The Seventh

by Richard Stark

  “I'm in a hurry,” Parker told her. He took a pistol out of his right topcoat pocket, just to have it handy, because Kifka might be the one he was after.

  She looked at it and her eyes went wide and she said, “What are you going to do to him?”

  “Nothing. Where is he?”

  “Please—Mister. . . .”

  Parker shook his head. “I'm not going to do anything to him.” He shut the hall door and walked over to the nearest of the two doors and opened it and looked in at a kitchen. He closed it again and went over to the other one and opened it, and this was the bedroom.

  Kifka was there, sprawled across the bed like a dead horse. He was a big, blond hunky, built like an out-of-condition wrestler. He was apparently sleeping nude, with a wrinkled sheet half twisted around his body. From the look of him and the bed, he thrashed a lot in his sleep. If the blonde had been sharing the same bed with him, it had to be true love.

  The bed was an old-fashioned double, with brass headboard and footboard like cell windows. Parker went over to the foot of the bed, seeing the clothing scattered all around the room like used snakeskins on a hot rock, and rapped the gun barrel against the brass footboard. The sound rang out in the room with surprising volume.

  Kifka snorted and shifted around some on the bed. But he didn't wake up.

  Then the girl, from the doorway, cried out, “Look out, Dan, he's got a gun!”

  Kifka dove off the bed, lunging for a pile of clothing on the chair.

  Parker said, “Dan! Hold it!”

  Kifka was a tumbler. He landed on a shoulder, rolled, reversed, and came up on his feet. He was as naked as a piece of granite, with a red, sleepy, baffled face. He said, “What goes on? What the hell goes on?” From the sound of his voice, his head was stuffed with virus from ear to ear.

  Parker told him, “We've got to talk, Dan.”

  “Parker?” Kifka frowned heavily and scrubbed his face with meaty palms. “This goddam virus won't get the hell out of here,” he said.

  The girl said, “Get back in bed, Dan, you'll make it worse. Get back in bed.”

  “Yeah. That's right.”

  Parker waited while Kifka got himself back in bed and pulled the sheet up again, and then he turned to the girl and said, “Why'd you let him go out tonight, if he's so sick?'”

  She looked indignant. “Out! I wouldn't let him go out!”

  Kifka was arranging the pillows so he could sit up against them. He stopped and looked at Parker and said, “What's up, Parker? I haven't been out of this bed in three days.”

  Parker believed it. Kifka wasn't faking sickness, and the girl wasn't faking her answers. He said, “How about your friend makes us some coffee?”

  “Tea,” Kifka said. “She's got me on tea. You want some?”

  Parker shrugged. He didn't care what he drank, just so the girl would leave the room awhile to go get it.

  Kifka said, “Janey, be a good girl? Tea all around.”

  She had come in a few steps from the doorways, and was standing there still holding the sweatshirt in place. She looked more awake now, but also more confused. She said, “He walked in here with a gun, Dan. He's still got it in his hand.”

  “That's okay, honey, take my word for it. Parker's a friend of mine.”

  Parker put the gun away in his pocket and showed the girl his empty hand. She said, “What do you take in tea, sugar or lemon?”

  He didn't know, so he said, “Neither.”

  She nodded, turned around, and went out. Because she was pulling the sweatshirt down so hard in front, it was riding very high in back, revealing a bottom as tender as a wheat field.

  Kifka laughed, and coughed, and laughed. “Ain't that the loveliest ass?” he said. “The first time I seen that, in stretch pants, I knew I wanted some. How's the broad you're shacked up with?”

  “Dead.”

  “What?”

  Parker went over and shut the bedroom door and leaned his back against it, so the girl wouldn't come in unexpectedly. “I went out tonight for the first time,” he said, “to get beer and cigarettes. When I came back, she was dead and the cash was gone.”

  “The hell you say!”

  “There were crossed swords on the wall. Somebody took one down and stuck it right on through her.”

