The Steel Hit p-2 Page 5

  Stubbs turned around, looking like somebody trying to answer a tough question. “She says you was in there around noon.”

  “That’s right.”

  “The Doc was killed maybe four o’clock in the afternoon, while I was washing the cars.”

  Parker shook his head, disgusted. “You know how far Nebraska is from here?”

  Stubbs chewed on that for a while and then said, “Okay, it wasn’t you.” That settled, he turned to Handy. “Gimme the gun back, will ya?”

  Handy looked at Parker, wondering if this clown was kidding. “Just wait a minute, Stubbs. I think we’ve got to talk.”

  “Sure,” said Handy. He held on to the automatic.

  “There’s nothing to talk about. You didn’t do it.”

  “This way,” said Handy. He motioned with the automatic.

  Stubbs wanted to argue some more, but Parker hit him openhanded on the ear, where a punchy could feel it. Stubbs screwed his face up and hunched his shoulder and cupped his hand over his ear, and then he went where Handy told him.

  They walked into the apartment, and Parker told Stubbs to sit down on the leather chair. Handy sat over to the side, in the maroon overstuffed chair, and Parker stood in the middle of the brown rug. He looked at Stubbs for a while, and then he made a disgusted sound. “All right. Now what?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Stubbs said. His face was still screwed up, and his hand was still up protecting his ear. “I’m willing to go.”

  “That’s it,” Parker said. “Go where?”

  “I got two more suspects.”

  Parker nodded. “That’s what I thought.” He went over to the sofa and sat down and lit a cigarette. “All right, tell me ‘about it.”

  “The Doc only did three jobs in the last year,” Stubbs said. “We figured it has to be one of them three, or the guy wouldn’t have waited so long, If was a guy from two years ago, see, and he was going to go for the Doc, he’d of done it already.”

  “You and May,” said Parker. “You worked that out?”

  “May, mostly,” Stubbs answered. “I figured, I got to get the guy. There’s nobody else to do it, because the Doc was a Red.”

  Parker glanced at Handy, and shook his head. Handy shrugged. From listening, he was beginning to understand.

  “And if May doesn’t hear from you, she blows the whistle, is that it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “On who?”

  “The last three. She wouldn’t be able to know which one it was, which one got me. So she’d blow the whistle on the last three.”

  “Including me,” said Parker.

  “But you didn’t do it,” said Stubbs, frowning. He’d missed something somewhere. “You’re out of it, you didn’t do it.”

  “What if number two did it?” Parker asked. “And instead of you getting him, he gets you. Then May blows the whistle on me. Right?”

  Stubbs hadn’t thought of that. He frowned heavily, scrubbing his hand over his face. Then he brightened a little. “Don’t you worry. He won’t get me. I’ll get him.”

  Handy laughed. He tossed Stubbs’s gun in the air and caught it. “The way you got Parker?”

  Stubbs looked at him, not understanding, and Parker explained. “He knew me by the name of Anson,” he said to Handy.

  “Oh.”

  Parker said, “Listen, Stubbs. What if you phone May and tell her I’m in the clear?”

  Stubbs shook his head. “We talked about that. How it could be faked, maybe. She’s got to see me in person.”

  “God damn it,” Parker said, “I don’t have time for this crap.”

  Handy shrugged. “You’ll have to go back to Nebraska with him.”

  “I don’t have time,” said Parker angrily. “The job’s set up for two weeks from now. We’ve got to set up the cars, the routes, we’ve got to chart the state troopers, we’ve got to buy guns–-” He mashed his cigarette out and got to his feet.

  “There’s too much to do. Stubbs, when’s the deadline?”

  Stubbs blinked at him. “What?”

  “The deadline, the deadline. When does May blow the whistle if she doesn’t hear from you?”

  “Oh. A month from now. From yesterday. Four weeks from yesterday.”

  Parker paced back and forth, looking down at the carpet. “Two days,” he said. “Even if we fly out. One day out and one day back. Two days for Alma to fast-talk Skimm, two days with nothing getting done.”

  “We could hold the job off for a week.”

