The Mourner p-4

by Richard Stark

  The door opened a few inches, held by a chain from opening any farther. A chain like that can’t keep anyone out; it only serves as an irritation. Beyond was a sleepy-eyed girl’s face. She was sleepy-eyed and holding a robe closed at her throat, but her hairdo was in perfect shape without a net.

  “Who is it? What do you want?” she said, the voice a good imitation of sleepy blurriness.

  But the hairdo had given it away. Parker didn’t have to ask any questions after all. His right foot went out and wedged in the doorway, so the door couldn’t be closed. His right hand reached through and grabbed a handful of hair on the top of her head. He slammed her forehead against the edge of the door. Her hands started to come up towards his wrist, and her mouth was opening wide to shout, so he did it again. The third time, she became a dead weight and collapsed straight downward, leaving several strands of hair in his fist.

  It took two high, flat kicks with his heel to pop the chain loose from the doorpost. The door swung open, and beyond the lighted foyer and the dark living-room was a bright doorway. The silhouette of a fat man appeared in it and Parker dove for the rug, stabbing into his pocket for the Terrier. The fat man fired over his head. Parker rolled into a wall and came up with the Terrier in his hand. The bright doorway was empty. Parker moved quickly, slamming the hall door and flicking off the foyer light.

  The fat man had the same idea. There wasn’t any bright doorway any more. The whole apartment was dark.

  The fat man knew this place, and Parker didn’t. The fat man could sit and wait, and Parker couldn’t take the time. The fat man could stay where he was and listen, shoot at the first sound, or just wait for Parker to go away.

  In the dark, Parker found the unconscious girl. He dragged her into the living-room and knelt beside her on one knee. In a conversational voice he said, “Fat man. Listen to me, fat man. You fired one shot. The light sleepers around here are awake now; they think it was a truck making a backfire. You turn on a light, fat man, and you come out here where I can see you, or I make more noises. I can scream like a woman, fat man. I can scream like a woman, and then very slow I can empty this pistol into your girl. Too many backfires, fat man. Somebody will call the police. Before I’m finished, somebody will call the police. Then I wipe the gun clean and put it down on the floor and beat it. No fingerprints of mine here, fat man. Nothing to connect me. But your fingerprints are everywhere. And somebody’ll connect you up with this woman.”

  Silence.

  “Now, fat man. The next thing I do is scream like a woman.”

  “Wait.”

  It was a soft voice, and from the left somewhere. Not in the room.

  “Hurry.”

  “I will not turn on the lights,” said the voice. It had a faint accent, something Middle European. “But it is possible we can talk.”

  “Not in the dark.”

  “You must be reasonable. We will effect a compromise.”

  “Name it.”

  “You want something here, quite obviously, else you wouldn’t have come. Yet I don’t know you. I cannot imagine what it is you want. Your reactions and movements are hardly those of a burglar or a rapist. Either you have come to murder me, at the behest of the opposition, or you are here seeking information of some sort. If murder is your purpose, it would hardly be sensible for me to show myself. If what you want is information, we can discuss it just as profitably in the dark.”

  While the fat man was talking, Parker was crawling towards the sound of his voice, moving cautiously across the carpet on hands and knees. When the voice stopped, Parker stopped. He turned his head away, so he wouldn’t sound any closer. “I’m here for information. Where’s Pete Castle?”

  “Ah!” The fat man seemed pleased to have the mystery cleared up. “He didhave associates.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Reposing in a safe place, I assure you. And relatively unharmed. I would suggest, by the way, that you come no closer. You are now nearly to the doorway, and I pride myself on my shooting. If you clear that doorway, and then are foolish enough to speak, it will take me no more than one backfire to dispose of you.”

  “Why warn me?”

  “Curiosity, just curiosity. The same motive that impelled me to have your friend taken away to where he could be questioned at leisure. Our operation is of a complexity and a delicacy. Your friend’s presence became quite naturally, of concern to us. We had to know whether his goal coincided with our own. Now I discover that there are two of you, perhaps more. You might tell me just what it is you want with Kapor. If our purposes are the same, it is possible we could come to an agreement.”

