Ask the Parrot

Lindahl took a shopping cart and pushed it away into the sparsely populated store. Parker watched him go, then turned and walked back outside and headed down the row of secondary shops. On the way in, he’d picked the one he thought he probably wanted, a youth clothing store featuring baggy jeans and baseball caps and sweatshirts with penitentiary names on them.

Yes. Reaching that store, looking in the plate-glass window past the display of elaborate sneakers designed like space stations, he saw no customers, only the clerk, a skinny high school kid wearing the store’s product as he moved slowly around, halfheartedly neatening the stock.

Parker went into the store, and the kid looked up, first hopeful and then blank when he realized this was unlikely to be a customer. “Yes, sir? What can I do for you?”

“Well,” Parker said, and showed him the pistol, “you can open that cash register over there and then you can lie facedown on the floor behind the counter.”

The kid gaped at the pistol and then at Parker, as though he’d lost the ability to understand English. Parker lifted the gun so it pointed at the kid’s nose from a foot away. “Or,” he said, “I can shoot you in the face and open the cash register myself.”

“No, I’ll do it!”

The kid abruptly moved, all jangly limbs, bumping into things as he hurried around the end of the counter and opened the cash register. He stepped back from it and stared at Parker. “You won’t shoot me?”

“Not if you’re facedown on the floor.”

The kid dropped as though in fact he had been shot, and when he was on the floor, he put his hands over the back of his head, trembling fingers entwined.

Parker reached over the counter into the cash register drawer and removed the twenties and tens, touching only the money. Then he looked down at the kid and said, “Look at your watch.”

The enlaced hands sprang apart, and the kid arched his back to look at the large round watch on his left wrist.

“I’ll be outside for five minutes. If I look through the window and see you up, I’ll shoot. Five minutes. Got that?”

“Yes, sir.” The kid kept staring at the watch, body arched.

Parker turned away, left the shop, and walked back to the large store, where he went inside and found Lindahl on line at a checkout counter, only one other shopper in front of him. In his shopping cart were two dark brown duffel bags folded into clear plastic bags and two pairs of yellow kitchen gloves mounted on cardboard in shrink- wrap. He nodded to Parker: “Found it. You get anything?”

“No, I just looked around.”

Lindahl’s turn came, and he paid and got his purchases in a large plastic bag with the store’s name over a smiley face. They walked out of the store, Lindahl carrying the bag and saying, “Should I drive back?”

“Sure.”

Parker gave him the keys. In the car, they started out to the road, but then had to wait while a police car rushed by, lights flashing and siren ablare. Lindahl watched them go by, startled. “What do you think that is?”

“Nothing to do with us,” Parker said.

6

They stopped at a run-down traditional diner for lunch on the way back. They chose a table beside the large window with its view out to very little Sunday traffic on this secondary road, and after they’d given the waitress their orders, Parker said, “Tell me about the Dennisons.”

“The who? Oh, Cory and Cal? What do you want to know about them for?”

“They came to see me last night. Right after you left.”

“They came— They were at my place?”

“They think I might be one of the missing robbers.”

“Jesus!” Lindahl looked as though he just might jump straight up and out of the diner and run a hundred miles down the road. “What are they gonna do?”

“If I am one of the robbers,” Parker said, “they think I must have a bunch of money on me.”

“But you don’t.”

“But if I was and I did, I could give Cal money to get plastic surgery and an artificial eye.”

“Oh, for—” No longer in a panic, Lindahl now looked as though he’d never heard anything so dumb. “They said that to you? You’re the robber, and give us some of the money?”

“The robber part wasn’t said.”

“But that’s what it was all about. And if you give them the money, they won’t report you? Is that the idea?”

“I suppose so.”

“That’s a Cal idea, all right,” Lindahl said. “He’s jumped off barn roofs since he was a little kid.”

“Cory’s the smart one,” Parker agreed, “but he follows the other one’s lead. They say they’re gonna come back today and talk to you.”

Lindahl was astonished all over again. “Talk to me? About what?”