She drove to the parking area in front of a supermarket, left the car, went into the store. She was tall and slender, very blonde, in heels and jeans and black suede jacket over fluffy pink sweater. She looked urban, not rural.
Parker circled once, then took the nearest empty space, behind the Honda in the next row. He switched off the engine, sat there to wait, and a red Chevy Suburban pulled in next to him.
The gun Parker kept spring-clipped under the Lexus driver’s seat was a small and lightweight .25 automatic, a Firearms International Beretta Jetfire—not much use beyond arm’s reach but very handy in close. As a bulky guy got out of the Chevy on the far side from Parker and came around the front of his car, Parker reached under the seat, snapped the Beretta into his palm, and rested that hand in his lap.
The guy coming toward him wore black work pants, a dark blue dress shirt, an open maroon vinyl zippered jacket, and a self-satisfied smile. He had a big shaven head, a thick neck, small ears that curled in on themselves. He looked like a strikebreaker, everybody’s muscle, but at the same time he was somehow more than that. Or different from that.
As Parker thumbed open his window, the guy came up to the car, leaned his forearms on the open windowsill, smiled in and said, “How we doing today?” It was the gravel voice from the phone call.
Parker showed him the Beretta. “One step back; I don’t want blood on the car.”
The guy took the step back, but he also gave a surprised laugh and stuck his hands up in the referee’s time-out signal, saying, “Hold on, pal, it’s too late for that.”
Too late? Parker rested the Beretta on the windowsill, his eyes on the other’s eyes and hands, and waited.
The guy nodded toward the supermarket. “Sandra’s already been on the horn with the DMV. Claire Willis, East Shore Road, Colliver’s Pond, New Jersey oh-eight-nine-eight-nine. Why don’t you wanna have a nice little talk?”
“You’re not law,” Parker said.
The guy shook his head. “Never said I was.”
Being with a partner, running a license through Motor Vehicles, having all the time in the world for a stakeout, not particularly impressed by the sight of a handgun. “You’re a bounty hunter.”
“You got it in one, my friend,” the guy said, grinning, proud of either himself or Parker. “If you’re not gonna blow my head off, I can reach in my jacket pocket for my card case, give you my card.”
“Go ahead.”
“Not that a Beretta like that’s gonna blow anybody’s head off,” the guy said, reaching into his jacket, coming out with a card case. “Though it would make a dent, I’ll give you that.”
He extended a card, holding it flat between the first two fingers of his outstretched right hand. Parker put the Beretta hand in his lap again, held the card in his left, and read,
“Sandra’s the ‘Associates,’” Keenan said. “What she walks around with mostly is an S and W three fifty-seven. I don’t see her at the moment, but it could be she could see us.”
“You people like to talk.”
“Yes, we do,” Keenan said, with another comfortable smile. Then he said, “Oh, I see, you mean she won’t be quick enough on the trigger. You may be right, but what the hell, pal, here we both are. Why not let me say what I have to say, listen to what you have to say, if there’s anything you want to talk about, and then you’re done with me, and we don’t have a lot of three fifty-seven Magnum bullets flying around a parking lot.”
“We’ll talk in your car,” Parker decided.
That made him laugh again. “Still worried about bloodstains, are you? Come along.”
12
The interior of the Chevy was laid out almost like a police car—a hunter’s car, anyway. An over-under shotgun was attached by clips to the under part of the roof, and extra radios and scanners filled the space between the driveshaft hump and the bottom of the dashboard. The rear side windows were tinted glass with metal mesh inside, which would be for when a prisoner was in the backseat.
Keenan sat at the wheel, engine off and windows open, Parker to his right, hand in his pocket with the Beretta. Parker said, “You want to talk.”
“Well, you know what I want to talk about,” Keenan said, “I want to talk about Michael Maurice Harbin.”
“I didn’t know those other names.”
“The impression I got,” Keenan said, “that meeting you were all at, you were some kind of pickup group. Not long-term pals, I mean. A little more complicated for me, that’s all. I’m not being nosy here, I don’t wanna know what that meeting was all about, none of my business. My only business is Harbin.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
“I believe that,” Keenan said. “But I also believe one of the other fellas at that table just might know where he is. So the way it looks from here, if I’m going to find Michael Maurice, who has just absolutely vanished from the face of the Earth, I’m going to first have to find the rest of you guys from the meeting.”
“Starting with me?”
“Well, no.” Keenan gazed thoughtfully out the windshield. “I started with Alfred Stratton. He was the one rented the room, and I noticed he used a false name and ID to do it, which slowed me down a little. But that was pretty interesting.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want his wife to know he plays poker.”
“Maybe. He used a credit card in that phony name, though, that’s pretty far to go for peace with the missus.”
“Not impossible,” Parker said.
