Deadly Edge: A Parker Novel Page 8

  “I think she ran girls.”

  “She ran a lot of girls. She was very damn good. A woman is always better than a man at that, but it’s tough to find a woman with business brains. They’d rather marry a man and steer him like a car.” He made steering motions over his stomach. He had a fat man’s way of sitting, feet widespread and flat on the floor.

  Parker waited. The fat man hadn’t said anything yet that he should reply to, so he just stood there and waited.

  The fat man brooded at the closed door, thinking about his organizational problems. Then he said, “They’re after you too, huh?”

  “I think so. I can’t be sure till I find them.”

  “But you don’t know who they are, or how come they’re after you. You know how many?”

  “Two, I think.”

  “You can handle them yourself?”

  “I think so.”

  The fat man nodded his head at the three hoods. “You want me to loan you a boy?”

  “I’m better off on my own.”

  “This thing ought to be punished. They left me one hell of a headache. I figured to start my own people out.”

  “They wouldn’t know where to go or what to look for.”

  “That’s where you could help them,” the fat man said.

  “I’m better off by myself.”

  The fat man pursed his lips. “Look,” he said. “If Mrs. Keane knew this friend of yours, Briley, it means she supplied him girls. So what I can do now, I can put some people to work on the phone, check out all her girls, find out who got sent to a guy named Briley. Then I can tell you where he is. Or on the other hand, I can send people of my own and the hell with you.”

  “Briley doesn’t know your people. He knows me. He’ll believe me and work with me. If we aren’t wasting too much time here.”

  “Time. Aldo, call the office for me. Lynch, go sit down over there.”

  Parker went over to the chair in the corner and sat down. The way the room was arranged, all four of them were now between him and his armaments on top of the television set.

  Aldo dialed the phone, talked into it briefly, handed the receiver to the fat man. The fat man rumbled into it for a while, then hung up. “Lynch, come over here.”

  Parker walked over.

  “Lynch, we decided to save our own manpower. You want to take care of them, you take care of them. You wait here now, somebody will call you, tell you where Briley is. Aldo, give him a card. Lynch, you need help, you lose the trail, anything goes wrong, call Aldo.”

  The card said, Family Bowling Center, with a Dearborn address and phone numer. Parker put it in his pocket.

  The fat man heaved himself to his feet. “Don’t go over to your gun till after we leave.” He walked toward the door, the three hoods around him like tugboats around an ocean liner. At the door, he looked back and said, “Have a good hunt.”

  “Thank you.”

  They left. Parker glanced at the closed bedroom door, then went over and got the automatic and knife and put them away.

  There was the possibility he was simply being set up to eat this rap, though it seemed pointless. Still the chance existed that the fat man would have Aldo dial Police Headquarters from some other telephone, and in five or ten minutes the law would walk in and start asking questions Parker couldn’t answer.

  None of the apartment windows overlooked the street. Parker propped the hall door open with a straight chair from the kitchen and walked down the corridor past the stairwell to the window at the end. Down below was the sidewalk and the street. Across the way, two of the hoods were helping the fat man into the back of a black Cadillac. Parker watched the three of them drive away. It didn’t surprise him that the fourth had been left behind; he’d expected the fat man would tie shadow to him until he got to the people who’d killed Mrs. Keane. It was a problem that could be handled later.

  He waited half an hour. This was a workingmen’s apartment house, and though there was occasional movement on the floors below, no one appeared up on the top floor at all. And then, after half an hour by the window overlooking the street, Parker heard the phone ring in Mrs. Keane’s apartment. He strode down the corridor, shoved the chair out of the way so the door would swing closed, and crossed the room to pick up the receiver.

  A colorless female voice said, “Robin Hood Motel, Pontiac.”

  6

  The third time Parker pounded on the door, a sleep-heavy man in T-shirt and jockey shorts opened it and blinked blearily out at him, weaving slightly as he said, “What day is it?”

