The Mourner p-4

by Richard Stark

  Menlo shifted his bulk in the chair and looked with an innocent smile at Parker. “This plan could still be effected,” he went on. “Without the minions of the Outfit, of course. I doubt that they were ever really happy with the operation. They disliked the thought of being connected even indirectly with international politics, but the harvest was too tempting to be missed. Now, because of all the trouble you two caused tonight, they have abandoned the plan completely. Spannick informed me of this with great pleasure tonight, while watching me dig. The Outfit recalled those who had helped me, and recouped its losses by selling to Spannick the information that I had intended in my own turn to steal the money. So the Outfit is no longer concerned with Kapor. Spannick is dead, and if I know that egotistical idiot, he would not have made any report on me until he had already done me in. He always preferred telling his superiors about a problem only after he had already solved it. Which means that Kapor has been left to us.”

  Parker studied the fat man’s face. “Us?”

  “But of course. You have business of your own with Kapor, though I confess I cannot imagine what it is. In addition, you would no doubt like to share in that hundred thousand dollars. I need assistance, which you can give me. You need to know the location of the money, which I can give you.”

  “You know where it is?”

  “The exact spot. I must say, it is exceedingly well hidden. I hardly think you could find it without me.”

  “How come you know where it is?” Handy asked.

  “Clara told me. She had weeks to look for it, and eventually she found it. Poor Clara.”

  Menlo smiled again, his ingenuous smile. “I forgot to tell you. I returned to Clara’s apartment tonight, Mr Parker, after you had left. You had mistreated the poor girl most terribly. The only humane thing I could do was end her misery.”

  He beamed.

  Parker stubbed his cigarette. “I didn’t ask her enough questions,” he said.

  “You are hardly to be blamed. You must have thought of her as only a pawn in our game. How could you know she was the key?”

  “So you want to team up with us?”

  “It seems most logical, does it not? My information, your experience. And we will, of course, split evenly. Half for me, half for you.”

  The fat man wouldn’t be getting any of it, but Parker, for appearance’s sake, made a complaint. “That’s no even split. A third for each of us.”

  Menlo spread his hands and smiled. “If you insist. I am not greedy, I assure you.”

  So the fat man was planning a double-cross too, Parker thought, and asked, “You still want to do it Friday?”

  “That strikes me as the best time, yes. By the way, could you possibly tell me what it is that you two are concerned with in Kapor’s house? That lovely girl mentioned the sum of fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Kapor’s got a statue, supposed to be one of the lost statues from some tomb in France. A collector gave us fifty thousand to steal it for him.”

  “One of the mourners of Dijon?” Menlo smiled in surprise. “I have read of them, of course. How romantic! And a collector, you say? That charming girl’s father, no doubt. I would most like to meet him.”

  “Maybe I can arrange it,” Parker said.

  4

  HER full name was Elizabeth Ruth Harrow Conway. She was, as the fat man had said, a magnificent female, twenty-nine years old, and with honey hair made to gleam in candlelight. She had the hollow-cheeked aristocratic face that comes of generations of breeding and inbreeding, and the tall, lush, well-proportioned body of a stripper crossed with a Channel swimmer. She was rich now, and had been all her life, living currently on a combination of alimony from her ex-husband and atonement gifts from her father. She was well-sexed, with an occasional liking for self-cruelty, and she kept her hotel room door unlocked.

  Parker came in and closed the door and stood there looking at her. “Whose idea was this? Yours or your father’s?”

  She was in bed, with the covers up to her neck, and two pillows under her head. She smiled languorously and stretched, her body moving lazily under the blanket. “It was mine, Chuck, don’t you know that? But Daddy thinks it was his.”

  “Either you take off, or there’s no job.”

  “Now, don’t threaten me like that, Chuck. Be nice.” She slid one arm out from under the covers and patted the bed next to her hip. “Come sit down beside me and we’ll talk.”

  He shook his head. “Forget it.”

  “Be nice, Chuck,” she murmured. “Be nice to me, and I’ll go away first thing in the morning. If you still want me to.”

