Plunder Squad p-15 Page 6

  The music was live. When Parker stepped through the open French doors, he saw four musicians at work to his right, methodically pumping away in front of banked amplifiers lined up along the rear wall of the house. Electric guitar, electric organ, Fender bass and drums. The musicians were all very young, and all looked serious and self-absorbed, like apprentices learning to build ship models in bottles.

  The music was very much louder out here, drowning all other sounds. Parker had to lean close to Mackey’s ear and shout, “You know what he looks like, you lead the way.”

  Mackey nodded, and gazed out over the lawn. About forty people, the men in shirt sleeves and the women in expensively casual day wear, were scattered across the lawn between the house and the bamboo hedge. Down at the far end, a long white-cloth-covered table had been set up in front of the hedge, functioning as a bar at one end and a buffet at the other, with white-uniformed and black-bow-tied men efficiently at work behind it. Although here on the patio nothing could be heard but the music, the guests out on the lawn seemed to be talking to one another.

  Mackey scanned the crowd, and then turned back to Parker and shrugged, with an eyebrow-raising movement; he didn’t see Griffith out there. He made a stirring motion with one down-pointing finger; he would circulate around the lawn and look for Griffith. Parker nodded and jabbed a thumb at the French doors; he would wait inside, away from the worst of the noise.

  When he went back in, he shut the doors behind him, which cut the volume of the music in half. He wandered around the room looking at the paintings; they were all recently done, but traditional in style, naturalistic. No abstractions here, though he had seen some in other rooms he’d passed while coming through the house. He stopped in front of one painting that showed a civilized cocktail party in a quietly wealthy room. People stood in small groups across the surface of the painting, chatting with one another. There weren’t too many guests for the size of the room, and those present were all middle-aged, well-dressed, obviously well-bred. The quiet sounds of their conversations could almost be heard emanating from the painting, blotting out the rock music from the patio.

  “That is a contrast, isn’t it?”

  Parker turned his head, and standing beside him was a fairly short man in a white Norfolk jacket, pale blue turtleneck shirt, and dark blue slacks. The drink he was holding was tall, carbonated, iced, and transparent. There was something a little too graceful about the way he was standing. He had black hair, thinning on top and worn long over his collar in back. Between his wide mouth and narrow nose ran a thin line of mustache.

  Parker looked back at the painting. A contrast. “Yes,” he said.

  “I mean, with that crowd out there.”

  Parker said nothing.

  “Oddly enough,” the short man said, as though the fact were for some reason sad, “two of the guests depicted in that painting are outside on the lawn right now.”

  “Is that right?”

  “I don’t believe I know you,” the man said.

  Parker shrugged. “You don’t.” He kept on looking at the painting.

  “But that isn’t acceptable. I have to know everyone here, that’s one of the rules of the house.”

  Now Parker looked at him. “You mean you’re Griffith?”

  Griffith’s expression suddenly changed again, became almost petulant. “Oh, of course,” he said. “You must be Mackey’s friend, the one who absolutely had to have a face-to-face.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I really can’t talk now. You may not believe it, but this little affair isn’t quite off the ground yet. I have to keep breathing on the guests till they come to life. Where’s Mackey?”

  “Outside.”

  “Why don’t you join him? I’ll have time to chat with you soon.”

  “I’ll wait in a quiet room in here,” Parker said.

  Griffith frowned, disapproving and not liking to have to explain his orders. “You’re supposed to behave,” he said, “as though you’re here for social reasons only.”

  “Mackey brought his woman. I didn’t. I’ll wait in here, in a quiet room.”

  Griffith gave an irritable shrug. “Oh, all right, suit yourself. I don’t like this anyway, I don’t see what the point is. I told Mackey what I want and what I’ll pay for it and where it is. What more is there to talk about, for heaven’s sake?”

  “You want to talk now?”

  “No. I already said no.” He moved his hands in an agitated way. “I don’t have the time.”

  Parker shrugged. “What room should I wait in?”

  “At least get yourself a drink. Try not to look as though you’re here to repossess the furniture.”

  “All right. I’ll get a drink.”

  “Thank you,” Griffith said, being half sardonic and half grateful. He said, “Then, if you insist on a quiet room, go out that door over there and down the hall and through the second arch on your right. Then go across that room and through the door on the other side. That’s my office, you can wait in there.”

  “Good.”

  “If someone blunders onto you, pretend you’re making a long-distance call or something.”

  “All right,” Parker said.

  “Now come along and get a drink.”

  Parker went with him outside again, past the loud and sober musicians and down across the lawn toward the bar along the hedge. Midway, Griffith got dragged into somebody else’s conversation, and Parker went on alone. He arrived at a slight lull in the bar’s activity, and got himself a light gin and tonic. Mackey came wandering over to him as he turned away from the bar; they nodded to one another, and Mackey said, “You talk to him?”

  “We met,” Parker said. “We didn’t talk. You and Brenda hang around out here.”

  “Brenda’s having a big time,” Mackey said, and grinned. He was fond of her. “I’ll tell you a rule of human nature, Parker,” he said. “All women are social climbers.”