  Parker shook his head. “It’s sour enough already. I want to get it over with. Another week for Alma to think up some more cute ideas? Another week for that damn cop to see me driving by?”

  “What cop?”

  Parker shrugged. He didn’t feel like talking about it. “A cop paid attention to me on route 9.”

  “Near the diner?”

  “South of it.” He turned and studied Stubbs. “The easiest thing,” he said, “would be to bump you and drop you in a pool by one of the refineries. Then two weeks from now I go cut May.”

  Stubbs doggedly shook his head. “She’s got her common-law husband with her,” he said. “And his brother. They figure something might happen like that.”

  “What if you just let him go?”

  “Look at him,” Parker said. “He’s punchy. He goes up against the guy who killed that doctor, he’s dead. Then I’m dead.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Stubbs said.

  ‘Sure,” Parker answered.

  ‘So what do you want to do?” Handy asked.

  ‘There’s too much to watch. I’m ready to pull out of this damn thing, there’s too much to watch.”

  “I could use the cash,” Handy said. “This is my last job, you know.”

  “Yeah. That’s the thing. I need it too.” Parker looked at Stubbs and shook his head. “I’ve got to hold on to this beetle for two weeks. I’ve got to put him on ice.”

  Handy considered that. “What about the farm?”

  “What farm?”

  “Outside Old Bridge. Where we’re supposed to meet after the job. You been out there yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “We could stash him there, maybe.”

  Parker thought about it. So many things to watch. The job, Alma, the state trooper, and now Stubbs. But he didn’t have anything else on the fire. “That’s a bad way to work it. To hang around the hideout before the job.”

  “Do you figure we’re going there after it?”

  “That’s right. I forgot about Alma.” Parker shrugged. “All right. We’ll put him on ice out there.”

  Handy stood up, and waved the automatic at Stubbs. “Come along.”

  Stubbs said, “Listen, what are you trying to pull?”

  “Look,” Parker said. “Look at him, he wants to argue.”

  Handy turned to Stubbs. “How’s your kneecaps? In good shape?” Stubbs caught the message. He got to his feet and shut up. They took him downstairs and back to the Ford. They drove over to 9 and headed south, Parker driving, with Stubbs beside him and Handy in the back seat.

  On the way Parker asked, “How’d you get me?”

  “That letter you got,” Stubbs said. “I looked up that Lasker fella in Cincinnati, and he left a forwarding address. I went there and hung around till I saw you.”

  “He left a forwarding address,” repeated Parker. He shook his head and kept driving. He didn’t know if this was Handy’s last job, but he knew it was Skimm’s.

  PART TWO

  Chapter 1

  PARKER left the car off Hudson Boulevard in Jersey City and walked two blocks to the office building. There were two elevators, but only one of them was working. An ancient angular Negro with a loose vacant smile operated it. Its metal sides were painted green, and there were grease smears on the doors.

  Parker got out on the third floor and tuned left. A sign on the fourth door down read: “Eastern Agency Confidential Investigations.” He pushed the door open a
nd went into a small green reception room. On one wall was a certificate stating that James Lawson was a licenced private investigator.

  A bleached blonde, looking secondhand, sat at the grey metal desk, talking on the phone. When Parker came in she said, “Hold on, Marge.” She pressed the telephone to her hard breast and looked at Parker.

  “Doctor Hall to see Lawson,” Parker said.

  “One moment, please.” She told Marge to hold on again, and got up and went to the door of the inner office. She had stripper’s hips, big and thick and wrapped in a tight black skirt. She went through into the inner office, and in a minute she came back. “Go right on in, Doctor.”

  “Thanks,” said Parker.

  She went back to her desk and her phone call, and Parker went through to the inner office and closed the door.

  James Lawson was small and balding. He looked like the kind of man who was worried about being out of condition, who kept promising himself he’d start going to a gym but never went. He looked across his wooden desk at Parker. “I don’t think I know you.”

  Lawson wasn’t a man to trust with the new face. “Parker sent me. Him and Handy McKay.”

  “So you can name-drop,” said Lawson. “Doctor Hall, and Parker, and Handy McKay. Parker’s dead.”

