Firebreak

room. Parker started toward that doorway, then realized that was the mistake. The guy's knee was gone; how fast could he move, and for how long?

Parker went out to the hall and down to the dining room that way. When he eased his head around the frame, he saw the guy just to the right of the other door, Lloyd still visible through there on the floor, the guy leaning heavily against the wall, blood soaking his right pants leg from the knee down, his hands clenched on a chair he'd dragged over from the dining room table. He wanted Parker to come through that doorway and take the chair in the face.

No. Parker stepped into the dining room, showed the pistol, and said, 'Sit on it. You'll feel better.'

The guy looked at him. He was in pain, but he was still trying to find a way out of here. His eyes flicked at the side windows.

Parker said, 'I don't think so. You want him to come back, and so do I, but I don't think so. Sit down, it's still question time.'

The guy thought about that, then shook his head. 'I'm just the heavy lifter,' he said, wheezing as he talked. 'My partner knows everything.'

'You know some—'

Lloyd came erupting out of the other room, face twisted, grimacing with hatred and shame and revenge. 'You bastard).' he yelled, and stuck the Beretta into the middle of the guy's face, and pulled the trigger.

2

Parker stepped forward, knocked the Beretta away, knocked Lloyd to the ground, but it was too late. The thug's head was splattered on the wall now, and his body had dropped like a sack of doorknobs.

Lloyd, on his side on the floor, stared in horror at the man he'd just killed. 'My God,' he whispered.

'I needed him,' Parker said. 'You needed him. And you don't need this mess.'

'I didn't— I don't know what I—'

'You got tough all of a sudden,' Parker told him. 'Get up. Stop looking at him, get up, come into the other room, we'll work this out.'

Lloyd finally looked away from the dead man, blinking up at Parker. 'I was just... scared,' he said.

'Come in here,' Parker said again, and went back to the living room, where the furniture was a little messed up, not too bad, and the broken window

didn't show very much under the dark porch roof. He stood looking at the room, considering it, until Lloyd came in, shaky, unsure of his balance. Then Parker sat on the sofa, put his feet on the coffee table, on the story Lloyd had been writing, and said, 'You want to give this place up? Or you want to deal with what happened? Sit down.'

'Do I want to— What do you mean, give this place up?'

'Sit down.'

Lloyd sat, on the chair angled to Parker's right. He stayed forward on the seat, knees together, hands clasped on knees, worried face turned to Parker. He said, 'Move? How can I move?'

'You've got two choices,' Parker told him. 'You can give up being on parole, hide out, take your profit from the Montana job and turn yourself into somebody else. Or you can clean up this mess.'

'I can't— I can't—'

'You can do either one. They're both gonna be tough.'

Lloyd looked at the doorway. 'That man—'

Parker said, 'How much does the law watch this house?'

'What? Oh, the patrol.' Lloyd shook his head, to clear it. 'City police keep an eye on me,' he said. 'In a car, the regular patrol car. Not often. They just drive by, I see them look at the place, they drive by.'

'They never come in?'

'Once or twice, if something's different. A strange

car in the driveway, other people here.' He made a twisted smile. 'They want to be sure everybody knows I'm a felon.'

'What about when you drive away from here? Stop you, search the car?'

'A few times they stopped me,' Lloyd said, shrugging that away. 'Just ask me where I'm going, remind me I'm on a leash.'

'Search the car?'

'Never.'

'Do you have a tarp?'

Lloyd didn't seem to know the word. 'A what?'

'A large waterproof sheet,' Parker told him. 'Plastic, whatever.'

'Oh, yes, sure. In the basement. You mean for'—a glance at the doorway—'him.'

'You wrap him good,' Parker said. 'Then you clean up in there. You got any caulk, for windows, anything like