Abadandi moved forward, his silent shoes doubly silent on the room’s wall-to-wall carpeting. He went around the foot of the bed, looking at the sliding doors of the closet to the left, one side open to show empty hangers on the rod and one small suitcase closed on the floor. The mark didn’t intend to stay here long.
The air near the bathroom door was increasingly moist and steamy. Abadandi did some rapid blinking, to moisten his contact lenses, and reached his right hand forward till the palm was resting gently against the beaded wet surface of the door. The door opened inward to the right, and the sounds of shower and singing came from the right, behind the door. Abadandi held the gun out in front of himself with his left hand, took a small step closer to the door to brace himself for the rush, and sensed a sudden breeze of movement behind his back.
He turned, looking over his left shoulder, and the guy coming from the closet was already halfway across the room, moving low and fast. Abadandi had a split second to think,
The singing went on in the shower. Abadandi brought the gun around fast, but he’d started too late and there was no way to catch up. The guy dove, flat and low, his right hand going for Abadandi’s left wrist, his head and left shoulder thumping into Abadandi’s midsection, bouncing him at an angle into the door and the wall.
Abadandi wasn’t a fool; he didn’t pull the trigger unless the gun was aiming at something useful, and the hand on his wrist was keeping him from bringing the Trailsman around into play. So he forgot the gun, and concentrated on the weapons he still had available: his right hand, his legs, his head. He was trying to knee the guy even before his back hit the door, and though that first impact knocked the breath out of him, he still managed one good rabbit punch on the back of the guy’s neck before the guy dropped down and sideways, pressing his side and back against Abadandi to pin him to the wall while turning under his gun arm, trying to come up with that arm bent around backward, trying to lever Abadandi down into a powerless position on the floor.
And the singing had stopped. Abadandi, with everything else going on, took note of that; the singing had stopped the instant his back hit the door, meaning the one in the shower knew something was going on, meaning there would very soon be two of them in the play.
He hit the guy twice on the back of the head with his fist, but it made no difference. The guy was moving under his left arm, twisting the arm forward and down, pressuring Abadandi’s shoulder to follow, his body to follow the shoulder. Then the guy was through his turn, was rising again, was next to Abadandi now instead of in front of him, the two of them both facing out from the wall but turned slightly toward one another, and the guy had both hands on Abadandi’s wrist, one above the other, pressing forward and down. Abadandi couldn’t turn into that pressure, couldn’t get at the guy with anything at all, and he felt himself slowly but steadily bending forward.
There wasn’t time for this, not with the other one ready to join at any second. Abadandi had been a wrestler and a tumbler in high school, he still did some of the old tumbling routines out by the pool for the enjoyment of his kids, so now he suddenly dropped to the left knee, dipped the left shoulder, the one getting all the pressure, and rolled, somersaulted in a compact ball out toward the middle of the room, at the same time kicking up and back with his left leg, hoping to hit anything at all.
Nothing. But he did break the hold on his wrist, he did free himself. Spinning around on the middle of his back, still in the tight ball, still rolling away from the doorway, he came up on his knees facing the doorway again, his head coming up out of the ball-shape, his eyes staring up and out, seeing the second man naked and astonished in the doorway, and then seeing a dark shape angling toward him, zooming in at him like a jet plane, and he realized it was the other guy’s foot, coming up on a trajectory to meet the flow of his own movement. He hadn’t pulled himself free, after all; the guy had let him go, had stayed close to him, had followed the arc of his motion, and was right now aiming a kick at a spot in the air where Abadandi’s head was about to be.
He tried to stop, stall, alter, drop, lunge, shift, somehow change the movement, but the momentum was on him and the orders to his muscles were too slow, and he thought.
Twenty
Parker kicked the guy in the head, stepped to the right, kicked the gun from the slackening fingers across the room, dropped to one knee as the guy landed heavily on his left side, and chopped down hard on his neck with the edge of his hand.
That was enough; maybe more than enough. Parker shoved his shoulder so that he fell out flat on his back, and patted him quickly for more weapons. A .22-caliber Browning Lightweight automatic in a small clamshell holster attached to the inside of his right shin. Nothing else.
“What the hell is that?”
Parker looked up; it was Grofield, in the bathroom doorway, naked and with a cake of soap in his hand. “Either an angry husband,” Parker said, “or somebody from the people who got our money.”
Grofield came padding forward, dripping on the rug. Frowning at the unconscious man, he said, “No husbands this trip. He came here to kill me, huh?”
“Both of us,” Parker said. “He picked you first because he had a make on the car.”
“I’m too trusting,” Grofield said. He looked at the cake of soap he was holding. “I’ll be right back.”
“Sure.”
Grofield went back to his shower, and Parker went more carefully through the unconscious man’s pockets. Crumpled Viceroys in the shirt. Right side trouser pocket a key chain, containing two house keys, a small anonymous key, and ignition and trunk keys for a Chrysler Corporation car. In the same pocket forty-three cents in change. Left pocket a matchbook advertising the New York Room. Left rear pocket five twenty-dollar bills folded separately into thin flat lengths. Right rear pocket the wallet.
Parker carried the wallet over to one of the room’s two chairs, lit the table lamp next to it, sat down, and went through every piece of paper the wallet contained.
The guy on the floor was named Michael A. Abadandi. He lived at 157 Edgeworth Avenue. He was a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners and the American Alliance of Machinists & Skilled Trades. He had credit cards, driver’s license, and a bank courtesy identification card, but nothing indicating his employment. He was carrying fifty-seven dollars in the wallet, in addition to the hundred that had been tucked away in the other hip pocket.
The phone was over by the bed. Parker went over there, carrying the wallet, and put a call through to Lozini, at home. The male voice that answered said, “Mr. Lozini isn’t up yet.”
