“He left a number where you could call him.”
He made a bark of laughter. “That must be some number,” he said, and took off the windbreaker and read the phone number on the pad in the kitchen, then opened the phone book to see where that area code was. 518. Upstate New York, around Albany.
He used the kitchen phone to make the call, and after four rings a recorded woman’s voice, sounding like somebody’s secretary, announced the number he’d just dialed, then crisply said, “Please leave a name and number after the tone. Thank you.”
No. Parker waited for the tone, then said, “Mr. Howell will phone at three o’clock,” and hung up, and at three o’clock he stepped into the phone booth at the Mobil station out on the highway to New York, the only enclosed phone booth within eight miles, and dialed the number again.
One ring, and the man who answered sounded fat, middle-aged, wheezy. “Cathman,” he said.
“Not Mr. Howell,” Parker said.
A wheezy chuckle. “Not really possible,” Cathman said. “That’s Mr. Parker, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know anybody named Cathman,” Parker said.
“We’re meeting now, in a way,” Cathman pointed out. “The fact is, Mr. Howell was going to be doing something for me, but he told me he had this other project with you first, and then we could get together to plan our own enterprise. Unfortunately, he didn’t survive that earlier obligation.”
Parker waited. Was he supposed to be responsible for this fellow’s plans coming apart?
Cathman said, “I don’t want to sound forward, Mr. Parker, but I believe you share much of the expertise I found so valuable in Mr. Howell.”
“Possibly.” If this was an entrapment call, it was the flakiest on record.
“I expect,” Cathman said, “you’re not particularly looking for work at the moment, since I believe your part of the activity just completed was rather more successful than our friend Howell’s.”
“Oh,” Parker said. “You want me to take Howell’s place.”
“If,” Cathman said. “If you’re interested in further work in, well, not the same line. A similar line. If you’d prefer to rest, take time off, of course I’ll understand. In that case, if you could recommend someone
“
This fellow, whoever he was, was recruiting people for some sort of criminal undertaking over the telephone.Had Howell really taken this clown seriously? Or had Howell been interested in something else, that Cathman didn’t realize? Parker said, “I don’t make recommendations.”
“But would you be Well, would you care to meet? There are things, you understand, one doesn’t say on the phone.”
Well, he knew that much, though he didn’t seem to understand the concept in its entirety. Parker said, “A meet. For you to tell me what Howell was going to do for you.”
“Just so. You could come here, or if you prefer I could go to you. I’m not exactly sure where you are
“
Good. Parker said, “Howell gave you this phone number?”
“His wife did. I presume she’s his wife.”
“I’ll come to you,” Parker decided, because Cathman sounded more dangerous than interesting. He had no sense of self-preservation, and he was walking around with knowledge that could hurt other people. If he turned out to have something interesting, Parker might go along with it, take Howell’s place. If not, Parker might switch him off before his broadcasting interfered with anybody serious.
“Oh, fine,” Cathman said. “We could do lunch, if you”
“A meet,” Parker said. “Your territory. Outside. A parking lot, a farmer’s market, a city park.”
“Oh, I know,” Cathman said. “The perfect place. Amtrak comes up the Hudson. Could you take the train, from Penn Station? In New York.”
“Yes.”
“It’s less than two hours up, the stop is called Rhinecliff. Wait, I have the schedule here. What would be a good day?”
“Tomorrow.”
“That’s wonderful. All right, let me see. Yes, you take the train at three-fifty tomorrow afternoon, you’ll get to Rhinecliff at five twenty-eight. I’ll come down from Albany, my train gets there at four fifty-one, so I’ll just wait on the platform. You’ll find me, I’m heavyset, and I have about as much hair as our poor friend Howell, and I’ll be wearing a gray topcoat. Oh, and probably a gray hat as well, so the baldness doesn’t help, does it?”
“I’ll find you,” Parker said.
4
Amtrak was new, but the station at Rhinecliff was old, one end of it no longer in use, rusted remains of steel walkways and stairs looming upward against the sky like the ruins of an earlier civilization, which is what they were. At the still-working end of the platform, a long metal staircase climbed to a high enclosed structure that led above the tracks over to the old station building. The land here was steep, coming up from the river, leveling for the tracks, then continuing sharply upward.
A dozen people got off the train with Parker, and another two or three got on. He came down to the concrete last, the only passenger without luggage, and stood on the platform while the rest of them trudged up the stairs and the train jerked forward behind him. In his dark windbreaker and black chinos and heavy black shoes, he looked like some sort of skilled workman, freelancing, brought in by a contractor to do one specific job. Which he was.
