The Seventh Page 8

  He could hear the sound of running feet within Ellie's apartment as he went on by the window he'd broken. So the cop on guard duty out in the hall had heard the shooting and was coming to see what was happening.

  Parker felt a cold rage pouring through him. The bastard was right there, right up there on the roof. It had to be him again, hanging around, hanging around, taking his stupid potshots at Parker just as though he knew what he was doing. Right up there on top of the goddam building, and instead of going up and taking the stupid bastard apart piece by piece until the money fell out, Parker was running like a rabbit the other way.

  Because of the cop. Because the maniac on the roof was so stupid he'd stand up there and shoot off a gun with a cop on plant inside the same damn building.

  So he was up there, and by rights Parker had him cold, but instead of having him cold Parker was forced to let him go. And more than that. He didn't want the law to get its hands on the silly bastard yet, either, so he was going to have to make a distraction, he was going to have to cover for the bastard.

  He had to make it possible for the bastard to get away.

  Cursing, raging, Parker went on down the fire escape, firing a couple of shots nowhere in particular in order to distract the cop's attention from the roof. Above, the cop had found the broken window and had become aware of Parker going down the fire escape and was hollering for him to stop.

  The bottom was a square pit, a concrete hole spotted with dented garbage cans. A black metal door led into the basement of the building, through blundering darkness in which Parker cursed and kicked and hurried, and then to a flight of stairs, and up, and through another metal door to the first floor hallway.

  He stopped running at the front door. The pistol went back into his pocket, he closed his overcoat, took a deep breath, and walked calmly out the front door. He turned to the right, and a block away heard sirens coming from the other way. But he was clear now.

  And so was the quarry. No matter how stupid he was, he had to be clear now.

  Ready for refinding.

  6

  Janey was a disappointment with her clothes on; still pretty, but young and dull. She was wearing a pink sweater that made her breasts look like hard and youthful buds and a green skirt that gave no hint of the round rump underneath. She wore neither stockings nor socks, and on her feet were rumpled loafers.

  She opened the door to Parker's knock, saw Parker standing there in the hall, and said, “Oh, it's you. You might as well come in. We've got a whole convention going here.”

  “Think you'll need help?”

  “Don't talk dirty.”

  Parker heard sounds of talking from the kitchen and went over there first. Negli and Rudd and Shelly were sitting around the kitchen table drinking beer and playing knock poker. They looked up when Parker came in, and Negli said, “You must have it by now. You couldn't of been gone this long and come back without it. They didn't swipe it from you again, did they, Parker?”

  “In a little while, Negli,” Parker said, “I'm going to use you for toilet paper.”

  Shelly said, “What's the score, Parker?”

  “Tied, nothing-nothing at the half.”

  Negli said, “Where've you been all this time?”

  “Hiding from you.” To Shelly and Rudd he said, “I've got to talk to Dan, I'll be back in a minute.”

  Negli had the last word, but Parker didn't listen to it.

  Kifka, still holding his own with the virus, was sitting up in bed with two large yellow bath towels draped over his shoulders and torso to keep him warm. Clinger was sitting hunched in a chair like a bankrupt laundromat owner in his lawyer's outer office. Feccio, over at the window, was studying the world with an eye that reserved judgment.

  Kifka looked up when Parker came in, and said, “Where've you been?”

  “Getting started.”

  Clinger roused himself a little bit, and said, “I would never have expected it from you, Parker. Not you.” He said it like it was Parker's fault the laundromat was bankrupt.

  And it was; Clinger was right. Parker said, “I'll get it back myself, you want that. You want to help, fine.”

  Feccio, coming over from the window, said, “Parker, don't lose your logic. It could have happened to any of us. Some things you can't account for, you can't plan in advance.”

  Parker walked around the room with his arms swinging at his sides, his hands opening and closing. “The bastard can find me,” he said. “He's got no brains, no sensible plan, he's a lousy shot, he's an amateur, but he can find me like that. And I can't find him at all.”

