“And where’s the boat guy?”
“In the river.”
The guy thought it over. Parker let him have a minute, but then figured it was time to distract him: “Cathman’s been gone quite a while.”
“What?” Startled, the guy called, “Cathman!” When there was no answer, he strode over to the shut door and hit it twice with the gun butt. Then he pulled open the door and took one step in, and stopped.
Parker said, “Pills?”
The guy stepped back from the doorway. “Well, there’s one from your wish list. Or almost. The color of his face, the sounds in his throat, if we called nine one one right now and got the EMT over here on the double, they just might save him. What do you think?”
“I think,” Parker said, “we should respect his wishes.”
10
Parker thought he was probably a cop. The way he handled himself, some of the things he’d said, turns of phrase. And the shotgun in the truck being from a police department. And that he just happened to be traveling with handcuffs.
Some kind of rogue cop, running away from trouble he’d made for himself, needing a bankroll to start over. Somehow, he’d heard about the ship heist, decided to deal himself in. Wound up at the cottages, same as the three bikers, so all they did was screw up each other’s ambush.
The question was, where was his road in? It seemed as though it had to be one of the other four people in the job, but none of them looked right for the part. It hadn’t been Cathman, who’d had a different agenda, it wasn’t Parker, so who else could it be?
Dan Wycza; Lou Sternberg; Mike Carlow; Noelle Braselle. He couldn’t see this mangled cop cozying up with any of them.
Anyway, if it was one of them, wouldn’t this guy know more than he does? But what else could it be?
Maybe, a little later, he’d get a chance to ask that question. But for now, they still had to negotiate their way through this matter of the search. Parker needed to make that search, because the alternative was to uproot Claire and start all over again somewhere else, and if he did that this time he’d be doing it again, and Claire wouldn’t be happy on the constant go. Claire liked a nest.
“In here,” Parker said, meaning in the bedroom, “you can do it for me. Open drawers, take out anything that’s paper, throw it on the bed, let me look at it, and we take away what I want. In the office down the hall there, we could do it this way. I go first, and stop in the doorway. You undo the cuffs, and I walk forward to the desk, so you’re always behind me. You stay in the doorway with the gun on me. I do my search. Then I walk backward to the door with my wrists behind my back, you cuff me again. Or you could just cuff me in front, then I could”
The guy laughed at him. “Sure,” he said. “Cuff you in front. I could ask you to hold my gun for me, too.”
“Then the other way. You’re behind me, you’re armed, if I try to do something you don’t have to kill me, just wound me. What am I gonna do about you at the desk? Throw a pen at you?”
“I’ll have to search it first,” the guy said. “Maybe you happen to know there’s a gun in one of those drawers.”
“Cathman, with a gun? Search away. You want to help me to my feet?”
“No,” the guy said, and backed into the hall. “I don’t need to be that close to you, you’ll work it out.”
Of course he would. Well, it had been worth a try. Using the foot of the bed to push against, Parker turned himself partway around, got one leg under his torso, and pushed upward against the bed until he was on one knee. From there it was easier, except for one second when he wasn’t sure he’d keep his balance. But he did, again by leaning on the bed, and there he was, standing.
“I knew you could do it,” the guy said. “Come on out, lead the way. We’ll do this office first.”
They went down the hall and into the office, and the guy had Parker stand in the corner between the two windowed walls, facing the wall, while he did a quick open-slam of all the drawers in the desk. Then he said, “Okay, good. A lotta shit in here, you ask me. Back up to the door.”
Parker did, and felt the vibrations of metal scraping on metal as the key moved around the lock.
“Stand still, I’m doing this one-handed.”
“Right.”
The cuffs came off. “Walk.”
Parker walked. His head still ached, and now his wrists were sore. He rubbed them as he walked across the room, giving himself a fireman’s grip and kneading the wrists, and then sat at the desk.
A lot of shit in the drawers, as the guy had said, but not all of it useless. He palmed a paper clip, one of the larger thicker ones, and when he bent to open the bottom drawer he clipped it to the front of his shirt, below desk level. There were also ballpoint pens, simple plain ones that didn’t retract. He held one up, showing it to the guy in the doorway, saying, “I could use a pen. Okay?”
The guy snickered at him. “To throw at me?”
“Sure.”
“You want it, keep it.”
Parker dropped the pen in his shirt pocket, and kept searching, and at the end he had two pages from this year’s weekly memo book, one with Marshall Howell’s name and his own written there (the name “Parker” was followed by a question mark), and one with that phone number of his that Howell had given away. He had also smeared his palms over everything he’d touched. There was nothing else here either of danger or of use.
