he said.
“No, I don’t.”
Karns said, “You don’t sound happy about this fellow Parker.”
“I’d like to see him in a pine box,” Lozini said.
“What’s he done to you?”
“Claims I owe him money.”
“Do you?” It sounded as though Karns were smiling.
“No, I don’t.” This conversation was making Lozini uncomfortable; he had a sense of Karns laughing at him. He said, “But what difference does it make? Who is this guy?”
“You remember Bronson from Buffalo, a few years ago?”
“You took his place,” Lozini said. He was too irritable to be anything but blunt.
“I did. But I didn’t force his—retirement.” Bronson had been shot, Lozini remembered, in his own home. “That was Parker,” Karns said.
“You mean he’s the one—” Lozini stopped, trying to figure out how to phrase the question on the phone. Had Parker killed Bronson?
“That’s what happened,” Karns said. “He claimed our outfit owed him some money. Forty-five thousand, to be exact. The whole situation was ambivalent, and Bronson decided not to pay him. So he made various kinds of trouble and—”
“That’s what he’s doing here,” Lozini said.
Karns said, “Well, Bronson finally paid him off, but then he decided Parker shouldn’t get away with that, and he sent some people to—annoy him. That was when Parker figured he’d be better off dealing with Bronson’s successor.”
“You.”
“I had nothing to do with it,” Karns said. “Though I admit I didn’t mind it happening. But I didn’t meet Parker myself until a couple years later, when he helped us with some competition we had off the Texas coast. Did you ever hear about that?”
“No. What happened?”
“Ask around,” Karns said. “Maybe somebody local could tell you. Ask about Cockaigne.”
Lozini frowned. “Cockaigne?” He’d never heard of it.
“An island. But if you’re calling to ask me what I think about your problem with Parker, my advice is to pay the man.”
“I don’t have his money,” Lozini said. “He thinks I got it, but I don’t. Somebody else did.”
“But he holds you responsible?”
“Goddamnit, I’m not!”
“Good luck,” Karns said, with cool good humor in his voice, and hung up.
Lozini wanted to go on arguing, but he was holding a dead phone. Feeling angry and foolish, he slammed the receiver down and glared across the empty room. “I won’t be pushed,” he said aloud.
Eleven
At two-thirty in the afternoon Parker made another call to Lozini. When he’d phoned twenty minutes ago, Lozini hadn’t been available. “But I know he wants to talk to you,” the male voice had said. “He’s between destinations at the moment. Could he reach you anywhere?”
That had been too stupid a question even to answer. “I’ll call back in twenty minutes,” Parker had said, and had hung up, and now he was in a different phone booth making the second call.
The same male voice as last time said, “Oh, yes. Mr. Lozini just came in. Hold on, please.”
“For sixty seconds,” Parker said. Two years ago the local hoods and the local law had been in tight with each other enough to work together hunting him down in that amusement park, so maybe they were close enough for Lozini to have friends on the force who wouldn’t mind tracing him a phone call.
“Less,” the voice said, and went away.
Waiting, Parker looked around at the sunny afternoon. Grofield was at the wheel of the bronze Impala they’d rented this morning, after they’d checked out separately from the hotel. With the amount of fuss they’d made in this town last night, it was a good idea not to stay in any one place too long. The credit card they’d used in renting the car should be good for at least another week, giving them a mobile base of operations; later today, if necessary, they could find another spot to settle down for the night.
This phone booth was on a corner of Western Avenue, nearly out to the city line. The street was wide, lined with used-car lots and discount furniture stores. A supermarket the size and shape of an airplane hangar was a block away. Traffic went by fast, sensing the suburbs, but this was still a local in-town phone call.
“Parker?”
Parker recognized the rasping voice of Lozini. He said, “I still want my money.”
“I called Karns,” Lozini said.
“Good,” Parker said. “He told you to give me my money.”