  Feccio said, “Dan told us. He's the one ambushed you last night.”

  “Twice,” Parker told him. “Just this afternoon.”

  From the doorway, Negli said, “You keep up like that, Parker, you'll turn into a figure of fun.”

  Parker looked carefully at Feccio. “Turn your angelino off,” he said.

  Feccio's face darkened. “Don't start on me, Parker.”

  Kifka said, “Negli, what's your little problem?”

  “My seventh,” Negli told him. “Where's my seventh, that's my problem.”

  Kifka said, “We'll find it for you, okay?”

  From his gloomy corner, Clinger said, “Squabble, that's what we need now. A nice long squabble.” Rudd and Shelly had come in now and were just standing around.

  Feccio said to the room in general, “Bob won't say anything more, you got my guarantee.” He looked at Negli. “My guarantee,” he said.

  Negli looked insulted, and walked over into a corner.

  Kifka said, “What's the story so far, Parker?”

  Parker told them of his afternoon: Detective Dougherty and Ellie's apartment and the madman on the roof. “I had to unload the Buick,” he said. “And sooner or later that cop's going to get your name, Dan; you knew Ellie, and he'll come around here to ask questions, so we've got to find a different place to meet.”

  Feccio said, “Vimorama. We've got the run of the place. Dan could move right on out there now.”

  “Fine. All right with you, Dan?”

  “As long as I got my Janey with me,” Kifka said, “I don't care where I am.”

  Parker took Dougherty's list out of his pocket and gave it to Kifka. “You know any of these people?”

  Kifka glanced down the list and said, “Sure. About half of them. This is the list you got from the cop, huh?”

  “That's right.”

  Clinger said, “One thing I got to admit. I got to admit, Parker, you've got gall. You go to the cop to get your information.”

  Parker said, “He was the only one had it.”

  Rudd said, “One thing.”

  They all looked at him. Rudd was a silent workman type; it was a strange thing to hear him speak.

  Kifka said, “What is it?”

  Rudd said, “What we're talking about here is maybe twenty thousand bucks. Less than that. And financing out of that, maybe eighteen grand. For eighteen grand, Parker is walking into cops' houses, we're all hanging around here where a cop is going to show up sometime, maybe five minutes from now, and we're going to keep poking around in the same places where the cops are poking around. They're looking for the same guy as us.”

  “So what do you want to do?”

  “Pack it in. I don't blame Parker, it could have happened to me, to anybody. But I say pack it in.”

  It was the most anyone had heard Rudd talk in years, so it had its effect. Much more effect than if Little Bob Negli had said the same things.

  But Parker was aggravated. Somewhere in this dirty city there was a guy who had stolen two suitcases full of money from Parker. And shot at Parker twice. And killed the girl Parker was living with. And tried to set Parker up to take the fall.

  What he wanted now was the appearances of logic and good sense. If the other six stayed active in this thing, then it was a simple sensible matter of getting the group's money back. But if they all quit, Parker knew he himself wouldn'
t quit, and he'd be going after the guy instead of the money.

  He didn't like to catch himself doing things that weren't sensible, and that just aggravated him all the more.

  He said, “Anyone wants to give up his seventh, just turn it over to me.”

  Negli rose to the bait. “Not you, Parker. Don't you even think it.”

  Kifka said, “I'm not going to pack it in. But face it, I won't be able to help much; I'm weak as a kitten.”

  Parker said, “Feccio? You in or out?”

  “In, you know that. And so's Bob.”

  “Good. Clinger?”

  Clinger shrugged and looked pessimistic. “It's good effort thrown after bad,” he said, “but what can we do? Twenty thousand dollars is still and all and nevertheless twenty thousand dollars.”

  Feccio smiled and said, “Well spoken.”

  Parker turned around. “Shelly?”

  Shelly grinned. “I got nothing else to do with my time,” he said. “This might be interesting.”

