down in against his knees, arms wrapped around his head, making himself a black ball that rolled and bumped inside the turning barrel.
It was impossible. The cop had all the ammunition in the world over there, he could keep shooting and Parker could never get set for the one shot that had to be good.
So he got out of there. He jumped to the side again, out of the direct line of fire, and ran across a big bare room full of obstacles — treadmills and places where jets of air from the floor would lift female customers’ skirts — to a flight of wooden stairs. Behind him the barrel was still going around and around. Far away outside, the laughter and music at the front of the fun house was still carrying on.
He made the top of the stairs, and there were suddenly more shots. He looked back, and the cop was through the barrel and shooting again. The guy in the overcoat blundered out, too, bumping into the cop, sending a bullet into the ceiling.
There was a doorway ahead of Parker. It led out to an open area on the front of the fun house, a kind of balcony directly in front of the huge laughing face, up on the second floor. But there was another way out, too, a curtained opening three feet high in a side wall, and that was where he headed.
There was a chrome bar at waist-height across above the opening. Parker reached down, grabbed that with both hands, and swung through the curtain, feet first. He let go the bar and swept through into darkness.
A chute, metal, curving, was what he was on, a spiral that ran down inside the building. Parker rode it down, his arms folded across his chest, hands pressed against jacket pockets, to be sure he lost neither the pistol nor the flashlight.
The bottom. Lights, all different colors. More distorting mirrors, more fun-house gimmicks. But also a side door, with the dull red EXIT sign over it, tucked away in a corner.
Parker ran to that door, pushed it slowly open. He looked out, and this was the rear of the building, away from most of the light and most of the noise. Ahead, vaguely seen in the darkness, was the Voodoo Island band shell. A ways off to the left was the Land of Voodoo black-light ride, and off to the right was the fountain at the center of the park. There was no one in sight.
He stepped outside and carefully closed the door behind him, not wanting the rectangle of light to attract attention. He started away, headed for the band shell since that was the nearest structure, and suddenly darkness fell. Darkness and silence.
He looked back, surprised. They’d found the master switch and turned the fun house off again. There was no light now anywhere.
Good. He didn’t need light, not right now. He turned away again and trotted through the darkness toward the band shell.
Two
PARKER STOOD at the window and watched the flashlights bob, out there by the fountain in the middle of the park. He cautiously raised the lower half of the window and then he could hear the voices, though he couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying.
But he didn’t have to know the exact words, he could pretty much tell what the conversation was about. Apparently he’d lucked out. It looked as though he’d got their leader on the first try, back at the fun house. That was why they were being so disorganized now, they hadn’t worked it out yet who was going to be leader in the dead man’s place. That was why they weren’t pressing him now, keeping him moving.
But he should keep himself moving, anyway. He had to take advantage of the break he’d been given, chop away at them while they had no leader. And the first thing to do was find out how many of them there were in here, just exactly what the odds were against him.
He was in New York Island now. One of the ranks of stores had a second floor, containing administrative offices. The staircase was hidden behind a mirror in the women’s clothing boutique and wasn’t likely to be found by people in a hurry. That was why Parker had come here from the fun house, but now it seemed there was no necessity to hide out for a while. It would maybe be better to scout the enemy while he was regrouping his forces.
Parker was using no lights, not even a flashlight, so when he left the window and went downstairs he moved fast but with caution. To break a leg now, even to sprain an ankle, would be the end. He had to be able to move, to keep moving around. That was the biggest edge he had, that he was only one man, traveling light, mobile, not limited to a base of operations.
He closed the mirrored door carefully behind himself when he got to the first floor, then moved through the shop and out the front door to the street. He moved along the fake cobblestones to the right, past the shops, coming closer to the fountain.
They were still there, talking away. They weren’t arguing exactly, but they hadn’t yet come to an agreement. Two of them were doing most of the talking, and they seemed to be the ones Parker had seen at the fun house, the cop and the guy in the overcoat. When Parker got closer, he could hear that the guy in the overcoat wanted to report to somebody — Lozini, the name sounded like — wanted to call this Lozini and tell him the situation and ask what they should do next. But the cop didn’t want any part of that. He wanted to press on right now, get Parker, get it over with. He was vague on some of his reasoning, telling the other guy he knew what the reasons were, as though he didn’t want the others present to hear what he had to say. The guy in the overcoat kept saying, “Yeah, I know, I know what you mean. But I still say we ought to call, it could still work out the same. You think he’ll call it off?”
“I say let’s not cause ourselves trouble,” the cop said. “There’s only the one guy, let’s go and get him and quit standing around talking.”
Besides those two talkers, there were two others, neither of whom said much of anything. One of them was apparently the other cop who’d tried that crap with the loud-hailer when they’d first come in, and the other one seemed to be the guy in the black and white hunting jacket Parker had seen carry something out of the station wagon this afternoon.
Was that all of them? Could they have been dumb enough to leave the front gate unguarded?
It didn’t seem possible, but the thing to do was go and see, so Parker moved away again, left them still talking things over, and headed for the main gate. He went to the band shell first, around that, then around the Land of Voodoo black-light ride, then around Marooned! — the black-light ride where his money was stashed — then past the little office where he’d waited for them to come in, and finally to the gates.
