Ask the Parrot

“Shut up, Cal,” Parker said. “Tom, switch off that set.”

Cal, suddenly bristling, said, “My brother tells me to shut up. You don’t tell me to shut up.”

As Lindahl killed the sound on the television set, Parker took a step forward and slapped Cal hard, open- handed, across the cheek, under the patch. Cal jolted back, astonished and outraged. Parker stood watching him, hands at his sides, and Cal, fidgeting, wide eyed, tried to figure out something to do.

“Okay,” Cory said, stepping forward, not quite between them, but just to the side, like a referee. “Okay, that’s enough. If it goes any further, you got me, too.”

Parker half turned to him. “They say it was definitely one of the guys they’re looking for, and they say he was at this mall, and I’m not. But let’s say your brother’s right. They just said on the TV the bandits don’t have the money any more, or if they do, they can’t pass it because the law’s got the serial numbers. So if I am the bandit, I either don’t have the money or I have money nobody can use. And if I am the bandit, why weren’t you two dead last night?”

Cory had nodded through all of that, thoughtful, and now he said, “I don’t know.”

“What do you know?”

“Something doesn’t smell right.” Cory nodded toward his brother but kept looking at Parker. “Cal and me, we both noticed it, and we talked about it.”

Cal had apparently decided the slap on the face was now far enough in the past that he didn’t have to react to it at all, so, his aggressive style back, he said, “What are you doin here, that’s the point. Whether you’re him or you’re not him, and I still know goddam well you’re him, but even so, how come you’re here? What are you doin here?”

“Visiting my old friend Tom.”

“Bullshit,” Cal said. “Maybe those old farts at the gun club bought it, but we don’t. We never did. I took one look at you up at St. Stanislas and I said, ‘What’s goin on with that fella?’ That was even before I looked at the picture.”

Lindahl now stepped forward. He was paler than usual, and Parker could see he still hadn’t completely adapted himself to what he’d just learned from the television set, but his expression was determined. “Cal,” he said, “you never called me a liar before.”

Cal turned to glower at him. “You gonna punch me now? I don’t think so, Tom.”

“Then don’t call me a liar.”

“Cal,” Cory said, crowding in on top of whatever Cal had meant to say, “we’re done in here.”

Cal now had reason to glower at everybody. “Done in here? Whadaya mean done in here? Now the guy’s knocking off shopping malls!”

“That’s nothing to do with us,” Cory told him. “Come on, Cal. Tom, I’m sorry we busted in on you.”

“Anytime,” Lindahl said, though he sounded angry. “Just knock first.”

“We will. Come on, Cal. Sorry if we upset you, Ed.”

“You didn’t,” Parker said.

“Well . . .” Cory herded Cal to the door and out, Cal wanting to yap on about something or other, Cory pushing him out with nods and hand gestures, the two finally outside, Cory closing the door without looking back.

Parker continued to stand and frown at the closed door. After a minute, Lindahl gave him a puzzled look. “What is it?”

Parker nodded at the door. “Cory’s scheming,” he said.

9

Six hours. Six hours from now, Parker and Lindahl could leave Pooley and head south to the racetrack, which would be shut and dark and ready for them when they got there. That wasn’t the problem; the problem was in the six hours.

Cory Dennison was out there somewhere, scheming, that was the first thing. He’d decided that, whoever Parker was, he was up to something the Dennison brothers would find interesting and should therefore be in on. So what would they do? Hang around the neighborhood? Watch Lindahl’s house and SUV, follow them if they left? All the way to the racetrack?

All right; somewhere along the line he’d have to neutralize the brothers. But in a way, they were less trouble than Fred Thiemann, because they were at least sane and more or less sensible and knew what they wanted. Thiemann was none of those. He was a loose cannon, not at all under his own control, only partly under his wife’s control. There was nothing Parker could do about him that wouldn’t make it worse. If Thiemann were to die, at Parker’s hands or his own or anybody else’s, Parker would just have to forget the racetrack and hope to clear out of this part of the world before the law arrived.

Because once the law was interested in Thiemann, they would also be interested in Thiemann’s partners in the manhunt. The wife would lead them to Lindahl, and that was the end.

What were the choices? He could tie up Lindahl right now, or shoot him if the man wanted to make trouble, and leave here in the SUV. He’d have the car’s registration and the new driver’s license belonging to William G. Dodd, and if stopped he’d say his friend Tom Lindahl had loaned him the car.

But if he did do that, and it turned out at the same time that Thiemann was eating his rifle, Parker would be on the road in a hot car and not know it. Or he could wait the six hours, ignoring the Dennison brothers and trusting Jane Thiemann to keep her husband in line, and the disaster would find him sitting here in Lindahl’s living room with his feet up.

Another car. He needed a car he could safely drive, a car he could show up in at the roadblocks. A car with paperwork that wouldn’t arouse suspicion, no matter what was happening back here in this neighborhood.