Then Parker saw the occupants of the car and relaxed. A guy in his twenties driving, girl of the same age beside him, two little girls standing up on the back seat, looking out the rear window. The car stopped, and the driver stuck his head out the window to say, “Excuse me. Can you tell me how to get to the Holland Tunnel?”
Parker shook his head. “Sorry. I’m a stranger here myself.”
“Well, can you tell me how to get the hell out of here?” He waved his arms to include the whole neighborhood and looked a little desperate.
Parker thought of the city map in his pocket, but he’d need that later, and he didn’t want to waste a lot of time with these people. He pointed the way he’d come, saying, “I think if you go that way you’ll come to some place where there’s people.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“Sure.”
The car pulled away, and Parker started walking again, first checking the guy, who had slowed down but was still less than half a block back by now. Parker walked at the same speed as before, and the guy gradually fell back to his normal distance.
There wouldn’t be a better neighborhood. One car in five minutes, and that guy here only because he was lost. A diner that’s closed by ten o’clock at night. No residences of any kind, no twenty-four-hour plants.
In the next block, there were two long warehouse sheds with a loading space between them in near-darkness. Parker passed it without looking in, went down to the corner, turned right, waited a second, and came right back around again.
This time the guy covered it better. He slowed a bit, but that was all.
Parker walked faster than before, timing it. It would work out fine. They’d pass each other right opposite the loading area.
As they passed, Parker on the outside, Parker turned on his left foot and drove a right hand across the side of the guy’s jaw. It turned him, threw him off balance, and sent him flailing forward into the loading area to wind up in the shadows there on his hands and knees.
Parker went in after him, to ask him questions and be sure he was getting the right answers. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.
But it wouldn’t work that way. There was a clicking sound, and the guy came up with a knife. He didn’t waste any time, just lunged.
Parker had no weapons on him but his hands. They were big hands, to go with the rest of him. He moved to the left to limit the guy’s knife-arc, pretended a left-hand grab for the knife, and stepped in fast, bringing the edge of his hand in under the guy’s jaw.
There wouldn’t be any more air going through that throat. The knife fell, and then the guy fell.
Parker had moved as a result of training. Counter-attack should be at least as strong as attack. If someone wants to hit you, you hit him. If someone wants to rough you up, you rough him up. If someone wants to kill you, you kill him.
But now, belatedly, he wished he’d pulled that swipe a little. He couldn’t get any answers now. The clown shouldn’t have reached for a knife.
Parker went through his pockets. Cigarettes, matches, comb, small package of Kleenex, inhaler, unopened box of contraceptives, key chain with three keys on it including one to a General Motors car, nail clipper, wallet. The wallet contained seven dollars in bills, two photos of girls, an unemployment insurance check, and a driver’s license. The check and license were both made out to Edward Owen, and the driver’s license gave Owen an address in Jersey City.
He hadn’t been law, but Parker already knew that. What he’d been, he still didn’t know. He put the wallet in his own pocket; maybe Paulus would know. Then he left and walked down to the next intersection and looked at the street signs. There was a streetlight there; under it Parker opened his city map and found out where he was and how to get where he was going.
It was six blocks before he saw anybody at all.
2
Paulus opened the door, looking wary, and then smiled a greeting when he saw it was Parker. “Come on in,” he said, holding the door wide. “We been waiting for you.” He was short, slender, balding, forty. He was wearing a thin brown suit and a thin brown tie, and he looked like a timid accountant.
Parker stepped into the apartment, took the door away from Paulus and shut it. “The deal’s queered,” he said.
They were standing in a little empty foyer with a spaceship light fixture up above and an oriental rug below. Paulus blinked rapidly and said, “What? What? What do you mean?”
“Somebody was following me.”
Paulus switched to relief again, the way he’d done when he’d seen it was Parker at the door. “Oh,” he said, throwing it away. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It doesn’t mean anything?”
“I know all about it, Parker.” Paulus patted at his arm, trying to get him moving. “Come on in, we’re all here, Edgars will explain it to you.”
Parker didn’t move. “Youexplain, Paulus,” he said.
Paulus looked troubled, unhappy. “I think it would be better if Edgars told you the situ”
“I think it would be better if youdid,” Parker told him. “He’s dead.”
Paulus now was just blank. “What? Who?”