  “All I want is Pete Castle. You’ll tell me where to find him, or I’ll start making that noise”

  A body suddenly fell on him, grappling with him, and the girl’s voice shrilled in his ear, “I’ve got him, Mr Menlo! I’ve got him, I’ve got him!”

  Parker struggled with her, hampered by the darkness, and over her shouting he heard the pounding of running feet. He flung her off at last in time to catch a glimpse of the hall door opening, and the back of the fat man. Parker headed that way, but the girl got him around the ankles, dropping him again. He kicked free, made it to the hallway, and heard the clatter of taps on metal stairs. The fat man was already halfway down.

  Parker ran back into the apartment, switching on lights as he went. The girl was slowly and groggily getting to her feet. Her robe was disarranged, and beneath it she was fully dressed except for shoes. Parker ran past her to the first window he found, in the kitchen, but it faced the rear of the building. So did the bedroom window. No window faced the courtyard.

  Parker came back to the living-room. The girl was on her feet but weaving, moving at a snail’s pace towards the door. Parker came after her, grabbed her by a shoulder, flung her back into the living-room. The chain attachment on the front door was broken but the bolt still worked. Parker shot it, and went back to the living-room.

  The girl was no more than half-conscious. She’d been battered once too often in the last five minutes. She was standing in the middle of the room, frowning and squinting as though not sure what was going on. Parker took hold of her arm and steered her into the kitchen. She moved with no complaint, repeating under her breath, “Mr Menlo? Mr Menlo?”

  Parker sat her on a kitchen chair and slapped her face to get her attention. “Where have they got Pete Castle?”

  She frowned up at him, and then rationality came back to her and her face hardened. “You can just go to hell.”

  Parker shook his head in irritation. He hated this kind of thing, hurting people to make them talk. It was messy and time-consuming and there ought to be a better way. But there wasn’t.

  He found twine in a kitchen drawer, and tied her to the chair, and gagged her. She fought it, but not successfully. He left her right hand free and put paper and pencil on the table.

  “Write the address when you’re ready,” he said. Then he reached for the kitchen matches.

  3

  THERE WAS a delivery truck out front, a small, dark panel truck with the name KELSON FURNITURE on the sides. It was way after one o’clock, but two men in white coveralls were carrying a rolled-up rug out of the dark bungalow.

  This was in Cheverly, off Landover Road. Parker crouched in the back seat of the cab, watching them through the windshield. They were half a block ahead, and on the other side of the street. Just the two men in white coveralls and the rolled-up rug. No fat man.

  Parker said, “Douse your lights.”

  It was a lady cab-driver, a small, middle-aged coloured woman with a wild red hat. She glared over her shoulder at him. “What was that?”

  Parker found a twenty and shoved it at her, wishing he had the Pontiac. But Handy had taken that with him. Parker said, “I want you to put out your lights. Then follow that delivery truck over there when it takes off.”

  She now looked baffled, but just as suspicious. “Is this some kind of gag, mister?”

  “N
o gag.”

  “We’re not supposed to do nothing like that.”

  “Just take the twenty.”

  “How I know you ain’t a cop? Or a inspector or something?”

  “Do I look like a cop?”

  “Some cops, yeah.”

  “All right,” Parker said. “We’ll do it the hard way.” He dropped the twenty in her lap and showed her the Terrier.

  The gun she could understand. She doused the lights. “If you got robbery or rapery on your mind, big man,” she said, “you just forget it.”

  “All you do is follow that delivery truck. Get ready now.”

  “Sure. They got a body in that rug.” She thought she was being scornful.

  “That’s right,” Parker answered.

  “Huh?”

  The delivery truck started away from the kerb. Parker said, “Give them a block. Keep the lights off till I say so. You can see by the street lights.”

