The Hunter: A Parker Novel (Parker Novels) Read online

  “Sure, Mal. Anything you say. How'd it go with Stegman?”

  “Fine, fine. It's about that. This guy who's looking for me, his name is Parker. Now I've moved out of the Outfit for a while, I'm staying at the St. David on 57th, room 516. You spread the word around. If anybody asks for me, asks any of the guys, this Parker shows up, tell him where I am. You got that?”

  “You want us to tell him?”

  “Right. Not easy, not right off the bat, or he'll smell something fishy. But let him know where I am. Then call me right away. You got that? They don't call you, they call me.”

  “Okay, Mal. Whatever you say.”

  “Make sure they call me right away.”

  “I'll tell them, Mal.”

  “Okay.”

  Mal hung up and took a deep breath. All right. When the time came, he knew a couple of guys he could hire to hang around with him. They worked for the Outfit sometimes, sometimes not—they were like free-lancers. It wouldn't be the same as using Outfit people.

  There was a knock at the door. Mal started, eyes jerking involuntarily to the phone. He called, “Who is it?”

  “Room service.”

  “Hold it. Hold on a second.”

  The gun was in the bedroom, on the bed, next to the suitcase. He hurried in, picked it up, brought it back to the living room with him. The pocket of the dressing gown was large; the gun was a smallish .32, an English make. He held tightly to the gun in his pocket and opened the door.

  A kid in a red and black bellboy uniform wheeled in a chrome cart with the liquor and mix and glasses and ice. Mal closed the door after him, and only then relaxed his grip on the gun. He fumbled in the bottom of his pocket, past the gun, and his fingers found two quarters. They went into the bellboy's open hand, and Mal clutched the gun again as he opened the door for the bellboy to go out. There was no one else in the hall.

  Alone again, he made himself a drink, glancing at the phone. He looked at his watch and it was only quarter after seven. Forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes. If she was early, she'd get an extra ten.

  He went into the bedroom and cleared the suitcase off the bed and pulled the spread down. He kept standing looking at the bed. His right hand clutched the gun in his pocket.

  6

  She was only five minutes early, so he decided the hell with the extra ten. When she knocked at the door, he went through the same routine as with the bellboy, holding hard to the gun in his pocket, calling through the door. He didn't hear what she answered, but it was a female voice so he opened the door, and she smiled at him and came in.

  She was a knockout. Better than Phil's, a million times better. She looked like Vassar maybe, or some hotshot's private secretary on Madison Avenue, or a starlet on the Grace Kelly line.

  She was a blonde, like he'd asked for, with medium-short pale hair in one of those television hairdos. Perched atop the hairdo was a black box hat with a little veil. She wore a gray suit and a green silk scarf, like a photo in Vogue.

  Her legs were long and slender, sheathed in sheer nylon, shod in green high heels. She walked like a model, one foot directly in front of the other, the pelvis rotating back and forth, her left arm and green-gloved hand swinging straight at her side in short arcs, her right hand, bare, holding her tiny black purse and other green glove to her body, just below her breast.

  Her face had been chiseled with care, honed and smoothed to creamy perfection, slender brows arched over green eyes, aquiline nose, soft-lipped mouth with just a trace of lipstick, long slender throat and cameo shoulders.

  He looked at her and he knew he would never have better. If he lived a hundred years, he'd never have anything again as good as this. Better in the rack, maybe, he didn't know about that, but not better looking, not more desirable or more perfect than this.

  She smiled, stepping across the threshold with her model's walk, saying, “Hello, Mal. I'm Linda,” extending her gloved left hand to him, palm down, fingers curved slightly. Her voice was warm velvet, her diction clear and perfect.

  “Hi,” he said, smiling eagerly at her.

  The gun forgotten, he took his hand from his pocket, clasped hers briefly, and then she was past him and he closed the door. He turned to look at the back view, the straight spine, the sides curving in to the waist, blossoming below in the long curve over the hips and sweeping away down the length of leg. She was taller than he, but it didn't matter. In the rack, he'd be taller.

  He wiped damp palms down the sides of his dressing gown. “You want a drink, Linda?”

  “Thank you, yes.” She smiled again, a warm impersonal smile, and set her purse and one glove down on an end table, then removed the other glove.

  He made drinks for them both, watching her all the time, gratified by every cultured move she made, the grace of her walk across the room to the round mirror between the windows, the supple beautiful shift of curve and line as she raised her arms. She lowered her head slightly, and standing before the mirror removed the two jewel-tipped pins from her hat, took off the hat, stuck the pins back into it and set the hat down on the table by the mirror.

  He watched her as they had a drink together, sitting side by side on the sofa. She turned just slightly toward him, sheathed knees together, costume and body and face and voice and speech all perfect, all meshed in wonderful symmetry, an idealization machine of flesh and blood and bone and sinew and female parts. He didn't want her now, not yet, not physically. He was content with what he had: the look of her, the presence of her, the sureness of her, the knowledge that he would have her tonight, that he had all of tonight to posses her as completely and as often as he wanted.

