Flashfire p-19 Page 5

A little after nine in the evening, Parker left the Taurus in the parking lot of a chain drugstore that wouldn’t close till midnight. He left the parking lot over a chain-link fence at the back, and kept to the rear of houses, moving as far as possible from the lit-up noisy ones, crossing only side streets and only at their darkest points. This area was patrolled almost as heavily as Palm Beach, but he was keeping himself dark and silent.

  All of the houses along the Waterway are equipped with alarm systems; enter through any door or window, and if the alarm is not switched off at the control pad within forty-five seconds it will signal both the town police and the security service. But where is the control pad to be found? In every house, it is just inside, next to the door nearest to where the car is parked. It was never hard to figure out which door that was.

  In the next hour and a half, Parker went into nine houses, and the method was always the same. Interior pockets in the back of his coat carried his tools, which included a telephone handset with alligator clips, a special one used by telephone company repairmen to check lines. With this, he could attach to the house’s phone line outdoors, where it came in from the pole, and call that line. He could always hear it ring, inside the house. If the answering machine picked up, or there was no answer after ten rings, and no dog barked, it was his. He’d go to the door nearest where the car would normally be parked and use his small pry bar to pop it.

  Inside, on the wall, its red light lit, would be the alarm control pad. He never needed the full forty-five seconds to short-circuit and disarm it. Then he’d move through the house, looking only for cash. He had to leave behind hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry, bonds, paintings, cameras, watches, and all the other toys of the leisured rich, but it didn’t matter: there was always cash. There was often a wall safe, which he would find by lifting pictures along the way and get into with hammer and chisel, and the wall safes always produced bundles of cash, often still in the paper band from the bank.

  Nine houses, a little over a hundred twenty thousand dollars. Finished, he skirted the areas he’d already been through, made his way back to the drugstore fifteen minutes before it would close, and drove back north to Corpus Christi.

  Tomorrow, he’d have more money for the banks in Houston.

  12

  On Friday, from a different motel in Corpus Christi, Parker phoned Norte, got the Poco Repro machine, left a message, and Norte phoned right back: ‘We’re ready, Mr Lynch,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll come right down,’ Parker told him, and drove down to Norte’s place, but when he turned the corner a black Chevy Blazer was parked in front of the house, with white exhaust visible at the tailpipe. Parker decided not to stop, but drove on by, and saw the driver alone in the Blazer, a chunky man in a white dress shirt, with the thick black hair of the Mayan Indian. He sat facing front, hands on the steering wheel, waiting, patient.

  Another customer was with Norte. Parker drove on down to the next corner and went around it. He didn’t want Norte’s other customers to meet him, and they probably didn’t want him to meet them.

  He spent ten minutes driving around the neighborhood before going back to Norte’s house again to see the Blazer still there. But this time its engine was off and the driver was gone.

  Parker slowed, peering at the house. The “Ring Bell And Walk In” sign, which had been there ten minutes ago, was gone now from its hook above the bell button.

  Something wrong. Parker drove three-quarters of the way around the block, parked, and walked on to the house.

  Blazer still there, sign still gone. No one visible in the windows. He walked up to the house and around it to the left to the carport. The Infiniti was there, as before. There was just enough room between the car and the house to slide down there and look through the high window over Bobby’s desk.

  Norte was at his own elegant desk, on the phone. Bobby stood in the middle of the room, an automatic loose in his hand. Three men lay facedown on the floor, wrists and ankles and mouths swathed in duct tape. One of them was the Mayan driver.

  The thing to do was go away somewhere and phone. Parker moved back from the window, sidled past the Infiniti, and when he got to the front corner of the house Bobby was there, the automatic pointed at Parker’s chest. With his other hand he gestured: Come with me.

  Parker shrugged. He walked past Bobby and around to the front door and in, Bobby trailing after him.

  Norte was off the phone now, standing behind his desk, looking aggravated. ‘Bad timing, Mr Lynch,’ he said.

