The Outfit

by Richard Stark

  Johnny moved very slowly, reaching around under the apron to his hip pocket and coming up with a worn brown leather wallet. Parker said, “Toss it on the desk.”

  “I got a lot of papers in there,” Johnny told him. “Driver’s licence and stuff.”

  “Good,” said Parker. It would go with the papers from the poker players in Miami. Legitimate papers were always useful. He dropped the wallet in the box and closed the top. Then he switched the gun to his left hand, picked up the box in his right, and swung it against St Clair’s head. It made a dull echoing sound. When St Clair woke up, he’d be in a hospital.

  Parker put the box down, got into his topcoat, and picked the box up again. “Now,” he said, “We’re going outside. We’ll go through the kitchen and out the back way, and you won’t say anything to that boy working back there, not even hello. You got me?”

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  “Don’t be brave, Johnny, you just work here. Let’s go.”

  Johnny led the way, and Parker followed, cradling the metal box. They went out to the hallway and turned right to go through the kitchen. The Negro was still sweating at the clipper, shoving dirty dishes in at one end and pulling clean dishes out at the other. The clipper made a lot of noise and he didn’t even notice them going through. The kitchen was steamy from the clipper, which made the outside air seem even colder and damper than before.

  After they went out, Parker closed the door. It was pitch-black, and it took Parker a few seconds for his eyes to adjust. Then he saw and heard Johnny making a run for it to the left. He smiled thinly and followed. They both went around the building, Johnny crashing and blundering ahead, Parker moving silently in his wake. Then Johnny burst out to the brightly-lit sidewalk and ducked to the left around the corner of the building towards the entrance. Parker made it to the sidewalk and walked the other way. In three steps he was in darkness, and then he was around the corner. He got into the Olds, put the metal box on the seat beside him, and drove away.

  FOUR

  In spidery Gothic script, the name plate on the ivory door read: Justin Fairfax

  Parker looked at the name, then touched his finger to the button beside the door. The apartment within was soundproofed. Standing in the muted hall, Parker couldn’t hear the bell or chimes or whatever sound the button produced. Probably chimes. He waited, looking at the name plate on the door.

  Justin Fairfax. He hadn’t moved. That was stupid, it really was. He should have moved.

  Parker had been here once before, while trying to get his money back from the syndicate. Justin Fairfax was one of the two men in charge of the New York area of the Outfit’s operations.

  The door opened. A heavy set, distrustful man stood there, his right hand near his jacket lapel. He asked quietly, “What is it?”

  Beyond him, Parker could see the elegant living room with its white broadloom carpet, white leather sofa, and free-form glass coffee table. The twin brothers of the heavyset man lounged there, looking out of place, like burglars resting in the middle of a heist.

  “I’ve got a message for Mr Fairfax. From Jim St Clair,” Parker said.

  “What’s the message?”

  “I’m supposed to deliver it to him personally.”

  “Tough. What’s the message?”

  Parker shrugged. “I’ll go tell Mr St Clair you wouldn’t let me in,” he said. He turned away and headed for the elevator.

  “Hold on.”

  Parker looked back.

  “All right. You wait there, I’ll see what Mr Fairfax has to say.”

  “I’ll wait inside. I don’t want to hang around the hallway.”

  The heavyset man made an angry face. “All right,” he said, “get in here.”

  Parker went in, and the heavyset man dosed the door after him. They stepped down into the living room, and the man warned, “Watch this bird!” Then he crossed the room and went through another door which led deeper into the apartment.

  The twin brothers watched him. Parker stood with his hands in his pockets, his right hand on the .38. His topcoat was unbuttoned, so he could aim the gun in any direction from within the pocket.

  The heavyset man came back, followed by Fairfax. Fairfax was tall and stately, greying at the temples, with a smartly clipped pepper-and-salt moustache. He was about fifty-five, and had obviously spent a lot of time in gymnasiums. He was wearing a silk Japanese robe and wicker sandals. He looked at Parker and frowned. “Do I know you?”

