'Sure.'
'We'll do it, then,' he said. 'As soon as we get back to town.'
'We can do it in Omaha, at Joe's apartment. The sooner we do it, the better for both of us.'
Younger shrugged. 'Okay, fine. I don't care. Only thing, what about me giving you an alibi?'
'I'll cover it in the note. Say I told you it was earlier than it was, and you didn't have a watch on you, something like that. The whole thing'll be worked out in the note.'
'Good. That's a good idea.'
'For you, too,' Parker told him.
Younger looked startled. He glanced at Parker, and away. 'What do you mean, me, too?'
'You write a note, too.'
'What? That I killed Tiftus? It wouldn't make any sense.'
'No, that you killed Joseph Shardin.'
Younger now looked scared. 'I didn't kill him! What the hell are you talking about, Willis, I didn't kill him!'
'I didn't kill Tiftus,' Parker reminded him. 'That isn't the point. The point is to have something on you, like you'll have on me.'
'But it don't make any sense. How's it gonna look?'
Parker said, 'You write, 'I killed Joseph Shardin. I was trying to extort money from him, and I didn't mean to kill him.' And you sign your name. No, wait a second. Besides that, you write, 'Doctor Rayborn knows all about it.' Because he does, doesn't he?'
Younger glowered at the road. 'If that bastard's been opening his mouth-'
'He didn't have to. I haven't seen him since he fixed up my face.'
'I don't like it,' Younger said. 'I didn't kill the old man, why should I say I did?'
Parker told him, 'You'll have my note about killing Tiftus, I'll have your note about killing Joe. That way, we're safe from each other.'
Younger gnawed on his lower lip, and shook his head back and forth. 'I don't like it,' he said. 'I just don't like it.'
Parker sat back in the seat and watched the flat countryside roll by. Flat farmland, not a tree in sight. You could see white farmhouses miles away across the flat fields.
Sitting at the wheel, driving down the straight road, Younger chewed his lip and tried to get used to having only a quarter of a million dollars. That was the problem, and Parker knew it. Younger had been counting on the whole pie, and now he was having to shift his thinking, having to gear down to half a pie.
Half a pie in the sky.
With the outskirts of Omaha lumping up ahead of them, Younger finally nodded. 'All right,' he said. 'It's the best way.'
Parker knew what he meant. He meant he wasn't that sure anyway that he could get Parker before Parker got him.
'You're right,' Parker told him.
SIX
PARKER'S note read:
I killed Adolph Tiftus. He came in my room and we argued and I hit him with the ashtray. Then I went to Joe Shardin's house and saw Captain Younger and told him it was half an hour earlier than it was. I scared Rhonda Samuels into making up the story about Jim Chambers.
Charles Willis
Younger read it and said, 'Fine. That covers the whole thing.'
They were sitting at the kitchen table in Joe Sheer's Omaha apartment. Parker had found pen and paper and had written his note first, to keep Younger from getting suspicious. Now he pushed the pen and the pad of paper across the desk and said, 'Your turn.'
'Sure,' said Younger, but he kept holding Parker's note, and there was a thoughtful look in his eye.
Parker told him, 'Forget it. You still need me. You need me to find the dough, and you need me to help you when you find the guy that killed Tiftus.'
'I didn't have any plans,' Younger said. He put the note down, took the pen, and started to write. Parker watched him and waited.
This was a quiet neighbourhood Joe had picked. There wasn't a sound coming in the kitchen window, not a sound anywhere but the ballpoint pen sliding over the paper as Younger wrote his suicide note.
When it was done, Parker took it and read it:
