came on, and Parker could hear he was singing, not loud, not soft: “Be down to getcha in a taxi, honey, better be ready bout half past eight.”
Wycza was not somebody who sang. As he rounded the corner and walked openly past the doorway he’d crawled through just a couple of minutes ago, Parker reversed himself and got crouching to his feet, and hurried bent low back the way he’d come, to the last cottage, and around it to the front, where he saw Wycza just moving out of the range of the light toward the road. He didn’t seem to care that he was exposed.
Keeping to the darkness, being sure he couldn’t be seen, Parker followed.
3
Down the dirt road, where you couldn’t see the light from the cottage any more, Wycza stood waiting. Parker joined him and said, “What’s up?”
“The three bikers, like you said, in three rooms. Set up for an ambush, but gunned down. Two dead, one not. Not then.”
“Wounded? Took a shot at you.”
“The young one. Been hit high on the chest, right side, lying in the living room behind the sofa. Lookeddead. I found the other two first, one in a bedroom, shot in the back of the head, one in the kitchen, shot in the chest. One shot each.”
“Economical.”
“I was keepin down, movin slow.” Wycza shook his head, remembering. “All of a sudden, this son of a bitch in the living room rolls over, he’s got a .22 in his hand. You know as well as I do, you can’t hit your own pocket with one of those.”
“They’re not for work,” Parker agreed. “For noise, and for show.”
“So he shot at me, hit the ceiling or some fucking thing, and I put him down.”
“Okay.”
“The thing is,” Wycza said, “he startled me, so I come upright, and I did him, and I’m standin there, and all at once I realize, I got windows on three sides of me. You know that living room, it’s all across the front.”
“But nobody killed you,” Parker said.
“Hell of a way to find out,” Wycza said. “So where’s the guy from the pickup? Those three in the cottage didn’t shoot each other, and the pickup’s still there, but nobody’s shooting at me. Is he hurt? Or is he just waiting? Did somebody maybe put a bullet into the pickup guy?”
“Not with a .22,” Parker said.
“The one in the kitchen,” Wycza said, “carried a .45 auto, been fired once tonight.”
“That’s different,” Parker said.
“So I figure,” Wycza said, “long as nobody’s shooting at me anyway, why not just waltz around, have a look?”
“I watched you,” Parker told him.
“You weren’t the only one, I’m pretty sure,” Wycza said. “So you saw me stop at the bedroom window.”
“You were interested in that screen.”
“Three fresh holes in it, two pushing in, one pushing out. The way it looks to me,” Wycza said, “those three were scattered in the house for the ambush. Our pickup guy came over, shot the one in the bedroom. The other one ran over through the kitchen, got to the doorway, saw the pickup guy in the window, took a shot at him, the pickup guy shot him back. Or the other way around. Anyway, the biker dead, the pickup guy wounded. Some blood drops on the wall, like it sprayed when he was hit.”
“But he went on after the third one.”
“Well, he had to,” Wycza said. “In a hurry, hurt, got him in the living room through the side window there, another hole in the screen. But he didn’t feel healthy enough to go in and finish the job. Went to hide, hope to feel better, wait for us. But from what I could see, it’s only the one guy.”
Parker turned and looked back toward the cottages. “So he’s there, probably in the cottage between ours and his truck”
“That’s where I’d put him,” Wycza agreed. “Where he can watch, but where he can also feel like he’s got a way out if he needs it.”
“And he’s wounded, or maybe he’s dead now,” Parker said. “Wounded bad, or just scraped.”
“He didn’t take a shot at me,” Wycza pointed out.
“Waiting for the money,” Parker said. “If he’s alive, that’s what he’s doing.”
Wycza nodded. “That’s what I’d do, I was him. And alive.”
“If we burn him out,” Parker said, “the flames’ll bring every volunteer fireman in a hundred miles. If we just go in to get him, he’s got too many chances to get us first.”
“Fuck him, leave him there,” Wycza said.
“I can’t do that,” Parker said. “Come on, let’s go talk to Lou.”
4
Before they reached the main road, they saw headlights turn in, then go black. “The money’s here,” Wycza said.
They continued on, and found the van stopped behind the Hyundai, its sliding side door open, spilling light onto
