'Sure, Willis. Just as soon as you tell me what I want to know.'
Parker was feeling impatient, and he was still rocky from having been slugged, so he said more than he would have usually. He turned to look at Captain Younger and say, 'You know everything already. You know I was digging down there without a shovel, and you know I hit myself on the side of the face. You know what I was looking for. What else do you want?'
'What was that you said? About the shovel?' Captain Younger was so startled he almost crossed the threshold and got close enough for Parker to reach out for him.
Parker said, 'Did you see a shovel down there? What do you think the guy hit me with?'
All of a sudden there was a gun in Captain Younger's hand. 'So you found it,' he said. 'You had an accomplice, and you found it, and he took off with it.'
'With what? When do you start making sense?'
'Where's he going, Willis? There's still a chance for you to get a cut. You tell me where he's going, what he looks like, what name he travels under. I can get out an alarm on him, have him picked up for questioning no matter where he goes. You can't get him, but I can.'
Parker shook his head. 'There's a hell of a lot of morons with guns,' he said. 'I talk to you after I see the doctor.'
Captain Younger seemed to consider for a minute, and then he said, 'So you're not worried about wasting time. So maybe you
Parker waited. Sooner or later Younger was going to have to start making sense.
Younger motioned with the gun. 'All right, Willis,' he said. 'Let's go into the living-room. I'll call Dr. Rayborn for you. He can come right over here and take care of you, and then we'll talk. I'm not taking you down to headquarters; I'm keeping you right here, and when we're done with the doctor you'll tell me everything I want to know.'
They walked into the living-room, Parker first, and Parker settled himself in an overstuffed armchair where the light from the windows was all behind him, where Captain Younger wouldn't be able to see his face very well. Younger got on the phone and made his call and then sat down fat and smug on the sofa, the gun held casually in his lap. His brown suit was baggy and creaseless, his cowboy hat was tipped back on his head. He looked like a yokel Khrushchev.
They sat in silence a minute or two, and then Younger said, 'I know what you think. You think I'm just another hick cop. Well, that's all right, Willis, I don't mind. You go on thinking that, you think that just as long as you can. Dr. Rayborn'll be here in a little while, and he'll get you all fixed up nice and new, and then you can start telling me all about yourself and what your connection was with Joe Sheer.'
It took Parker a few seconds to realize that Captain Younger had just said Joe's real name, not the cover name he'd been buried under. Parker squinted, and saw Captain Younger sitting over there pleased and contented, smiling like the Cheshire cat.
SEVEN
'… all about yourself and what your connection was with Joe Sheer.'
That was easy. What his connection was with Joe Sheer most recently, he had come up to this rotten little town to find out if it was going to be necessary to kill Joe Sheer or not. And all about himself, that was even easier; he was a thief.
Once or twice a year, Parker was in on an institutional robbery – the robbing from organizations rather than from individuals. It wasn't out of humanity that he limited himself to organizations, it was just that organizations had more money than individuals; organizations like banks or jewellery stores or one of those firms that still paid its employees in cash.
Parker wasn't a single-o. He always worked with a pickup group gathered for that single specific job. Every man was a specialist, and Parker's specialities were two; planning and violence. Other men were specialists in opening safes or scaling walls or making up blueprints from nothing more than observation, but Parker was a specialist at planning an operation so it ran smoothly, and at stopping any outsider who might be thinking of lousing things up.
It was rare for a job to take more than a month in the planning and the operation, so it was rare for Parker to spend more than a month to six weeks a year at his work. The rest of the time he lived on the proceeds, usually in a coastal resort centre, under the name Charles Willis. Charles Willis owned pieces of small businesses – parking lots and laundromats and things like that – here and there around the country; they never brought him a dime, but they justified his income on his Federal tax forms. As Charles Willis he had a complete background, documents and everything, enough to satisfy anybody.
He had been Charles Willis in Miami Beach, spending the money from his last job – at a place called Copper Canyon, North Dakota, in the course of which he'd met the woman he was living with now – when the first letter had come from Joe Sheer. It had read:
Parker,
I think I got some trouble here, but I'll take care of it. But maybe you better not try to get in touch with me for a while, until I get everything squared away again. I'm not down in my place in Omaha, but staying up here in my house in Sagamore. If anybody tries to get in touch with you through me for the next while I'll have to tell them to go to you direct if I'm sure of who it is. If I'm not sure, I'll just play dumb, until this trouble straightens itself out. I'll let you know when everything is okay again.
Joe
Joe Sheer was an old-time jugger who'd cracked his first safe the other side of the First World War. He wasn't working any more now, but in his day he'd been one of the best safe and vault men in the business. There wasn't a bank vault made he couldn't open, and he worked at staying on top of the profession. Under three or four names, at different addresses around the country, he got all the trade papers and promotional copy from every safe and vault manufacturer, private protective association, and manufacturer of locks and burglar alarms; and he got all the banking association trade journals. Nor was he, like most juggers, limited in his methods; he could use nitro or the torch or the hammer or a drill, whatever was best for the particular job. When he was active, he'd been in steady demand.
