some things tucked to the side— a couple of hats and a scarf, things like that— but the middle was empty.
And the dresser drawers hadn’t always been full. And there’d been a dozen or more empty hangers in the closet.
They were both gone somewhere?
Parker went back into the living room, found the phone book and the phone, looked up the number of Brock’s record store, and dialed it. When someone answered, Parker said, “Hey, is Paul there? This is Bernie from Capitol Records.”
“No, he isn’t here now.”
“Be in this afternoon?”
“He won’t be in all week. He had to go a way for a few days. You want me to have him call you when he gets back?”
“He’ll be back the beginning of the week?”
“He wasn’t sure. You want me to tell him to call you?”
“Sure. It isn’t important. Tell him Bernie from Capitol Records.”
“Okay.”
Parker hung up and dropped the phone on the floor. Then he got to his feet and prowled around the apartment, but it had nothing else to tell him. It couldn’t tell him where Brock and the other guy were now, or what they were doing. It couldn’t tell him where Uhl was, and that was still the key.
He remembered part of the question-answer session from last night. He’d been asked if he had any other connections to Uhl besides Rosenstein, and he’d said Benny Weiss. Then the voice had said Benny Weiss was dead, so he didn’t have any other connection, and that was true. So here he was, and he was stuck.
Brock would come back someday, though. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Even if he and the other guy were after the money, thirty-three grand wasn’t enough to make him leave forever. He obviously had too many good things going already right around here.
So is that what Parker should do— stay here and wait for Brock to come back,-the other guy to come back? If they brought the money with them, he’d take it away. If they didn’t, he’d bend them until they told him where to find Uhl.
But that was so long and so chancy. If they had Uhl spooked, they could come back and not know anymore themselves where to find him. Or they could go up against Uhl and lose. Too many things could happen, with him sitting passive in this bombed-out apartment.
But what else was there to do? His only other link to Uhl was Benny Weiss, and Benny Weiss was dead.
Benny Weiss.
Parker stopped in his tracks. Benny Weiss. Maybe, after all….
The things he wanted from here he packed into a paper bag from the kitchen, and then he made his way through the mess to the front door and out. He was moving fast again.
Seven The porch was full of children. Parker went up the stoop and through them to the front door, and they stopped swinging on the glider, climbing on the railing, playing soldiers on the floor, and stared at him. He stood at the screen door, looking through it into the mohair dimness of the living room, and pushed the bell button. An Avon-calling chime rang far away in the kitchen. The children were silent and wide-eyed behind him, staring at his back because he was something new.
The woman who appeared at the far end of the living room, drying her hands on her apron, was short and round and dowdy, with fluffy gray hair and a faded dress and down-at-the-heel slippers. “Coming,” she called. “Coming.” She scuffed across the living room carpet peering through her glasses at him. Framed in the doorway he had to be a silhouette to her, unidentifiable until she got close, and he saw the instant she recognized him. Her step faltered; her hands stopped moving in the apron; her mouth got a sudden slack look to it. Then she became more brisk again, saying, “Parker. I never thought to see you here.” She pushed open the screen door. “Come on in. You kids keep it down, now.”
A half a dozen of them shouted, “Yes, Mrs. Weiss!” and the racket that Parker had interrupted suddenly started up again.
Parker stepped into the house, and she let the screen door shut behind them. She said, “We’ll be able to hear ourselves think in the kitchen. Besides, I’ve got some baking to watch.”
“All right.”
He followed her through the small, neat, overstuffed rooms to the kitchen, which was large and square and expensively equipped and full of bakery aromas. Three glass cookie jars along the back of one counter were all full, each with a different kind of cookie.
“Sit down,” she said. “Do you want coffee?”
She wouldn’t know about her husband yet, and it would help her if she was doing something when he told her, so he said, “Thanks.”
“Just a jiffy,” she said. Turning her back to him to start the coffee, she said, “You being here is bad news, I suppose. You being here, Benny not being here.”
“Yes.”
“He’s dead, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
She sagged forward for a second, her hands bracing her against the counter. He watched her, knowing she was trying to be as stoic and matter-of-fact as she could, knowing she would hate him to do anything to help her unless she was actually fainting or otherwise breaking down, and knowing that she had to have rehearsed this moment for years, ever since the first time Benny had gone away for a month on a job. Like Claire, Parker’s own woman.
