Read Parker16 Butcher's Moon Online
Authors: Richard Stark
Faran gave him a cold look and a cold nod.
The guy turned to look at Lozini. "Parker's in the other car," he said. "Back seat. You talk to him there, I'll talk to Mr. Faran here."
"I thought you were alone in there," Lozini said.
The guy grinned again, still in a friendly way. "That was the idea," he said. "Parker kept down out of sight until we found out whether you had any other plans or not."
"No other plans," Lozini said. He pushed open the door and got out of the Olds, feeling immediately the heat of the afternoon; the sunlight wasn't so crisp when you were away from air-conditioning.
As he closed the door again, Lozini heard the guy saying to Faran, "My name's Green, Alan Green."
Lozini walked slowly forward to the Impala. Now he could see the silhouette of somebody sitting in the back seat. The Impala's engine was running and the windows shut, for the air-conditioning. The low stutter and growl of the two cars' engines was the only sound. No other traffic on the road at all, not a house in sight. Just cleared fields that hadn't been farmed for a while and were now knee-deep in weeds. No wind blowing, no movement anywhere; the view was like a painting, or a jigsaw puzzle. Lozini paused next to the Impala, his hand on the door handle while he looked around. Nobody and nothing. In the front seat of the Olds, Faran and Green were in cheerful conversation. That was fast; Green's old-buddy style had to connect with Faran, of course, but Lozini was surprised at how quickly they'd become pals.
Lozini opened the door, and cold lifeless air came out of the car. His body was still adjusting to the outer heat, and now he was going to enter air-conditioning again. He stooped and slid into the back seat, and pulled the door shut.
Parker was on the other side, his shoulder against the side window. He was half turned toward Lozini, facing him. Just looking at him; no words, no expression.
"Hello, Parker," Lozini said. He was thinking that Parker didn't look quite as vicious as his memory had made him. He looked like an ordinary man, really; a little tougher, a little colder, a little harder. But not the ice-eyed robot of Lozini's memory.
Parker nodded. "You wanted to talk," he said.
"I got a problem," Lozini said, and spread his hands expressively. "I don't want trouble with you, but I don't know how to get around it. That's why I want to talk."
"Go ahead."
Lozini looked away, out across the front seat and the steering wheel and through the windshield at the empty road curving away behind a stand of trees up ahead. It was colder in here than in the Olds, and Parker was one of those people who almost never blink. Looking out at the road, Lozini said, "I called Karns. He told me about your trouble with Bronson, and he told me about Cockaigne. He said if I owed you money, I ought to pay you."
"That's right."
Lozini turned and looked at Parker full-face. Now he, too, didn't blink; he wanted Parker to know he was hearing the truth, the bottom line. "My trouble is," he said, "I don't have your money."
Parker shrugged, as though it was a minor matter. "You want time?"
"That's not what I mean. I mean I never had it. I didn't find it in the amusement park."
"It isn't there," Parker said. "Where I left it."
"I didn't get it," Lozini told him. "I have never had your money."
"Some of your people got it, and kept it for themselves."
"I don't think so." Lozini shrugged and shook his head. "It's possible, but I don't think they'd try it. Not any of the people I had in there with me."
Parker said, "Nobody else would find it. Where I left it, no maintenance man would go near it, nobody else would stumble across it. The only way it's gone is because somebody was looking for it and found it. That's you and your people, nobody else."
"Maybe that's what happened," Lozini said. "I don't say it couldn't have been that way, somebody holding out on me. All I say is,
I'm
not the one who got the money. I never had it and I don't have it now." He leaned closer to the other man, put his hand out as though to touch his knee but didn't quite complete the gesture, and said, "Listen, Parker, I'm on the level. Maybe ten years ago I wouldn't have given you the time of day, I would have just put every one of my people on the street to hunt you down, and not care how long it took or how much noise it made or how many times you scored against me before I got to you. That's ten years ago, when things were different."
Parker waited, watching him, still without expression.
"But right now," Lozini said, "I can't do that. Things have been quiet around here for a long time, I'm not even organized for that kind of war any more. I don't have enough of the right kind of people now; most of my people these days are just clerks. And right now this town is in an election campaign."
"I saw the posters."
"It's a tough campaign," Lozini said. "My man may be in trouble. The election's Tuesday, and the one thing I don't want is blood in the streets the weekend before election. This is the worst possible time for me, things are very shaky anyway and you could make them a lot worse. So that's another reason I don't want a war with you. Besides what Karns told me. All of that, it all adds up to me wanting to get along with you, work something out, figure out some kind of compromise."
"I left seventy-three thousand here," Parker said. "Half of it belongs to my partner." He made a head gesture toward Green back in the other car. "Neither one of us wants ten cents on the dollar, or a handshake, or a compromise, or anything at all except our money. Our full take, everything we took out of that armored car."
"Then you've got to look somewhere else," Lozini said. At that moment a farm pickup truck with an old refrigerator standing up in the back passed them, the first traffic since they'd stopped here. Lozini pointed at it through the windshield as it went bumping away, disappearing around the stand of trees. "If you went to that farmer," he said, "and told him you left seventy-three thousand dollars in Tyler two years ago and you want it back, he'd tell you you're at the wrong door because he doesn't have it and doesn't know where it is. And I'm telling you the same thing."
Parker shook his head, betraying his impatience by a tightening of the lips at the corners of his mouth. "The farmer isn't connected," he said. "You are. Don't waste my time."
