Firebreak

'Rafe. Rafe, you there?'

'Yeah, sure!'

'If he comes back— Who've you got there? Anybody could hold them?'

There's always a few drivers downstairs,' Rafe said, 'but they already left, I don't think they're—'

'If they do,' Frank interrupted. 'If they do come back, don't call me first, call downstairs first, get your hands on little Arthur and whoever the other guy is, then call me.'

'Okay, Frank.'

'Which is what you shoulda done this time.'

'I didn't think, I just wanted—'

'I know, Rafe. Maybe they'll give you a second chance.'

'I'll—I'll take care of it, Frank. If they come back.'

'Good,' Meany said, and broke the connection.

Rafe hung up, and turned his troubled look on Arthur. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

'Sorry for what in particular, Rafe?'

'I'm not around violence, Arthur,' Rafe said. 'You know that, no more than you ever were.'

Arthur shook his head. 'You're around it now.'

Parker said, 'What's the link between Cosmopolitan and Paul Brock?'

Rafe had the scared reaction of somebody who's been falsely accused: 'Who?'

Arthur said, 'You don't know this fella Brock?'

'Never heard the name in my life,' Rafe said, blinking at Arthur. 'I'm not going to lie to you, Arthur, not now, not like this.'

'If you don't know Brock,' Arthur said, 'what do you know?'

'Frank came to me, a little while ago,' Rafe told him. 'He knew you and me kept in touch, he wanted to call you, give you a job.'

'A job,' Arthur said.

Rafe looked at Parker, then down at his hands curled on the desktop. 'I'm not proud of this,' he told his hands.

'Bullshit, Rafe,' Arthur said. 'We do what's needed.'

Not looking up from his hands, Rafe said, 'He wanted me to know, in front, you weren't gonna come out of it. So I wouldn't have a complaint later, he told me the setup.'

Arthur waited, looking at Rafe's bowed head. After a minute, Rafe sighed, shook himself, and said, 'What it Was, there was a guy worked for Cosmopolitan, I guess a hit man, I don't know, and he did private jobs sometimes, too. He did a private job that got him killed, and Cosmopolitan didn't like it, they had a lot invested in the guy, and it looked bad if their pro got put down by some independent named Parker that nobody knew, so they took it over, the private job, they made it a Cosmopolitan job.'

'My job,' Arthur said.

'Yeah.' Rafe looked up at Parker. 'I don't know what you're gonna do to me, right now,' he said, 'but you got a whole big corporation looking to shut you down.'

Parker pointed the Beretta at the memo pad on Rafe's desk. 'Write down Frank Meany's addresses and phone numbers. Where he works and where he lives.'

'I don't know where he lives,' Rafe said, and at Parker's expression he said, 'I swear to God!'

Arthur, quietly, said, 'I never knew where Frank lived either.'

'On the job, then,' Parker said.

Rafe looked from one to the other, not saying he was dead no matter what he did now, because they all knew that. Then he made a sour face and said, 'He's at Cosmopolitan, over in Bayonne.'

Parker looked at Arthur. 'You know the place?'

Shaking his head, Arthur said, 'I used to know the address. I was never there.'

Parker nodded at Rafe. 'Write it down.'

Obediently, Rafe picked up his pen and wrote the company name and address on the memo pad.

Parker said, 'What does he do there?'

'PR,' Rafe said.

Parker frowned. 'What?'

'Public relations,' Rafe explained. 'He's head of public relations.'

'That's the company's idea of a joke,' Arthur said, picking up the whole pad, putting it in his jacket pocket. 'That and bombs.' Looking at Parker, he gestured toward Rafe: 'Why won't he call Frank as soon as we leave?'

'Because,' Parker said, 'either I shoot him dead, or he comes with us. It's up to him.'