The transition from Billy’s called bluff to this bourse room on this Saturday night had been gradual, with the game slowly becoming one that was played for keeps, but still being a game, always a game. So she’d given Parker the same seventy-thousand story as Billy, but something about the remote strength and cold self-assurance of Parker had gotten through to her and she’d given him other things, too, that Billy had never gotten. Which simply made the game more interesting.
Until the shot.
It was as though a layer of mud had been abruptly washed away from the inscription on a tomb, so that she could suddenly see words she had never suspected the existence of before, telling her a truth too unbearable to support. So she had fallen, and was lying here, and in all the jumble that her mind had turned into only one picture kept returning and returning: Ed, broken open like a sausage, smeared across that rocky mountainside. Inside, in a quiet corner away from the panic and the guilt and the chaos, she began for the first time to mourn her husband.
Parker came into her line of vision, a gun in his hand, but he was only a black shape between her and the white ceiling. He spoke, harsh and quick, and the words might as well have been Swahili. She wanted to say to him, “Help me escape the responsibility. Don’t let them make me pay. I didn’t know how it was.” But she couldn’t organize words, couldn’t find the strength or the method.
Parker leaned down and slapped her face, very hard, so that her head rocked, and afterward the whole side of her face began to sting and burn, the feeling getting worse and worse. She closed her eyes, knowing she deserved it but wishing it wouldn’t happen.
This time when he spoke she understood the words. “On your feet,” he said. “Now. On your feet.”
She didn’t move, and he slapped her again, on the other side of the face, even harder, and she burst violently into tears, as though she’d been weeping for an hour already. As though someone would turn on a television set and the picture would show someone who has been crying for a long while without letup.
But Parker wouldn’t change. His voice cut through her own sounds, telling her again to get on her feet, and only the new fear of his hand made it possible for her to nod her head and move her arms and actually start to get up.
He didn’t help. She pulled herself up with the table beside her, and when she was vertical he said, “We’re getting out of here. Stay with me.”
“Don’t show me any pictures,” she said, because it seemed to her that Parker was some kind of judge, and he had pictures of who had been killed when the shot was fired, and he was going to show them to her, and she wouldn’t be able to bear it.
“Stay with me,” he said, ignoring her, and started away.
She moved after him, hurrying on shaky legs, her mind still a jumble, and ahead of her Lempke came backing out of the wall and turned around and his head was all bloody. “French,” he said, wide-eyed, and fell down.
Claire began to scream.
PART FOUR
One
THE SCREAM tore it.
Parker looked around, and the job was sour, it was dead, it was in pieces around him. Billy Lebatard had to be dead. Lempke was maybe dead, maybe dying, maybe just unconscious. Carlow and Mainzer had to be already taken out of the play. French had come back in to hijack the operation, and was blocking the exit through the tour office.
There’d only been the one shot. Lebatard must have brought his goddam gun after all, that’s why he kept his coat on. French was a pro, he wouldn’t be in a hurry to do any shooting, so Lebatard must have forced his hand. Then he’d slugged Lempke when Lempke poked his head through the hole in the wall, but French was a little shaky himself now and he didn’t manage to get Lempke right. He had got him enough to put him out, but not before showing himself to Claire and setting her off like a siren.
Would French clear out, or would he stay a few minutes in the tour office? It depended how rattled Lebatard had made him, and Parker didn’t want to take the chance. There was no safe way to go through the wall.
Which left the other route, through the hotel. They were alerted out there now anyway, because of Claire’s scream, so they’d have to be contended with no matter which way Parker went out, but it was still a bad alternative. Out, and down the stairs, and through the lobby, and onto the street.
Parker wasted no time thinking about it. He looked around, saw the situation, and moved. He grabbed Claire by the arm and said, “Come on. You brought me in, you can bring me out.”
She came along as docile as a zombie. After the one scream she’d gone silent, her face chalk-white, and Parker doubted there was any comprehension at all behind those eyes right now.
Not that he cared. To do her part she wouldn’t have to think.
There was already pounding at the double doors, and a voice calling. Parker dragged Claire along behind him into the security room, shut the intervening door, and went over to the hall door. “When I open this,” he said, “you walk out there. Move when I push, stop when I pull.”
She didn’t respond, but he thought she probably had the idea. He opened the door, stepped behind Claire, grabbed a handful of her sweater at the small of her back, and pushed slightly. She walked.
Two Pinkerton men were to the left, hammering on the ballroom doors. Another Pink was at the far end of the mezzanine, having come out of the display room down there to see what was going on.
Parker shouted, “Everybody keep cool!” He started backing away toward the stairs, keeping Claire in front of him. She moved with him, doll-like and obedient.
One of the Pinks at the door started a dive to the right, going for his holstered-gun at the same time. Parker fired, and he ended the dive in a heap and didn’t move. Claire froze for just a second at the sound of the shot, but when Parker tugged at her she began to move again.
The other two guards put their hands up over their heads and left them there. Their faces looked cold and