  Kifka said to Rudd, “You're the only one doesn't want his seventh. You want us each to have a sixth?”

  “I don't walk out alone,” Rudd told him. “You people mess around, with or without me, I'm still in the same trouble, it could still get back to me if you louse yourselves up.”

  “So you're in?”

  “I'm in.”

  Parker said, “Dan, you've got to know more of Ellie's friends, names not on that list.”

  “Sure I do.”

  “Then write them down. We can't go near one of those nine unless we're pretty sure it's the guy we want. The reason I had to talk to the cop, I had to know which of Ellie's friends the law was on to and watching, and I had to know if they were on to you.”

  “Ellie hung round with different groups different times,” Kifka said. He tapped the list of names. “Most of these are in a different kind of crowd from me. I know some of them, we've met here and there, but we're not buddies. Starting from these guys, the world these guys hang around in, it's going to take that cop a hell of a long while to get to me.”

  “Maybe.”

  Kifka shrugged. “All right, maybe. What about these phone numbers on the list here?”

  “They mean anything to you? I got them in Ellie's apartment.”

  Kifka shook his head. “Not a thing. Let's check them out.”

  “Me,” Clinger said. “My kind of proposition.”

  Kifka ripped that part of the sheet of paper off and handed it to Clinger, who went out to the living room to make the calls. Kifka took a pencil from the bedside table, wet the tip with his tongue, and said, “Other people Ellie knew.”

  Parker said, “With a grudge, if you know any.”

  “That I wouldn't know. Let me just give you the names.”

  Feccio said, “Then we go play detective?”

  Parker said, “Something like that.”

  Rudd said, “We're looking for trouble.”

  “Don't worry, Pete,” said Kifka. “This won't be as bad as you think.” He shifted around in the bed and started writing names and addresses down on the paper.

  For a couple of minutes there was silence, everybody sitting around waiting for Kifka to get his list finished. Clinger came back in and shook his head and said, “A pizzeria and a movie theater.”

  Parker said, “It figured.”

  Shelly said, “Who's for poker?”

  They all trooped out but Parker and Kifka. Kifka sat on the bed, frowning in concentration like a wrestler trying to remember who's supposed to win this bout, and Parker went over to the window and looked out at the night-dark city.

  He was out there, somewhere.

  PART THREE

  1

  He was standing in a small square room with beige walls. The room was nine feet long, ten feet wide, nine feet high. Paint was peeling from the ceiling. A gray carpet covered most of the floor. The furniture was old and nondescript.

  He was looking out the window at the night-dark city, feeling Parker's eyes. Somewhere, looking out from some other window in some other part of this city, were Parker's eyes, searching for him.

  He didn't know Parker's name, didn't know his history, but it wasn't necessary. He had seen Parker. He had tried once to frame Parker, and twice to kill Parker. He had taken an awful lot of money from Parker, money which must connect Parker with that robbery out at the stadium.

  He was terrified of Parker.

  At the beginning of it, he hadn't really been aware of Parker at all. He'd known Ellen was living with another one, someone new, but his rage and hatred and sense of loss, all because of Ellen herself, had been so strong in him that he hadn't had the thought or the inclination to wonder about this new one, or care about him, or even consider him in his plans.

  Except to wait for him to leave the apartment.

  For two days he'd snuffled around that building, loping and looking, waiting for Parker to come out of there. He'd been out of town for a while, ever since Ellen had screamed at him that time, ranted and raved, cut him up with her tongue like slicing a piece of paper with a razor blade. She'd said things to him no one had ever said before in his life, things he would have killed a man for saying. She made fun of his triumphs, detailed his failures. She mocked his manhood, described the extent of his stupidity. She told him he was lousy in bed and worse out of it. She threw his electric razor out the window and told him to take the rest of his things and get the hell out of there. And when he went after her, driven beyond endurance, she'd run to the kitchen and grabbed a sharp knife out of the drawer there and held him at bay with it, screaming at him and taunting him all the time.