  “If I get stopped by a cop “

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  The cab, with its headlights off, trailed the tail-lights of the delivery truck out to Landover Road, where the truck turned back towards the city. As soon as it had made the turn and was out of sight, Parker said, “Put your lights on now.”

  The truck barrelled along ahead of them, and didn’t seem aware it was being followed. There was no circling of blocks, or speeding up and slowing down, to check for a possible tail. The truck just ran on over to Bladensburg Road and down into the city. In the Trinidad section it made a right turn. Parker said, “Keep back a block and a half unless they turn.”

  Ahead, the truck turned in at a driveway. This was a commercial section, shut down tight. Parker said, “Turn at the corner here. Don’t go past where they turned in. Now go half a block and stop.”

  He had another twenty ready when the cab stopped. He tossed it to her. “This one’s to forget to call the cops.”

  She shrugged and shook her head. “I sure hope you got your money’s worth,” she said. She sounded doubtful.

  Parker hurried back around the corner, and down the block towards where the truck had turned in. There was no reason to hurry, except he wanted to know what the hell was going on.

  Only thing he knew now Handy was still alive. If Handy were dead, they’d either have left him there or driven the body farther away from town. But he was alive, because they still wanted to know what he was up to, and they’d just moved him so they could question him some more. The fat man had hurried away, then set up his new place to bring Handy and called his friends to get Handy out of there. If Parker had taken three minutes longer getting the answer out of the girl, he’d have missed the move completely.

  Whether Handy was alive or dead wasn’t the important part. The important part was who these people were and what they wanted. If they were after the mourner too, it would complicate things.

  Parker came to the driveway. It was blacktop and narrow, hemmed in on both sides by brick walls. The one on the right was a garage and on the left was a dry cleaner’s. From the front, both looked dark and empty.

  Parker moved cautiously down the driveway and found the truck at the end, against another wall. The truck doors were open, and the rug was gone.

  Both side walls contained metal doors back here. Parker tried the one leading to the garage first, and it was unlocked. He stepped through into darkness, and listened. A dim murmur of voices came from his right and above. He moved that way, skirting first a workbench and then some machinery, and ahead of him saw a dim light. The ceiling was high, and a row of offices was built out from the rear wall, with a wooden staircase going up. The light was spilling down from one of the offices.

  Parker moved forward, and then saw a cigarette glow for a second ahead of him. There was somebody sitting at the foot of the stairs.

  Parker moved in slowly, staying back under the stairs, which had been built hastily, without risers. Parker held the Terrier by the barrel, reached through between two of the stairs, and put the guard out with the gun butt. He slumped, and slid down off the stairs to the floor.

  Parker came around and checked him, and he was out. The voices were still murmuring upstairs, without a break. He went up the stairs, the butt of the Terrier in his hand now, and followed the sound of the voices.

  There was a walkway outside the offices, with the office wall on one side and a wooden railing on the other. The wall was panelling halfway up, and glass the rest of the way. The light was coming through the glass down towards the other end of the walkway. Parker moved that way, and edged close enough to look in through the glass.

  It was just a small office, with pale-green filing cabinets and pale-green partitions. There was a desk, and three chairs, and the usual office furniture, with a big calendar on the back wall showing a trout leaping in a mountain stream.

  They had Handy sitting on the floor, his back against the wall under the calendar. He was tied with a lot of white clothes line, but not gagged. There was blood on his face, and his clothes were messed up. The two men in the white overalls were with him, talking to him. Handy’s eyes were shut, but from his posture he was probably awake. Or mostly awake.

  Parker couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. And he was surprised that the fat man wasn’t there with them. But the way the fat man could run, he maybe never got too close to the action. He just stayed back by a telephone somewhere where he could be the general.

  Parker turned back and retraced his steps. There was only one door leading into the offices, but each had connecting doors. Parker stepped into one from the walkway and moved along through three other dark offices, opening and closing the doors as he went without a sound. Then he was at the partition, standing in front of the inner door to the lighted office, and he could hear now.