  “The hell with her,” said Kifka, making an angry dismissing gesture. “What's this about the cash?” He was sitting bolt upright in the bed now.

  “Gone,” Parker told him. “The guy killed her, took the cash, hid out somewhere nearby, waited till he saw me going back in, and called the cops.”

  “You got out before the cops showed?”

  “No. I had to hit heads.”

  Kifka waved a hand back and forth just above the sheet, like a man dusting a pedestal. “I don't like this,” he said. “I don't like this one goddam bit.”

  “It had to be somebody in on the job,” Parker told him. “Who else would know about the money?”

  Kifka said, “And you figured me? I look like the guy?” He was all set to be insulted.

  Parker said, “You're the only one I know how to find. So I came to talk to you.”

  “With a gun in your hand?”

  “You were supposed to be working. I stopped by the garage and they said you hadn't been around at all. You read it, Dan.”

  Grudgingly, Kifka said, “All right. It was a possibility. But you see the way I am. I started getting this right after the job, right while I was stashing the first car.”

  “Somebody got the cash,” Parker reminded him. He didn't feel like a talk about Kifka's symptoms right now.

  Kifka nodded. “So what do we do now?” he said.

  The girl was at the door, kicking it with a bare foot. Parker said to Kifka, “Give her a reason to stay out of here.”

  “Will do.”

  Parker opened the door and the girl came in carrying a cookie tray with a teapot on it, three cups, a sugar bowl, a little round dish bearing a lemon, and a sharp knife. She put everything down on the table beside the bed. She'd found an apron, pink and white, to supplement the sweatshirt, but it only covered her in front, and when she bent to set the tray down on the table she aimed at Parker again that part that had won Dan Kifka.

  Kifka said to her, “Janey honey, Parker and I got to talk awhile, private. Boy talk.” Seeing him talking cute to the girl was like watching Smokey the Bear.

  The girl turned and looked at Parker. It was obvious she'd decided she didn't like him and never would. She said, “Dan needs his rest.”

  Parker told her, “He'll get more rest with me than you.”

  “Just for a few minutes, honey,” Kifka said. He could have crumpled her, one-handed, like an empty cigarette package, but instead he put on apologetic look on his face and asked pretty.

  Parker waited because that was all he could do, but he didn't like it.

  Still, it didn't take as long as he'd expected. The girl pouted a little, and hesitated, and twitched her exposed tail, and made a few more remarks about the state of Kifka's health, and insisted on pouring the tea, but then she gave in and left the room, and closed the door behind her.

  Kifka pointed at the closed door. “That's the medicine, boy,” he said. “That little girl can keep me as warm as toast.”

  “The cash,” Parker said.

  “I know, I know. I'm trying not to think about it.”

  “That's bright.”

  “Okay, Parker, don't get feisty. Somebody stole the dough. Look at me, what can I do?”

  “You know where a couple of the others are holed up.”

  Kifka nodded. “Sure I do. Arnie and Little Bob. You want me to contact them?”

  “No. I want their addresses. I want to go see if they're still there.”

  “You think it's one of them? Neither of those guys would pull anything like that, Parker; I've known them both for years.”

  Parker said, “Who, then? Clinger?”

  “Naw. Who, Clinger? He ain't the type.�
��

  “How about Shelly? Or Rudd?”

  Kifka shook his head to both of them. “You know those guys as well as I do,” he said.

  “Somebody took the cash,” Parker reminded him. “There's only seven of us. It wasn't me and it isn't you. So that leaves five.”

  Kifka frowned hard, rumpling his face up like a beagle. “I just can't see it,” he said. “It couldn't be some outsider?”

  “Sure. Coincidence. I don't mind coincidence, it won't be the first time. A flat worker just happened to pick that apartment while I was out. He didn't know Ellie was there, and she saw him and he figured she could identify him, so he took the sword down off the wall and killed her. Then he found the cash by accident and took off. Except burglars don't like to kill if they can avoid it; they'd rather run. And why should he blow the whistle to the cops after I go back in the apartment?”

