“I don’t have to call any—”
“Call him and ask him,” the voice said, “what you should do if you owe some money to a guy named Parker.”
“You come over here,” Lozini said. “I’ll pay you off, all right.”
“Ask Karns,” the voice said. “I’ll call you tomorrow night, tell you where to leave the—”
“I’m not asking anybody anything!”
“You’re making a mistake,” the voice said.
Lozini slammed the phone down. An instant later he regretted that and picked the receiver up again, but the connection was broken. Maybe he could have figured out some way to get the bastard within arm’s reach. Parker, did he say his name was? All right.
Lozini made a quick call. His really good number-two man, Joe Caliato, had been killed in that amusement park, killed by this same son of a bitch coming around now, looking for money. His replacement, Ted Shevelly, was going to be Grade A some day, but that day hadn’t quite happened yet. Still, he’d be more than good enough for this.
“Hello?”
“Ted?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Lozini.”
“Ted, you remember that trouble at the amusement park, a couple years ago?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The fella that caused it, he says his name is Parker, says he’s in town. Just called me on the phone.”
“On the level?”
“I think so. I’d like to meet up with him, you know what I mean?”
“Yes, sir, sure do.”
“Think you can find him?”
“If he’s in town,” Ted Shevelly said, “I can find him.”
“Good boy.”
Lozini hung up, and sat brooding at the phone a minute longer. An itch in his brain wanted him to make a long-distance call to Karns, a man he hardly knew at all, but powerful nationally. But what did it matter what Karns said? If this bastard Parker was really under Karns’ protection, he’d come in here openly, with soldiers of his own to back him up. He was a four-flusher, that’s all, a cheap heist artist with a gun in his hand.
Besides, even if Karns or anybody else said it would be a good idea to give Parker his money back, it wouldn’t do any good. Because Lozini didn’t have the bastard’s money. He’d had that amusement park tossed from one end to the other two years ago, after Parker had gotten away, and there hadn’t been a sign of it. And you can’t give it back if you don’t have it.
Lozini got to his feet, left the cabana, and walked back over to where his guests were standing around the wok, taking turns stirring the vegetables inside. They were relieved when their host came back to join them.
“Thanks, fellows,” Lozini said, and took the wooden spoon back from Nate Simms and looked in the wok. The vegetables had mushed down to a kind of wet green mass, a steaming swamp. The steam smelled like mildew.
Six
“Very nice library you have here,” Grofield said.
The girl walking through the stacks ahead of him turned her head to twinkle over her shoulder in his direction. “Well, thank you,” she said, as though he’d told her she had good legs, which she had.
They went through a section of reading tables, all unoccupied. “You don’t seem to get much of a business,” he said.
She gave a dramatic sigh and an elaborate shrug. “I suppose it’s all you can expect from a town like this,” she said.
Oh ho, thought Grofield, one of those. Self-image: a rose growing on a dungheap. A rose worth plucking? “What other attractions are there in a town like this?” he asked.
“Hardly anything. Here we are.”
A small alcove held a battered microfilm reader on a table, with a wooden chair in front of it. Smiling at it, Grofield said, “Elegant. Very nice.”
She smiled broadly in appreciation, and he knew she knew they were artistic soulmates. “You should see the room with the LPs,” she said.
“Should I?”
“It’s ghastly.”
He looked at her, unsure for just a second, but her expression told him she hadn’t after all been suggesting a quiet corner in which they could bump about together. The idea, in fact, hadn’t occurred to her; she was really a very simple straightforward girl, appropriate to the town and the library.
Out of habit, and not to offend the child’s feelings, he went on with the routine, pitching it slow and simple and without double meanings. “There must be
