Parker had made sure of that, though not as heavily as Rosenstein had done with Barri Dane. But Progressi was a loudmouth, a big talker with a belligerent facade, and that type never took long to empty. Just turn them upside down and everything they had spilled right out.
Parker had found him in the third place he looked, a bowling alley off Flatbush Avenue. He kept it calm and quiet at first, just telling Progressi he had a message for him from George Uhl.
Progress looked interested. “George? Something up?”
“Come on outside.”
“I’m in the middle of a game, pal.”
“You’ll be back.”
So Progressi shrugged and came out with him and they got into Parker’s car and Parker hit him in the throat. Then he sat there and waited till Progressi could talk again, when he said, “I’m looking for George.”
Progressi had a heavy face with a beard-blue jaw, but his skin was now white and unhealthy looking. Both hands were still up protectively around his throat, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse, “Whadaya hit me for?”
“So you’ll tell me where I find George.”
“You want his address? He’s in the phone book, for Christ’s sake. He’s down in Washington in the phone book.”
“You’re gonna try my patience,” Parker said, and backhanded him.
“Jesus!”
“All I want to know is how I find George.”
“I dunno! I dunno!”
Parker hit him again.
“What’s the matter with you? I don’t know. He isn’t home? I don’t know where he is, I swear to Christ I don’t.”
Parker sat back. “Anybody else been asking about him?”
“About George? No. My nose is bleeding. You got any Kleenex? My nose is bleeding.”
“No. Where am I going to find George?”
“Maybe his girl knows.” Progressi was snuffling, putting his head back. His fingers and wrists were bloody from his nose.
Parker said, “What girl?”
“Down in Washington. Barri Dane, her name is. With an i. She’d know where he is. Christ, what’s he done to you?”
“Maybe he’ll tell you someday,” Parker said. “You can go back to your game now.”
Progressi didn’t believe it. He blinked at Parker, blinked at the door handle. “I can go?”
“Put some ice on the back of your neck,” Parker told him. “It stops the bleeding.”
Progressi opened the car door. “You want to try this stuff on George,” he said. His voice was shaky. “You can’t push everybody around like this, not everybody.”
Parker waited for him to get out of the car.
Progressi licked blood from his upper lip. He was blinking and blinking, trying to figure some way to get his assurance back. “I’ll see you again sometime,” he said, saying it less tough than he wanted.
Parker waited.
Progress! got out of the car and stood there with the door open a second. “You’re a real son of a bitch,” he said. “You’re a goddam bastard, you know that?”
Parker started the engine and drove away from there, and the acceleration shut the passenger door. He drove straight down the coast to Washington and here was his first sign of Matt Rosenstein, and Barri Dane wasn’t going to be answering anybody’s questions for quite a while.
He shifted in the chair, looking across the room at her. If she’d wake up. But she wasn’t going to, she’d been doped to the ears. It would be tomorrow sometime before she opened her eyes at all, and she’d still be groggy then.
And he didn’t even know for sure she had anything to tell. It looked as though Rosenstein had worked on her a long time, maybe for as long as she’d stay conscious for it, so it could be she didn’t know anything at all and Rosenstein had just been tough to convince.
Why hadn’t Rosenstein brought along that drug of his? Maybe he preferred to ask his questions this way, if it was a woman.
But the hell with Rosenstein. The question was, What was Parker going to do now? There was nothing left except the cop in New York, Dumek, the one Joyce Langer had told him about. A patrolman named Dumek. He might be tough to find, and even if he was found he was a real long shot to know anything. Dumek might be one hundred percent crooked, he might be on the take every way there was, but he was still an unlikely guy for Uhl to go to with his hands full of caper money. But what the hell else was there?
He got to his feet, suddenly impatient. He wanted to go somewhere and there wasn’t anywhere to go. All this driving today, up and down, back and forth, hour after hour, and he hadn’t gotten anywhere at all. And he wanted to do more of it. His mind was full of the urge to get into the car and drive, just drive. Just to be doing something.
