Flashfire p-19 Read online

  His second visit, coming to an early show, Parker had waited until the manager left on one of her rounds, then tried the four keys he’d brought with him against the lock in the office door and found the one that worked. The third time, he’d watched the ticket-taker at the door, the only other employee in here except for the concession-stand girl. He was a college kid in a maroon and gray uniform; what did he do when the money was in motion?

  Nothing, or nothing that mattered. Once the box office closed, the kid crossed the lobby, went through an Employees Only door and down a flight of stairs to change out of his uniform. So the cashier and the manager were all he had to think about.

  Tonight, he stood looking at a poster for a coming attraction, mounted on the wall down the corridor from the manager’s office. He read the names and looked at the colored drawing of an exploding train going over a cliff, as the cashier went by behind him, carrying the metal tray. Farther down the hall, the manager stood in the open doorway. She and the cashier had been doing this routine for years. Neither of them was wary, neither of them looked at the customer reading the poster. The cashier went into the office, the manager shut the door, and Parker heard the sound of the lock as it clicked shut.

  He waited just over a minute, then slipped on the surgical gloves and moved quickly down the hall. The key was in his right hand, the Sentinel in his left. He opened the door with one quick movement, stepped into the office, and shut the door.

  The manager was on one knee in front of the open black metal box of the safe in the corner behind her desk. The cashier had put the money tray on the manager’s desk and was just starting to hand the cash to her. They both had stacks of bills in their hands. They looked over at Parker, and neither of them was yet alarmed, just startled that somebody had come through that door.

  The manager’s name was on a brass plate on her desk. Stepping forward, showing the Sentinel, Parker said, ‘Gladys, keep that money in your hands. Turn toward me. Turn toward me!’ He didn’t want her thinking about hurriedly slamming shut the safe.

  Gladys merely gaped, thinking about nothing at all yet, but the cashier, a short stocky round-faced woman, stared at the gun in openmouthed shock, then sagged against the desk, the stacks of bills falling from her fingers. Her face paled, sweat beaded on her forehead, and her eyes glazed. Parker said, ‘Gladys! Don’t let her fall!’

  Gladys finally got her wits about her. Scrambling to her feet, tossing onto the desk the money she’d been holding, she leaned toward the cashier, stretching out an arm while she snapped at Parker in a quick harsh voice, ‘Put that gun away! Don’t you know what you’re doing?’

  Ashort green vinyl sofa stood against the sidewalk Parker said, ‘Come on, Gladys, help her to the sofa.’ Gladys had to come around the desk to reach the cashier, but she still glared at Parker. ‘She’s from Guatemala,’ she said, as though that explained everything. ‘She saw

  ‘

  The cashier was moaning now, sliding down the desk, the strength giving out in her legs. Parker said, ‘Get her to the sofa, Gladys, and she won’t have to look at the gun.’

  ‘Maria,’ Gladys murmured, helping the other woman, moving her with difficulty away from the desk and over toward the sofa. ‘Come on, Maria, he won’t do anything, it’s all right.’

  That’s right, Parker wouldn’t be doing anything, at least with the Sentinel, not this time. He wanted not to use it unless he absolutely had to, because that, too, could become a pattern, a series of robberies that always began with the wounding of one of the victims.

  The two women sat on the sofa, Maria collapsed into herself like a car-crash dummy, Gladys hovering next to her, murmuring, then turning to glare again at Parker and say, ‘Are you robbingus? Is that actually what this is? Are you actually robbingus?’

  ‘Yes,’ Parker said, and moved around the desk toward the safe.

  ‘For money?’ Gladys demanded. ‘The traumayou’re giving this poor woman for money?’

  ‘Keep her calm,’ Parker said, ‘and nobody’s going to get hurt.’

  He had brought with him a collapsible black vinyl bag with a zipper, inside his shirt at the back. Now he took it out, put the Sentinel handy on the desk, and stuffed cash into the bag. When it was full, he zipped it shut and put the rest of the money in his pockets.