  So he'd finally gathered up his gear and left the apartment, and she slammed the door after him. Standing in the hallway, he heard her slap the police lock into place. He had a key for the other lock, but not for that one.

  He left town that same night, wound up in Mexico for a while. He knew Ellen would talk, would tell everyone how she'd routed him and why, and what she'd said to him, and how she'd held him off with a knife. He couldn't face them, face anyone he knew in that city, knowing they would know, Ellen would tell them.

  After months in Mexico, humiliation and rage gradually hardened into something colder and more dangerous than either, and he'd finally come north again, knowing he wouldn't be able to rest until he'd paid Ellen back for everything she'd done to him.

  He arrived Saturday afternoon. It was a cold fury that activated him, cold enough to make it possible for him to think, and to plan. He would even the score with Ellen, and he would do it in such a way that he himself would never be caught, because if he was caught and punished then that would negate the getting even, and Ellen would still be one up.

  So he didn't just attack. He reconnoitered first, studied the apartment, and saw Parker going in and coming out. He saw Parker drive off with the truck and later come back in a cab. He was waiting then to see the extent of Ellen's perfidy. Was this stranger going to stay overnight?

  Yes. Overnight and then some.

  He waited. He'd taken a small room a few blocks away, and when he could stand it no more, when his eyes were closing and he was weaving on his feet, he went back there and slept, fitful dozing, plagued by bad dreams. It was fully night when he went to sleep, and still night when he drove himself up from the bed and out of the room and back again to watch Ellen's apartment.

  He had begun by hating Ellen, but as the time went on, his hate expanded to include the stranger, too. Three days. Three days and three nights in that apartment there with Ellen. In bed with Ellen.

  All the vicious things Ellen had said about his own prowess in bed came back to him, contrasting brutally against the silence of that apartment door and the slow inexorable moving of time.

  Three days and three nights, and then at last the stranger came out. A big man he was, hard-looking, mean-looking. After all that time he didn't even seem pleased or satisfied; his expression was flat, emotionless.

  The stranger went dow
n the stairs. He waited, listening to the stranger's footsteps receding, then the door closing way down there at street level, and he was alone again.

  His key still worked, and the police lock wasn't on. No, and not the chain lock either. He went in, moving fast, moving silently.

  He knew she'd be in the bedroom. Where else could she be, the slut? Where else in all the world?

  He came in and she was there as he'd expected, sitting cross-legged tailor fashion on the bed, a cigarette dangling from her loose mouth. She was half-asleep. She looked up and frowned at him, and she wasn't frightened. She wasn't even angry. All she did was act weary, disgusted, this-is-too-much-to-bear. “Oh, for Christ's sake,” she said.

  The details of his revenge had never been clear in his conscious mind. He had known only that he had returned to this city in order to even the score with Ellen. Now he was here, at the very core of Hell, at the brink of vengeance, and he felt an instant of utter panic because he had no idea what to do next.

  He could see her eyes assessing his weakness, see her lips curling around the opening phrase of another cutting remark. He could see everything that would happen now; her verbal arrogance, his helplessness in the face of her, his clumsy, sullen, pathetic retreat.

  Not this time.

  His head turned this way and that, his eyes searched the room for something he didn't yet remember he remembered and then he saw the silver X on the wall, sleek and sharp.

  It was too late for thought. Words were slipping from her mouth, ready to cut him.

  He reached up his hand, and the silver X became a silver stroke, a diagonal slash separating the wall into metric feet, and the other slash was in his hand. He didn't know yet what he would do with it—though the hilt felt so perfect in his grip, so natural, so inevitable—and for an instant he just stood there, holding it above his head like a Goth on the way to Rome.

  If even then she'd been frightened, everything might still have been all right. Even at that point, he might have been able to convince himself he had only taken the sword down to frighten her with, he meant no physical harm; anyone could see he wasn't the type.