  ‘Hand me the papers and I’ll go,’ Parker told him. Two of the men, not the driver, had twisted around to stare up at Parker, not as though he might help but as though he might be more trouble. Norte, with a sad smile and a harried look, shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You see the situation here, no?’

  ‘Dissatisfied customers,’ Parker suggested.

  But Norte shook that away. ‘No, I don’t have dissatisfied customers. What I got, I got a customer doesn’t want anybody alive that knows who he is now and what he looks like now. That fuckhead sent these fuckheads to kill Bobby and me.’

  ‘He sent the wrong fuckheads,’ Parker said.

  ‘So now I gotta take themdown,’ Norte said with a disgusted gesture at the men on the floor, ‘and I gotta take their boss down, because I don’t need this shit.’

  ‘It’s not my fight,’ Parker said. ‘Just give me the papers and I’ll go.’

  ‘I wish I could,’ Norte said, and he sounded as though he meant it. ‘But you’re a witness here, no?’

  ‘I don’t witness things,’ Parker told him.

  Norte didn’t like it. He chewed the inside of his cheek, and then he said, ‘I tell you what. When I get this shit straightened out here, I’ll call Ed Mackey, tell him the situation, see what he thinks I should do.’

  Parker watched him.

  Norte tried a smile while still chewing his check. He said, ‘That’ll work, no? Ed Mackey knows you.’

  ‘He knows me.’

  ‘In the meantime,’ Norte said, ‘just lie down on the floor here.’

  ‘Sure,’ Parker said, and as he bent forward he reached inside his shirt. He pivoted the holster down, lifted his left arm, and fired through his shirt.

  The bullet hit Bobby somewhere, it didn’t matter where. It wouldn’t stop him, only confuse him for a second; long enough, maybe, for Parker to drop to his knees, turning, pulling the Sentinel out, hearing the big boom of the automatic bounce in this enclosed room, knowing the bullet had gone over his head. He thrust his arm out as Bobby adjusted his aim, and shot the guard dog in the face.

  That still didn’t finish him, but it made him drop the automatic as he whipped both hands up to his ruined face. He tottered there as Parker dropped the Sentinel, grabbed the automatic, and lunged to his feet.

  Norte was pulling a blunt revolver out of a desk drawer, ducking down low behind his desk, calling, ‘Drop that!’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Parker said, and pulled Bobby in front of himself to take Norte’s first three shots. Now he held the dead Bobby up in front of himself and moved forward toward the desk as Norte, still hidden behind it, called, ‘All right! I’m done!’

  ‘Put the gun on the desk,’ Parker told him.

  Norte stayed out of sight behind the desk. ‘We don’t have to kill each other,’ he said.

  ‘We’re not gonna kill each other.’

  ‘I was worried, I was upset, I was too hasty. Ed Mackey said you were okay, I should’ve remembered that.’

  ‘Put the gun on the desk.’

  Still he remained out of sight. ‘People need me,’ he said. ‘They won’t like it if you take me down. Ed Mackey won’t like it.’

  Parker waited.

  ‘I was wrong,’ Norte said. ‘I was too hasty.’

  Parker waited.

  ‘There’s no reason to do anything anymore.’

  Parker waited.

  Norte’s hand appeared, with the revolver. He put it on
the green blotter and pushed it a little forward.

  Parker let Bobby fall, on top of the men on the floor. He went forward and walked around the side of the desk to where Norte crouched there, looking up. Norte, voice shaking a little, said, ‘You don’t need to do a thing. I got your documents, middle drawer. You’ll see, they’re beautiful.’

  ‘Let’s see them.’

  Norte hesitantly rose, then looked at his revolver still on the desk. ‘Aren’t you gonna take that?’

  ‘You intend to reach for it?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Let’s see this ID.’

  Norte opened the middle drawer, took out a manila envelope, shook two official papers out onto the green blotter. He was careful to keep as far as possible from the revolver. He stepped back to the wall, holding the manila envelope, and gestured for Parker to look them over.

  His name was Daniel Parmitt. He’d been born in Quito, Ecuador, of American parents, and the birth certificate was in Spanish. His Texas driver’s license showed he lived at an address in San Antonio. The photo on the driver’s license, with the glasses and the mustache, made him look less hard.

