reached out and put the slip of paper on the table beside it.
Parker picked up the paper and opened it, and written inside were two names and addresses, the first female, the second male. He looked at her.
She said, “The top one is the girl George was living with last year. That’s her address; he used to live with her there. They split up a while ago, but she might still know where he is.”
“All right. And the other one?”
“He and Benny and George were going to do something together once. It was his caper — he found it and planned it.”
Parker tapped the paper. “This guy? Lewis Pearson?”
“Yes. It was Pearson’s idea, and he brought Benny and George together. That’s how Benny got to know George — when they were planning this other thing. But it never came off.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Benny told me once he thought Pearson had never been serious about it. I don’t know what went wrong. But Pearson knows George.”
“You try calling Pearson just now?”
“Yes. I told him Benny wanted to get in touch with George Uhl, and he said I should tell Benny to stay away from Uhl, he was no good. I couldn’t push the question after that. Maybe you can.”
“Maybe I can.” Parker got to his feet. “Thanks, Grace.”
“I did it for the money,” she said.
I Eight After he rang the bell three times without getting an answer, Parker walked around on the smooth green lawn to the back of the house. It was a white ranch style, very new, on a plot big enough to make the neighboring houses barely felt presence’s beyond the high hedges bordering the property. A white Mustang in the driveway meant somebody was home. It was a hot and sunny day here outside Alexandria, Virginia, so maybe they hadn’t answered the bell because they were out back.
They were. The rear of the house was dominated by a turquoise swimming pool. A greased, bronze woman in a two-piece white bathing suit lay on a chaise longue in the sunlight, eyes closed behind sunglasses, and a bronzed, stocky man in black bathing trunks, with hairy shoulders, was swimming doggedly back and forth in the pool like a man being paid a small salary to do so many laps every day.
Parker stood beside the pool and neither of them noticed him. He watched the man swimming back and forth, and finally the man glanced up and saw him standing there and was so startled he sank for a second. He came spewing back to the surface and swam over to the edge of the pool, grabbing the tiles near Parker’s feet. Looking up, squinting in the sunlight, he said, “Where the hell did you come from?”
“I rang the bell and didn’t get any answer, so I came around.”
“That damn thing. We never hear it out here.”
The woman across the way had sat up and was looking at them.
Parker said, “Are you Lewis Pearson?”
“Yeah, that’s me. You an insurance man? You don’t look like one.”
The woman called, “Who is it, Lew?”
He turned in the water, keeping one forearm on the tiles to support himself, and yelled, “How the hell do I know? Give me a minute, will ya?”
“You don’t have to snap my head off!”
“Just butt outski for a minute.”
Parker said to the top of his head, “I’m a friend of Benny Weiss.”
Pearson turned around again, forgetting the woman, and squinted up at Parker once more. Thoughtfully he said, “You are, huh?” .
“Yes.”
“That’s a funny coincidence. Hold on a minute, lemme get outa here.”
Pearson turned away, pushing wearily off from the edge of the pool, and slogged across to the ladder on the other side. He pulled himself up out of the water, padded over to the empty chaise longue beside his woman, picked up a towel there, and began to pat himself dry. The woman said something to him; he said something back. She glanced over at Parker, said something else to Pearson, and he turned and called, “You want something to drink? Gin and tonic?”
Parker didn’t want anything but information, but he’d learned a long time ago that people liked you more if you let them play host, and people would only tell you things if they liked you, so he said, “That’d be fine, Thank you.”
The woman got up, ran a finger under the bottom of her bathing suit in back the way women do, stepped into sandals, and went off to the house. Parker walked around the pool towards Pearson, who was still drying himself, scrubbing vigorously with the white towel. He was of medium height, stocky build, about forty, and hairy all over, legs and arms and back and chest and shoulders. He finally tossed the towel back onto the chaise and said, “You want to stay out here or go inside in the air-conditioning?”
“It’s up to you.”
“Let’s stay out here,” Pearson said. “I’m working on my tan.”
He led the way to a table with a beach umbrella over it. Parker sat in the shaded chair and Pearson sat in sunlight. Pearson said, “I don’t know all of Benny’s friends. Which one are you?” He was being friendly and easygoing and relaxed, but Parker could see the eyes studying him, not yet having made up their mind about