  “I’m looking for Briley.”

  “Briley? Christ, is that the sun?”

  Parker pushed the door the rest of the way open and went in. The sleepy man tottered backward, not quite losing his balance, saying, “Jesus, fella, don’t knock a fella over.”

  Briley’s group had a four-unit separate section of the motel completely to themselves. This section was off behind the parking lot, where they wouldn’t disturb anybody. All the connecting doors were open, the drapes were closed over all the windows, and they had their own private dim-lit world in which to party.

  A naked girl was curled up asleep on the floor in front of the television set, which was showing a soap opera with the sound turned off. Two fretful women sat at a kitchen table on the grainy screen and mouthed worried remarks at one another.

  A couple was asleep in one of the room’s double beds; the other was empty, but rumpled. Empty bottles, full ashtrays, and stray playing cards were all over the room. The girl sleeping in front of the television set was clutching a thick white candle in one hand.

  Parker went over to look at the man asleep in the bed, but it wasn’t Briley. He turned back to the one who was semi-awake and said, “Briley’s the one I want to see.”

  “It’s got to be too early in the day. What did I do with my watch?”

  Parker went over and took him by the upper arm and applied pressure. “Briley,” he said. “Where’s Briley?”

  “Jesus! He’s down at the end! I told you twice already, down in the end room!”

  Parker released him. “Thanks.”

  “One thing,” the man said, and waved in the general direction of the girl on the floor. “That one’s mine.” Then he weaved over and got into bed with the other couple, and began rummaging with the girl’s body under the sheet. Eyes closed, she rolled over to face him and put her arms around him, and when Parker left the room they were moving together, neither of them entirely awake.

  Briley wasn’t in the last room. The ones in between had continued the same general style as the first one, and unit four was no exception, except that in here there was an odd number of people; a man and woman asleep in one bed, and a woman asleep alone in the other.

  It took a while to wake the solitary woman. Parker finally took a warm bottle of club soda and emptied it on her. She sat up, then, sputtering, shaking, and Parker said, “Where’s Briley?”

  “What?” She used the sheet to wipe her face. “Oog. I hate soda.”

  “Briley,” Parker said.

  “He got a phone call,” she said. “He went away.”

  “Where?”

  “How do I know? He wrote something down over there.”

  “What time did he get the call?”

  She peered up at him, squinting although the room was very dim. “Are you kidding?”

  Parker left her and went over to the stand between the beds. The phone was there, and a pencil, and a small memo pad of blank white paper.

  The woman patted the wet pillow. “What a hell of a mess you made in here. That wasn’t nice.”

  Parker picked up the pad and pencil and walked around the beds and went into the john. He turned on the light and shut the door, and tried to angle the pad so he could read the indentations in the top sheet that had been left when Briley had written on the sheet above it. He could see the lines, but he couldn’t make them out.

  There was a formica counter beside the sink. Parker put th
e pad down on that and very lightly brushed the pencil back and forth over the paper. The indented lines grew less dark. The scrawled note read: “53 2 mi N Romeo left church Galt on right.” Parker put the pad and pencil in his pocket, opened the door, switched off the bathroom light, and went outside to find a man dressed in nothing but pants blocking his way with a bottle in his hand, the bottle held as a club.

  The man said. “What’s your story, Mac?”

  “I’m a friend of Briley’s.”

  “He ain’t here.”

  “I know that.” The woman he’d awakened was asleep again, her head on the wet pillow. Both women were asleep.

  “Then you oughta get outa here.”

  Parker said nothing. He started for the door, passing to the man’s left. He went one pace farther, then dropped to one knee and the bottle curved over his head, the man grunting as the swing went past the spot where he’d expected it to stop. Parker came up behind the swing and hit the man twice in the stomach. A man who’s been partying has a weak stomach. The man made a sound, dropped the bottle, backed up two steps, ran into his bed, and fell down on it, both arms over his stomach. He landed on his woman’s legs, and she began to thrash around in her sleep. The man rolled over onto his side on the bed and stayed there, his arms still pressed to his stomach, his mouth open like a fish.

