“I’m in a hurry,” Parker said. “I’ll try him at home.”
“Okay,” the cashier said.
Parker stood there looking at him.
The cashier frowned, not understanding. “What’s the matter?”
“His address.”
“Who? Paul’s?”
“Naturally.”
“I can’t give out Paul’s home address. I thought you knew it.”
“If I knew it,” Parker said, “I wouldn’t be asking you.”
“Well, I can’t give it out,” the cashier said. “He’d fire me, I start giving out his home address to everybody off the street.”
“You know his phone number?”
The cashier shook his head. “I can’t give you that either. You better come back around two, two thirty.”
“I didn’t ask for it, I asked do you know it.”
“Sure, I know it.”
“Call him.”
The cashier wasn’t getting it, and that was making him mad. “What the hell for?” he said.
“Ask him should you tell me his home address. Tell him there’s a guy here wants to talk to him about Matt.”
“The hell with that,” the cashier said. “I got work to do here. You come back this afternoon.”
“Don’t mess around when there’s things you don’t understand,” Parker told him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe Brock won’t be happy that you wasted my time. Maybe you ought to find out.”
The cashier hesitated. Parker knew if Paul Brock was Matt Rosenstein’s go-between it was likely Brock was himself into a few things here and there, and an employee on close enough terms to speak of him by his first name would have to know at least that there were things happening under the surface of Brock’s life, whether he knew exactly what they were or not. So although the feeling of urgency here was all on Parker’s side, the cashier couldn’t be sure of that, and he was going to have to cover himself just in case Parker was somebody important.
But the cashier’s back was up, and he was resisting. He frowned, and hesitated, and looked past Parker at his three maybe-customers as though hoping one of them would interrupt them by buying something, and in general he let the seconds tick by without doing anything. Parker looked at his watch finally and said, “I don’t have a lot of time.”
“I’ll see what he has to say,” the cashier said sullenly and pulled a telephone out from under the counter. He was sitting on a stool and he dialed the phone in his lap, protecting it jealously so Parker wouldn’t be able to see what the number was. Parker didn’t bother to watch.
The cashier held the receiver to his ear a long time with nothing happening, and Parker had about decided Brock wasn’t home and he was going to have to come back here this afternoon after all when the cashier suddenly said, “Paul? Artie. Listen, Paul. There’s a guy here. He came in lookin’ for you. He wants me to give him your address.” He listened and said, “I don’t know, I never saw him before.” He sounded aggrieved, as though it was Parker’s fault they hadn’t met before. Then he listened again and said, “All I know is what I told you.”
Parker reached across the counter and closed his thumb and first finger on the cashier’s nose. “Don’t tell fibs,” he said, and squeezed, and let go.
“Ow!” Eyes watering, the cashier jumped to his feet, the stool clattering over behind him. He still kept the phone to his face, but he looked as though he’d forgotten about it. Putting his other hand over his nose, cupping the nose protectively, he said, “What are you doing? You crazy?”
“I told you it was about Matt,” Parker reminded him. “Tell Brock I want to talk to him about Matt.”
“Hold on, Paul,” the cashier said and put the receiver down on the counter. He put both hands to his face and squinted past his bunched fingers at Parker. “That hurt, goddammit,” he said. “Hey!”
Parker had picked up the receiver. The cashier lunged for it, but Parker grabbed his wrist and held. He said into the receiver, “Brock?”
A thin voice said, “Hello? Artie? What the hell’s going on there?”
“I want to talk to you about Matt,” Parker said.
There was a little silence, and then the thin voice said, “Who’s this? Where’s Artie?”
“I’m the one wants to talk to you about Matt,” Parker told him. “I’m in a hurry, and I figured you wouldn’t want me talking in public here, so I thought I’d come by and talk to you at home.”
“About what? Who the hell are you, for the love of God?”
“About Matt,” Parker said.
“Matt? Matt who?”
“Matt Rose. You want more identification? A longer name, for instance?”
There was another silence, and then, in a quieter voice, Brock said, “No, I get you. You want to talk about him, huh?”
