Parker turned and saw a bulky man coming down the sidewalk toward him. He moved past a streetlight as Parker watched, and it was the guy in the mackinaw, the one that had been asleep on the bench back in the cab garage. Parker put his right hand in his topcoat pocket, and stepped back into darker shadow in the lee of a tenement stoop.
They had this block to themselves. The windows of all the tenements on both sides were marked with the white X of urban renewal; they stood nearly empty, waiting for the wreckers. Within them the cockroaches crawled and the rats cluttered, but the humans were away, infesting some other neighborhood. Outside, the street was empty of cars, either moving or parked. Except for the man in the mackinaw, nothing living moved on the sidewalk.
The man in the mackinaw hurried the last half block separating them, and then abruptly slowed and came forward more warily, head craned forward like a periscope, turning slowly from side to side. In a shrill whisper he called, ‘Where are you? Where’d you get to?’
‘Here.’
He stopped. ‘What are you doing? come on out of there.’
Parker said, ‘You want to talk, talk.’
‘You was asking about Dan Kifka.’
‘So?’
He hesitated, didn’t seem to know how to go on. ‘Why don’t you come out where I can see you?’ He sounded plaintive.
Parker told him, ‘Say what you’ve got to say.’
‘You a friend of Kifka’s?’
‘In a way.’
‘He was supposed to be in tonight. Three nights in a row he was supposed to be in and he didn’t show up.’
‘So I heard.’
‘They didn’t tell you everything, back to the office. He keeps calling in sick. Every day he calls in sick and says be sure and leave him a slot for tomorrow, he’ll be in for sure.’
That didn’t make any sense yet. Parker ignored it, and said, ‘What’s your interest?’
‘He owes me thirty-seven dollars for over a year now.’ The aggrieved tone wasn’t faked; Parker relaxed a little.
Still, he said, ‘Why follow me?’
‘I figured maybe you know where he is, maybe he owes you money, too, or something like that, and we can go see him together.’
‘You don’t know where he lives?’
He hesitated again, and sculled his feet on the sidewalk, and finally said, ‘No, I don’t.’ This time he was obviously lying. The truth probably was he was afraid of Kifka, wouldn’t dare brace Kifka alone in Kifka’s apartment. That’s why he’d been hanging around in the garage where there’d be other people there to help him in case Kifka got mad. And now he figured to ride along on Parker’s coat-tails, but he was making a mistake.
Parker stepped out onto the sidewalk. ‘Forget it,’ he said.
‘We can go see him together.’ He was pleading now. ‘Two heads are better than one,’ he said.
‘Not always.’ Parker turned away and walked on. Ahead, far down the street, the world was more brightly lit. There he could find a cab to take him to Kifka’s place.
The clown in the mackinaw wouldn’t give up. He came padding along saying, ‘You’re going to see him anyway, what difference does it make to you? I won’t get in your way; I just want to get my thirty-seven bucks.’
Parker stopped and turned around and said, ‘Walk someplace else.’
‘You don’t have to be so goddam tough about it.’ He spoke with the whine of the natural loser, but he wouldn’t give ground. He just stood there, unable to force himself on Parker and unwilling to go away and forget it.
Parker had no patience for this kind of clown. He took his hands out of his topcoat pockets, empty, and balled them into fists. He took a step toward the clown, but he skittered away like an underfed mongrel. Parker said, ‘Don’t follow me.’
The clown said, ‘It’s a free country. I can walk where I want.’ He was at least forty years old, but he talked like a kid in a schoolyard.
Parker felt the pistols weighing heavy in his pockets, but that was no good. That answer was always too simple, too easy, and left the worst kind of trail. It was a temptation to be resisted.
Instead, he said to the clown, ‘I don’t want you around.’ He let it go at that, and turned away, and walked on toward downtown.
The clown kept trailing along about a block behind.
Another three blocks and Parker was beginning to come into a more active section. He saw a cruising cab with its dome light lit, and stepped off the sidewalk to motion at it. The cab made a U-turn and stopped in front of him. He got into the back seat and gave Kifka’s home address. The cabby pushed flag and accelerator down at the same time.
Looking out the rear window, Parker saw the clown standing there two blocks back, standing on the curb with his hands in his mackinaw pockets, his shoulders hunched as he gazed after the cab. He just stood there.
Three