  Parker went outside, where the sun seemed twice as bright as before, glaring off the concrete drive. Over on Route 59, trucks were going by, smudging the air.

  The car he’d picked up in Detroit, a green Mustang, was down at the other end of this four-unit section. Parker walked down to it, got in, and drove a quarter mile to a gas station. He looked at a Michigan map while the tank was being filled. There was a Route 53. North of Detroit on 53 was a town called Romeo.

  When he pulled out of the gas station, the beige Buick that had been following him since Mrs. Keane’s place was still behind him.

  7

  Parker slowed for the turn. He was nowhere near Romeo or Route 53. He was turning from a blacktop secondary road onto a dirt road that led directly into woods. The beige Buick, because of the lack of other traffic out here, was keeping well back.

  Parker drove half a mile before he found a place where he could pull the Mustang off the dirt track. Trees hemmed the car in on all sides. It was green, which in here was a lucky color.

  Parker left the car, crossed the dirt road, and made his way through the trees back the way he’d come, paralleling the path. After a minute or two he heard the Buick coming, and stopped beside a tree. His automatic was in his right hand.

  The Buick went slowly by, crumpling twigs beneath the tires. The driver was one of the hoods who’d been with the fat man. The one beside him, Parker had never seen before, but he was in the same mold.

  Parker shot the left front tire, and waited, and for a long time nothing happened at all. The driver had stopped the car the instant the shot sounded, the man beside him was holding a revolver up with its butt resting on the dashboard, and both were turning their heads, looking at the woods all around them. Neither tried to hide, neither made any move to get out of the car. It was a very cool, very contained reaction.

  Parker called, “Drive forward. Very slowly.”

  They both looked toward the sound of his voice, but he knew they couldn’t see him. He waited while they looked for him, then looked at one another, and finally the driver put the car in gear and it slid forward, the hood bumping up and down because of the flat tire.

  The car went just a few feet, and then the brake lights went on and it stopped again. The driver called, “We’ve got a flat.”

  “Drive anyway. Slowly.”

  The driver looked irritable, but he took his foot off the brake and the Buick limped forward again.

  Parker kept to the trees, far enough away so he’d be difficult to see as he moved from cover to cover, yet close enough to keep the Buick in sight. He didn’t want the passenger to slip out and come looking for him on his blind side.

  The brake lights went on again briefly when they came to the Mustang, but the car didn’t entirely stop. Parker angled in closer, and when the Buick had gone about thirty feet past the Mustang, he called, “Stop there,” and the Buick stopped. “Turn off the engine. Climb out. Both on the left side. Leave your guns on the front seat. Walk around in front of the car. Face away from the car. Put your hands on your heads.”

  Parker moved cautiously to the Buick, watching them. Neither of them said anything, to him or to one another. He opened the driver’s door, took the keys out of the ignition, put them in his pocket. There were two revolvers on the seat. He put away his own automatic, picked up the two revolvers, stepped back from the car, and said, “You’ll hear shots now. I’m shooting tires, not you.”

  “And you’re making a big mistake,” the driver said.

  “Before you shoot the tires—” the other one said, and Parker put a bullet in the left rear. As he walked around the back of the car, the second man started again: “We’re along to back you up. You’re putting heat on yourself for no reason, you aren’t what we’re after.”

  “I told your boss I work alone.” Parker shot the right rear tire, moved up the side of the car.

  The driver said, “Don’t you know we’re national? Don’t you know you can’t go anywhere we won’t find you?”

  Parker shot the fourth tire. “Take five paces forward.”

  They moved forward. The driver said, “You’re going out of your way to make a lot of people mad at you.”

  “One pace to the right. Now lie down. Facedown.”