  “No, he ain’t. Him and Handy and Pete Skimm and me are working on a job. You want to call Skimm?”

  Lawson shook his head. “I don’t call anybody,” he said. “Where’d you get the Dr Hall from?”

  “Parker. He said I should call myself Doctor Hall, and then you’d know what was what.”

  “How come he didn’t come himself?”

  “He can’t show himself in the East. He ran into trouble with the Outfit.”

  Lawson nodded. “I heard something about that, too. But I also heard he was dead.”

  “He wasn’t, the last time I talked to him.”

  Lawson chewed on a knuckle. “You look okay,” he said, “and you sound okay. But I don’t know you.”

  “Do you think I’m law? If I was law, I wouldn’t play games. I could take your licence away without half trying. I wouldn’t have to fool around with you.”

  “Take my licence away for what?”

  “For the time you gave Parker three Magnums and the Positive.”

  Lawson started. “You know about that?”

  “Parker told me. So let’s quit fooling around?”

  “Maybe I better call Skimm,” said Lawson. He was suddenly very nervous.

  Parker gave him the number, and then sat down in the client’s chair during the phone call. Skimm was home, and Parker had already told him the right answers. Lawson talked with him briefly, and then hung up.

  “You ready to deal?”

  “Sure.” Lawson grinned, his lips wet. “But I ought to know who I’m dealing with,” he said.

  “Flynn. Joe Flynn.”

  “I don’t think I’ve heard of you.”

  “I’ve always worked out around the Coast before this.”

  “And where’s this job? Here in Jersey?”

  Parker shook his head. “Youngstown, Ohio,” he said. “You’ll read about it in the papers.”

  Lawson opened a drawer and took out a pencil and notepad. “What do you need?”

  “Three guns. Medium size — .32’s or .38’s.”

  Lawson nodded. “I’ll look around. Anything else?”

  “Two trucks. Semis.”

  “Tractor-trailers!” Lawson frowned, and tapped his pencil point against the notepad. “That’s a tricky one. There isn’t so much market in those big ones any more. That’ll probably cost you.”

  Parker shrugged. “If it costs too much, we’ll steal our own.”

  Lawson tapped the pencil faster against the notepad. “You’ve still got the registration to worry about. And the cover.”

  “Don’t need them,” Parker said. “Just the trucks.”

  “Stripped?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh. That isn’t so tough, then. I know one already, if it isn’t sold. Down in North Carolina. I’ll check on it for you.” He wrote on the notepad again. “Anything else?”

  “Some place to get some work done on one of the trucks.”

  “Engine or body?”

  “Body.”

  Lawson nodded. “I think I know the place for you. Anything else?”

  “No.” Parker got to his feet. “That’s all we need. You can leave messages with Skimm.”

  Lawson ripped the top page from the notepad, stuffed it in his side pocket. “You ought to leave something with me. Sort of a drawing account.”

  Parker took out his wallet, peeled off four fifties, and dropped them on Lawson’s desk.

  Lawson picked them up and grinned. “You want a receipt? You know, for tax purposes?”

  “No,” Parker said. “Leave the word with Skimm.”

  “Will do.”

  Parker went back downstairs in the green elevator and walked back to the Ford. It had a parking ticket on it. He threw the ticket into the gutter and drove away, back to Hudson Boulevard and then to the Pulaski Skyway and down 9. Because of the trooper, and not wanting to be near the diner too soon before the job, he turned on 1 when it branched away to the right. At New Brunswick, he turned left on 18, then right at Old Bridge, heading down towards Spotswood. But before he got there he turned left up a winding dirt road.

  The land here was red clay and white sand mixed together, with a fuzz of wild grey grass and here and there thick-trunked trees. The road seemed to end shortly but Parker went up an overgrown slope, and the dirt road angled sharply around a tree and then dropped away down the dip into a kind of cup.

