The man calling himself Lasker, but whose name was really Skimm, looked up as Parker came into the room. He dropped the pint and reached under the pillow.
Parker said, “Didn’t Joe tell you about the new face?”
Skimm paused with the Colt Woodsman half out from under the pillow. He squinted and said, “Parker?”
“That’s right.”
Skimm held on to the Woodsman. “What name’d you use in Nebraska?”
“Anson.”
Skimm nodded and shoved the Woodsman back under the pillow. “They did a good job on you,” he said, “You made me drop my whisky.”
Parker went over to the window and looked out — at brick building backs and rusted black metal constructions on roofs. Down below he could see a trapezoidal concrete-covered yard, scattered with garbage cans and bits of paper. “You picked a bad neighbourhood, Skimm,” he said.
Skimm was picking up the pint. Some had spilled, soaking into the carpet. He looked over at Parker and shrugged in embarrassment. “We haven’t been bankrolled yet.” He held the pint up and squinted at the inch of whisky left in the bottom of it. “I need this job,” he said. “I admit it.”
Parker knew about that. Skimm, like most men on the bum, lived from job to job; he spent more in one year than most make in five and was always broke, dressing and looking like a bum. How he did it, where it all went, Parker didn’t know.
He worked it differently, spending the money and time between jobs living at the best resort hotels and dressing himself in the best clothes. There was no overlap between people he knew on and off the job. He owned a couple of parking lots and gas stations around the country to satisfy the curiosity of the Internal Revenue beagles, but never went near them. He let the managers siphon off the profits in return for not asking him to take an active part in the business.
He came back from the window. The room sported a green leather chair, the rip across the seat patched with masking tape. Parker settled into the chair gingerly.
“All right. Who else is in it?”
“So far, only me and Handy McKay. I’ve got the earie out for Lew Matson and Little Bob Foley. Maybe we’ll need more; it’s all how we set it up.”
“You want me to angle for the bankroll, huh?”
“You got the connections, Parker,” Skimm said. He had watery eyes, of a pale blue. They looked at Parker when Parker was talking, but when Skimm was talking they looked everywhere else — up at the ceiling and over at the window and down at the near-empty pint and over at the pillow and then the other way at the door with the hotel regulations pasted on the back.
“I’ve got the connections,” Parker agreed. “Who’s the bird dog on this one?”
“It’s a frill.” Skimm looked embarrassed. “She’s a busher,” he said, “but she’s okay.”
“If she never worked this route before,” Parker said, “where’d she get the connections?”
“Through me. I met her one time.” Skimm now looked more embarrassed than before. He was a thin stub end of a man, all bones and skin with no meat. His head was long and thin, set on I a chicken neck with knotty Adam’s apple, and his face was all nose and cheekbones. The watery eyes were set deep in the skull, the jaw small and hard. “We get along, “he said, “her and me.” He said it apologetically, as though he knew an off-the-wall like him shouldn’t be getting along with any woman. “She works in a diner. In Jersey.”
Parker dragged his Luckies out of his pocket, shook one out, and lit it. “I don’t know,” he said.
“She’s straight, Parker. I been in this business long enough.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I heard about what happened with your woman. That was a tough bit.”
Parker shrugged. “She got in a bind, that’s all. So now she’s dead.”
“Alma is okay, believe me.”
“It isn’t she’s a woman,” Parker said. “It’s she’s new, that’s what I don’t like. When a new fish does the fingering, most of the time the job goes sour.”
“Sure,” said Skimm. “I know that. Because they want their piece of the pie, but they got to be covered because they’re known. But this time it’s different. Alma’s going to take off with me after it’s over.”
“We’ll see. What’s the set-up?”
“Hold on, I’ll show you.” Skimm tilted the pint, emptied it, and set it on the night table. Then he went over to the dresser, opened the bottom drawer, and took out a manila envelope. There wasn’t any table or writing-desk in the room, so he went back and spread things out on the bed. Parker stood beside the bed and watched.
The first thing Skimm took out of the envelope was an Esso road map of New Jersey. “Here it is,” he said. He opened the map and pointed a finger to the right-hand side of it, near New York. “Here’s where it is here, where it says Perth Amboy. See it? Route 9 comes south here, see, and down here a couple miles below Perth Amboy it splits. See? 9 keeps on south, and 35 heads off to the east and follows the shore.”
Parker nodded. He could have seen it better if Skimm had kept his fingers out of the way, but he didn’t say anything. He wasn’t in any hurry, and every man has his own rate and style of telling a story. Try to hurry Skimm or make him talk without covering the map with his fingers and he’d just get confused.
“Okay,” Skimm was saying. “Now, two miles farther south, 34 takes off. To the east again, same as 35. Right there, see it?”
“I see it.”
