Ask the Parrot

They started to strip the plastic off the duffel bags, and a glaring light snapped on in the next room. They stopped, looking at each other, and a voice out there called, “Anybody here?” The voice tried to sound in control, but there was a quaver in it.

Parker handed the duffel to Lindahl and pointed at the corner behind the open door as he started toward that doorway, calling, “Hello? How do I get out of here?”

Behind him, Lindahl moved silently into the corner, his face drained of blood, and Parker stepped through to the outer room, where he saw, over by the door they’d come in, a guy in a brown guard uniform. He was big, maybe six and a half feet, and once brawny, but now out of condition, older and too long comfortable. In the glare of the overhead fluorescents, his eyes and cheekbones showed fear. He was armed with a revolver, but it wasn’t in his hand, it was still in its holster on his right hip, and his right hand was still on the light switch just to the right of the door.

Now, seeing Parker, he lowered that hand to the butt of the revolver but didn’t unsnap the safety strap that held it in the holster. He patched over the fear with a deep frown and said, “What the hell you doing here?”

“Trying to get out.” Parker looked back over his shoulder at the safe room. “What kind of place is that?”

“What do you mean, trying to get out of here?” The guard, not sensing threat, had settled into the indifferently bullying tactic that would always have been his method with civilians.

Parker spread his hands. “Everything’s locked. I can’t get out of the goddam place.”

“That’s kept locked,” the guard told him, jutting his jaw toward the safe room.

“No, it wasn’t,” Parker said. “I saw the light in there, maybe it’s a way out at last.”

“I don’t get this,” the guard said. “What are you doing in here? The end of the day, every day, there’s a sweep, make sure everybody’s out.”

“I fell asleep,” Parker said. “In the men’s room, in a stall.” He didn’t try to act embarrassed, just matter-of-fact. “I didn’t have that much to drink. I been working double shifts for a while now . . .” He shrugged it off. “Can you get me out of here?”

The guard was suspicious, but he wasn’t sure of what. Nodding at the safe room, he said, “That door’s kept locked.”

“It was open, just like that,” Parker told him, pointing at the doorway. “Door hooked open and the lights on. You think I got keys to this place? Look at the door, I didn’t bust in, it was just like that. Listen, I’m sorry. If you wanna call the cops on me, go ahead, but I just gotta get out of here.”

The guard considered him. “We’ll go to the office,” he decided.

“If that’s on the way out,” Parker said, “fine.”

“You lead the way.”

“Sure. But you’ll have to tell me which way I’m leading.”

The guard’s right hand went from the revolver butt to the doorknob behind him. Opening the door, stepping to one side, he said, “Just go out and down the hall.”

“Sure.”

As Parker went by him, the guard frowned at the door he was holding. “Was this unlocked, too?”

“No, it wasn’t shut.”

“It’s always shut.”

Parker waited while the guard followed him out and pulled the door closed. “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “It was almost shut, but not all. I could just push it. And I saw those lights in there.”

“Something’s funny here,” the guard said, and nodded at the corridor. “Just go straight down.”

“Right.”

They walked past the door on the left leading to the stairwell that Parker and Lindahl had used. Parker didn’t look that way but faced straight, and at the end the guard directed him to turn left down a different corridor. This was a completely different route from the one he’d taken before with Lindahl, and it led finally to an elevator. So this guard didn’t like climbing stairs.

He also didn’t like being in the enclosed space of the metal elevator with Parker. He stood against the back wall, hand on the revolver butt again, this time his fingers toying with the safety strap as he looked sidelong at Parker.

At the top, the corridor was carpeted. “To the left.”

They walked down the corridor, Parker in front, and the guard said, “The open door on the right.”

“What?” Somebody past that open door had heard the voice.

Parker made the turn, and this was the security room, with banks of television monitors, shotguns locked into racks on the wall, and several desks, only one of them occupied, by a slightly smaller version of the first guard, equally out of shape.

This one started to rise when he saw Parker, then settled back again when his partner came in. Looking at the partner, he said, “Bill? Whatchu got here?”

“He was in the safe room.”

“He what?” Now he did get up from the desk and frowned at Parker but kept talking to his partner. “What’s he doing in there?”

“Says he’s trying to find the way out. Says he went asleep in the john.” Pointing at the monitors, he said, “You see him on any of the screens?”