  There was one line in here for both phone and fax. He unplugged the line at the wall and at the phone, rolled it up, and pocketed it, then carried the vinyl bag and the Sentinel over to the two women on the sofa. ‘Gladys,’ he said.

  She looked up at him. She was calmer now, and Maria was getting over her faint. Gladys was ready to stop being angry and start being worried. ‘You wouldn’t dare shoot that,’ she said. ‘Not with all the people around.’

  ‘Gladys,’ Parker said, ‘there’s gunshots going off in the movies all around us. I could empty this into you, and nobody’d even look away from the screen.’

  Gladys blinked, then stared at the gun. She could be seen braving herself to stare at it. Maria moaned again and closed her eyes, but wasn’t unconscious.

  Parker said, ‘I’ll wait out in the hall for a few minutes. If you come out too soon, I’ll shoot you. You know I will, don’t you?’

  She looked from the Sentinel to his face. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘You decide when to come out, Gladys,’ he told her. ‘But take your time. Think what a trauma it would be for Maria, to see you lying in a lot of blood.’

  Gladys swallowed. ‘I’ll take my time,’ she said.

  10

  From a pay phone in Houston, Parker called a guy he knew named Mackey and got his girlfriend Brenda.

  ‘Ed around?’

  ‘Somewhere,’ she said. ‘I don’t think he’s looking for work.’

  ‘I don’t have any. What I want is a name.’

  ‘Yours or somebody else’s?’

  ‘Both,’ Parker said. ‘Maybe he could call me at wait a minute two o’clock your time.’

  ‘You’re in a different time?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and gave her the number of another pay phone, backward.

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ she promised.

  ‘How’ve you been keeping yourself?’

  ‘Busy,’ he said, and hung up, and went away in his dog collar to make today’s cash deposits into his nine bank accounts, and then shift more of that money into the accounts in Galveston.

  At three, changed out of the religious clothes, he went to that second pay phone, mounted on a stick to one side of a gas station, by the air hose. He stopped the Taurus in front of the air hose, got out, stepped toward the phone, and it rang.

  Ed Mackey sounded chipper, like always. ‘Brenda says you’re looking for a name.’

  ‘There was somebody you knew, in Texas or somewhere, could give me a name.’

  ‘I know who you mean,’ Mackey said. ‘I think he specializes in Spanish names, though, you know? People that wanna bring their money north.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ Parker said.

  ‘Okay. He’s in Corpus Christi, he’s in the phone book there, he calls himself Julius Norte.’ He pronounced the last name as two syllables: Nor-tay.

  ‘Julius Norte,’ Parker echoed.

  Mackey laughed. ‘I think maybe his first customer was himself.’

  ‘Could you give him a call? Tell him Edward Lynch is coming by.’

  ‘Sure. When?’

  ‘Tomorrow sometime,’ Parker said, and the next day, when he’d finished his bank transactions, he drove south the two hundred miles to Corpus Christi, the southernmost Texan port on the Gulf, nearest to Mexico and South America.

  Corpus Christi International Airport is just west of town, down Corn Products Road from Interstate 37, and near there he found tonight’s motel. A Southern Bell phone book for the area was in the bottom drawer of the bedside table, and Julius Norte was listed. Parker dialed the number and got an answering machine: ‘You’ve reached Poco Repro, nobody in the office right now. Please leave your n
ame and number and we’ll get back to you.’ Then it repeated the same thing in Spanish.

  ‘Edward Lynch,’ Parker said, and reeled off the phone and room numbers here. Then he went back to the phone book and a local map for restaurants, but hadn’t made his decision yet when the phone rang. So Julius Norte was home after all, and screening his calls.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr Lynch?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A friend of yours said you might call.’

  ‘Ed Mackey.’

  ‘That’s the fellow. Where are you?’

  ‘Near the airport.’

  ‘You want to come down now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Know where Padre Island Drive is?’

  ‘I can find it.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, and gave quick precise instructions, and Parker followed them and found himself in a neighborhood that could have been anywhere in the south or west of the United States, from Mobile to Los Angeles: small one-story pastel stucco houses without garages or porches, a little shabby, on small weedy plots of land, with not a tree or a tall bush within miles.