  “I understand,” she said, “that you are an executive in the organization.”

  He grinned. “Yeah. I'm what you might call administrative.” And he found himself telling her all about his job, the responsibility it entailed, the problems hie faced, the kind of guys he had working for him.

  And she responded with good questions, with an interested expression on her face, with intelligent comments. He talked on and on, knowing he was impressing her and interesting her, delighted with himself and with her, more animated and vibrant than he'd ever been before in his life. When next he looked at his watch it was seven minutes to ten.

  He stopped in mid-sentence, struck by the stupidity of it. Two hours shot, gone forever, and this broad didn't even have her suit jacket off yet.

  It was time. It was way past time.

  But how the hell was he supposed to start? He'd spent all this time talking, and this was a high-class chick. You didn't just all of a sudden tell her to spread her legs, you had to be genteel about it. How the hell was he supposed to start?

  She watched him, smiling, and said, “Is it all right if I take off my shoes? I've been wearing them for just hours.”

  “Yeah,” he said, distracted. “Sure, go ahead.”

  She crossed one leg over the other, nylon brushing nylon, and removed her shoe. She was half turned toward him, and in that position he had a clear view down the length of the crossed leg, the darker band at the top of the stocking and the creamy flesh beyond.

  Impulsively he reached out, stroking his hand up the underside of her leg, squeezing the top of the thigh beyond the stocking. “You're great, Linda,” he said. “You're the goddam best.”

  She smiled again. “Help me off with my stockings, will you, Mal?”

  “You bet I will.”

  He knelt before her, rolled the stockings down the perfect lengths of her legs. She took her jacket off and the green silk scarf and the white blouse with the lace at the throat. Her bra was white. That was better than red, he thought, looking at her—more discreet, more cultured.

  She touched his jawline. “I suppose we ought to go to the bedroom now,” she said softly.

  “Yeah.”

  He followed her into the bedroom. She was barefoot, wearing gray skirt and white bra, the bra strap at the level of his chin. She asked him to unsnap her and he did, and then
she stepped out of the skirt and the garter belt and the panties. He was by then out of his dressing gown and trousers and slippers, and when she lay back on the bed, arms up to enclose him, he was ready.

  He should have known that a girl who could charge one hundred dollars for one night of her companionship would have to be worth it in every way. In appearance, yes. In ability to make her customer feel at ease and feel interesting and important, yes. But most of all, she would have to be worth it in bed. And she was.

  Excitement and delayed expectation and her skill finished him almost at once. He lay startled and humiliated and enraged: the boy who got to the matinee just as the chapter was ending. He gnawed painfully on his lower lip, and she murmured, “That's all right, Mal. That's only warming up.”

  But he knew himself, he was no champion: he wasn't born to run relay races all by himself.

  “Let me get up, Mal,” she whispered. “I'll be right back, and don't you worry about anything.”

  He rolled over, and watched the grand fluidity of her body as she rose from the bed and left the room. To have had that, and only for those few seconds, that was bitter.

  But when she came back, he found out at last what it truly was he was paying her for. To make him more a man than he was. With gentle smiling urgency she made him ready again, and for the second time he closed his eyes and had the time of his life. And afterwards he slept, content.

  He awoke to find the nightstand lamp still burning, and her asleep beside him. The clock said twenty past three. She was lying on her back, one arm down at her side, the other bent, the hand on her stomach. Her hair was disarranged, the lipstick had been rubbed from her mouth, her body gleamed in the dim light. He looked at her now and felt only physical desire, stronger even than before.

  He woke her, and she reacted at once, her arms coming around him, her body responding to him, and he just barely heard the sound of the window being raised.

  He pushed up with his hands, arching his back, staring terrified over his shoulder, and saw Parker come through the window from the fire escape. His head spun around, and he saw the dressing gown on the chair beyond the nightstand. Desperately he pushed away from her, lunging headlong toward the dressing gown, knowing he would never make it.

  7

  Like a machine, he felt a click and it was nine months ago. At the estate, when they came back from the island and he first approached Ryan about the double cross.

  “You know Parker better than I do,” he'd said. “Tell me something. Would he ever try to grab the whole pie in a thing like this?”

  “Parker?” Ryan shook his head. “Not a chance. I worked with him three, four times, and he's straight. Don't you worry about it.”

  “Okay,” said Mal doubtfully. “If you say so. It's just I heard him and Sill talking, and from what they said it sounded like---it must of meant something else, that's all.”

  Ryan bit right away. “Wait a second. What did they say?”

  “Parker said something about a two-way split. At least, that's what it sounded like. A two-way split was better, something like that. And Sill said something about you were the only guy who could fly the plane and Parker said there was still a car in the garage. The one Lynn came up in.”

