the list of the other places that got hit.”
“Yes, sir, Mr Bronson.”
“Yeah. Have one of the boys downstairs show you your room.”
“Yes, sir. Good night, Mr Bronson.”
“Yeah, good night.”
Left alone, Bronson sat at his desk, brooding. What the hell had happened? He could remember the twenties, and it was nothing like this. Did anybody in the Outfit go around then with a briefcase full of statements?
“Wewere the Parkers then.” He said it aloud, surprising and angering himself. He got up from the desk, went to the window, and looked out at the park, thinking of Quill’s crapshooters. Were there any Outfit people in that game? A few, maybe, but just a few.
That bastard Parker belonged in that game. Bronson could see him now, getting out of that blue Olds over there and going into the park, not giving a damn about anybody. Hell, half the Outfit people wouldn’t go intothat park at night.
He wondered where Parker was, right this minute. He wondered if those four bodyguards were any damn good they’d never had to show their stuff. He felt a slight chill in his spine.
When he turned away from the window, the hall door was open. There was a man standing there. Bronson had never seen him before in his life, but he knew right away it was Parker.
He wasn’t even surprised.
PART FOUR
1
TWO DAYS AFTER knocking over The Three Kings, Parker sat in his darkened room in the Green Glen Motel just north of Scranton and looked out the window at Route 6.
It was eight-thirty, Thursday night; Handy was due in half an hour.
He heard footsteps coming along the cement walk and leaned back, waiting for whoever it was to pass his window. But the footsteps stopped and there was a rapping at his door. Madge’s voice called, “Parker? It’s me.” Parker shook his head and got to his feet. He’d have to talk to her.
Madge ran the Green Glen Motel. She was in her sixties now, one of the rare hookers who’d retired with money in the bank. Running this motel brought her a modest living, gave her something to do, and, indirectly, kept her connected with her original profession, for most of the units were rented by the hour. Because she could be trusted, her motel was also used sometimes as a meeting place by people in Parker’s line of work. The only thing wrong with her was that she talked too much.
Parker opened the door and she came in carrying a bottle and two glasses. “Turn the light on, Parker. What the hell are you, a mole?”
Parker shut the door and switched on the ceiling light. “Sit down,” he said, knowing she would anyway.
Madge was bone-thin, with sharp elbows and shrivelled throat. Her hair was coarse white, cut very short in the Italian style. It was cold outside and she hadn’t bothered to put on a coat for the walk from the office. She was wearing brand-new black wool slacks with the shadow-sharp creases and a white blouse with large black buttons down the front. Triangular turquoise Indian earrings dangled from her ears, and black thonged sandles revealed her pale feet and scarlet toenails. Her eyebrows had been completely plucked, and redrawn in satanic, black lines. Her fingernails were long, curved, and blood red. But she wore no lipstick; her mouth was a pale scar in a thin deeply lined face.
She put the glasses down on the bureau and held up the bottle for Parker to see. Haig & Haig. “Just off the boat,” she said, and laughed. She had gleaming white false teeth. Inside the young clothes was an old body, but inside the old body was a young woman. Madge wouldn’t let herself be old. It was 1920 and she was as young as the century the Great War was over, Prohibition was in, money was everywhere. It was a grand thing at the beginning of the Jazz Age to be alive and young and a high-priced whore. It would be 1920 around Madge till the day she dropped dead.
“You want ice?” she asked him. “I can go get some ice if you want.”
“Never mind,” said Parker. He wanted to get it over with, get the talking begun and done. Handy was due soon.
She splashed liquor into both glasses, handed him one, and said, “Happy times!”
He grunted. The liquor, when he tasted it, was warm and sour-sharp. He should have had her go for the ice.
She went over and sat on the bed. “What a sourpuss. I just can’t get used to that new face, Parker. You know, I think it’s even worse than the old one.”
“Thanks.” He went over and looked out the window again. When Handy got here, he’d have an excuse to throw Madge out.
“Did I tell you Marty Kabell was here last summer? He had some blonde with him, Christy or something. He had a moustache, too
.”
She talked away at his back as he stood looking out the window. She told him whom she’d seen in the last year, whom she’d heard about, where this one was now, what happened to that one. She was full of information. Some of the names she mentioned Parker didn’t recognize; Madge thought all the people she knew also knew one another. One big happy family. It was part of her still being twenty years old.
A car turned in from the highway and Parker interrupted her.
“You got a customer.”
“Ethel’s minding the store.” Ethel was a cow of a girl, about twenty-five, somewhat retarded. She lived at the