  The address Parker wanted was on a corner, with a carport added on the side away from the intersection, and the first surprise was the car in the carport: a gleaming black Infiniti with the vanity plate 1NORTE1. This car cost more than all the other vehicles up and down the block, all combined together.

  Parker left the Taurus at the curb and walked up the cracked concrete walk to the small stoop at the front door. Beside the door was a bell button, and above the button on a small hook hung a sign that read ‘Ring And Walk In.’

  So now Parker knew a number of things. This was not where Norte lived. He wasn’t worried about who might walk through his door. And he was richer than this neighborhood.

  He rang the bell, as instructed, and pushed open the door, and stepped directly into what had once been the living room but was now an office, with two desks. The desk to the left rear, facing this way with its side against the wall under the carport window, was a simple gray metal rectangle, and seated at it, just putting down a fotonovelato give Parker the double-O, was a guy who looked like a headliner in TV wrestling: long greasy wavy black hair, a neck wider than his forehead, and a black T-shirt form-fitting over a body pumped up with weights. His nose was mashed in, mouth heavy, eyes small and dark under forward-thrusting eyebrows. The look he gave Parker was flat but expectant, like a guard dog’s.

  The other desk, nearer the door and off to the right, was a much bigger affair, more elaborate, a warm mahogany that took the light just so. A green felt blotting pad, brass desk lamp and gleaming desk set, family photos in leather frames; it had everything.

  And the guy seated at the desk had everything, too. He wore a white guayabera shirt that showed off his tan, and his head was topped by a good rug, tannish brown, medium long, nicely waved. Below, his bland nice face had the smooth noncommittal look of much plastic surgery, and when he rose to smile at his visitor it was as though he were holding the smile for somebody else. ‘Mr Lynch,’ he said.

  ‘Mr Norte,’ Parker said, and shut the door behind himself.

  Norte came around the desk to offer a strong workingman’s hand that had not had plastic surgery and so was more truthful about where he came from. Parker shook it, and Norte gestured with it at the brown leather armchair facing the desk. ‘Sit down, Mr Lynch,’ he offered. ‘Tell me about it. Our friend Ed is well?’

  ‘He didn’t say,’ Parker said.

  Norte gave him a quick smile as they both sat, on opposite sides of the desk. The guard dog had gone back to his fotonovela. ‘Down to business, eh?’

  ‘Might as well,’ Parker said, but took a second to look around. Gray industrial carpeting, a few beige filing cabinets, a closed interior door opposite the entrance. A paper company calendar and a few diplomas on the wall. ‘You call this place Poco Repro,’ he said. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Printing,’ Norte explained. ‘Mostly yearbooks, annual reports, banquet programs. More Hispanic than Anglo. But that’s not what you want.’

  ‘No,’ Parker agreed. ‘What I want is ID.’

  ‘How good?’

  ‘Real. Good enough to buy a car, take out a loan. I don’t need it forever.’

  Norte nodded. A fat gold pen lay on the green blotter in front of him. He rolled it in his fingers and said, ‘You must know, real is the most expensive.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how long you want it for, you can’t sell it back, or even give it back. Once you’ve got it, it’s yours.’

  Parker shrugged. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Do you care about the backstory?’

  ‘Just so there’s no paper out on the name.’

  ‘No, of course.’ Norte considered, looking past Parker at the front window. ‘The Social Security won’t be real,’ he said. ‘I can’t get a legitimate number that works in their system.’

  ‘That should be okay,’ Parker said.

  ‘I’m thinking of some friends of mine,’ Norte said, ‘naturalized citizens. Is that okay?’

  ‘I gotta have a name that looks like me.’

  ‘Oh, yes, sure, I know that. You could be Irish, no?’

  ‘I could be.’

  ‘Many Irish went to South America,’ Norte told him, ‘in the nineteenth century, did well, the names survive. In Bolivia, other countries, you’ve got your Jose Harrigan, your Juan O’Reilly.’

  ‘I can’t use “Juan,”’ Parker said.

