Parker glanced at them. “Which one brought the army? Not Faran, not Simms, not Walters. You’re with Dulare.”
“You want to see somebody?”
“Not you,” Parker said, and headed for the living room. When they made a move at him he showed a gun. “Go in ahead of me,” he said.
They glared at the gun and frowned at one another. Slowly they started to raise their hands.
“I didn’t tell you to put your hands up,” Parker said. “I told you to go into the living room.”
They were reluctant to do it, to walk into their employer’s presence at the end of somebody else’s gun, but there just wasn’t any choice. Looking twice as tough as usual, hunching their shoulders so they looked as though they were wearing football equipment, they turned and went through the archway into the living room.
The four men in conversation over by the far window glanced casually, and then with curiosity and surprise, toward the new arrivals. Only one of them had a face Parker didn’t know, so that one must be Dulare. Talking to Dulare, Parker said, “Are these yours?”
Dulare, a tall tanned man with an autocratic manner, frowned deeply, saying, “What’s the problem?”
Frank Faran was suddenly grinning. “Mr. Dulare,” he said, “meet Mr. Parker. Mr. Parker, Mr. Dulare.”
“I know who it is,” Dulare said. “I want to know what he thinks he’s doing.”
One of the tough boys said, “We didn’t know who he was, Mr. Dulare.”
Faran, still grinning, said, “They braced him, Ernie, that’s what happened.”
It was clear that Dulare didn’t like any of this. He was mad at his bodyguards and mad at Parker, but he obviously realized he couldn’t say anything to either of them without somehow making a fool of himself, so he turned on Faran, saying, “I don’t need your help, Frank.”
Faran, offended, stopped grinning. After a second he shrugged and turned away and ostentatiously sipped from his drink.
Parker said to Dulare, “Send these two home.”
“They stay with me,” Dulare said. “And put that gun away, nobody’s showing guns around here.”
A pair of imitation Victorian chairs flanked an imitation Sheraton drop-leaf table on the opposite side of the room. Parker pointed the pistol toward them, saying, “Tell them to sit over there. I’m here to talk, not waste time.”
Frowning again, Dulare said, “Who called this meeting, you or Lozini?”
“I’m doing Lozini’s talking for him.”
Walters said to Dulare, “When I got here, Harold told me we were supposed to wait for either Al or Parker.”
Dulare hesitated, then made an angry sweeping gesture with his arm, telling his two men, “Go on over there, take a seat.”
They hulked away, aggravated and upset, and Parker put his pistol back out of sight. He said to Dulare, “How much do you know about what’s going on?”
“I know about you,” Dulare said. “You’re causing trouble. Where’s Al Lozini?”
Parker said, “Have you heard from Buenadella?”
“Dutch? What about?”
Parker looked at Faran, then Simms, then Walters. He said to Walters, “Doesn’t anybody tell this man anything?”
Walters spread pudgy hands. “We didn’t know, of course, if he, uh . . .” He gestured helplessly; it was intended to be a delicate motion, a subtle one, but with Walters’ ungainliness it came out as a kind of lumpish dance movement.
Still, Parker got the idea; Lozini hadn’t known whether he was being attacked by Buenadella or Dulare, so he’d kept them both in the dark.
Dulare had turned on Walters. “What’s going on. Jack?”
“Dutch is trying to take over,” Walters said.
“From Al?” Dulare sounded unconvinced.
“It’s true, Ernie,” Faran said. He seemed to take a vindictive pleasure in giving Dulare bad news. “Dutch has been setting it up for a couple years.”
Dulare frowned around at everybody, then said to Walters, “Tell me about it.”
“Let Parker tell you,” Walters said. “I think he knows more about it than I do.”
Dulare gave Parker a suspicious look. “All right,” he said. “What is it?”
Parker said, “The reform candidate, Farrell, is Buenadella’s man. The finish of the scheme is Farrell taking over as mayor from Wain. Buenadella already talked to some of the other people around the country that he needs okays from. I figured maybe he talked to you, too.”
Dulare’s attention had been caught; he was no longer irritable because of the defusing of his bodyguards. He said, “Who says Farrell belongs to Buenadella?”
“He does. I asked him.”
“And he just told you?”
