him.
“My name’s Parker. I don’t know if Benny ever mentioned me.”
“Parker?” Pearson started a smile. “Yeah, Benny mentioned a guy named Parker. Once or twice. He thinks Parker’s the best there is. In his kind of business, I mean.”
“You’re in the business, too,” Parker said. “Anyway, you thought about it.”
Wariness came back into Pearson’s face. “I did? When was that?”
“The time you and Benny and George Uhl were going to do something together. Only it didn’t work out.”
Pearson didn’t say anything. He studied Parker’s face.
The woman came out with a tray containing iced drinks in tall blue glasses. She put it down and said to Pearson, “Business, Lew?”
“Yeah, I think so,” he said. He sounded cautious, wary.
“I’ll swim,” she said.
“You do that,” he said. He was keeping his eyes on Parker.
She went over and dove into the pool, and Parker said, “Benny’s wife called you about nine-thirty this morning.”
“She did?”
“I was in the house when she called you,” Parker said. “She called you because I asked her to.”
“She said it was for Benny.”
“I know. It was simpler that way, to say Benny wanted to get in touch with Uhl. But all you’d say was Benny should stay away from Uhl.”
Pearson frowned and picked up one of the drinks. “Yeah, I know I did,” he said. “I thought about that later and I was sorry I did that. It isn’t up to me who Benny works with. He knows what I think of Uhl. Just because I’ve got my own personal hack about George Uhl doesn’t mean I should keep somebody else from getting in touch with him.”
“What’s your bitch about Uhl?”
Pearson glanced at Parker, at his drink, He turned his head and looked at his wife floating lazily in the pool. He shook his head and said, “It’s a personal thing; it doesn’t have anything to do with business at all. You aren’t drinking your drink.”
Parker took the other drink and sipped it, remembering Brock and the drugged coffee. But there wasn’t going to be anything like that here; it didn’t have the feeling about it.
He said, “Benny doesn’t want to talk to Uhl. I do.”
Pearson frowned. “You’ve got work for him?”
“I have a personal thing I’ve got to get settled with him.”
Pearson gave a sour grin. “You too? Georgy does get around.” He was facing the house, with Parker facing the opposite way, and now Pearson looked at the house and said, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
“That’s why Grace called, huh? To get Uhl’s address for you.”
“Yes.”
“So now you’re coming to me direct,” Pearson said, and then he said, “Uh,” and a small black thing appeared in the middle of his forehead, making him look cross-eyed. His head started to go back, the black thing went deep, burrowing, turning red at the edges, and the sound of the shot finally caught up with it, a flat, echoless clap in the middle of the sunshine.
Parker dove off the chair. Things speeded up all at once, shots were sounding one on top of the other, Parker was rolling across flagstone and green lawn, the world was full of spinning confusion. Then he was in the shadow of the hedge and he could lie flat on his stomach, peering out, the smell of grass and dirt in his nostrils, the air surprisingly cool down here in the shadow of the hedge. Far away, Pearson’s body was still falling out of the chair, as though that little space existed in slow motion with the rest of the world boiling around it at top speed.
Parker had one of his guns in his hip pocket. He dragged it out and watched the house. There weren’t any more shots coming from there.
Pearson’s body landed. It made a soft mound on the flagstones.
Parker got to his hands and knees and began crawling along the line of hedge, coming indirectly closer to the house.
The woman’s head appeared up over the edge off the pool, staring at the body lying there. She began to scream.
Parker got to his feet and ran for a corner of the house. There were no more shots. He moved quickly down the side of the house, but then he heard a car door slam somewhere out front. He ran and got to the front of the house in time to see a pale blue Chevy disappearing away to the right. Uhl’s car.
He could hear the woman still screaming. Go back there? No, she wasn’t going to know anything, and a hysterical woman could be several kinds of unexpected trouble.
Parker knew what had happened; he could see the whole thing clear and entire. Pearson had told him about having second thoughts after refusing to tell Grace Weiss how to get in touch with Uhl. So he’d done something about the second thoughts, but instead of calling Grace back he’d gone directly to Uhl.
Uhl must have had a bad minute there when Pearson called him and told him Benny Weiss wanted to see him.
