closer to the doctor. “You see it there?”
The doctor read the letter, slowly, holding it in both hands. His hands were so clean they looked bleached. He nodded. “Yes, I see.”
“Can your man give me a ride to town?”
“Of course. You’ll probably find him in the kitchen.”
“Thanks. I’ll take my case.”
“Oh, yes. I forgot.” The doctor stood up, went over to the dark green safe in the corner, and twisted the combination. He opened the door and took out a light brown typewriter case. The typewriter case contained eight thousand five hundred dollars, all of Parker’s cash.
Parker took the case and picked up the suitcase. “I’ll be seeing you around.”
“I doubt it.”
When Parker left, the doctor was studying the letter again, a thin smile on his lips.
Chapter 2
DR ADLER’S handyman was punch-drunk, though he’d never been in the ring. He’d been a Party organizer in the ‘thirties, among the migrant crop harvesters, and scab-wielded two-by-fours had scrambled his brains. His former fluency with dialectic was gone; these days the driving of a hydromatic Chrysler was the most complicated exercise his brain could handle. He was fifty-four and his face was lumpy, with scar tissue around the eyes. The doctor called him “Stubbs”.
Parker found him in the kitchen, a stainless-steel room kept spotless because most of its equipment was never used. Stubbs sat on a steel table against one wall, holding a white coffee mug in both hands. The cook, a thin ex- whore named May, was reading the back of a box of Fab.
Parker said to Stubbs, “You’re supposed to drive me into Lincoln.”
Stubbs frowned at him. “We got a Chrysler.”
“Am I being kidded, friend?”
“No,” May said. To Stubbs, she said, “To the city, Stubbs. He wants you to drive him to the city.” She turned back to Parker. “Did the doctor say it’s okay?”
“Yeah.”
Stubbs got down from the table, laboriously. “I never drove a Lincoln,” he said, “I drove a Rolls once. It belonged to a sympathizer. That was down south some place, near Dago. They killed a Joe Goss that time, blew the whole thing wide open. It would of been a good strike up to then, a deputy drove over this little girl, broke her leg. But then — the guys had to kill that Joe Goss, and it was all over.” He scratched his cheek.
I The flesh was soft, and gave like dough under his fingernails. “Where you want to go?”
May answered him. “Down into town, Stubbs. The freight yards, I guess.”
“You betcha.”
Stubbs led the way through the garbage room and out the back door. The sanitarium property, wooded, climbed up a slope back of the building. The garage was a separate brick structure to the left of the main building, with a cock weather-vane atop the peaked roof. There was room for four cars, but aside from the Chrysler there was only one other vehicle, a Volkswagen Micro-Bus.
Parker stowed his suitcase and typewriter case on the back seat of the Chrysler and climber in front next to Stubbs. Stubbs backed out, left the car long enough to pull down the garage door, and then manoeuvred in a wide U-turn and around the building and down the blacktop road to the three-lane concrete highway to the city.
They rode in silence, Parker smoking and watching the scenery. The new face was beginning to feel strange. His forehead and cheeks were tight, as though glue had dried on them.
Before they reached the city, Stubbs pulled over to the shoulder of the road and stopped. He carefully shifted to neutral and put on the emergency brake, and then turned to Parker. His face was creased in concentration, as though he was having a hard time remembering the words. “I want to talk to you,” he said. “I talk to all the patients, when they’re ready to go.”
Parker flipped his cigarette out the window, and waited.
“One time,” said Stubbs, “there was a guy came here to get a new face. Doc gave it to him, and then he figured the best thing was to kill Doc, because then nobody’d know who it was under the new face. He didn’t have to do that, because the Doc is one man you can trust with your life. But this guy wouldn’t take that, so I had to take the new face away from him again. You follow me?”
Parker smiled at him. “You think you could take this face away from me?”
“No trouble at all,” said Stubbs. “Don’t come back, mister.”
Parker studied him, but challenges were for punks. He shrugged. “A fella named Joe Sheer told me the doctor was straight. It’s his word I take.”
Stubbs’s belligerence faded. “I just wanted you to know.”
“Sure,” Parker said.
They rode the rest of the way in silence. Stubbs let him off at the railroad station, and Parker bought a ticket for Cincinnati. He had a three-hour wait, so he checked his luggage and went to a movie.
Chapter 3
THE MAN calling himself Lasker was sitting on the edge of the bed when Parker came into the room. The Warwick was a fourth-rate Transient & Permanent hotel with a dirty stone face and no marquee, and Lasker’s room was what Parker had expected, complete with green paint on plaster walls and a faded imitation Persian on the floor. The wood of the window frame was spreading along the grain, looking like eroded farmland.