  There was nothing to say to that. Parker nodded again and walked back up the slope toward the patio. A man stepped in front of him, frowning slightly, and said, “Aren’t you Greene?”

  “No,” Parker said.

  “My God, that’s fantastic.” He was a little drunk, but carrying it well. “Hubert Greene?” he said, as though Parker might be the right man after all and had merely forgotten his own name. “You don’t know him? Surely people have told you you look like him.”

  “No,” Parker said.

  “Listen, come along here. Do you mind?” Taking Parker’s arm, he turned and started off, calling, “Helen! Come over here!”

  A nearby group of three women and two men now shifted to include Parker and the other man, and one of the women said, looking curiously at Parker, “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “Who does this fellow look like?”

  Everybody looked at him. Parker stood looking back, waiting for something else to attract their attention.

  Nobody could guess who it was he was supposed to look like, and when the first man mentioned the name of Hubert Greene, it prompted a long discussion, half the group agreeing more or less and the other half in violent opposition, one of the women constantly assuring Parker, “You don’t look anything like Hubie Greene, you really don’t.” And one of the men grinned at him and said, “If you knew Hubie, you’d punch Fred right in the face.”

  The conversation finally shifted gears when one of the women said, “Why isn’t Hubie here, anyway?”

  “I suppose he isn’t a potential customer.”

  “Don’t be catty.”

  “Face it, dear, the only reason Leon invited any of us here is in the wild hope we’ll take some of his stock off his hands.”

  The man who’d thought Parker looked like Hubert Greene now got caught up in this new discussion. Finally releasing Parker’s elbow, he said. “Do you really think that’s true? I thought Leon was loaded.”

  “Leon,” said one of the women, “is loaded with valuable paintings,
which isn’t quite the same thing.”

  “Not the way the tax laws are changing.” one of the other men said, and a couple of people nodded grimly.

  The woman named Helen said, “Tax laws? You mean paintings aren’t a good investment any more?” She sounded worried enough to have a lot of money of her own tied up in paintings.

  “Investment, yes,” said one of the men. “Tax write-off, no. Not as good as they used to be.”

  “The old charity dodge, you know,” said another man.

  But it turned out Helen didn’t know. As the group began all at once to explain the old charity dodge to her, Parker moved quietly away from them and on up over the lawn toward the house.

  Three

  When the door opened and Griffith came in, Parker was sitting at the desk in the small neat office, looking at nothing in particular. Griffith looked at him, shut the door, and said petulantly, “I suppose you’ve gone through everything.”

  “There wasn’t that much to go through.”

  Griffith obviously didn’t know how to handle Parker’s lack of denial, any more than he knew what to do about the fact that Parker wasn’t getting up from the desk. He stood indecisively just inside the door, and then made an abrupt unfocused movement forward, ending it just as abruptly, and saying, “Well. Very well, I’m here. You wanted to talk.”

  “My price is forty thousand,” Parker said.

  Griffith frowned. “You should have talked this over with Mackey,” he said. “I’ve made all the financial arrangements with him.”

  “I know, he told me all about it. We get one-thirty to split however we want. That’s between you and Mackey. But my price is forty. Meaning that whatever my share of the one-thirty is, the difference between that and forty I get direct from you.”

  “Definitely not,” Griffith said. “Absolutely no.”

  “All right,” Parker said. He got to his feet, walked around the desk, and headed for the door.

  Griffith watched him, frowning, until Parker reached out for the doorknob. Then he said, irritably, “What makes you worth it?”

  Parker kept his hand on the knob. Looking at Griffith, he said, “When Mackey called you and said I wanted this meeting, you said no. Mackey told you he wanted me in on the job, and he gave you reasons. The reasons were good enough to make you change your mind about seeing me. Those are the same reasons why I cost forty.”

  “Other people can make up plans,” Griffith said. “You aren’t the only one who can do it.”

  “If they’re good, they’re expensive.”

  Griffith gazed moodily toward his desk. From the way the side of his face was rippling, he was biting the inside of his cheek. Parker watched him, and finally Griffith said, still looking toward the desk, “It might be we could work something out.”

  Parker took his hand from the knob. “I’m willing to listen.”

  Griffith moved. He tried to pretend he was walking casually toward his desk, but in fact he was hurrying there, not wanting Parker to go back and sit there again. Parker leaned against the door and waited, and when Griffith had seated himself behind the desk, told him, “But my price is still forty.”

  Griffith seemed to be more confident with the desk around him. Palms on the desktop, he gave Parker a tight smile and said, “We can’t negotiate that way. Why not come sit down?”

  “It might be wasted movement.”

  Suddenly irritable again, Griffith said, “Why not argue with Mackey? He’s the one who thinks you’re so important. Tell him you want forty thousand, and he can split the other ninety any way he wants.”

  “No. You’re the one buying, not Mackey.”

  “Well, what if he finds out you’re getting a special deal? I can’t—”

  “I’ll tell him,” Parker said.

  “You’ll— But then he’ll come want the same thing!”

  Parker shrugged. “That’s up to the two of you.”

  “This is—I can’t—” Griffith gestured vaguely with both hands. “I can’t have you people coming in one at a time, holding me up, everybody wanting the same amount as everybody else.”

