Parker got out on the third floor and tuned left. A sign on the fourth door down read: “Eastern Agency Confidential Investigations.” He pushed the door open and went into a small green reception room. On one wall was a certificate stating that James Lawson was a licenced private investigator.
A bleached blonde, looking secondhand, sat at the grey metal desk, talking on the phone. When Parker came in she said, “Hold on, Marge.” She pressed the telephone to her hard breast and looked at Parker.
“Doctor Hall to see Lawson,” Parker said.
“One moment, please.” She told Marge to hold on again, and got up and went to the door of the inner office. She had stripper’s hips, big and thick and wrapped in a tight black skirt. She went through into the inner office, and in a minute she came back. “Go right on in, Doctor.”
“Thanks,” said Parker.
She went back to her desk and her phone call, and Parker went through to the inner office and closed the door.
James Lawson was small and balding. He looked like the kind of man who was worried about being out of condition, who kept promising himself he’d start going to a gym but never went. He looked across his wooden desk at Parker. “I don’t think I know you.”
Lawson wasn’t a man to trust with the new face. “Parker sent me. Him and Handy McKay.”
“So you can name-drop,” said Lawson. “Doctor Hall, and Parker, and Handy McKay. Parker’s dead.”
“No, he ain’t. Him and Handy and Pete Skimm and me are working on a job. You want to call Skimm?”
Lawson shook his head. “I don’t call anybody,” he said. “Where’d you get the Dr Hall from?”
“Parker. He said I should call myself Doctor Hall, and then you’d know what was what.”
“How come he didn’t come himself?”
“He can’t show himself in the East. He ran into trouble with the Outfit.”
Lawson nodded. “I heard something about that, too. But I also heard he was dead.”
“He wasn’t, the last time I talked to him.”
Lawson chewed on a knuckle. “You look okay,” he said, “and you sound okay. But I don’t know you.”
“Do you think I’m law? If I was law, I wouldn’t play games. I could take your licence away without half trying. I wouldn’t have to fool around with you.”
“Take my licence away for what?”
“For the time you gave Parker three Magnums and the Positive.”
Lawson started. “You know about that?”
“Parker told me. So let’s quit fooling around?”
“Maybe I better call Skimm,” said Lawson. He was suddenly very nervous.
Parker gave him the number, and then sat down in the client’s chair during the phone call. Skimm was home, and Parker had already told him the right answers. Lawson talked with him briefly, and then hung up.
“You ready to deal?”
“Sure.” Lawson grinned, his lips wet. “But I ought to know who I’m dealing with,” he said.
“Flynn. Joe Flynn.”
“I don’t think I’ve heard of you.”
“I’ve always worked out around the Coast before this.”
“And where’s this job? Here in Jersey?”
Parker shook his head. “Youngstown, Ohio,” he said. “You’ll read about it in the papers.”
Lawson opened a drawer and took out a pencil and notepad. “What do you need?”
“Three guns. Medium size — .32’s or .38’s.”
Lawson nodded. “I’ll look around. Anything else?”
“Two trucks. Semis.”
“Tractor-trailers!” Lawson frowned, and tapped his pencil point against the notepad. “That’s a tricky one. There isn’t so much market in those big ones any more. That’ll probably cost you.”
Parker shrugged. “If it costs too much, we’ll steal our own.”
Lawson tapped the pencil faster against the notepad. “You’ve still got the registration to worry about. And the cover.”
“Don’t need them,” Parker said. “Just the trucks.”
“Stripped?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh. That isn’t so tough, then. I know one already, if it isn’t sold. Down in North Carolina. I’ll check on it for you.” He wrote on the notepad again. “Anything else?”
“Some place to get some work done on one of the trucks.”
