different seasons of the year, police records of Baron’s employees. Parker leafed through these, saw there was nothing else of value, and turned to Yancy. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘So far, it doesn’t look impossible.’
Yancy had been sitting in moody silence on the edge of one of the beds. Now he perked up, stood up, said: ‘That’s good, that’s good. Mr. Karns will like that.’
‘So far,’ Parker repeated.
Yancy was his normal self again, glass in right hand, bottle in left hand, smile on face. He said, ‘You want something else? Whatever I can do.’
‘I want to go out there, as a customer.’
Yancy seemed surprised. ‘Really? You want to show your face?’
‘Why not?’
‘Beats me. It’s your face.’
It wasn’t. It was a face a plastic surgeon had given him once. But that wasn’t the point. ‘I want to go there,’ he said. ‘I’ll need a stake, say six hundred.’
‘Done.’
‘And a woman. Someone who looks right and knows how to use a camera. With a camera hidden on her someplace, purse, or whatever. When I tell her take a picture, she takes a picture.’
Yancy nodded. ‘There’s no reason we can’t come up with somebody,’ he said.
‘Tonight.’
Yancy smiled. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, leaning on the words.
Parker picked out the four or five sheets of paper he’d found useful, and said, ‘You can take the rest of this stuff away again.’
‘We like to be thorough,’ Yancy said.
‘So do I,’ said Parker.
3
PARKER walked around the cab and opened the other door, and the little blonde danced out in a swirl of petticoats and narrow knees and tanned thighs above the stocking tops. She stood patting her waist and studying her purse as Parker shut the door again and the cab drove away.
‘To tell you the truth,’ the blonde said, as Parker took her elbow and they started down the pier, ‘to tell you the truth, I’m scared to death of water. Terrified. Petrified.’
She talked a lot. She’d talked a lot in the cab, and before that she’d talked a lot in his motel room while he was getting ready. She was narrow, narrow all over, with narrow head and narrow waist and narrow legs, and where she wasn’t exactly narrow she was at least slender. Her nose was narrow, flanked by prominent cheekbones, and her eyes were large and brown and innocent and liquid, like the eyes of a Walt Disney fawn. She said her name was Crystal, which had to be a lie, and it was impossible she was as brainless as she seemed.
But she looked right for the part, so this time Outfit thoroughness seemed to be working out. If she knew how to operate the camera hidden in her purse, and if she wouldn’t do anything stupid to give the game away, fine. In any case, she talked too much.
‘I suppose,’ she said, as they walked down the pier, ‘it’s one of those childhood things A trauma? Where maybe somebody threw me in the water to teach me to swim and I was too young or something? I don’t remember anything like that, but maybe that’s significant because I wouldn’tremember it. That makes sense, doesn’t it?’
Parker had discovered the way to handle her. When she paused, he grunted. She turned his grunts into whatever words she wanted to hear, and went on with her monologue again.
‘All I know, anyway,’ she said after his grunt, ‘all I know for sure is I’m absolutely terrified if I even thinkabout water. So I wouldn’t come along on a date like this with just anybody, Jerry, let me tell you. This means you’re something special, Jerry, that I’d even consent to come out with you like this tonight.’
The last two sentences, with the name Jerry in them, had been spoken for the benefit of the stocky guy in the sport shirt and yachting cap at the end of the pier, sitting on a barrel and smoking a cigarette and watching Parker and the girl with complete lack of interest.
Parker stopped and said to the guy, ‘The boat for Cockaigne leave from here?’
‘Where’s that?’ said the guy.
Parker took from his pocket the small card he’d been given this evening by Yancy. It had written on it in ink, ‘COCKAIGNE’ and ‘OK’ and an illegible signature. Parker handed this to the guy in the yachting cap, who squinted at it in the dim light two twenty-five watt bulbs glowed high up on a pole at the end of the pier and then said, ‘Okay. We leave in five minutes. Go on down the stairs there.’
Parker led the way. The stairs were narrow and steep, and the girl didn’t have any attention left over for talk until they were down on the deck of the cruiser. Then she said, not loud, ‘I’m not kidding, I’m really scared. I just hope I don’t upchuck, that’s all I hope.’
Most of the deck was roofed over, and in that area were four rows of chairs, four chairs to each row. Two couples were sitting in the rear row, chatting together quietly. Parker led the way up to the front row and he and the girl sat down there.
Just ahead, three steps led up to a higher level, where the controls were. A guy was sitting on the rail there, a younger version of the stocky type upstairs. He too had a cigarette going, and didn’t seem to give a damn about much of anything.
The girl said, ‘Can you feel the boat move? Feel it? We aren’t even going anywhere yet, and it’s moving. Can you swim?’
‘Yes.’
