“Okay.”
Parker gave him the keys then walked out of the park. He found a cab, and went back to the motel.
4
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, Parker phoned Bett Harrow in Miami. She wasn’t in her room so he had her paged, dropping dimes and quarters into the phone while he waited. Handy was in Buffalo, sitting in the park across from Bronson’s house, a job that had become considerably dull by now. Bronson spent most of his time at home, and had no visitors. Parker’s estimate of the household and the position of particularly important rooms had been verified over and over again.
There was only one reason for watching the house now. Bronson might decide to leave, might suddenly pack his luggage, and go off to some other city. Handy had suggested going in before Thursday since the job seemed simpler than they could have hoped for, but Parker wanted to wait. He wanted to be sure the Outfit had been hit a few times before he got rid of Bronson. So they waited, and continued the monotonous job of watching Bronson’s house. Hardly anything was written in the notebook any more.
If things went right, he could be back in Florida by Friday or Saturday. That was why he was calling Bett Harrow, to be sure she would still be there and that she still had the gun. If she’d got tired of waiting and had already turned it over to the law, he wanted to know that, too.
When she finally came on the line, he said, “This is Chuck.”
“Oh! Where are you?”
“Not in Florida. You still got the gun?”
“It was very clever of you to figure out why I took it.”
“No it wasn’t. There couldn’t be any other reason.”
“I might have just wanted a gun.” He could hear the sardonic smile in her voice.
“Yeah. Do you still have it?”
“Of course. You asked me to wait a month, didn’t you?”
“All right. I’ll be back in a couple of days. Figure to see me in your room sometime Saturday night.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“Yeah.” He hung up and left the phone booth.
The booth was in the gas station across the road from the motel. Parker went out to the road, waited for a break in the traffic, then strode across. It was six-fifteen; the rush hour traffic was lessening. Parker went into his motel room and stretched out on the bed to wait for ten o’clock.
He was oddly tense and impatient. He didn’t like this feeling, he hadn’t expected it. Always, when he was working, when the job was being set up and he was waiting for it to start, when everything was planned and ready, and all he had to do was look at the clock and wait for it to tell him now always, during that time, he felt compact and timeless, almost bodiless, without impatience or tension or boredom or nervousness of any kind. One time, in Spokane, he was on a warehouse job, and he’d had to sit in silent darkness inside a truck for six hours, not even able to smoke, and he’d done it with no trouble at all. It was while working, while a job was being set up and run through, that he felt most alive and most calm.
Except this time. This time he couldn’t get into the mood. This time he wasn’t finding the calm satisfaction in planning the job.
Because it wasn’t an ordinary job, that was why, and he knew it. This wasn’t money he was after, it was a man. It wasn’t for profit, it was personal reasons. He felt strange using the methods and experience of his work for personal reasons.
He found himself thinking of Bett Harrow. He would bed her Saturday night, first thing. Before talking about the gun and whatever demands she had to make, before any business at all. Do it right away, because there might be bitterness later, and he wouldn’t want it spoiled by bitterness.
At least, in this way, towards sex, he was reacting as though on a normal job. He never had a craving for a woman while working, not an immediate, right-now, sort of craving. It was a part of his pattern, part of the way he lived. Immediately after a job, he was always insatiable, satyric, like a groom on a honeymoon after a long and honourable engagement. Gradually, the pace would slacken, the pressure would ease, and the need would grow less fierce, until by the time the next job came along, he was an ascetic again. He wouldn’t touch a woman or even think much about women until that job was over. But once a job was completed, the cycle would start again.
It had always been that way. When Lynn, his wife, had been alive, it had been a tough pattern for her to get used to, but now that Lynn was dead, he worked out his cycle on the bodies of transients like Bett Harrow, which was easier for all concerned.
Saturday, he knew, he would be raring. So it would have to be pleasure before business that night.
He had been lying on the bed, thinking, but now he got to his feet and paced around the room. His damn impatience was gnawing at him, keeping him from resting. He looked at his watch. It was only twenty-five minutes to seven. He shrugged back into his coat and left the motel, headed for the diner, wondering how long he could make dinner last.
Just until tomorrow night. Take it easy, he told himself. One more night.
5
HANDY GNAWED at a wooden match. “I don’t like wasting time on the chauffeur.”
They were parked in front of Bronson’s house, against the opposite curb. Parker was at the wheel, Handy beside him. It was ten-forty, Thursday night.
Parker said, “The chauffeur’s the only one outside the main house. They’re liable to have a phone to him back there or something like that. If one of them gets word to him there’s no way we can stop him sending for help.”
