They drove nine blocks down Rockaway Parkway, then through an underpass under the Belt Parkway and around a circle to a broad cobblestone pier sticking out into Jamaica Bay. There were a couple of Parks Department — type buildings out at the far end of the pier. The rest was parking lot, with a few small skinny trees, the whole surrounded by a railed concrete walk and benches.
Stegman stopped in the parking lot, which was almost empty. “The Bay’s polluted,” he said. “There’s no swimming here. Kids come here at night and neck, that’s all.” He shifted in the seat, facing Parker, and said, “Now what’s this about Sidney? He wouldn’t dare run off with the dough.”
“He didn’t.” Parker took the envelope out of his pocket and dropped it on top of the dashboard. “I took it away from him.”
Stegman’s hand reached toward the radio switch. “What the hell is this? What are you up to?”
“Touch that switch and I’ll break your arm.”
Stegman’s hand stopped.
Parker nodded. “I’m looking for Mal Resnick,” he said. “You’re going to tell me where he is.”
“No. Even if I knew, the answer would still be no.”
“You’ll tell me. I want to tell him he doesn’t have to pay her off any more.”
“Why not?”
“She’s dead. So is your fat pansy. You can be dead, too, if you want.”
Stegman licked his lips. He turned his head and nodded at the small stone buildings out at the end of the pier. “There’s people there,” he said. “All I got to do is holler.”
“You’d never get it out. Take a deep breath and you’re dead. Open your mouth wide and you’re dead.”
Stegman looked back at him. “I don’t see no gun,” he said. “I don’t see no weapon.”
Parker held up his hands. “You see two of them,” he said. “They’re all I need.”
“You’re out of your mind. It’s broad daylight. We’re in the front seat of a car. People see us scuffling — “
“There wouldn’t be any scuffle, Stegman. I’d touch you once, and you’d be dead. Look at me. You know this isn’t a bluff.”
Stegman met his eye, and Parker waited. Stegman blinked, and looked down at the radio. Parker said, “You don’t have that long. He won’t be calling for ten minutes. You’ll be dead in five if you don’t tell me where Mal is.”
“I don’t know where he is. That’s the truth. I believe you — you’re crazy enough to try it — but that’s still the truth. I don’t know where he is.”
“You got that dough from him.”
“There’s a checking account in the bank near my office. On Rockaway Parkway. There’s a hundred bucks in it to keep it alive. Every month Mal deposits eleven hundred. Then I write a check and take it out. I keep the hundred for myself and send the grand to the girl. A different messenger every month, the way he wanted it.”
Parker gnawed on his cheek.
Stegman said, “He’s scared of the girl. That’s the way it looks to me.”
“He must have left you a way to get in touch with him.”
“No. He said he’d see me around.” Stegman exhaled sharply, shaking his head. “Mister,” he said, “I don’t know nothing about this. I don’t know who you are, or the girl, or why the payoff. Mal and I used to hang around together in the old days, before he went out to California. So he shows up three months ago and says do him a favor. I’ll pick up an extra C a month, and there’s no problem, no law, nothing. So I’ll do him the favor, what the hell. But now you come around and talk about killing me. That much a buddy of Mal I’m not. If I knew where he was, I’d tell you. That’s straight. If he was setting me up for this, some guy coming around going to kill me, he should have picked another boy. He should have told me what might happen. You think I’d come out for a ride with you?”
Parker shrugged. “All right.”
“I’ll tell you this much. He’s in New York, that I know.”
“How do you know?”
“He said so. When he come around for me to do this little favor. I asked him how he liked it out west, and he said he was through out there. From now on, he was staying in the big town. He got like lonesome, he said.”
“So where would he be? You know him from the old days. Where would he hang out?”
“I don’t have any idea. He was gone a long time.”
“You could check.”
“I could say I’d check. Then you’d get out of the car, and I’d mind my own business some more. And I’d tell my drivers, they see you around again, they should jump on you with both feet.” He shrugged. “You know that as well as I do.”
Parker nodded. “So I’ll find him some other way. You want Sidney back, you send somebody up to Lynn Parker’s place. I got him locked in the bedroom.”
“I thought you said he was dead.”
“He isn’t.”
“Is the girl there, too?”
“No. She’s in the morgue. All right, let’s go back. You can drop me off at the subway.”
