The Hunter p-1 Read online

  They both read the driver’s license, giving his name as Edward Johnson, and then they gave the wallet back and one of them said, “What was the business in the back of the store? Did you buy something or sell something?”

  “Neither.”

  “Nothing like that, officers,” said Delgardo hurriedly. “You know me, I don’t do nothing like that.” He was sweating beneath his mustache.

  “Nothing like what?” one of the cops asked.

  Delgardo looked flustered. Parker said, “Nothing like junk.” He shucked off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves, showed them his bare arms. “I don’t take it, buy it, sell it or carry it,” he said. “Get the broads out of here, I’ll show you my legs. No needle marks there either.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said the talking cop. “Just empty your pockets. You too, Delgardo. And let’s see the pad.”

  He glanced at the memo pad, looked at Parker. “What’s doing at the Carlington Hotel?”

  “I’m staying there,” Parker said.

  “That isn’t what it said on your driver’s license.”

  “I had a fight with my wife.”

  “What was the business in the back of the store?”

  “We had a Coke together,” said Parker. “I’m an old friend of Jimmy’s. I come around to look him up.”

  “An old friend from where?”

  “Upstate. We worked for the same trucker, up in Buffalo.”

  “How come you don’t have a chauffeur’s license?”

  “I don’t do that kind of work any more.”

  “What kind of work do you do now?”

  “I’m unemployed. I was laid off. That’s what the fight was all about.”

  “What fight?”

  “With my wife. I told you.”

  “Laid off from where?”

  “General Electric. Out on the Island.”

  The cop chewed the inside of his cheek a minute, and glanced at his partner. “You tell a good story, Johnson. But you feel wrong.”

  Parker shrugged.

  The cop said, “How come you’re so hipped on narcotics? How come you brought the subject up the minute you saw us?”

  “The neighborhood has a reputation,” Parker said. “I been reading the Post.”

  “Yeah. Lean up against the wall there.”

  Parker leaned forward, palms flat against the wall, and the cop frisked him briefly, then stepped back, saying, “Okay.”

  “I’m clean,” Parker said. “Do I take my goods back now?”

  “Yes.”

  Parker took his wallet and change and cigarettes from the counter top and put them back in his pocket, watching as Delgardo was frisked and also found clean. The talking cop nodded sourly at Parker and said, “You can go. I suppose we’ll be seeing you around.”

  “I doubt it,” Parker said. “It’s more civilized downtown.”

  “We didn’t ask for this precinct,” the cop said.

  “Nobody did,” Parker said.

  “Take off,” said the other cop.

  Parker went on out, pushing past the two women, who still look terrified. They hadn’t understood a word. They believed Delgardo had called the police to arrest them for shoplifting.

  Chapter 2

  I’m looking for a girl,” said Parker.

  She smirked at him. “What do you think I am, big boy — a watermelon?”

  Parker picked up his beer glass, looking at the cool wet ring it left on the bar. “I’m looking for a particular girl,” he said.

  She arched a brow. She plucked her eyebrows and painted on new ones, in the wrong place, so that when she arched a brow it came out wrong, like a badly animated cartoon. “A hustler? I don’t know them all, baby.”

  “She’d work by telephone,” he said. “She wouldn’t be a loner, she’d be connected with the organization.”

  She shook her head. “Then I wouldn’t know her.”

  Parker emptied the glass, motioned at the bartender for another round. “You’d know people who might know her,” he said.

  “I might and I might not.” The round came and she said, “Thanks. Why should I tell you anything? I don’t know you from Adam.”

  He looked at her. “Do I look like law?”

  She laughed. “Not much. That’s one thing you’re not. But maybe you want to give her a bad time. Maybe she gave you athlete’s foot once or something.”

  “I’m her brother,” Parker lied. “We been out of touch. The doctor tells me I got a little cancer in my throat. I want to look her up, you know how it is. It’s my last chance.”

  She looked shocked and mournful. “Jeez,” she said. “That’s a bitch, man. I’m sorry.”

  Parker shrugged. “I had a good life. I got maybe six months to go. So I thought I’d look her up. There’s just her and this aunt of ours, and I wouldn’t look the aunt up if she had a cancer cure.”

  “Jeez,” she said again. Meditations on mortality creased her brow. “I know how you feel, man,” she said. “You maybe don’t think so, but I do. In this lousy business, you got to be thinking about disease all the time. There was this girl I knew, we used to room together. She didn’t feel so good, and it hurt to swallow, and sometimes she’d spit blood, so she thought it was TB. I told her and told her, go down to the clinic, so finally she did, and they put her in the hospital. She had a little something in the back of her throat too. Not cancer. The occupational disease, you know?”

  Parker nodded. He couldn’t care less, but if he let her talk about this maybe she’d talk about the other.

  “She’s still in there,” she said. “I went to see her once, and it was awful. She looked like an old bag, you know? And she couldn’t even talk any more, just croak. That was about six months ago, I went to see her. And that was enough for me, brother, I didn’t go back since. For all I know, she’s dead by now.

  She’d be better off.” Then she caught herself, and went wide-eyed, clapping a hand over her mouth.

  “That’s okay,” Parker said. “I know what you mean. Me, I fir, ure I’m not going to stick around for that part. When it gets kid bad, I slit this vein here.” He turned his hand over, showing the wrist. “See? That blue one there.”

  She shivered. “Don’t talk that way, will you, baby? You get me all depressed.”

  “Sorry.” Parker swallowed half his beer. “About my sister,” he said.

  “What’s her name? You never know, I might know her.”

  “The last I heard, she was calling herself Rose Leigh.”

  She thought, brows furrowing in the wrong places. Shaking her head, she said, “No, I don’t think so. For a minute it sounded kind of familiar, but I guess not.”

  “It’s from the old song,” he said. “Rosalie, my darling, Rosalie, my love — That’s why it sounds familiar.”

  “That must be it. Listen, Bernie might know her.”

  “Bernie?”

  “The barman. They sometimes take calls in here.” She raised a hand. “Hey, Bernie!”

  He came down along the boards behind the bar, expressionless. “Another round?”

  “In a minute,” she said. She leaned over the bar toward him, urgent and intent. “Listen, Bernie, do you know a hustler named Rose Leigh? Like the song?”

  “Rose?” He shrugged. “Not to look at, no. She never come in here at all. But I know the name, yeah. From the phone.”

  “This is her brother,” she said, stabbing a purple-nailed thumb at Parker. “He’s looking for her.”

  Bernie studied Parker dispassionately. “To take her home?”

  Parker shook his head. “We been out of touch. I want to look her up is all.”

  “He’s sick,” she said, in a loud stage whisper. “He wants to see his sister again, you know?”

  Bernie wasn’t a sentimentalist. He said, “So what do you want from me?”

  “Where does he find her?”

  “How should I know? I know the name only from the phone.”

  “Where d
o I find somebody who knows where she is?” Parker asked him.

  Bernie thought it over. “I don’t know you, buddy,” he said at last. “I wouldn’t want to tell you something I shouldn’t.”

  She opened her big mouth again. “Maybe you could call to somebody to tell her her brother’s in town.”

  Bernie liked that. “Yeah,” he said. “That I can do for you.”

  “Have them tell her it’s Parker. That way she’ll know it’s really me.”

  Bernie nodded. He went away and she said, “You came to the right place, mister. Bernie can help you out.”

  “I came where the hustlers were,” he said.

  “Speaking of that, I still got to make a buck. I’d like to stick around and talk with you but — “

  “That’s all right.”

  “Good luck,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  She climbed down off the stool, tugging her skirt down over thick hips, and promenaded toward the door. Halfway there, she caught a high sign and angled instead over to a table where two guys were sitting across from one another, looking eager.

  She stood at the table, talking with them a minute, then went back and talked to a girl sitting at the end of the bar. The other girl studied the two guys, then nodded and they both went back to the table.

  Parker watched it all in the back mirror. The four of them, now two couples, were just getting up from the table when Bernie came back from the pay phone. “They’ll call back in a little while.”

  “You told them Parker?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fine. Thanks.” He pushed his empty glass forward. “Another of these.”

  He waited twenty-five minutes. If this fell through, if he couldn’t find her or she couldn’t find out where Mal was, he’d have to wait for Jimmy Delgardo. And if Jimmy didn’t work out either, he’d have to try some completely different way. It didn’t matter. He had all the time in the world. Mal, the fat cat. What back fence are you sitting on, Mal?

  When the phone in the pay booth rang, he watched Bernie walk slowly and deliberately down the length of the bar, lift the hinged flap at the end and step through, close the flap after himself, step into the booth and close the door. He picked up the phone and spoke, and listened. Then he looked at Parker, and they looked at each other as he spoke again. Giving a description.

  Finally, he put the receiver down on the shelf and opened the door. “It’s for you.”

  Parker went back and into the phone booth, shutting the door. It was hot in there. Before picking up the receiver, he clicked on the fan. It whirred, and blew air past his neck.

  He said, “Hello.”

  A girl’s voice said, “Okay, smart boy, who are you?”

  “Hi, Wanda,” he said.

  “The name is Rose.”

  “It used to be Wanda. This is Parker, like the man said.”

  “Try again, smart boy. Parker’s dead.”

  “I know it. But I couldn’t rest easy till I paid you the twenty bucks.”

  The line hummed in his ear for a few seconds, and then she said, “Is it really Parker?”

  “I told you it was.”

  “But — I saw Lynn in Stern’s, three, four months ago. She said you was dead.”

  “She thought I was. I want to talk to you.”

  “You’re lucky,” she said. “This is my monthly vacation. 298 West 65th — the name is by the bell downstairs.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “Wait. Let me talk to the bartender again. I’m supposed to tell him whether you’re straight or not.”

  “Sure.”

  He went out of the phone booth, and it suddenly seemed a lot cooler in the bar. He caught Bernie’s eye, and motioned at the phone. “She wants to talk to you again.”

  Bernie nodded and came back down the bar. On the way by he said, “Stick around a minute, huh?”

  Parker nodded. Two guys down at the end of the bar by the door were definitely not looking at him.

  Bernie talked briefly on the phone, then hung up and came back. A smile worked its way lugubriously up out of his gut, fading away when it reached his face. “Okay, friend,” he said. “Glad I could help you.”

  “Thanks again,” said Parker. He got off the stool and headed for the door. The two guys at the end of the bar looked at him now.

  Chapter 3

  She hadn’t changed. She still looked seventeen, though by now she must be pushing thirty-five. Her smallness helped; she was barely five feet tall and delicately boned. Her eyes were large and round and green, her hair was flaming red, her rosebud mouth was a carmine blossom against a pale clear complexion.

  Her body was beautifully proportioned for her size, with conical well-separated breasts, a fragile waist, low-slung hips. Only her speech gave her away: it was not the speech of a college freshman.

  She flung open the door, wearing a swirling muumuu with at least ten colors on it, and cried, “Come on in here, you lovely bastard — let me welcome you back to life.”

  He nodded, and brushed past her through the foyer and down the two steps into a huge movie set of a living room. Porcelain figures, mostly of frogs, crammed all the table tops.

  “Surly Parker,” she said, closing the door and coming down the steps after him. “You’re the same as ever.”

  “So are you. I want to ask you a favor.”

  “I thought you were my long lost brother. Sit down. What are you drinking?”

  “I’ll take a beer.”

  “I’ve got vodka.”

  “Beer.”

  “Oh well, the hell with it. I should have known better. Parker doesn’t make social calls. You don’t have to have the beer if you don’t want it.”