  He pocketed both documents, looked around the room. What had he touched? The carpet, Bobby; nothing that would leave prints. ‘Come here,’ he said.

  Norte didn’t move. His hands fidgeted with the manila envelope the documents had been in as he said, ‘It’s a misunderstanding, it’s all over. Bobby and me, we were gonna take these shits away, not mess up the office, then all of a sudden we got you here it was too much goin’ on, I got too hasty.’

  ‘Come here,’ Parker said.

  It finally occurred to Norte that he was still alive and that he needn’t be. With small steps, he came forward to the desk and Parker took the manila envelope out of his hands. ‘Pick up the gun,’ he said.

  ‘No!’

  Parker held the automatic leveled at Norte’s forehead. ‘You aren’t gonna point it at me,’ he said. ‘You’re gonna finish those three.’

  ‘Here? We didn’t want to’

  ‘Bobby’s messing your rug already. The other way is, I do you and I do them and I go.’

  ‘But what’

  ‘Ed says you’re useful. I say you’re too jumpy to be reliable, but you do good work. If you make it possible, I’ll help you stay alive. Pick up the gun.’

  ‘And, and kill them?’

  ‘That’s what it’s for,’ Parker said.

  Norte stared down at the three men. The driver was still stoic, but the other two were now staring up at Norte, hoping something different was going to happen now.

  No. Abruptly, as though to get it over before he had to think about it, Norte grabbed up the revolver, bent over them, and shot each one in the head. The carpet would have to be replaced for sure.

  ‘Keep shooting,’ Parker said.

  Norte grimaced at him. ‘They’re dead. Believe me, they’re dead.’

  ‘Keep shooting.’

  Norte looked down at the bodies and fired at random into their backs. One, two, click;the revolver was empty.

  Parker held out the manila envelope. ‘Put it in here.’

  Norte frowned, studying Parker’s face. ‘You want a hold over me.’

  ‘You make all this go away, what hold? All I need is, Iwas never here.’

  Norte managed a twisted smile. ‘Oh, if only that could be true, no?’

  ‘We can make it true. Put the gun in here.’

  Norte shrugged and reached forward to slide the revolver into the envelope.

  Parker said, ‘Stand back over there by the wall.’

  Obediently, Norte moved back to where he’d stood before. He kept his arms at his sides, palms forward, to show he wasn’t going to try anything, but Parker already knew that.

  Parker put the envelope, bulging and heavy with the revolver, on the green blotter. He went around the desk, found his Sentinel near Bobby’s feet, and put it back in its holster. Then he picked up the envelope. Automatic in his right hand, envelope in his left, he backed to the door, as Norte looked around at the mess he had to clean up. His face had gone through too much surgery to permit it to show his emotions, but they were there in his eyes.

  With a little trouble, Parker turned the doorknob with the hand holding the envelope. He stepped outside, let the door snick shut, and put the automatic under his shirt, keeping his hand on it in there, like Napoleon. But, as he walked away, Norte did not come outside. He had enough to think about.

  13

  Daniel Parmitt’s address in San Antonio, according to his driver’s license, was an office building downtown; nobody lived there.

  Parker stayed in three motels off Interstate 10 for three nights while setting himself up in town. A real estate agent showed him rental houses, and the second day he found what he needed in Alamo Heights, between McNay Art Museum and Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. It was a three-bedroom two-story fake-Gothic yellow clapboard house with a turret, set back from a winding, hilly street among modestly upscale houses. Parker knew it was right, but didn’t tell the real estate agent; they looked at another four places before he suggested they try again tomorrow.

  It was then two-thirty in the afternoon, time enough to get to a bank and open a checking account for Daniel Parmitt, using the address of the house he hadn’t rented yet, starting the account with a thirty-eight-hundred-dollar check from Charles O. St. Ignatius in Houston and a forty-two-hundred-dollar wire transfer from Charles Willis’s money market account in Galveston, so the money would he available at once. From there he went to the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles, putting in a change of address from the office building to the new house at both.