  The new face came in handy sometimes. Parker said, “I work for Mr St Clair. You might of seen me around with him.”

  “Mmmm.” Fairfax touched his moustache with the tips of his fingers. “Well, what’s the message?”

  Parker glanced meaningfully at the bodyguards. “Mr St Clair said I should keep it private.”

  “You can speak in front of these men.”

  “Well — it has to do with Parker.”

  Fairfax smiled thinly. “Parker is the reason these men are here,” he said. “What about him?”

  “He knocked over The Three Kings tonight.”

  “He what?”

  “He beat up Mr St Clair and the bartender. He walked off with thirty-four hundred dollars.”

  “So he’s in New York.” Fairfax mused, stroking his moustache.

  “He told Mr St Clair he was coming to see you next.”

  “He did, eh?” Fairfax glanced around at his three bodyguards. He smiled again, with scornful amusement. “I think we’re ready for him if he does come,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  “No.”

  Parker fired through his pocket, and the heavyset man who had let him in staggered back one step and fell over a table, scattering magazines to the floor. The twin brothers jumped to their feet, but Parker pulled the gun from his pocket and they stopped, frozen in midgesture. Fairfax backed up until his shoulders brushed the far wall; his face was pale and haggard, and his fingers now covered his moustache completely.

  Parker ordered the twins, “Pick him up. Fairfax, lead the way. Same bedroom as last time,” The last time he had been here, they’d been bodyguards, too. They’d been locked in a bedroom while Parker said what he had to say.

  The twins went over to the man on the floor. One of them looked up, saying, “He isn’t dead.”

  “I know. I caught him in the shoulder. You can call a doctor after I leave here.”

  Fairfax, looking stunned, led the way. The brothers followed, carrying the wounded man, and Parker came last. They went into the bedroom and the twins put the wounded man down on the bed. Fairfax pursed his lips at that, but didn’t say anything.

  Parker said, “Guns on the floor. Move very slow and easy, and one at a time. You first.”

  They did as they were told. Then Parker had them stand a few feet back from the wall, leaning on their hands, bodies off balance. He frisked them, finding nothing more on them. He relieved the wounded man of his gun, picked up the three guns in his left hand by their trigger guards, and motioned Fairfax to precede him out of the bedroom. Parker locked the door behind him. He and Fairfax went back to the living room.

  Fairfax had regained some of his composure. “I don’t know what you hope to gain,” he said. “You’ll keep annoying us, and we’ll keep hunting you. The end is inevitable.”

  “Wrong. You aren’t hunting me, I’m hunting you. Right now, I’m hunting Bronson.”

  “You won’t get at him as readily as you got at me.”

  “Let me worry about that. This is the second time I’ve met up with you, Fairfax, and you can live through it this time too, if you cooperate.”

  “Whatever you want, it’s beyond my power to give it to you.”

  “No, it isn’t. I want two things. I want to know where Bronson is now and where he’ll be for the next week or two. And I want to know who in the Outfit is slated to take over if anything happens to Bronson.”

  Fairfax’s smile was shaky. “It would be worth my life to tell you either of those things.”
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  “You won’t have any life left if you don’t. I got your body guards out of the way so you could tell me without anybody knowing. I’m making it easy on you.”

  “I’m sorry. This time you’ll just have to kill me.” His voice had a quaver in it, but he met Parker’s eyes and he kept his hand away from his moustache.

  Parker considered. Then he said, “All right, we’ll make it easier than that. You know who’s next in line after Bronson. I want to get in touch with you.”

  “Why?”

  “You listen, and you’ll find out. What’s his name?”

  Fairfax thought it over. His hand came up stealthily and lingered at his moustache. He said, finally, as though to himself, “You want to make a deal. All right, there’s no harm in that. It’s Walter Karns.”

  “Can you call him now?”

  “I imagine he’s at his place in Los Angeles.”

  “Phone him.”

