Now, for the next five days, the money was Parker’s responsibility. He knew where Kifka was staying because Kifka was staying at home. He didn’t know where any of the others were staying because there was no need for him to know; it wouldn’t be bright to contact them anyway, and at the time it didn’t seem there’d be any reason to contact them. In five days they would all get together again, this time at Ellie’s place, and divvy up the money. By splitting up this way and by not trying to clear out of the city and the area, they would make it more difficult for the law to get any kind of lead to them.
Parker just sat in the truck and smoked and waited. A little after three, police cars started rushing by, hurrying this way and that, and Parker heard sirens sounding in the distance, but nobody stopped to question him or search the truck. One prowl car did slow down, but a truck full of metal barrels could hardly be involved in the robbery.
At four o’clock, Parker started the engine and drove slowly away from there. He drove all the way through the city to the freight yards and parked the truck on Railroad Street, down from the main freight office. Parked and laden trucks lined both sides of the street along here, most of them here for the weekend. Parker climbed out, left the truck doors unlocked, and walked away. He walked three blocks, caught a cab, and went on back to the apartment. Ellie wasn’t home; he found out later she’d gone to the game. She was a Monequois fan.
At nine that night he went back downtown and picked up the truck and drove it over to the block containing Ellie’s apartment building. Going through the window between body and cab each time, he transferred everything from the Renault to the closet of Ellie’s apartment. The suitcases he carried up in one trip, and then the machine guns wrapped in blankets. The pistols he carried up in his pockets. When everything was stashed, he drove the truck downtown again, abandoned it for the last time, took another cab back, and went in to see Ellie. The job was done; he could feel himself unwinding.
Seeing how lackadaisical Ellie was about everything else in life, Parker hadn’t expected her to be more in bed than a receptacle, but she surprised him. He had found the one thing that made her pay attention. For three days and nights they hardly left the bed at all, and the whole time she was nothing but stifled mumblings and hard- muscled legs and hot breath and demanding arms and a sweat-slick pulsing belly. All the passion that had been dammed up inside Parker while his one-track mind had been concentrating on the robbery now burst forth in one long sustained silent explosion, and Ellie absorbed it all the way a soundproof room absorbs a shout.
By the third night the pace had begun to slacken, and waking up from one of his intermittent naps Parker felt the need for fresh air and a quiet walk. They were out of cigarettes and they would need beer soon after breakfast or whatever meal this was Ellie promised to make him, so he got dressed and went out, and he was gone ten minutes.
It was a last ten minutes, and the time since then had been fast too. Ellie was dead, the suitcases were gone. Parker had had a brawl with a couple of cops and he’d been trailed by a thirty-seven-dollar moocher and he’d been shot at by person or persons unknown who hadn’t killed him but who had killed the moocher as a consolation prize.
It was time to start pushing back.
PART TWO
One
Parker looked at the pistols scattered all over the kitchen table. He’d taken them out of all his pockets to decide which ones he wanted to carry.
There were four of them: a Colt Cobra .38 Special revolver with the two-inch barrel and a hammer shroud to keep it from snagging in a pocket, a Smith & Wesson Terrier .32, also with a two-inch barrel, a Colt Super Auto .38 automatic, and an Astra Firecat .25 automatic. It was the Terrier he’d fired last night; all the others still carried full loads.
Four guns was twice as many as he needed. He chose the two Colts, checked them to be sure they were full, and carried them over to where his topcoat was draped over a chair. He put the guns in the pockets, then carried the other two into the bedroom.
Dan was no different this morning, no better and no worse. From the night he’d obviously had with Janey, just holding his own was already a medical miracle. He looked up from the tea Janey made him drink between bouts, and said, ‘You ready to talk now?’ He had practically no voice at all this morning.
Parker said, ‘You heeled?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice.’
‘You better be. You want these two? This one’s been fired once.’
Kifka shrugged. ‘Why not? Stick ‘em under the pillow.’
Janey said, ‘Keep them out of the bed. Put them on the night table if you have to.’
Parker looked from her to Kifka. Kifka shrugged again, and Parker put the guns on the night table. Then he said, ‘How much does she know?’
‘Enough.’
‘About the operation?’
Kifka nodded. ‘My part in it, and what it was. And about Ellie being killed.’
Parker dragged a chair over closer to the bed and sat down. He told Kifka about the ambush last night, and about the dead clown. Two police cars and an ambulance had been around the block with screaming sirens last night, about half an hour after Parker had gone back upstairs, so the clown was long gone. Parker said, ‘You can figure cops knocking on the door today, routine questions, did you hear anything, see anything.’
Kifka said, ‘Janey can take care of it.’
‘I better get dressed,’ she said. She was still in the sweatshirt, or in it again.
Kifka told her, ‘Slick around.’ To Parker he said, ‘I think I know the clown. Morey, his name was. A real loser.’
‘Any connection with Ellie?’
‘New, not Morey. He was mucho married.’
