  Stegman stopped in the parking lot, which was almost empty. “The Bay’s polluted,” he said. “There’s no swimming here. Kids come here at night and neck, that’s all.” He shifted in the seat, facing Parker, and said, “Now what’s this about Sidney? He wouldn’t dare run off with the dough.”

  “He didn’t.” Parker took the envelope out of his pocket and dropped it on top of the dashboard. “I took it away from him.”

  Stegman’s hand reached toward the radio switch. “What the hell is this? What are you up to?”

  “Touch that switch and I’ll break your arm.”

  Stegman’s hand stopped.

  Parker nodded. “I’m looking for Mal Resnick,” he said. “You’re going to tell me where he is.”

  “No. Even if I knew, the answer would still be no.”

  “You’ll tell me. I want to tell him he doesn’t have to pay her off any more.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s dead. So is your fat pansy. You can be dead, too, if you want.”

  Stegman licked his lips. He turned his head and nodded at the small stone buildings out at the end of the pier. “There’s people there,” he said. “All I got to do is holler.”

  “You’d never get it out. Take a deep breath and you’re dead. Open your mouth wide and you’re dead.”

  Stegman looked back at him. “I don’t see no gun,” he said. “I don’t see no weapon.”

  Parker held up his hands. “You see two of them,” he said. “They’re all I need.”

  “You’re out of your mind. It’s broad daylight. We’re in the front seat of a car. People see us scuffling — “

  “There wouldn’t be any scuffle, Stegman. I’d touch you once, and you’d be dead. Look at me. You know this isn’t a bluff.”

  Stegman met his eye, and Parker waited. Stegman blinked, and looked down at the radio. Parker said, “You don’t have that long. He won’t be calling for ten minutes. You’ll be dead in five if you don’t tell me where Mal is.”

  “I don’t know where he is. That’s the truth. I believe you — you’re crazy enough to try it — but that’s still the truth. I don’t know where he is.”

  “You got that dough from him.”

  “There’s a checking account in the bank near my office. On Rockaway Parkway. There’s a hundred bucks in it to keep it alive. Every month Mal deposits eleven hundred. Then I write a check and take it out. I keep the hundred for myself and send the grand to the girl. A different messenger every month, the way he wanted it.”

  Parker gnawed on his cheek.

  Stegman said, “He’s scared of the girl. That’s the way it looks to me.”

  “He must have left you a way to get in touch with him.”

  “No. He said he’d see me around.” Stegman exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “Mister,” he said, “I don’t know nothing about this. I don’t know who you are, or the girl, or why the payoff. Mal and I used to hang around together in the old days, before he went out to California. So he shows up three months ago and says do him a favor. I’ll pick up an extra C a month, and there’s no problem, no law, nothing. So I’ll do him the favor, what the hell. But now you come around and talk about killing me. That much a buddy of Mal I’m not. If I knew where he was, I’d tell you. That’s straight. If he was setting me up for this, some guy coming around going to kill me, he should have picked another boy. He should have told me what might happen. You think I’d come out for a ride with you?”

  Parker shrugged. “All right.”

  “I’ll tell you this much. He’s in New York, that I know.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He said so. When he come around for me to do this little favor. I asked him how he liked it out west, and he said he was through out there. From now on, he was staying in the big town. He got like lonesome, he said.”

  “So where would he be? You know him from the old days. Where would he hang out?”

  “I don’t have any idea. He was gone a long time.”

  “You could check.”

  “I could say I’d check. Then you’d get out of the car, and I’d mind my own business some more. And I’d tell my drivers, they see you around again, they should jump on you with both feet.” He shrugged. “You know that as well as I do.”

  Parker nodded. “So I’ll find him some other way. You want Sidney back, you send somebody up to Lynn Parker’s place. I got him locked in the bedroom.”

  “I thought you said he was dead.”

  “He isn’t.”

  “Is the girl there, too?”

  “No. She’s in the morgue. All right, let’s go back. You can drop me off at the subway.”

  “Sure.” Stegman stopped for a red light and shook his head. “This’ll teach me. No more favors.”

  “You came out all right. So far.”

  Stegman turned his head. “What do you mean, so far?”

  “You happen to run into Mal somewhere, you don’t want to mention me.”

  “Don’t worry, friend. No more favors!”

  Chapter 6

  He changed trains three times, but there wasn’t anyone following him. He was disgusted. It meant Stegman was telling the truth, and it was a dead end. Otherwise, a tail would have led
to the connection.

  He wanted Mal. He wanted Mal between his hands… .

  It had started ten months ago. There were four of them in it: Parker and his wife and Mal and a Canadian hotshot named Chester. Chester was the one who set it up. He’d heard about the arms deal, and he saw the angle right away. He brought Mal into it, and Mal brought in Parker.

  It was a sweet setup. Eighty thousand dollars’ worth of munitions, with over-writes along the way bringing the total up to ninety-three grand and change. The goods were American, picked up here and there, and trucked piecemeal into Canada. It was easier to get the stuff into Canada than either into Mexico or out of a United States port, and once in Canada there was no trouble getting it airborne.

  There was a small airfield up in Keewatin, near Angikuni Lake, and at the right time of year the roads were passable. There were two planes, making two trips each, heading first westward over MacKenzie and Yukon and B.C. to the Pacific, and then turning south. One island stop for refueling, and then on southward again. The buyers were South American revolutionaries with a mountain airfield and a yen for bloodshed.

  Chester learned about the transaction through a friend of his who’d gotten a job driving one of the trucks north into Canada. He learned the details of the operation and knew that, in a deal like this, payment would have to be in cash. That made it a natural for a hijacking. There would never be any law called in, and there was nothing to fear from a bunch of mountain guerrillas a continent away.

  As to the Americans and Canadians doing the selling, they wouldn’t care; they wouldn’t be out of pocket at all. They’d still have their munitions, and there was always a market for munitions.

  The truck driver didn’t know when or where the money was supposed to change hands, but Chester found out from him the name of a man who did know, a lawyer named Bleak from San Francisco, one of the backers who’d put up the money in the states for the initial purchase of the arms. He also learned that he had five weeks before the arms would all have been delivered to the field in Keewatin.

  Chester at that time was a straight busher when it came to operations like armed robbery. Most of his experience was with cross-the-border running of one kind or another. He’d bring pornography into the states and bootleg it in Chicago or Detroit, transport cigarettes north and whiskey south, wheel bent goods into Canada for sale fence-to-fence, and things like that.