Dirty Money

“Can you get it?”

“Oh, sure. I’m just not as fast as I used to be.”

She bent to the lock again, Parker keeping the narrow band of light on her tools, and at last, with a slight click, the door popped a quarter inch toward her. That was the other part of the fire code: exit doors had to open outward.

While she put her tools away, Parker pulled the door a little farther open, pocketed the flashlight, put the Bobcat in his hand, and eased through. Sandra rose, put the felt bag in her pocket, brushed the knees of her slacks, and followed. Now her own pistol was in her hand.

Voices sounded, and then a strained and painful grunt. The bedroom door, opposite them, was partly open, showing one side of the kitchen, the room illuminated only by the lights and clocks on the appliances. The sounds came from beyond that, the living room.

Parker went first, silently crossing the room toward the kitchen doorway. Sandra followed, just behind him and to his right, so that she and her pistol had a clear view in front.

They stepped through into the kitchen. The sounds came from the living room, lit up beyond the next doorway, but only one vacant corner of it visible from here. Parker skirted the table in the middle of the room, and made for that doorway.

“You cocksucker, you make us mad, we won’t split with you.” It was the bulky guy’s voice.

“Yeah.” A second man, probably the other one in the Buick.

More sounds of beating, and then the bulky guy, exasperated, said, “We’re trying to be decent, you son of a bitch. You’re gonna tell us, and what if we’re mad at you then?”

There was no talk for a few seconds, only the other sounds, and then the bulky guy said, “Now what?”

“He passed out.”

“Get some water from the kitchen, throw it on him.”

Parker gestured for Sandra to stay back, and stood beside the doorway. The Bobcat was too small to hold by the barrel and use the butt as a club, so he simply raised it above his head with the butt extending just a little way below his fingers. When the other one came through the doorway, Parker clubbed straight down at his head, meaning to next step into the doorway and shoot the bulky guy.

But it didn’t work. The Bobcat was an inefficient club, and his own fingers cushioned the blow. Instead of dropping down and away, leaving the doorway cleared for Parker, he lurched and fell leftward, toward Parker, who had to push him away with his left hand and club again with his right, this time backhanded, scraping the butt across the bridge of his nose.

The guy crashed to the floor, at last out of the way, but when Parker took a quick look into the living room the moment was gone. McWhitney was slumped in a chair from the kitchen, tied to the chair with what looked like extension cords. The bulky guy was out of sight. Was he in some part of the living room Parker couldn’t see, or farther away, in the bar?

The guy on the floor was dazed, but moving. “Mike!” he called. “Mike!”

“Who the hell is it?” The question came from the corner of the living room down to the right of the doorway.

The one on his back on the floor skittered away until his head hit the stove, while he called, “It’s the guy killed Oscar!”

“And who else?”

“Some woman.”

Parker moved along the kitchen wall toward the spot where Mike would be just on the other side.

“Mike! He’s gonna shoot through the wall!”

Parker looked at him. “I don’t need you alive,” he said.

The guy on the floor lifted his hands, offering a deal. “We can all share,” he said. “That’s what we were trying to tell your pal there.”

Sandra said, “Make him come over here.”

Parker nodded. “You heard her.”

“No,” the guy said.

“You go over there, you live,” Parker told him. “You stay where you are, you die.”

The guy started to roll over.

“No,” Parker said. “You can move on your back. You can get there.” Over his shoulder to Sandra, he said, “This is taking too long.”

She said, “Don’t kill anybody unless you have to.”

“I think I have to,” Parker said.

“Mike!” cried the guy on the floor. “Mike! What the hell are you doing?”

That was a good question. Parker went to the doorway, flashed a quick look through, then had to duck back again when Mike fired a fast shot at him, very loud in this enclosed space, the bullet smacking into the opposite wall. But in that second what he saw was that Mike had pulled the extension cords off McWhitney, and had the groggy McWhitney sagging on his feet with Mike’s left arm around him to hold him as a shield.

Parker looked again and Mike was dragging McWhitney backward toward the door to the bar. He didn’t waste a shot in Parker’s direction this time, but called, “You come through this door, you’re dead,” then backed through the doorway, shoved McWhitney onto the floor on this side of it, and slammed the door shut.

Parker turned on the one on the floor. “The money?”

Now that Mike had quit him, the guy was trying to figure out how to change sides, “in the bar,” he said. “He carried the boxes in before we jumped him.”

Parker turned to Sandra. “You let this thing move,” he told her, “I’ll kill you.”

“I’ll kneecap him twice,” Sandra offered.

But Parker was already on his way, back through the bedroom and out the door to the darkness. He found his way down the alley to the street, turned toward the bar, and its door was propped open, Mike just carrying the first carton of money out, in both arms.

Parker stepped forward and pushed the barrel of the Bobcat into Mike’s breadbasket. He fired once, and there was very little noise. “It works,” he said, and Mike, eyes and mouth open, darkness closing in, fell down, and back into the bar. Parker kicked his legs out of the way, pulled the liquor carton full of money back inside, and shut and relocked the door.

Going through the bar to the apartment, he stopped in the living room to pick up the extension cords Mike had used to truss McWhitney and brought them to the bedroom, where nothing had changed. Tossing the extension cords onto the floor next to the guy, Parker said to Sandra, “Tie him up. Let’s get this over with.”

Sandra put her pistol away. “On your stomach. Hands behind your back.” As he did so, and she went to one knee beside him, she said to Parker, “What about the other one?”

“He wasn’t so lucky.”

“Jeeziz,” said the guy on the floor.

“Stay lucky,” Sandra advised him. When she was satisfied he wasn’t going anywhere, she stood and said, “What now?”

“Let’s see what Nels looks like.”

He didn’t look good, but he looked alive, and even groggily awake. The two guys working him over had been eager but not professional, which meant they could bruise him and make him hurt, but couldn’t do more permanent damage unless they accidentally killed him. For instance, he still had all his fingernails.