the store. Their expressions blank and hard, they studied Parker, and Parker said, “Wallet.” He reached slowly to his back pocket. They waited, and Parker pulled out the wallet and handed it to the nearest of them.
They both read the driver’s license, giving his name as Edward Johnson, and then they gave the wallet back and one of them said, “What was the business in the back of the store? Did you buy something or sell something?”
“Neither.”
“Nothing like that, officers,” said Delgardo hurriedly. “You know me, I don’t do nothing like that.” He was sweating beneath his mustache.
“Nothing like what?” one of the cops asked.
Delgardo looked flustered. Parker said, “Nothing like junk.” He shucked off his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves, showed them his bare arms. “I don’t take it, buy it, sell it or carry it,” he said. “Get the broads out of here, I’ll show you my legs. No needle marks there either.”
“That won’t be necessary,” said the talking cop. “Just empty your pockets. You too, Delgardo. And let’s see the pad.”
He glanced at the memo pad, looked at Parker. “What’s doing at the Carlington Hotel?”
“I’m staying there,” Parker said.
“That isn’t what it said on your driver’s license.”
“I had a fight with my wife.”
“What was the business in the back of the store?”
“We had a Coke together,” said Parker. “I’m an old friend of Jimmy’s. I come around to look him up.”
“An old friend from where?”
“Upstate. We worked for the same trucker, up in Buffalo.”
“How come you don’t have a chauffeur’s license?”
“I don’t do that kind of work any more.”
“What kind of work do you do now?”
“I’m unemployed. I was laid off. That’s what the fight was all about.”
“What fight?”
“With my wife. I told you.”
“Laid off from where?”
“General Electric. Out on the Island.”
The cop chewed the inside of his cheek a minute, and glanced at his partner. “You tell a good story, Johnson. But you feel wrong.”
Parker shrugged.
The cop said, “How come you’re so hipped on narcotics? How come you brought the subject up the minute you saw us?”
“The neighborhood has a reputation,” Parker said. “I been reading the Post.”
“Yeah. Lean up against the wall there.”
Parker leaned forward, palms flat against the wall, and the cop frisked him briefly, then stepped back, saying, “Okay.”
“I’m clean,” Parker said. “Do I take my goods back now?”
“Yes.”
Parker took his wallet and change and cigarettes from the counter top and put them back in his pocket, watching as Delgardo was frisked and also found clean. The talking cop nodded sourly at Parker and said, “You can go. I suppose we’ll be seeing you around.”
“I doubt it,” Parker said. “It’s more civilized downtown.”
“We didn’t ask for this precinct,” the cop said.
“Nobody did,” Parker said.
“Take off,” said the other cop.
Parker went on out, pushing past the two women, who still look terrified. They hadn’t understood a word. They believed Delgardo had called the police to arrest them for shoplifting.
Chapter 2
I’m looking for a girl,” said Parker.
She smirked at him. “What do you think I am, big boy — a watermelon?”
Parker picked up his beer glass, looking at the cool wet ring it left on the bar. “I’m looking for a particular girl,” he said.
She arched a brow. She plucked her eyebrows and painted on new ones, in the wrong place, so that when she arched a brow it came out wrong, like a badly animated cartoon. “A hustler? I don’t know them all, baby.”