Lozini cast around for something else. "All right," he said. "I'll look into it. Maybe it was one of my people—"
"It was."
"All right. I'll check them out, and let you know what I come up with."
Parker nodded. "How long?"
"Give me a week."
The small sign of impatience again. "I'll call you tomorrow evening, seven o'clock."
"Tomorrow! That isn't enough."
"They're your people," Parker said. "If you're in charge, run them. It won't take long. I'll call you at seven."
"I don't promise anything by then."
Parker shrugged and looked away.
Lozini was reluctant for the meeting to be over. He wanted an understanding he could live with, and he didn't feel he had one. He said, "You want to take it a little easy, you know."
Parker faced him again, and waited.
"I go for the easy way," Lozini said. "That's the situation I'm in right now, I go for the easy way. As long as the easy way is to cooperate with you, that's what I'll do. You lean too hard, you make it easier to fight back, then
that's
what I'll do."
Parker seemed to think that over. "I can see that," he said. "I'll call you at seven."
Fourteen
From a street-corner phone booth, Parker put in a call to Claire. Usually she would be at their house on a lake in northern New Jersey, but for privacy they rented the place out to summer people in July and August, spending that time in a Florida resort hotel instead; she was waiting for him now at the hotel.
She was in the room. When she answered, he said, "It's me," knowing she would recognize his voice.
She did. "Hello," she said, the one word filled with all her warmth. Neither of them expressed their feelings much in words.
"I'll be here a few more days," he said.
"All right," she said; meaning not that it was all right, but that she understood he had no choice.
"It might be a week," he told her. "I don't know yet."
"Any chance of my coming there?"
"It could get pretty loud," he said.
There was a small hesitation, and then, in a fainter voice, she said, "All right."
He knew what that was. Three times since they'd known one another his violent world had gone pushing in at her—during the coin convention robbery when they'd first met, and later when some people had kidnapped her to force Parker to help them in a diamond robbery, and finally when two men had broken into the house at the lake looking for him—and she wanted no more of it. Which was fine with him. "Good," he said.
He was about to hang up, but she said, "Wait. Handy McKay called."
Handy McKay was a retired thief, running a diner in Presque Isle, Maine. He was a sort of messenger service between Parker and some other people in Parker's business, and his calling meant somebody wanted to invite Parker in on a score somewhere. He said, "Tell him I was busy?"
"It wasn't like that," she said. "He was calling for himself. He said he wants to talk to you."
"All right."
"He didn't sound good," she said.
"In what way?"
"I don't know. He sounded—unhappy, I think. Or worried about something. I'm not sure."
"I'll talk to him," Parker said.
"Fine."
"I'll get back when I can."
"I know you will," she said.
He broke the connection, and called Handy McKay. Waiting for the call to go through, he remembered old Joe Sheer, another retired safecracker, who used to handle the messages for Parker until he'd got himself killed in some local stupidity, costing Parker an entire legitimate front in the process. Was the same thing going to happen again?
Handy's gravelly voice came on at last, saying, "McKay's Diner."
Without preamble Parker said, "Claire said you wanted to talk to me."
"Hello, there," Handy said. "The fact of the matter is, I need to come out of retirement."
That was a surprise. It had been nine years since Handy had done anything in the way of business; he and Parker had gotten involved in stealing a statuette for a rich man, and in the course of it Handy had been badly shot in the stomach. That's what had led to his retirement in the first place. Hesitating, Parker said, "I thought you were through for good."
"So did I. Little money trouble. The new interstate took all my truck business away, and this just ain't a family joint."
"Uh huh." 4
"So if you've got anything going," Handy said, "or hear about anything—"
"All right," Parker said. He could understand the situation now. "Nothing right now," he said, "but I'll keep you in mind."
"Thanks," Handy said. "Not as a favor, you know, but because I'm still good."
"I don't do favors," Parker reminded him. "I'll let you know if anything turns up."
"Good. So long."
Parker hung up and went out to where Grofield was waiting in the Impala. He slid in behind the wheel, and Grofield said, "We got the evening off, boss?"
"We just hang loose," Parker said, "till we call Lozini tomorrow at seven."
"Then I do believe," Grofield said, "I'll make a little call of my own." Opening the door, he hesitated halfway out of the car and, grinning, said, "Should I ask her if she has a friend?"
"No," Parker said.
Fifteen
While standing in the phone booth, receiver hunched between shoulder and ear as the phone did a lot of clicking and beeping before going into the ring sound, Grofield breathed on the glass wall, drew a heart in the steam, and inside the heart put AG and a plus sign. Then he paused, suddenly at a loss. What the hell was the girl's name?
It was ringing. What was her name, for the love of God?
Click. "Hello?"
Dori! Dori Neevin; it came to him in a flash at the sound of her voice, bringing him both the look of her as he'd last seen her in the library and the earlier sound of her telling him her name. "Hi, there, Dori," he said, pleased with himself, and then fumbled for a second as he tried to remember his own name. That is, the name he'd given her. Green, that's right. "This is Alan," he said. "Alan Green."
"Oh, hi," she said as he scribbled in a quick DN inside the heart. "How are you?" She sounded very pleased to hear from him; that business of the overreaction again, her trademark.
"I just couldn't get away last night," he said. "Business, you know."
"Well, you told me that might happen," she said. He could hear in her voice her willingness to forgive him anything, anything at all.