  Down in the indentation stood a grey farmhouse, nearly invisible on days the sun didn’t shine. Someone had once tried to make the land grow something beside wild grasses and occasional trees. But the farmhouse was slowly rotting away now, becoming a part of the land. It couldn’t be seen from any road, and most people in the area probably didn’t even know it existed. The dirt road leading in was sometimes used as a lovers’ lane, but those people never even came in very far. They didn’t care what was over the slope; they just wanted not to be seen from the road.

  When Parker had first come, the road had been impassable. The turn around the tree at the top of the slope had been choked with underbrush and dead branches. They would not have cleared it until the day before the job, but now there was Stubbs, so Parker had hacked away at it with an axe and cleared enough room for the Ford to just get through. He made it now on the first try and came down the grassed-over double track on the other side.

  He drove around to the back of the farmhouse, left the Ford up close against the house — he would have liked to park it in the barn, but that had already fallen in — and went down the steps into the basement. The flooring upstairs was unsafe, so they used only the basement.

  It didn’t smell like a basement. The windows were all broken out, and sand had sifted in over the years. It smelled mummified. There were two cots set up along one wall, a card table and three folding chairs on the other side, and a camp stove by the ruins of the furnace so the smoke would go up the chimney.

  Parker went over to the door to the fruit cellar and hit it with his fist. “You in there?”

  Stubbs’s voice came through the thick door faintly, “Go to hell.”

  Parker took the bar down and went back to the card table, where the automatic lay next to the canned goods. He picked up the automatic and called, “Come on out.”

  There was a pause, and the door pushed slightly open. Another pause, and the door jolted back and slammed against the wall and Stubbs came out with a grey chunk of two-by-four lifted over his head.

  Parker motioned with the automatic. He watched Stubbs decide whether or not to throw the two-by-four at him, but Stubbs decided against it. When he dropped it, Parker said, “Let’s go out in the air.”

  He would rather have just left Stubbs locked away in the fruit cellar
for two weeks, but if he did Stubbs might get sick and die. He couldn’t afford yet to have Stubbs die. He had to waste some time now getting Stubbs out in the sunlight.

  They went outside and Parker sat down on the ground, his back against the wall of the farmhouse. “Go on, walk around a little,” he said.

  Stubbs stood blinking in the light. There was no window in the fruit cellar, and he’d been in pitch-dark. He looked around, blinking in the light. “I got to go.”

  “Over there.” Parker pointed with the automatic. “Away from the house, over by that tree there. And cover it up.”

  Stubbs stood around, undecided. “I’m out of cigarettes.”

  Parker tossed him his pack, and some matches. He had more in the glove compartment of the Ford. Stubbs picked them up from where they’d fallen at his feet, and slowly lit a cigarette. He stuffed the pack and the matches in his pants pocket and looked sullenly at Parker. “You can’t kidnap me like this.”

  Parker shrugged. It didn’t need an answer.

  Stubbs screwed his face up, the way he did when he was trying to think. He wanted to tell Parker this whole thing was impossible, you just don’t lock a man away in a fruit cellar for two weeks with no electricity and no plumbing. But Parker was doing it, and that didn’t leave Stubbs much to say. After a minute, he turned and trudged over towards the tree.

  They stayed outside for half an hour, and then they went back into the basement and Parker let Stubbs make himself some beans and instant coffee at the camp stove. There was bread, too, but no butter, and a can of peaches for dessert. Stubbs thought about tossing a can of beans at Parker’s head, but Parker told him to forget about it, so Stubbs forgot about it.

  After he’d cleaned up his dinner utensils, Parker let him go outside again for a while. Then he put him back in the fruit cellar, put the bar across the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he called through the door.

  There wasn’t any answer, so Parker shrugged and walked away. It was just about sundown, darker in the cup around the farmhouse than up along the ridge. Parker got into the Ford, started the engine, and drove carefully through the dusk back to the road. He turned right and drove back towards the motel where he was staying, stopping off at a diner for a chicken dinner.

  Handy showed up a little after ten in Alma’s green Dodge. Alma didn’t like him using it, but he needed it for the stakeout and after a while she’d given in. He’d spent the day and part of the evening at various spots on route 9 working out the state trooper beats. They talked it over for a while, and then Parker said, “Let Skimm take over Thursday. I want to show you the doublecross.”