  “I figure it will probably be five men,” Parker said.

  “Five! That’s two hundred thousand dollars.”

  “If everybody gets paid the same.”

  “Won’t they all want to? I can’t afford that.”

  “They probably will, yes.”

  Griffith shook his head; he was positive, definite. “I can’t do that,” he said.

  “Tell them so. My price is forty.”

  “I know, I know.” Griffith looked around the small room as though the solution to his problem were written on one of the walls somewhere. Then he brooded at Parker again, and finally said, “Why not do it with three? I’ll still pay one hundred thirty, and you’ll have an extra ten thousand dollars to split among you.”

  “Can’t be done,” Parker said. “You’re talking about a major robbery, a hijacking of goods valued at around half a million dollars. It’ll be well guarded, it’ll be tough to get at. Three men can’t do it, not a chance in the world.”

  Griffith was becoming petulant again. “This was all supposed to be taken care of,” he said. “We were supposed to have an understanding.”

  “You do. With Mackey. But my—”

  “I know, I know.” Griffith irritably patted the air. “Your price is forty. Try not to say that any more.”

  Parker pushed away from the door he’d been leaning against, as though getting ready to leave. “If I’m wasting your time—”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Griffith fidgeted as though mosquitoes were bothering him. “Let me think about this.”

  Parker stood there, not quite against the door, neither fully committed to the room nor fully committed to leave, and Griffith chewed the inside of his face for a while, frowning at his desk, pushing pencils and stamp-holders around. From far away the rock music could be heard, more as vibration than sound; at this distance, it gave the room a timeless quality, a feeling like that of an aquarium, a place for afternoon naps.

  Griffith sighed. Frowning up at Parker, he said tentatively, “I’ll tell you what.” Then he paused again, apparently still thinking over his proposition.

  Parker said nothing. He waited.

  Griffith cocked his head to one side. “Four men?” he asked. Parker shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Depends how it lays out.”

  “But it’s possible.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You could do it with four men,” Griffith insisted. “If the circumstances were right.”

  Parker nodded. “Yes,” he said.

  “Then I’ll tell you what.” Griffith smiled slightly, showing a surprising warmth and openness and friendliness, all patently false. “I’ll add another ten thousand to the main number,” he said, “making it a hundred forty. That way, if you do it with four men you’ll wind up with thirty-five thousand for yourself. How about that?”

  “And I get the other five direct from you?”

  For just a second Griffith looked really angry; then it subsided to his normal irritation, he said, “You know better than that. I’m talking about a compromise here, and you know damn well that’s what I’m talking about.”

  “But I don’t compromise,” Parker said. “My price is forty thousand dollars. Not thirty-five. Not even thirty-nine and a half.”

  Petulant, Griffith said, “Never? Never in your goddam life have you ever done anything for less than forty thousand?”

  “This job,” Parker said, pointing straight down. “This job, my price is forty thousand.”

  “Come off it,” Griffith said, as though suddenly he was desperate to be finished. “Come away from that number, how can I talk to you? I came up ten thousand, you won’t even come down five?”

  “What if it takes five men? Then my piece is twenty-eight. You offering me the other seven thousand to bring it up to thirty-five?”

  “No, God damn it,” Griffith said. “I’m s
aying I won’t make any separate deals, because once I do it with one, I’ll wind up doing it with everybody. I say to you all right, okay, thirty-five, and then one after another everybody else wants thirty-five, and then you do it with ten men. And where’s my profit?”

  Parker shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “You don’t even give a damn,” Griffith said. “You stand there and you don’t care. Maybe the whole thing is, you don’t want to do the job at all, it scares you, but you don’t want Mackey to know you’re afraid of it, so you’re going through all this to have an excuse to run away.”

  “Pay me forty thousand,” Parker said, “and I’m in. Don’t pay it and I’m out.”

  “You won’t negotiate, damn it. How can I deal with you?”

  “Maybe you can’t.”

  Griffith chewed his lips and cheeks again for a minute, looking now very angry. Finally he said, “All right, I have another suggestion. You said it’s a possibility you could do it with four men.”

  “Maybe. With luck.”

  “All right, all right. Let’s both take a chance. I’ll go to one-sixty. That way, if you do it with four men, you get your price. If it takes more, you settle for less. And I’m paying you practically separate from everybody else, I’ve come up thirty thousand from what I already agreed.”

  Parker looked doubtful. “I don’t know—”

  “What don’t you know?” Griffith was on his feet all at once, trembling with annoyance. “I’ve broken my back for you, I’ve given you everything you want. What don’t you know?”

  Being hesitant, a little reluctant, Parker finally nodded. “All right,” he said. “One-sixty, no matter how many men it takes.”

  “At last.” Griffith said.

  Four

  Parker found Mackey down by the bar, talking with one of the bartenders about pro football. “I’m done,” Parker said.

  “Sure thing.” Mackey knocked back the rest of his drink and put his glass on the table. “Tittle,” he said to the bartender. “I still say Tittle.”

  The bartender gave a disbelieving shrug. “Maybe,” he said.