“He’s here.Look, look at him, he’s here.”
Handcuffs, behind back. Pain, in small mean lightning bolts, in the back of the head.
“I didn’t know he was coming here, I never thought he”
“I’ve been watching. You think you can lie to me? I’ve watched this house. He was here before, dressed like from the electric company, he spent hourshere”
“I never expectedhim to”
“I’m thinking, who is this guy? He’s not from the electric company, breaking in, staying hours.”
“He wasn’t supposed to”
“You came home. You talked with him.”
“He was in my”
“You drank wine withhim!”
Lying on the floor. Legs free. That idiot Cathman silent now. This one isn’t connected to Cathman after all, he was following him, watching him. Why?
“I didn’t hear everything you said, I came over after you came home, I listened at the side window. You called him Parker and he said he needed police ID and there was something about an assemblyman and you asked him when he was going to commit the robbery and he wouldn’t tell you.”
This one has been here all along, bird-dogging, waiting for it to happen. Who the hell is he? Where did he come from?
Cathman finally had his voice back: “You’ve still got it wrong. I’m afraid of that gun of yours, I won’t pretend I’m not, but you’re still wrong. I don’t know where the money is. You’ll have to ask him,if you didn’t kill him.”
“I didn’t kill him, but let’s wake him up. Go get a glass of water from the bathroom.”
“I’m awake.”
Parker rolled over onto his back, as much as he could with his hands cuffed behind him, and tried not to wince. When he moved, the pain in his head gave an extra little kick. He opened his eyes and squinted upward.
The guy was youngish, pudgy, thick-necked, in wrinkled chinos and a pale blue dress shirt; Parker had never seen him before in his life. His right ear was covered by a bulky makeshift bandage, what looked like a length of duct tape over several thicknesses of toilet paper. A red scar pointed to the bandage along his right cheekbone.
The biker back at the cottages had come very close, almost close enough. The .45 automatic slug does a lot of damage even on the near misses, and that’s what this had been. The bullet scraped facial bone, took out an ear, and kept going.
Parker nodded at the bandage. “You got any ear left down in there?”
The guy looked surprised, and almost glad. “Are you wising off with me?”
“Tell him, Mr. Parker,” Cathman said. “Tell him I have nothing to do with it.”
The guy laughed. He enjoyed being in charge. “Oh, now he’s mister,is he?” He held a little .38 revolver in his right hand, which he pointed at Parker as he said, “I bet, if I shoot you in the ankle, and then ask a question, you’ll answer it. Whadaya think?”
“I think this is the wrong neighborhood for gunshots,” Parker said. “I think it’ll fill up with cops, and I don’t think anybody in this room wants that. If you’d like to think with your brain instead of your gun, reach in my left hip pocket and read Cathman’s confession.”
That threw the guy off-stride. “His what?”
Cathman babbled, “It was a letter, I was never going to send it, I needed a”
“Read it,” Parker said. With difficulty, he rolled the other way. “Then we can talk.”
The guy was cautious, and not completely an amateur. He came the long way around Parker, staying away from his feet, crouching down behind him, touched the barrel of the revolver to the back of his neck, and held it there while he pulled the folded pages out of his pocket. Then he stood and backed away to the doorway, where Parker could see him again.
Cathman said, “I have to go to the bathroom.”
The guy was struggling to unfold the pages while not letting go of the gun or looking away from Parker. Distracted, he said, “Go on, go on.”
Cathman, looking like a large sad child in his yellow and green striped pajamas, got out of the bed and padded barefoot into the connecting bathroom, while the guy got the pages open at last and started to read.
Parker rolled again and managed to sit up, then moved backward until he could lean against the foot of the bed. He looked around on the floor and didn’t see the Python, so it was probably in the guy’s pocket. He watched him read, and thought about how to deal with this situation.
‘Jesus Christ.” The guy had finished. He dropped the pages on the floor and looked at Parker and said, “He’s a fucking lunatic.”
“Yes, he is.”
“He set you up to do it, so he could turn you in. That isn’t even entrapment, I don’t know what the fuck that is.”
“Stupidity.”
“All right.” The guy was more relaxed now, as though Cathman being an amateur and an idiot had created a
