But about five years ago he'd retired. Like Parker, like most of the professionals in this business, he'd had a cover name for years, complete with a faked-up way of earning a livelihood and all the documents you could ask for to prove identity. Among those documents was a Social Security card. When, shortly after his sixty-fifth birthday, he began to receive Social Security payments, Joe Sheer laughed for a week and then retired. His Social Security payments didn't cover the standard of living he was used to, but they didn't have to; he'd salted away some of his take over the years, enough to keep him going clear to the other side of the actuarial tables.
Joe had retired from the active side of the business, but not from the profession entirely. He still sat in on occasional planning sessions for a small piece of the action, and he operated as an answering service of sorts for Parker and a few other guys in the business.
The thing was, when Parker was being Charles Willis, he didn't want anybody contacting him as Parker. Almost everybody else in the business felt the same way; they didn't want other people in the business busting in on them when they were using their cover identities. So Parker, like a lot of others, had a friend who relayed any messages that might come along, who served as the one link between Parker and Charles Willis. Joe Sheer was the friend. If anyone in the business wanted to get in touch with Parker, he had to contact Joe Sheer, tell Joe the story, and wait for Joe to pass the word on to Parker. If Parker then felt like it, he would meet the other guy wherever the original message had said. If he didn't feel like it, there was no answer. His not showing up was its own answer.
For the last five years, that had been the main connection between Parker and Joe Sheer, the message bit. Plus, one time a couple years ago, he'd holed up at Joe's place in Omaha while Joe got him set up for a plastic surgeon to give him a new face; the one he'd carried around till then had got unpopular. Since then, except for occasional messages from other people through Joe, Parker had had no direct contact with him.
When he got the letter, he wondered a little what sort of trouble Joe was in, but since Joe had sounded confident that he could take care of it himself, and since in their business worrying about one's own self was a full-time job, Parker hadn't wasted any sleep over Joe Sheer. He was still flush from the Copper Canyon job anyway, and not looking for work, so it didn't matter to him if the messenger service broke down for a while.
The second letter came a month later. It read:
Parker,
You got to excuse an old man. I need help. You know I never in my life pushed for anybody to get me out of any trouble, but I'm getting old and rusty and scared. If you want to tell me to go to hell that's okay, but if you got the time and inclination I could use a hand up here. I don't promise you any profit out of it at all. In fact I don't see how you could break even on travel expenses unless I pay for them, and I will. If you got a woman, bring her along and I'll pay for her too. A young hard-case like you could take care of this problem of mine with no sweat, and sit around and drink beer a while afterwards. This isn't trouble I would have thought twice about ten years ago, but now is another story. Anyway, if you're coming, just come, and if you're not then don't and I won't hold it against you. Whatever you do for God sake don't call me on the telephone.
Joe
Parker read the letter three times before he made up his mind about it. It sounded like Joe Sheer's way of speaking and writing, but it sure as hell didn't sound like anything Joe Sheer would ever say. There were things men in their business might do for each other, like hide each other out if the heat wasn't too strong or stake each other if there were funds to spare, but they just wouldn't write this kind of letter to one another. A man didn't ask for help in a personal problem in the first place. In the second place, if a man asked for help about anything at all, he never said a word about
In the third place, a man never apologized for what cards he'd been dealt; what did Joe Sheer think all of a sudden at age seventy, he was the captain of his fate? A man was what the world decided he would be, and where the world decided he would be, and in the condition the world had chosen for him. If the world had decided to deal Joe a bad hand this time, it wasn't up to him to apologize for not having better cards.
But that was something Joe already knew, or had known. Now, from the looks of this letter, he'd forgotten it.
When he finally made up his mind it was really Joe Sheer who had written that letter, Parker pulled out a suitcase and started packing. It wasn't for Joe Sheer that he packed, or that he called the airport and made a reservation on the next plane for Omaha. As far as he was concerned, Joe could drop dead right now and that would be fine with Parker. In fact that would be better; it would save him a trip.
He was going for himself. He was going because in Joe's letter he saw a danger to himself much more obvious and lethal than any danger Joe had been trying to describe.
What he saw was the shaky penmanship and shaky mentality of an old man. Joe was going senile. At seventy, he'd lost every trace of the code of ethics he'd lived by all his adult life.
But he hadn't lost Parker's name and address.
Joe Sheer could crucify Parker, he could nail him to the wall with a hundred nails. He knew him by his old face, because who else but Joe Sheer had set Parker up with the plastic surgeon? He knew Parker's cover name, he knew twenty or twenty-five jobs Parker had been connected with, he knew enough about Parker to skin him alive.
Up till now that hadn't meant anything, because Joe had also known what sort of world he lived in and what his role was in that world. But not any more. Joe Sheer was just an old jugger now, turned shaky and rusty – he'd said it himself – shaky and rusty and scared, an old jugger ready to trade every man he'd ever worked with for a nice soft mattress and a nice warm radiator and a little peace of mind.
So Parker packed a suitcase and took a cab from the hotel and a plane from the airport and flew north and west across the country to see what it would take to protect himself from Joe Sheer.
He arrived at Omaha on Tuesday afternoon, switched from plane to train, got to the town of Sagamore Tuesday evening, and registered at the Sagamore Hotel. He didn't plan on staying at Joe's place this time because he didn't know what his relationship was going to be with Joe this time. And he used the Charles Willis name because that was the name he always used with Joe. He didn't know then that this time was going to get complicated, that a local cop would be in the act before noon the next day; if he'd known it, he would have used some other name.
No tourist had ever stayed at the Sagamore Hotel; travelling men only. Sagamore was not a tourist