  “

  but now we’ve got plenty of time. We’ve got all night, you know that? That partner of yours is pretty good, catching on so quick, but how’s he gonna find you here? Even if he gets anything out of Clara, so what? Off he goes to the house in Cheverly, right? And there’s the dead end.”

  The other one said, “Or maybe you got another partner. How many of you in this thing, Pete? Just the two of you? Or maybe three, four? What do you say, Pete?”

  There was silence, and then a thud, and the first voice said, “Take it easy, boy. You want to put him out again?”

  “All he has to do is be civil, that’s all. Just answer a polite question, that’s all.”

  “I tell you what, we’ll go over it for him again. Maybe he’s just a slow study.”

  “Let me take my pliers to his fingers. He’ll be a real quick study.”

  “No, Mr Menlo said don’t mess him up too bad till we find out what the score is.”

  “You gotto mess him up. Look at him.”

  “I figure he’ll listen to reason. Isn’t that right, Pete? You know we can’t do nothing drastic to you, but Pete boy, we got all night. Like, I could just take your hair like this, and just real gentle rap your head on the wall, see? Boom. And then again. Boom. See? The first time ain’t so bad. The second time’s a little worse. Now the third time. Boom. See? What do you think, Pete? Maybe forty times? We got all night, Pete.”

  “So boom him and get it over.”

  “Now wait a minute, let me talk to him. We got interrupted before; let me talk to him. Pete, listen to me. We don’t want so much. We ain’t greedy, Pete. But just listen. We’re getting this operation set up, getting everything ready, and all of a sudden you come into the middle of it. You make a play for Clara, so pretty soon Clara’s got it figured what you’re after is to get into Kapor’s house. You’re working on something, and we’re working on something. Now, all we want to know, Pete is it the same something? What do you want in Kapor’s house, Pete? And how many of you are in it? That’s all we want to know. What the hell, Pete, we were here first. I mean, fair’s fair, right? Boom. Pete. Boom. Isn’t fair, fair, Pete? Boom, Pete.”

  There was no sense listening t
o any more. They wouldn’t be saying anything more about themselves. There was Clara, and the fat man, Menlo, and these two, plus the one downstairs and maybe the one named Angel. Maybe some others too. They were all after something that Kapor had, just as Parker was, and if they, like Parker, were after the mourner, they wouldn’t be volunteering that information to Handy. So Parker opened the door and went into the light, gun first. “Freeze.”

  Nobody ever does. The two of them spun around, shock-eyed, and Handy opened tired eyes and grinned.

  “Untie him,” Parker said.

  The conversational one did it, while the one with the impatient pliers stood there and glowered. Then Parker had the one with the impatient pliers use the same ropes to tie up the conversational one. Parker only wanted to take one with him, and he had decided to take Pliers because in his experience the people who were the most anxious to use torture were also the ones most anxious to talk instead of being tortured themselves. Parker had been forced to ask questions the hard way twice already tonight. It hadn’t been bad with Wilcoxen, but with the woman, Clara, it had been very bad, because she was stubborn and Parker was in a hurry.

  Handy couldn’t walk; his legs were numb from being tied so tight for so long. Parker had Pliers carry Handy, and the three of them left the office and went downstairs and out to the truck. Parker got the ignition key, and then arranged the three of them. There was no partition between the seats and the load area, so Handy lay in back with the Browning .380 automatic Parker had taken away from the conversational one upstairs. From there he could keep an eye on Pliers, in front. Parker drove.

  He backed the truck down the driveway to the street, but for a second he didn’t know where to go. They hadn’t set up any place private yet, because the job wasn’t that close to being ready, and the hotel room wouldn’t be any good for questioning Pliers. Then Parker remembered the bungalow where they’d been holding Handy. Why not? If any place in the District was guaranteed empty right now, it was that bungalow.

  They drove in silence. Parker had his questions, but he wanted the proper atmosphere in which to ask them. And among them, he was wondering if Harrow had been dumb enough to send two teams after the same ball. Could the fat man and his friends be working for Harrow too? That would be stupid, and dangerous, for everybody.