“One thing,” the man said, and waved in the general direction of the girl on the floor. “That one’s mine.” Then he weaved over and got into bed with the other couple, and began rummaging with the girl’s body under the sheet. Eyes closed, she rolled over to face him and put her arms around him, and when Parker left the room they were moving together, neither of them entirely awake.
Briley wasn’t in the last room. The ones in between had continued the same general style as the first one, and unit four was no exception, except that in here there was an odd number of people; a man and woman asleep in one bed, and a woman asleep alone in the other.
It took a while to wake the solitary woman. Parker finally took a warm bottle of club soda and emptied it on her. She sat up, then, sputtering, shaking, and Parker said, “Where’s Briley?”
“What?” She used the sheet to wipe her face. “Oog. I hate soda.”
“Briley,” Parker said.
“He got a phone call,” she said. “He went away.”
“Where?”
“How do I know? He wrote something down over there.”
“What time did he get the call?”
She peered up at him, squinting although the room was very dim. “Are you kidding?”
Parker left her and went over to the stand between the beds. The phone was there, and a pencil, and a small memo pad of blank white paper.
The woman patted the wet pillow. “What a hell of a mess you made in here. That wasn’t nice.”
Parker picked up the pad and pencil and walked around the beds and went into the John. He turned on the light and shut the door, and tried to angle the pad so he could read the indentations in the top sheet that had been left when Briley had written on the sheet above it. He could see the lines, but he couldn’t make them out.
There was a formica counter beside the sink. Parker put the pad down on that and very lightly brushed the pencil back and forth over the paper. The indented lines grew less dark. The scrawled note read: “53 2 mi N Romeo left church Gait on right.” Parker put the pad and pencil in his pocket, opened the door, switched off the bathroom light, and went outside to find a man dressed in nothing but pants blocking his way with a bottle in his hand, the bottle held as a club.
The man said, “What’s your story, Mac?” 85 “I’m a friend of Briley’s.”
“He ain’t here.”
“I know that.” The woman he’d awakened was asleep again, her head on the wet pillow. Both women were asleep.
“Then you oughta get outa here.”
Parker said nothing. He started for the door, passing to the man’s left. He went one pace farther, than dropped to one knee and the bottle curved over his head, the man grunting as the swing went past the spot where he’d expected it to stop. Parker came up behind the swing and hit the man twice in the stomach. A man who’s been partying has a weak stomach. The man made a sound, dropped the bottle, backed up two steps, ran into his bed, and fell down on it, both arms over his stomach. He landed on his woman’s legs, and she began to thrash around in her sleep. The man rolled over onto his side on the bed and stayed there, his arms still pressed to his stomach, his mouth open like a fish.
Parker went outside, where the sun seemed twice as bright as before, glaring off the concrete drive. Over on Route 59, trucks were going by, smudging the air.
The car he’d picked up in Detroit, a green Mustang, was down at the other end of this four-unit section. Parker walked down to it, got in, and drove a quarter mile to a gas station. He looked at a Michigan map while the tank was being filled. There was a Route 53. North of Detroit on 53 was a town called Romeo.
When he pulled out of the gas station, the beige Buick that had been following him since Mrs. Keane’s place was still behind him.
Parker slowed for the turn. He was nowhere near Romeo or Route 53. He was turning from a blacktop secondary road onto a dirt road that led directly into woods. The beige Buick, because of the lack of other traffic out here, was keeping well back.
Parker drove half a mile before he found a place where he could pull the Mustang off the dirt track. Trees hemmed the car in on all sides. It was green, which in here was a lucky color.
Parker left the car, crossed the dirt road, and made his way through the trees back the way he’d come, paralleling the path. After a minute or two he heard the Buick coming, and stopped beside a tree. His automatic was in his right hand.
The Buick went slowly by, crumpling twigs beneath the tires. The driver was one of the hoods who’d been with the fat man. The one beside him, Parker had never seen before, but he was in the same mold.
Parker shot the left front tire, and waited, and for a long time nothing happened at all. The driver had stopped the car the instant the shot sounded, the man beside him was holding a revolver up with its butt resting on the dashboard, and both were turning their heads, looking at the woods all around them. Neither tried to hide, neither made any move to get out of the car. It was a very cool, very contained reaction.
Parker called, “Drive forward. Very slowly.”
They both looked toward the sound of his voice, but he knew they couldn’t see him. He waited while they looked for him, then looked at one another, and finally the driver put the car in gear and it slid forward, the hood bumping up and down because of the flat tire.
The car went just a few feet, and then the brake lights went on and it stopped again. The driver called, “We’ve got a flat.”
“Drive anyway. Slowly.”
