neatly made.
There were two closets. The one Parker opened first was full of the woman’s clothing, neat and rigid. The other one was Devers’, and it seemed sloppy by comparison, even though the clothing was all on hangers. But the shoes on the floor were not lined up in pairs, and the shelf was cluttered with stray objects.
In Devers’ closet were the coats. Tunics, really, like the white pullover tunics worn by some barbers and dentists. But these weren’t white, they were glistening metallic gold, as bright as the gold foil around a chocolate candy, seeming to glitter and sparkle inside the closet with their own light. They had long sleeves, high hard collars and elastic wrists. They looked as though they should be worn by a team of Cossack acrobats on television.
Parker took one of the tunics out, looked at it in the light, nodded in satisfaction and put it back again. It had been worth Fusco’s trip to New York City, to a costume rental place there. These tunics had the right look to them.
He went back to the living-room. In the kitchen, Fusco was now rinsing out his cereal bowl. Parker called to him, “They look good.”
Fusco shut the water off. “You like them? I had to try three places.” He dried his hands on a dish towel and came into the living room. “You should see what they tried to give me.”
Parker sat down on the sofa. “You got everything of yours cleaned out of here?”
“Sure,” Fusco said. “There wasn’t that much. I sent off a package Railway Express this morning.” He’d checked out of his hotel Sunday morning, had been sleeping on the sofa here since then, except for last night when he’d slept at a hotel in New York.
“To an address?” Parker asked him.
“To Manhattan. To be picked up.”
“Good.”
“You want coffee? Something to drink?”
“Nothing.”
Parker shut his eyes. He knew most people tended to get jumpy the day of a score, knew that jumpy people like to talk. He didn’t want to be talked to, and the easiest way to avoid it was by keeping his eyes shut. People leave you alone if you have your eyes shut, even if they know you’re awake.
He sat there like that, waiting, not thinking about much of anything, giving stray thoughts to Puerto Rico and Claire, until Fusco said, “Here’s the boys.” Then he opened his eyes and got to his feet.
The station wagon was parked out front. Three men were walking toward the house, Jake Kengle in the lead. Behind him was Bill Stockton, a tall skinny guy with black hair and a loose-limbed, stooped way of walking. Bringing up the rear was Philly Webb, who owned the station wagon and who would be driving tonight. He was short, chunky, olive-complexioned, with the chest and arms of a weightlifter, giving him a vaguely apelike look.
Fusco opened the door for them and they trooped in, all dressed like Parker in white shirts, black trousers and quiet-soled shoes. Kengle said, “This is the part I don’t like. Just before, you know? When there’s nothing to do but wait.”
“There might be a deck of cards around here,” said Webb.
“Sure,” said Fusco. “We can play at the kitchen table. I’ll be right back.”
Parker sat out, but the other four worked up a poker game to kill the time, most draw and five-card stud. They played for small stakes; it was a superstition that it was bad luck to gamble with money you hadn’t copped yet.
Parker didn’t gamble. He preferred to sit in the living-room, either doing nothing at all or going over again in his mind each step of what they were supposed to do today, trying to find things that had been overlooked.
Ellen came back about twenty after two. She looked at the four sitting around the kitchen table, and said to Parker, “How much longer are you all going to be here?”
“A little while,” he told her.
She was acting like somebody being calm with a great deal of trouble. She fluttered a bit in the living-room, and then went on out to the bedroom. Parker watched her go, frowning. He didn’t like the way she was acting, hadn’t liked any of the changes she’d gone through the last week and a half.
It had started with that oddball stupid sexless proposition. It had been a proposition, it couldn’t have been anything else, but it had been delivered in such a way as to make it tough to believe it had ever happened. As though she’d done it against her will, and had just gone through the motions without really meaning it.
But she’d meant it, he was sure of that. She’d spent a couple of days giving him cow eyes alternating with bad temper as though he’d been the one trying to put the make on her, and then it had been all over, with a new phase coming in.
The new phase had been hatred, cold silent murderous hatred. Whenever he’d been in the house she was always somewhere around, glaring at him, as though waiting for him to make the one move that would make it all right for her to come after him with a carving knife.
But that hadn’t lasted either. It seemed as though every time she went off for one of her sessions with the analyst she came back with a different set on the world. The next attitude toward Parker had been studied indifference; she’d ignored him as completely as if he weren’t there at all. But not arrogantly, not like a queen ignoring a peasant, which is ignoring in a way that still acknowledges existence. Parker seemed to have ceased to exist for her, as though she had a blind spot and he was standing in the middle of it.
That phase had been the easiest to put up with, but it too had changed, and the most recent attitude had been fear, a kind of guilty jumpy fear that had made him almost as nervous in her presence as she was. He’d asked both Devers and Fusco about it, and they’d both assured him she would have done nothing—like talking to the law—to justify her guilt or her fear. “That’s just the way she gets sometimes,” Devers had said. Fusco’s comment had been, “Ellen wouldn’t fink, period.” Parker had had to take their word for it, but he still didn’t like it; when she slunk and jumped and jittered around him like that it made his hackles rise.
Well, this was the end of it anyway. He’d be leaving this house for the last time this afternoon, and Ellen Fusco