  That would have been a solution, but he rejected it without bothering to think about it. This was the way he always was before a job. He lived to a pattern. Immediately after a job he was a satyr, inexhaustible and insatiable. Then gradually it would taper off, and by the time the next job was in preparation he was a total celibate. When a job was being set up, he could only think of one thing. Bett’s offer slid past him as though it had never been made. It simply didn’t interest him.

  “You’ll go away first thing in the morning, or the deal’s off,” he said. “And you won’t come back. I’ll see you after I give your father the statue.”

  “Maybe I won’t feel like it then.”

  He shrugged.

  She was still trying to be coy and seductive, but the edges were getting ragged. “What if I decided not to be an obedient little girl, Chuck?”

  “Your father’s out fifty grand.”

  Her languorous smile all at once turned sour, and she popped to a sitting position, her face twisted in a frown of anger. The sheet and blanket fell to her wrist. She was nude and her breasts were heavy but firm, and tanned as golden as the rest of her. She said, bite in her voice, “What’s the matter with you, Chuck? This is little Bett, remember? We’re not exactly strangers.”

  It was true. For most of two weeks they’d shared the same bedroom, though they’d seen each other only twice since.

  “I’ve got other things to think about,” Parker said.

  “You want to be careful, Chuck,” she said. Her voice was hard as a stone. “You want to be very careful with me.”

  “I’ll see you when the job is done.”

  “I’m not so sure. And just a minute, don’t leave yet. We’ve got more to talk about.”

  He kept his hand on the doorknob. “Such as?”

  “Such as those other two men. The one that looks like you, only more pleasant, and the funny fat one. You didn’t say anything to Daddy about working with anybody else.”

  “How I work is my business. Don’t be here in the morning.”

  She was going to say something else, but he didn’t give her a chance.”

  The other two were already asleep when Parker got back to his room. Menlo was staying here tonight, sleeping on the floor, and the three of them would move to another location tomorrow. Parker stepped over Menlo, stripped, and got into bed. He fell asleep the way he always did, completely and immediately.

  He was a light sleeper. Normal predictable sounds traffic outside a window, a radio playing that had been playing when he’d gone to sleep didn’t disturb him, but any unusual noise would have him completely awake at once. So when Menlo got up from the floor and crept cautiously towards the door, Parker came awake. He lay unmoving on the bed, watching Menlo through slitted eyes. Menlo took the time to pick up his suit coat and tie and shoes, but nothing else. He went out, the shoes in his hand, the coat and tie over his arm.

  There was no point stopping him. Parker went back to sleep.

  He awoke again when Menlo returned. The fat man was once again carrying shoes and coat and tie, but now he was carrying his shirt as well, and in the faint light from the window Parker could see that he was smiling to himself. So Bett had got what she’d come for after all. He wondered if Menlo had.

  5

  “Go,” said Handy. He thumbed the stop-watch; it read just about nine o’clock.

&nbs
p; Parker edged the Pontiac away from the kerb in front of Kapor’s house. Moving with the traffic, they went straight over to Garfield to Massachusetts Avenue, and then turned right on Wisconsin. That took them through Georgetown and on north out of the city into Chevy Chase, and then Bethesda. It was a commercial road all the way, with more traffic than Parker liked on a getaway route, but it was the quickest, shortest way.

  Menlo, sitting on the back seat like a renegade Buddha, watched with interest. At one point he said, “I still don’t see why this is necessary. Kapor will hardly be in a position to notify the authorities.”

  Parker was busy driving, so Handy explained. “You say the Outfit’s given up on this job, and maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. You claim Spannick was the only one of your old crowd that knew what you were up to, and maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. We’re going through the play the same night you planned, because it’s a good setup. Besides, now that Clara’s dead there’s nobody inside to let us know when the next good time is. But we’re running it an hour earlier than you figured just in case there is still somebody interested in you or Kapor’s hundred grand. And we’re working out the best route for the same reason.”