  ‘There are names that cross over,’ Norte said. ‘Oscar. Gabriel. Leon. Victor.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘And when would you like this?’ Norte asked, but laughed before Parker could say anything and said, ‘Never mind, that was not a smart question. You want it as soon as you can get it, no?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Texas resident?’

  ‘That would be best,’ Parker said.

  ‘And easiest for me. So you want a driver’s license and a birth certificate. Do you need a passport?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Now you surprise me,’ Norte admitted. ‘Most people, that’s the first thing they want.’

  ‘My troubles are domestic,’ Parker told him.

  Norte laughed. ‘All right, Mr Lynch,’ he said, ‘you can stop being Mr Lynch, I think, in three days’ time. Is that all right?’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Parker said.

  Norte said, ‘But then again, you haven’t been Mr Lynch all that long, have you? Never mind, that wasn’t a question. You didn’t bring a photo, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We can do that here,’ Norte assured him. ‘The other thing is money.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Driver’s license, birth certificate, both with legitimate sources. Ten thousand. Cash, of course.’

  ‘I like cash,’ Parker said.

  ‘There’s so little of it around these days,’ Norte said. ‘That would be in advance. Sorry, but it’s best that way.’

  Parker said, ‘Will you be here in half an hour?’

  ‘If you intend to be,’ Norte told him.

  Parker got to his feet. ‘Nice to meet you, Mr Norte,’ he said.

  ‘And you, Mr Lynch.’

  11

  When Parker went back to Norte’s office half an hour later, he’d made two stops, the first at a drugstore where he’d bought reading glasses of the lowest possible magnification, 1.25, and a dark brown eyebrow pencil. The glasses were squarish and blackframed, and the eyebrow pencil would work to emphasize his new mustache. And the second stop he’d made, in the far corner of a supermarket parking lot, had been to open a door panel and remove from inside it ten thousand in cash.

  Again he rang the bell and walked in, and again the guard dog looked up from his fotonovelato watch Parker cross the room. Norte was on the phone, but he said something quiet in Spanish, hung up, and got smiling to his feet. ‘Right on time,’ he said.

  He wanted to shake
hands again, so Parker shook his hand, then took out the money and placed it on the desk. Norte smiled at it. ‘You don’t mind if I count.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  Norte did, then said, ‘Bobby will take your picture.’

  ‘Bobby?’

  Norte indicated the guard dog. ‘Roberto,’ he said. ‘Not a name you could use.’

  ‘No.’

  Norte spoke to Bobby in Spanish, and the guard dog put down his fotonovelaand stood. Norte said to Parker, ‘You go with Bobby.’

  Parker went with Bobby, through the door at the back of the room into what still was a kitchen, though not many meals would be made here. Bedrooms and a bathroom were off the kitchen to the right and rear.

  A camera was set up on a tall tripod at head height, facing a blank wall. Bobby, moving toward the camera, made a shooing gesture for Parker to stand by the wall. When Parker went over there, he saw a pair of white footprints painted on the floor and stood on them.

  Bobby was efficient, if silent. He moved his head to show Parker how to pose, then quickly took three shots. Still saying nothing, he led Parker back to the other room.

  The money was gone from the desk, and Norte was standing beside it, smiling farewell. ‘Phone me Friday afternoon,’ he said. ‘It should be ready by then.’

  ‘Good,’ Parker said, and left, and drove back to the motel. Later, after dinner, he put on black clothing, took his b&e tools out from under the trunk bed in the Taurus, and drove south again, one hundred fifty miles almost to the border, turning east at Harlingen toward South Padre Island, where the rich boaters keep their country villas and retirement homes.

  Bay View, Laguna Vista, Port Isabel; this is where the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway begins, where the rich sea-loving Texans are based, alternating between agreeable ‘cottages’ and even more agreeable yachts, moored just at the end of the lawn. In the evenings, they visit one another, play bridge, drink, gossip, plan excursions across the Gulf to the islands of the Caribbean. Half the houses are full of light, warmth, good cheer; the other half are empty.