  Fairfax got on the phone. Karns wasn’t at the first two places he tried. Fairfax finally got in touch with him in Seattle, and said, “Hold on a second.” He hadn’t identified himself.

  Parker took the phone. “Karns?”

  “Yes?” It was a rich voice, a brandy-and-cigar voice. “Who is it?”

  “I’m Parker. Ever hear of me?”

  “Parker? The Parker who’s been causing all that trouble in the East?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Well, well, well. To what do I owe the honour?”

  “If anything happens to Bronson, you’re in, right?”

  “What? Well, now, you’re going a little fast there, aren’t you?”

  “I’m going after Bronson. Maybe I can make a deal with him, so we’ll both be satisfied.”

  “I really doubt that, you know.”

  “Maybe I can, maybe I can’t. If I don’t, you’re next in line. What I want to know is should I spend any time talking to Bronson?”

  “Well, well! So that’s it!”

  “Do I try to make a deal with Bronson?”

  “He’ll never do it, you know.”

  “You got any other reasons why I shouldn’t try?”

  “Hold on. Let me think about this.”

  Parker held on. After a minute, Karns said, “I think we could probably work something out, Parker.”

  “You people go your way, I go mine. You don’t annoy me, I don’t annoy you.”

  “That certainly sounds reasonable.”

  “Yeah. Give me a guarantee.”

  “A guarantee? Well, now. Yes, I see your position, of course, but — a guarantee. I’m not sure I know what guarantee I could give you.”

  “Right now, the Outfit is out to get me. If you take over, what happens?”

  “After this conversation? If I take over, as you say, as a result of any activity on your part, I assure you I’ll be grateful. The organization would no longer bother you in anyway. As to what guarantee I could give you —”

  “Never mind. I’ll give you a guarantee. I’ll get Bronson. I got Carter — you remember him?”

  “From New York? Yes, I remember that clearly.”

  “And I had my hands on Fairfax once. And, now, I’ll get Bronson. That means, if I have to, I can find you, too.”

  “You seem to have found me already. Who was that on the phone before you?”

  “That’s not part of the deal. I just want you to understand the situation.”

  “I think I understand, Parker. Believe me, if you succeed in ending the career of Arthur Bronson, you will have my undying respect and admiration. I would no more cross you thereafter than I would shake hands with a scorpion.”

  Parker motioned for Fairfax to come close. Into the phone, he said, “Say it plain and simple. If I get Bronson, what?”

  He held the phone out towards Fairfax. They both heard the faint voice say, “If you get Arthur Bronson, Mr Parker, the organization will never bother you again.”

  Parker brought the phone back to his mouth and said, “That’s good. Goodbye, Mr Karns.”

  “Goodbye, Mr Parker. And, good hunting!”

  Parker hung up. He turned to Fairfax. “Well?”

  Fairfax stroked his moustache. “I’ve always admired Karns,” he said. “And I never did like Bronson. You’ll find him in Buffalo. He’s staying at his wife’s house until you’re found. 798 Delaware, facing the park.”

  “All right, Fairfax. Now listen. What happens if you warn Bronson?”

  “I won’t, you can rely on that.”

  “But what happens if you do? You have to let him know you told me where to find him. He wouldn’t take any excuse at all for that.”

  “I’m not going to warn him.”

  “What about those bodyguards of yours? Can you keep them quiet about tonight?”

  “They work for me, not for Bronson.”

  “All right.” Parker went to the hall door and opened it. “Goodbye, Fairfax.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Parker boarded the elevator and rode down. He walked out on to Fifth Avenue. Central Park was in front of him and the Olds was illegally parked around the corner. He plucked the green ticket from under the windshield wiper, ripped it in two, and dropped the pieces in the gutter. Then he got behind the wheel, First to Scranton to pick up Handy McKay, if Handy felt like coming, and then on to Buffalo.