  Kifka nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, it don't sound probable,” he admitted.

  “Maybe it was a stranger after all,” Parker told him. “I'll believe it after I've checked and found out for sure it wasn't any one of us.”

  “That makes sense, I guess.”

  Parker looked around. “You got pencil and paper?”

  “Ask Janey. There ought to be some out in the living room.”

  Parker went over and opened the door and looked out. Janey was sitting in a basket chair across the room reading a paperback. Parker said, “We need pencil and paper. Just one sheet of paper.”

  She got to her feet without a word, dropped the book on the chair, and walked across the room to where a secretary stood in the corner. She opened it and started looking for a pencil. She was still dressed the same way, and she'd been sitting in a cane chair, and her bottom now looked like a rounded pink waffle.

  She came over finally with ballpoint pen and a small notepad. “Is it going to be much longer?”

  Parker took pen and pad from her. “A minute or two.” He shut the door in her face and went back to the bed. “You want to give me the addresses?”

  “They're together,” Kifka told him. “Arnie and Little Bob, the both of them. They're at a place called Vimorama, out on route 12N, about two miles out of town.”

  “Vimorama.” Parker wrote it down.

  “It's a health-food place,” Kifka told him. “They got all kinds of carrot juice there, crap like that. And like cabins in back. In the summertime they run like a diet farm there; fat people go out and spend a week and don't eat nothing but the carrot juice.”

  “They're in one of the cabins?”

  “Yeah. Number four. You know how to get to 12N?”

  “No.”

  “You know Ridgeworth Boulevard, that's where the hotel is where you stayed when you first came to town.”

  Parker nodded.

  “Well, you take that out past the hotel, going so the hotel is on your right, and you just stay on it out of town and it turns into 12N. Vimorama's about two miles beyond the city limits, on the right. There's a City Line Diner on your left, and you go just about two miles past that.”

  Parker said, “All right. You got a phone number here?”

  “Victor 6-2598.”

  Parker wrote it down and said, “I'll get in touch with you, let you know what the story is.”

  “Good.”

  Parker got to his feet and started for the door, but Kifka said, “How much was it?”

  Parker turned. “What?”

  “You counted it, didn't you? The take? How much was it?”

  “A hundred thirty-four thousand.”

  “I get a seventh,” Kifka said. “How much is that?”

  “About nineteen grand.”

  “Nineteen grand.” Kifka savored the words on his tongue. “I could use nineteen grand,” he said.

  “So could I.”

  Kifka nodded. “Sure. You want your seventh, too.”

  “That's right.” Parker turned away again, opened the door, and went into the living room. He said to Janey, “He's yours again.”

  She immediately dropped the book and got to her feet. “Good.”

  Kifka was never going to get healthy with Janey around. But then, maybe he didn't care. Parker went on out and shut the apartment door.

  He went downstairs and outside and started down the exterior steps to the sidewalk when a voice shouted from across the street, “Hey!” and then there was the sound of a shot.

  Parker dove the last four steps, rolled across the sidewalk, and came up against a parked car. A second shot sounded, and the side window of the car shattered, raining glass down on him.

  Parker got to hands and knees and crawled hurriedly around the rear of the car. Across the way there was a narrow blacktop driveway hemmed in on both sides by the sheer walls of apartment buildings. With the third shot, Parker saw a muzzle flash in the darkness within that driveway. He dragged a gun out of his topcoat pocket, braced his arm on the bumper of the car, and fired at the muzzle flash.

  Footsteps clattered, receding, somebody running away along the blacktop.

  Parker ran over that way, flattened himself against a wall, and edged slowly around the corner till he could see into the driveway. At the far end the driveway split, going to left and right behind the apartment buildings. There was a wall at the far end, with a light attached to it. There was no one moving in the alley between Parker and the light. Whoever he was, he'd already made the turn, one way or the other, and was gone. Even the sound of his running footsteps was now gone.

  But he'd left something behind, a bulky bundle lying against one of the side walls.