  They were now where he could keep an eye on them while he backed up to the Mustang. He had to lose sight of them for a few seconds while he got into the car and started the engine, and when he backed onto the road, one of them was out of sight and the other was on his feet. Parker ignored that, and ran the Mustang in reverse all the way to the blacktop road, where he turned north.

  8

  Glass shattered in front of his face; a pistol shot sounded in the tall reeds beside the house. Parker leaped over the porch railing, landed on his shoulder, and rolled for cover over the brown-earth yard. In scraggly underbrush, he took out his automatic, got to hands and knees, and crawled for the back of the house.

  He was going down the right side of the building, and the shot had come from the swampy ground off to the left. If the sniper didn’t move before Parker got there, he’d be flanked when Parker came around the rear of the house and moved into the area of the swamp.

  There was no other sound, no other movement. This farmhouse, several miles northwest of Romeo on an unnumbered gravel road, had a battered old rural delivery mailbox out front with the name Galt on it, but gave the impression of having been deserted for at least a few years. Most of the windows had been broken, and somebody had removed clapboard siding from one section of the side wall. There were no other houses in sight.

  It was now midafternoon, and as hot as it was going to get today, possibly sixty degrees. Mayflies made a background blur of sound that only intensified the silence; it was as though the leaves could be heard rustling on the fat oak trees beyond the farmer’s field.

  Parker came around the rear of the house, and stopped when he was still in cover but could see the Mustang where he’d parked it in front of the porch. He waited, sitting on his heels, ready to jump in any direction, and nothing happened, nobody moved. A slight breeze semaphored tree leaves all around. Behind the broken windows of the house were no curtains or lights, only darkness and vaguely seen blank walls with rectangular door spaces.

  Parker moved. The ground underfoot was very soft; water squeezed to the surface around his shoes when he shifted his weight. He moved in a crouch, with one hand touching the ground for balance, and the sensation against those fingers was cold and damp.

  Movement. A rustling. Reeds bent, sluggishly, and didn’t come upright again. Parker watched the movement to his right, away from the house, and waited for it to become something
meaningful, but after a few minutes it stopped again.

  He headed toward where the agitation had been, and through the reeds he saw a form stretched out on the ground, and when he came closer, it was a man lying face-down, arms bent laxly around his head.

  Alone? Parker circled him, listening, watching, and when the silence continued to stretch without snapping, he moved in closer and saw the automatic enclosed in the slack fingers of the man’s right hand. And also the familiar contour of his head, a reminiscent slope to the shoulder and back.

  Parker stood upright, and looked around, and nothing happened. He stepped quickly forward and kicked the barrel of the gun, and it slid away through the reeds with a faint squishing sound.

  Parker bent and turned Briley over, and the front of his shirt and trousers was smeared with mud and blood, drying unevenly together. He put his hand to Briley’s throat and felt pulse, felt breath shuddering in and out. He got to his feet, looked around, listened, then stepped to the left, bent, picked up Briley’s gun, held it in his hand and looked at it.

  It wasn’t the same automatic he’d carried in the robbery. This one was a Colt Super Auto, chambered for high-speed .38’s; a fairly old, well-used gun, it had the scratches and scars of a weapon that had been through many hands. Parker ejected the clip, and it was half empty. He put the clip back, felt the front of the barrel, and it was warm.

  Leaving Briley where he was, Parker went back to the house and up on the porch. Briley’s shot had further broken the broken glass in the storm door and had then gouged a new streak in the graying wood of the main door, before digging a hole for itself in the frame. Parker pulled open the storm door and saw the jimmy marks on the frame near the inner door’s knob. He pushed, and the door eased open. Holding his own gun in his right hand and Briley’s Colt in his left, he kicked the door open farther, and stepped in.

  The place had been stripped. Wiring straggled from the walls where light switches and outlets had been removed. Molding around windows and doors had been stripped away, and even part of the living-room floor had been ripped up and taken away, leaving a grave-size hole through which a dirt-floored basement could be seen.