Firebreak

'If you know of something,' Wiss said, 'Frank and me'11 listen.'

'No, I've got nothing,' Parker said. 'A little thing I have to do, but there's no money in it.'

'This one isn't easy,' Elkins said, 'but they never are. It's worth your while, Parker, if you come in on this.'

'Worth your while, too.'

'We know that,' Wiss said, 'that's why Frank called you.'

Parker considered. He had nothing else, he didn't know who had hired the hit man, Charov, he didn't know what complications that could lead to, but it looked as though he and Claire should stay away from the house for a while. He said, 'You cover my expenses.'

'Done,' Elkins said.

'And I don't pay you back out of my piece.'

'No, I understand that.'

'I gotta deal with a different problem tomorrow,' Parker said. 'Where and when do you want to meet?'

'The Muir, in Great Falls, next Monday,' Elkins said. 'You'll still be Lynch?' ,

'Yes.' Looking at Lloyd, he said, 'You're gonna be in Montana, your electronic gizmo is still gonna think you're in a library in Massachusetts?'

Lloyd laughed, with real pleasure, like a kid. 'That's what makes it fun,' he said.

4

Charov's place was a furnished apartment on Chicago's South Side, near Marquette Park. It was a sprawling dark brick building with a transient air to it, as though no one had ever planned to stay there long. Half the mailboxes and doorbells were unmarked, and many of the rest were handwritten on torn-off pieces of cardboard or strips of masking tape. Two bicycles in the clean but bleak front vestibule were heavily chained to vertical metal pipes, heat risers.

Charov's name was among the missing on mailboxes and doorbells, and Parker had no way to know which apartment was his. He found the super's apartment at the ground floor rear, beyond the staircase, and the second time he knocked the door was opened by a fiftyish very short stout woman in yellow tank top and jeans, barefoot. A lit cigarette was in the corner of her mouth, an unlit one behind her left ear. In her free hand she held a copy of the Star. She gave Parker a sharp suspicious look, decided he was neither a tenant nor a cop, and said, 'Yeah?'

'My brother Viktor's supposed to meet me at the airport,' Parker told her. He acted bewildered, starting to be worried, not very smart. He held his airline ticket up to show her, saying, 'See? I flew in from Albany, Viktor's supposed to meet me, he never showed up.'

She frowned at the ticket he was waving. 'Whado I care?'

'He lives here! Viktor Charov!'

'Oh,' she said, nodding, recognizing the name. 'Sure, that's right.'

'I had to take a cab in from O'Hare,' Parker told her. 'Twenty-three bucks! Viktor never showed up.'

'Maybe he's stuck in traffic,' she said.

'Maybe it's his heart,' Parker suggested. 'He had heart trouble once, maybe he's sick.'

She made an effort to act concerned. 'Did you try calling him?'

'No answer,' he told her. 'Come with me, open the door, let's see if he's there.'

She looked at her newspaper, frowning, not wanting to have to move out of her nest. 'My husband's upstairs fixing a sink,' she said.

'We'll just take a look,' Parker told her, 'make sure he isn't there, hurt or something.'

She sighed, feeling sorry for herself. 'All right, just a minute.'

She didn't ask him in, but shut the door, and he waited in the hall until she came out, now wearing sneakers and a lavender cardigan sweater. The cigarette was gone from her mouth, but the other one was still behind her ear. 'Come on,' she said.

The elevator was old and slow and a little too small. It creaked up the shaft to the fourth floor, and she led the way down a clean gray hall to the third dark brown metal door on the left. 'L' it said. The slot for a tenant to slip a card into with his name on it was blank.

She unlocked the door, leaned in, called, 'Mr. Charov?' She listened, then turned back, shaking her head. 'He isn't here.'

'We gotta look,' Parker said.

She frowned at him, irritated at how much of her time he was using, and shrugged. 'But we don't touch nothing,' she said.

They entered a narrow short foyer with a closet on the left, then a small living room with two windows in the opposite wall overlooking the street, and doors open in both side walls. The one on the left led to the bedroom, with a bathroom beyond it, and to the right was the kitchen. All was anonymously furnished by the landlord, with a few stray indications of Charov's tenancy. The rooms were empty.

'Like I said,' the woman told him. 'Stuck in traffic.'