  Parker approached it cautiously, but it didn't move. He bent and rolled it over. It was a man. It was the clown in the mackinaw, the follower, the one who wanted his thirty-seven dollars from Dan Kifka.

  He'd been shot in the side of the head by a gun of too large a caliber for the job. Kifka now owed thirty-seven dollars to the clown's estate.

  It had been the clown who had shouted. The voice had rung with familiarity, but at the time Parker hadn't been concerned with wondering who it was. Now he thought back and remembered it, and it had been the voice of the clown here.

  None of it made sense. The clown had been alone before, and had obviously had nothing to do with anything but his own thirty-seven bucks. But now he'd been here with somebody else, and he'd obviously been involved in a lot more than thirty-seven dollars.

  Parker's shot hadn't killed him. He'd been shot from close range, not from across the street.

  The way it looked, the two of them had been waiting here for Parker to come out. When he did, the second man was going to kill him. But the clown here shouted a warning, and the second man shot him instead and then tried to get Parker anyway and missed.

  That told what happened, by an educated guess, but not why. Why was the clown here? Why did he shout? Why was he killed? And who was the second man?

  Maybe it was an outsider after all. There was too much that made no sense; maybe it would start making sense if the guy who now had the cash wasn't one of the seven who'd worked the heist after all.

  One thing was sure. This changed the plans.

  Parker recrossed the street and went back upstairs to Kifka's apartment and knocked on he door. When the girl opened it this time she was wearing just the sweatshirt again and she looked a little flushed. Also irritated.

  Parker went in and shut the door. “Tell Dan I'm sleeping on the sofa,” he said. “If you heard the shots out there, that's why. I'll talk to Dan again in the morning.”

  She said, “Sure you don't want to come in and watch?”

  “I already know how.”

  Parker sat down on the sofa and ignored her. He hadn't bothered to take his topcoat off yet because he was thinking. If the hijacker wasn't one of the original group, then where did he connect? There had only been seven of them in on the operation from the beginning, on equal shares . . . .

  4

  The job had been set up within the last month. Parker had come north on th
e run, leaving years of careful work in ruins behind him. He'd needed a fresh stake, and when a slot in this operation was offered him he'd grabbed at it.

  Parker was a heister by profession, an institutional robber who stole from banks or jewelry stores or armored cars. He worked only as a member of a team, never as a single-o, and he'd been at this profession nineteen years. For most of that time he'd had a false name and a cover identity within which he lived while spending the profits of his work and out of which he moved once or twice a year to replenish the kitty. But all of that had gone to hell now. As a result of trouble on a piece of work over a year ago his fingerprints had gone on file with the law for the first time, and more trouble just two months ago had connected those fingerprints with the cover identity. Parker had had to leave fast, abandoning bank accounts, abandoning a way of life, everything.

  When he'd come north at the wheel of a stolen car, with less than a hundred bills to his name, he'd contacted a few of the men he'd worked with in the past, letting it be known he was available for any job in the offing. He'd holed up in a place outside Scranton called the Green Glen Motel, run by an old hooker named Madge, and a week later a telephone call had come from Dan Kifka.

  It was a strange conversation. In the first place, neither of them wanted to say anything specific over a machine as public and leaky as a telephone and in the second place, Kifka didn't really believe he was talking to Parker.

  He referred to that immediately after identifying himself, saying, “This is a new number for you, isn't it?”

  Parker knew what he meant. In the past no one had ever been able to contact him direct. Anyone who wanted to talk to Parker about business had to send a message through a guy named Joe Sheer, a retired jugger living outside Omaha. But Joe was dead now, a part of the trouble that had cost Parker everything but his neck.

  He said, “I just moved. You hear about Joe?”

  “Hear what?”

  “He died. I went to the funeral.”

  “Oh. I tried calling you there, but no answer.”

  “That's why.”

  Kifka hesitated, and then said, “Well, I just called to say hello, see how things are going. You working?”