  “Good,” he said. He sat down on the sofa. “You look good.”

  She sat on the leather chair facing him, flouncing into it, one leg dangling over the arm. “Small talk was never your forte,” she said. “Go ahead and ask your favor.”

  “You know a guy named Mal Resnick?”

  She hunched her shoulders, bit the corner of her lower lip, stared sideways at a fringed lampshade. “Resnick,” she said, the name coming out muffled because her teeth still held the corner of her lip. “Resnick.” Then she shook her head and bounced to her feet. “Nope, it doesn’t ring a bell. Was he one of our crowd? Should I know him from the coast?”

  “No, from here in New York. He’s in the syndicate somewhere.”

  “The Outfit, baby. We don’t say syndicate any more. It’s square.”

  “I don’t care what you call it.”

  “Anyway — oh.” Her eyes widened and she stared at the ceiling. “Oh! That bastard!”

  “You know him?”

  “No, of him. One of the girls was bitching to me. He got her for an all night — it was supposed to be fifty bucks. There was only thirty-five in the envelope. She complained to Irma, and Irma told her there was no sense raising a stink about it, he was in the Outfit. She said he was lousy anyway. All grunts and groans, no real action.”

  Parker leaned forward, elbows on knees, and cracked his knuckles. “You can find out where he is?”

  “I suppose he’s at the Outfit,” she said.

  “What’s that, some kind of club?”

  “No, the hotel.” She started to say more, then suddenly swirled around, reaching for a carved silver box on the teakwood table. She flipped it open, withdrew a cigarette with a rose red filter, and picked up a heavy silver Grecian-style lighter.

  Parker watched her, waiting till she had the cigarette lit before he said, “Okay, Wanda, what is it?”

  “Call me Rose, will you, dear? I’m out of the habit of answering to the other.”

  “What is it?”

  She looked at him a moment, thoughtfully, cigarette smoke misting around her face. Then she nodded and said, “We’re friends, Parker. I suppose we’re friends, if either one of us could be said to have friends.”

  “That’s why I came to you.”

&nb
sp; “Sure. The loyalty of friendship. But I’m an employee, too, Parker. In a business where it pays to have loyalty to the company. And the company wouldn’t like me to tell anybody about the Outfit hotel.”

  “So you didn’t tell me a thing.” He cracked his knuckles impatiently. “You know that already, why talk about it?”

  “How strong are you, Parker?” She turned away and walked across the room to the draped windows, talking over her shoulder as she went. “I’ve often wondered about that. I think you’re the strongest man I’ve ever met.” She stopped and looked back at him, one hand on the drapes. “But I wonder if that’s enough.”

  “Enough for what?”

  She pulled the drape to one side. The window was tall and wide. She stood framed against it, looking out, tiny and shapely. “You want an Outfit man named Resnick,” she said. “If I know you, you want him for something he won’t like.”

  “I’m going to kill him,” Parker said.

  She smiled, nodding. “There,” she said. “That’s something he won’t like. But what if something goeHwrbng, and you get grabbed, and they ask you where you found out about the hotel? If they ask you hard?”

  “I got it from a guy named Stegman.”

  “Oh? What you got against Stegman?”

  “Nothing, it’s just believable. Why, do you know him?”

  “No.” She slid the drapes shut again, prowled the room some more, crossing to the opposite side merely to flick ashes into a blue seashell. “All right,” she said, “you wait here. I’ll make a phone call. I want to know for sure whether that’s where he is or not.”

  “Fine.”

  “If you want a beer after all,” she said, “the kitchen is that way.”

  She left the room, and he killed time by lighting a cigarette. Then he picked up a green porcelain frog from the nearest table and looked at it. It gleamed and its eyes were black. He turned it over and it was hollow, with a round hole in the bottom, and the words Made in Japan impressed in the porcelain next to the hole. He put the frog back and looked around at the room. She was doing all right these days.