  Next day, he said to the real estate agent, ‘Let’s look at that yellow house again.’

  ‘I thought you’d like it,’ she said, and this time he did.

  Daniel Parmitt signed a two-year lease and left a check for two months’ rent plus one month deposit. Parker bought a sleeping bag, the only furnishing he’d need in the house, and settled down to wait.

  What he mostly had to do now was move money through his bank accounts, gradually cleaning out all the St. Ignatius accounts in Houston, emptying the two accounts Charles Willis had in Galveston, and concentrating the money into Parmitt’s checking and money market accounts in San Antonio.

  While doing that, he also went shopping. Daniel Parmitt was a rich Texan with a background in the oil business, a man who may have worked at some time in his life but happily doesn’t have to anymore, and Parker should dress the way Daniel Parmitt should look. He bought casual slacks and blazers, gaudily colored dress shirts with white collars, shoes with tassels or little gold figures attached to the vamp, yachting caps and white golf caps. He also bought obviously expensive luggage to put it all in.

  During this time, he waited to see what the Department of Motor Vehicles would do. If Parmitt’s license was real, as Norte had promised, the change of address would go through without a hitch, and he’d be safe to show that license anywhere. If Norte had lied, or made a mistake, the request would bounce back to him.

  But it didn’t. Two weeks into his stay at the turreted yellow house in San Antonio, Daniel Parmitt got his first piece of mail at his new address: his revised driver’s license.

  His local Jaguar dealer was happy to talk about leases. There was a little frown of doubt when, on the credit application form, he put down that he’d been at his present address for one month, and gave his previous address as Quito, Ecuador, but then he said, ‘I was in the oil business down there,’ and it was all right. Texans understand the oil business.

  Six weeks and two days after Melander and Carlson and Ross had made their mistake in Evansville, Daniel Parmitt got behind the wheel of his yellow Jaguar convertible, top down, rear full of luggage, left his yellow home in San Antonio, and drove eastward on Interstate 10. Three days later he’d covered the thousand miles to Jacksonville, Florida, taking his time, not pushing it, and there he turned south
ward onto Interstate 95. A day and a half later he turned off at Miami.

  14

  Claire was not in her room. He found her out by the pool in a two-piece red bathing suit, on one of the white chaises there, ignoring the interest she aroused and reading a biography of Aphra Behn.

  It had been a while since he had seen her at a different angle like this, coming upon her as though she were a stranger, and it reminded him of the first time they’d met, when he’d opened a hotel room door expecting some flunky driver and had seen this cool and beautiful woman instead. When he told her then he hadn’t expected a woman in the job because it was unprofessional she’d said, ‘It doesn’t sound like a very rewarding profession,’ and already he’d been snagged. Closed off before then, indifferent to the world except as it had to be tamed and manipulated, he hadn’t known he could be snagged, but here she was. And here again. Still here.

  In his dark blue yachting cap, sunglasses, mustache, pale green blazer, candy-striped dress shirt, white slacks, and tan shoes with tassels, he walked through the sun and the people and the coconut smells of sunblock to sit on the chaise next to her, sideways, to face her. Without looking away from her book, she said, ‘That’s taken.’

  ‘By me,’ he said.

  She, too, was in sunglasses, dark green lenses and white plastic frames. She turned her head to give him her cool look through those lenses, then frowned, removed the sunglasses, looked him up and down in astonished distaste, and said, ‘Good God!’

  He grinned. She was the only thing that made him grin. He said, ‘It works, I guess.’

  She studied him, detail by detail, then gave him a small quirk of a smile as she said, ‘This person. Can he be any good in bed?’

  ‘Let’s find out,’ he said.

  ‘Now I remember you,’ she told him, smiling, and ran her finger along the purplish furrow on his left side, just above the waist, where a bullet once had passed him by, fired by a man named Auguste Menlo, now dead. ‘My human target.’

  ‘I haven’t been shot for a long time,’ he said, and stretched beside her on the bed.

  ‘Not since you met me. I’m good luck for you.’