  “Where was this?” Ryan had asked.

  “When we came back, out by the plane. Remember they hung back a little?”

  Ryan worried it over in his mind a minute, frowning heavily, and shook his head. “Parker's never done anything like that. Sill maybe. I don't know about him. But not Parker.”

  “What made me wonder,” Mal said, “is because of the dough Parker needs.”

  “What dough?”

  “Didn't you know about it? That's the whole reason he took this job, out of the country and everything. He was going to do some other job in Chicago and it fell through---”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Ryan, glad to be presented with a fact he could verify. “I was in on that, too, I know about that.”

  “Yeah, well, Parker needs dough bad. That's why he took this job when the other one fell through. Think about it, Ryan. Did he ever work outside the country before?”

  “Parker? Nah, he's always worked the states.”

  “That's what I mean. So I thought maybe he needed dough bad enough to want to cross us. That's why I wanted to ask your advice.”

  Ryan chewed on it a while longer, his head shaking slowly back and forth as he thought. Finally, he shook his head more decisively and said, “No. He wouldn't do it, Mal. He'd know better than that. I'd find him---you better believe it---and he knows that. Parker wouldn't cross me, he knows better.”

  “Listen, that's the part scares me. If Parker was going to cross us, he wouldn't want to leave us alive, hunting for him. He'd want to be damn sure we were dead long before he'd leave this house.”

  “Yeah,” said Ryan slowly. “Yeah, I never thought of that.”

  Mal looked up at him. “What do you think we ought to do?”

  “I don't know,” Ryan said. “I want to think it over. Parker. It just don't sound like him.”

  “If he's planning anything, it'll be tonight. After we're all in bed.”

  “I got to think this over.”

  “Let me know,” Mal had said. “We don't have much time!”

  “Yeah. Jeez---Parker.” Ryan went away shaking his head.

  Later that night Mal took a knife and slit the sleeping Chester's throat. He got rid of the knife and ran to Ryan's room. “Ryan, wake up! He got Chester---Parker already done for Chester!”

  Ryan hadn't been asleep. He'd been lying awake in the darkness, his hand on the gun under his pillow, his eyes watching the door. Although he hadn't said anything about it, he'd nearly shot Mal when he came into the room.

  The two of them went and looked at Chester's body. “Parker,” said Ryan wonderingly. He shook his head. “I wouldn't of believed it.”

  “We got to get him, Ryan,” Mal said. “Before he gets us, we got to get him.”

  Ryan nodded heavily. “Yeah. I'll get the gun.”

  “No,” said Mal. “Wait a second. We don't want to do it that way.”

  Ryan paused, brow furrowed. “What way, then? You got a better idea?”

  Mal had a better idea. It had just come to him, just that minute, and it excited him, nerved him up, gave him goose bumps. He'd originally planned just this much, the way it was going, setting Ryan on Parker so it didn't matter which one survived. He'd be in the background waiting to finish the other.

  But now all at once he had this idea, and he didn't stop to analyze it, to think about how it was more complicated, more risky, more dangerous. He just knew it was the way to do it, the way it had to be done. When things hit him that way, his mind was closed, there was no longer any possibility but the one idea strong in his head.

  Lynn. Lynn Parker. The bastard's wife, the butt-twitching, high-breasted, long-legged wife.

  From the minute he'd seen her first, in the cab in Chicago when he recognized Parker and braced him for the proposition, he'd had hot pants for that bitch. He'd looked at her, and wanted her, and because she was Parker's he couldn't go near her. And that made him want her all the more.

  She'd do the job for them. She herself, she'd do it. It came to him, and he knew it was perfect.

  “Lynn,” he said. “She does the job for us. It's perfect.”

  Ryan frowned ponderously. “Lynn? She's his wife, Mal.”

  “I know that. She's the only one could catch him off guard. You know the bastard, Ryan. You want to brace him with him ready and eager for you? The hell with that.”

  “How you gonna get Lynn to do it? It don't make sense, Mal.”

  “We tell her the score. She either takes care of him or she's dead. We put it to her that way. We let her know we mean it---it's her or him.”

  Ryan thought slowly into it, a worried expression on his face. “I don't know, Mal,” he said laboriously. “Lynn, she's his wife, I don't know---”

  “You don't want
to brace him, Ryan.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  “It's worth a try. If it don't work, we regroup, that's all.” Ryan frowned harder.

  “We don't have a hell of a lot of time,” Mal said quickly.

  “We've got to make our move before he makes his.”

  “Yeah,” said Ryan. “Okay. We try it.”

  On the way down the hall, Ryan stopped off in Sill's room for a minute. That left only Parker to be taken care of.

  There was a bathroom between each pair of bedrooms, connected on both sides. They went into the bedroom next to the one occupied by Parker and Lynn, and waited by the slightly open bathroom door.