blotter. He was careful to keep as far as possible from the revolver. He stepped back to the wall, holding the manila envelope, and gestured for Parker to look them over.
His name was Daniel Parmitt. He’d been born in Quito, Ecuador, of American parents, and the birth certificate was in Spanish. His Texas driver’s license showed he lived at an address in San Antonio. The photo on the driver’s license, with the glasses and the mustache, made him look less hard.
He pocketed both documents, looked around the room. What had he touched? The carpet, Bobby; nothing that would leave prints. ‘Come here,’ he said.
Norte didn’t move. His hands fidgeted with the manila envelope the documents had been in as he said, ‘It’s a misunderstanding, it’s all over. Bobby and me, we were gonna take these shits away, not mess up the office, then all of a sudden we got you here it was too much goin’ on, I got too hasty.’
‘Come here,’ Parker said.
It finally occurred to Norte that he was still alive and that he needn’t be. With small steps, he came forward to the desk and Parker took the manila envelope out of his hands. ‘Pick up the gun,’ he said.
‘No!’
Parker held the automatic leveled at Norte’s forehead. ‘You aren’t gonna point it at me,’ he said. ‘You’re gonna finish those three.’
‘Here? We didn’t want to’
‘Bobby’s messing your rug already. The other way is, I do you and I do them and I go.’
‘But what’
‘Ed says you’re useful. I say you’re too jumpy to be reliable, but you do good work. If you make it possible, I’ll help you stay alive. Pick up the gun.’
‘And, and kill them?’
‘That’s what it’s for,’ Parker said.
Norte stared down at the three men. The driver was still stoic, but the other two were now staring up at Norte, hoping something different was going to happen now.
No. Abruptly, as though to get it over before he had to think about it, Norte grabbed up the revolver, bent over them, and shot each one in the head. The carpet would have to be replaced for sure.
‘Keep shooting,’ Parker said.
Norte grimaced at him. ‘They’re dead. Believe me, they’re dead.’
‘Keep shooting.’
Norte looked down at the bodies and fired at random into their backs. One, two, click;the revolver was empty.
Parker held out the manila envelope. ‘Put it in here.’
Norte frowned, studying Parker’s face. ‘You want a hold over me.’
‘You make all this go away, what hold? All I need is, Iwas never here.’
Norte managed a twisted smile. ‘Oh, if only that could be true, no?’
‘We can make it true. Put the gun in here.’
Norte shrugged and reached forward to slide the revolver into the envelope.
Parker said, ‘Stand back over there by the wall.’
Obediently, Norte moved back to where he’d stood before. He kept his arms at his sides, palms forward, to show he wasn’t going to try anything, but Parker already knew that.
Parker put the envelope, bulging and heavy with the revolver, on the green blotter. He went around the desk, found his Sentinel near Bobby’s feet, and put it back in its holster. Then he picked up the envelope. Automatic in his right hand, envelope in his left, he backed to the door, as Norte looked around at the mess he had to clean up. His face had gone through too much surgery to permit it to show his emotions, but they were there in his eyes.
With a little trouble, Parker turned the doorknob with the hand holding the envelope. He stepped outside, let the door snick shut, and put the automatic under his shirt, keeping his hand on it in there, like Napoleon. But, as he walked away, Norte did not come outside. He had enough to think about.
13
Daniel Parmitt’s address in San Antonio, according to his driver’s license, was an office building downtown; nobody lived there.
Parker stayed in three motels off Interstate 10 for three nights while setting himself up in town. A real estate agent showed him rental houses, and the second day he found what he needed in Alamo Heights, between McNay Art Museum and Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. It was a three-bedroom two-story fake-Gothic yellow clapboard house with a turret, set back from a winding, hilly street among modestly upscale houses. Parker knew it was right, but didn’t tell the real estate agent; they looked at another four places before he suggested they try again tomorrow.
It was then two-thirty in the afternoon, time enough to get to a bank and open a checking account for Daniel Parmitt, using the address of the house he hadn’t rented yet, starting the account with a thirty-eight-hundred-dollar check from Charles O. St. Ignatius in Houston and a forty-two-hundred-dollar wire transfer from Charles Willis’s money market account in Galveston, so the money would he available at once. From there he went to the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles, putting in a change of address from the office building to the new house at both.
Next day, he said to the real estate agent, ‘Let’s look at that yellow house again.’
