They turned. Being professionals, they knew what was coming. Knowing what was coming, they tensed themselves, hunching their heads low on their necks, tightening their shoulders.
Parker turned the gun around, held it by the barrel, and looped his arm over twice. The bodyguards dropped, the luggage thumping on the rug. Fairfax reached up and touched his mustache as though to reassure himself it was*thece.
He was a tall and stately man, graying at the temples, with a clipped pepper-and-salt mustache. An aging movie star perhaps, or an idealized casino owner. He was perhaps fifty-five or a little over and clearly spent a lot of his time being pummeled by the machinery in a gymnasium.
Parker turned the gun around again and motioned with it at the bodyguards. “Drag them into the bedroom.”
Fairfax touched his mustache again, considering, and then said: “This isn’t going to do you any good, Parker.”
“I think it will. Do you want a bullet in the knee?”
“No.”
“Then drag them into the bedroom.”
The bodyguards were heavy. By the time he had dragged both of them to the nearest bedroom, Fairfax was puffing, looking more his age. There wasn’t any key in the lock of the bedroom door so Parker asked for it. Fairfax said, “There’s only the one key. It’s in the closet door there.”
“Get it. And disconnect the phone. Pull out the wires.”
“I don’t have to. It plugs in.” He unplugged the phone and showed Parker the jack. “I don’t have extensions. I have outlets for the phone in all the rooms.”
“Bring the phone with you.”
He knew already that the fire escape was outside the window of the other bedroom. He had Fairfax lock the door, and then the two of them went back to the living room. Parker told him to sit down and he did so, saying, “I don’t understand what you’re doing here. I thought you were going after Bronson.”
“I’m not stupid. Is that a phone outlet there?”
“Yes.”
“Plug the phone in. Call Bronson. Tell him he owes me forty-five thousand dollars. Either he pays me, or he won’t have anybody left to manage the New York end.”
“I can’t call him. He left town.”
Parker grinned. “He’s a brave man. Make it a long-distance call.”
“It won’t do any good, Parker. He let Carter die and he’ll let me die too.”
“With Carter, he thought I was bluffing.”
“It didn’t make any difference to him.” Fairfax touched his mustache again. “I don’t know the full details of the case,” he said. “I don’t know if you should get your money or not. All I know is, Bronson said no. He won’t change, not for anything. He never does.”
“This time he will.” Parker sat down, facing the other man. “When you call him, I want you to tell him something for me. I’ve worked my particular line for the last eighteen years. In that time I’ve worked with about a hundred different men. Among them, they’ve worked with just about every professional in the business. You know the business I mean.”
“All I know about you,” said Fairfax, his mouth hidden by the fingers against his mustache, “is that you were involved in a payroll robbery in Des Moines.”
“That’s the business I mean.” Parker shifted the gun to the other hand. “There’s you people with your organization, and there’s us. We don’t have any organization, but we’re professionals. We know each other. We stick with each other. Do yo* know what I’m talking about?”
“Bank robbers,” said Fairfax.
“Banks, payrolls, armored cars, jewelers, adf yplace that’s worth the risk.” Parker leaned forward. “But we don’t hit casinos,” he said. “We don’t hit layoff bookies or narcotic caches. We don’t hit the syndicate. You’re sitting there wide open — you can’t squeal to the law, but we don’t hit you.”
“There’s a good reason for that,” said Fairfax. “We’d get you if you tried it.”
Parker shook his head. “You’d never find us. We aren’t organized, we’re just a guy here and a guy there that know each other. You’re organized, so you’re easy to find.”
“In other words,” said Fairfax, “if we don’t give you the forty-five thousand dollars, you’ll steal it — is that it?”
“No. I don’t do things like that. I just keep chopping off heads. But I also write letters, to those hundred men I told you about. I tell them the syndicate hit me for forty-five Gs; do me a favor and hit them back once when you’ve got the chance. Maybe half of them will say the hell with it. The other half are like me; they’ve got the job all cased. A lot of us are like that. You organized people are so wide open. We walk into a syndicate place and we look around, and just automatically we think it over — we think about it like a job. We don’t do anything about it because you people are on the same side as us, but we think about it. I’ve walked around for years with three syndicate grabs all mapped out in my head, but I’ve never done anything about it. The same with a lot of the people I know. So all of a sudden they’ve got the green light, they’ve got an excuse. They’ll grab for it.”
“And split with you?”
“Hell, no. I’ll get my money from you people, personally. They’ll keep it for themselves. And they’ll cost you a hell of a lot more than forty-five thousand dollars.”
Fairfax rubbed his mustache with the tips of his fingers. “I don’t know if that’s a bluff or not,” he said. “I don’t