  PART THREE

  ONE

  Rolling slow and silent beside the park in the late-morning sunlight, the two black Cadillacs formed a convoy that moved at measured pace along the blacktop street. Dappled sunlight filtered through the park-side trees reflecting semaphoric highlights from the polished chrome. Alone in the rear seat of the second Cadillac, Arthur Bronson chewed sourly on his cigar and glowered out in distaste at the beautiful day. The late November air was crisp, clean, and cold, the late November sunlight bright and shimmering. A few scarlet leaves still clung to some of the trees along the park’s edge relieving the stark blackness of their trunks and branches.

  A hell of a place to be in November! he thought, thinking of Las Vegas. He glanced ahead, saw his wife’s house and repeated the thought: A hell of a place to be in November. A hell of a place to be anytime.

  It was a big stone monstrosity of a house facing the park. Twenty-one rooms, tall narrow windows, three stories, four staircases, impossible to heat. Putting in decent wiring and plumbing had cost a fortune. Buying statues to fill the niches and paintings for the walls had cost another fortune. And then rugs. And half the furniture on the Eastern Seaboard. For what? For a house he inhabited not more than three months out of the year unless something unusual came up.

  But Willa had wanted it. She was a Buffalo girl, from the cracked-sidewalk section back of Civic Centre, and owning one of these stone piles by the park had been her driving ambition for as long as she could remember. And what Willa wanted, whatever she truly wanted, Arthur Bronson went out and got for her.

  He was fifty-six; born in Baltimore seven years before World War I and thirteen years before Prohibition. He’d been driving a rum-runner’s truck at fourteen, in charge of collections in the north east area of Washington at twenty, one of the four most powerful men in the Baltimore-Washington area liquor syndicate at twenty-seven when Prohibition ended. He was the most powerful man in that area at thirty-two, member of the national committee from the mid-east states at thirty-nine. He had become chairman of the committee at forty-seven and held that post for the past nine years.

  His cover was impeccable He was senior partner in a Buffalo firm of investment counsellors, with a junior partner who handled all the legitimate business. He was a member of the board of three banks, two in Buffalo proper and one in Kenmore, a suburb. He belonged to a country club and a businessmen’s fraternal organization; he was a member in good standing of the church three blocks from his Buffalo home, and his income tax returns would never send him to jail. At fifty-six, he was of medium height, about twenty pounds overweight, and his black hair was flecked distinguishedly with grey. His f
ace was broad and somewhat puffy, but he still retained traces of his earlier dark good looks. He gave the impression of being a solid citizen, a hard businessman, possibly a difficult employer, but absolutely respectable.

  Willa, too, was respectable. In 1930, when he’d married her, she’d been a mediocre singer with a fair jazz band, but she took to rich respectability as though she’d known no other life. She was now fifty-two, a plump and soft-spoken matron, a doting grandmother who was constantly phoning her married daughter in San Jose, to find out how her two grandsons were getting on. The pile of stones facing the park was her home twelve months out of the year. Her husband might be away for months at a time — New York, Las Vegas, Mexico City, Naples — but this pile of stones was Willa’s home, and she stayed in it.

  It was not her husband’s home, and he avoided it as much as possible. He didn’t like the place, it was too big, too solemn, too empty, too draughty, too far removed from life. He preferred hotel suites with terraces overlooking a pool or the sea. He preferred chrome and red leather. When it came to that, he preferred a good, stacked, intelligent, hundred-dollar whore on a white leather sofa to the plump grandmother in the pile of stones in Buffalo, but, at the same time, it was the good whore who got the hundred dollars and the plump grandmother who got the hundred-thousand-dollar house.

  The lead Cadillac crawled on past the driveway and stopped. There were four men in the car, and they looked out the windows intently in all directions, watching the traffic and pedestrians. The second Cadillac with the armed coloured chauffeur at the wheel and Branson alone in the back seat turned in the driveway like a sleek tank. Only after it had gone in past the hedge did the other Cadillac go on down the street and around the corner. To the undiscerning eye, there was no particular connection between the two Cadillacs.