  “Then why go only so far as the motel? Why not continue on our way as rapidly as possible? We might go to Baltimore, for instance, and come to rest there.”

  Handy turned farther around in the seat, so he could talk full-face with Menlo. “Listen. If what we wanted was to get a confession out of Kapor, we’d let you handle it all the way. That’s what you’re a pro at; we’d follow anything you said. But what we’re doing is breaking into Kapor’s house and grabbing his goods, and that’s what we’repros at. So you just let us do it, OK.”

  “My dear friend,” said Menlo, looking concerned, “please not to misjudge me. I mean no distrust of your abilities. You are most certainly professionals at your craft, and I appreciate this. It is in a spirit of curiosity only that I ask these questions. I would like to learn more.” This was all said too earnestly to be sarcasm; Menlo was perched forward on the seat, his hands pressed to his chest in a gesture of honesty.

  Parker would have just told him to keep his mouth shut and watch and learn, but Handy didn’t mind talking. “All right,” he said, “I’ll explain it to you. There’s three ways to handle the getaway. You can do like you said, just take off and keep going, maybe a couple hundred miles. Or you can just go two blocks and hole up there till the heat’s off. Or you can go a few miles and hole up and wait four or five hours and thentake off and go your couple hundred miles. Now, if you do the first, take off and keep going, you’re on the road all the time you’re the most hot, and that’s the way to get yourself picked up fast. If you hole up real close and stay there a week or two, you’re right where the most cops are doing the most looking, and that’s the way to get picked up six or seven days after the job, when you go out for more groceries. But if you hole up nearby for a few hours, you throw everybody off stride. If the law is after you and they’ve thrown up roadblocks, they stay up for a few hours and then the cops figure you either got through quick or you’re holed up, and they take the roadblocks down. See what I mean? Right after the job is when they do their looking on the roads, and later on is when they do their looking in town. So right after the job is when we stay in town, and later on is when we’re on the roads. It’s a feint, like in basketball. You go,but you don’t go, and thenyou go.”

  Menlo nodded happily. “Yes, I follow. I can see where that would be the method most difficult for the authorities to counteract. But in this case, we need have no fear of authorities. Kapor will feel his loss most deeply, of course, but he will not contact the police.”

  “Not Kapor, no. But suppose some servant sees it first, that somebody’s broken in, and calls the cops before he tells his boss? So whether Kapor likes it or not, the law will be in on it. Or maybe the Outfit is still hot for that money, and they’ll show up at nine-thirty, the way you originally figured. They find out the swag is gone, the Outfit’s after us. Or maybe it’s your old group, friends of Spannick’s. We do it the safe way, the reliable way, and we never get jugged.”

  Menlo smiled with a touch of sadness. “I must say you remove the romance most utterly from all this. I had been seeing myself in quite dramatic terms. The defecting policeman, meting out poetic justice to the embezzler by depriving him of his ill-gotten gains, then disappearing again, quite for ever, an enigma to all who seek to find him. But now I find I am merely a participant in a dreary and pedestrian series of quite normal activities opening doors, driving automobiles, sitting in motel rooms.” He shrugged and spread his hands.

  Parker slowed the car. The motel was just ahead the Town Motel. They’d picked it because it was on the right side of the road, and because it was built in a U shape, on a slope down from the road, so that parked cars could not be seen from the street.

  Parker made the turn, drove down into the court, and parked. Handy thumbed the watch and read it. “Just over eighteen minutes.”

  “Not good,” Parker said.

  “It’s the fastest way,” Handy said.

  They’d spent most of the afternoon trying various suburbs and motels, and this one had been the quickest by far. So now they had run it again at the same time of night they would be coming over it Friday. It was Wednesday, and they could expect a little more traffic on Friday, but they’d still done well. The traffic had been heavy, with the majority of the drivers like the majority of all eastern drivers spending the majority of their time in the passing lane. Parker had driven mostly in the right-hand lane, and had made better time than any other car on the road.

  Still, he wasn’t satisfied. “What if we holed up right at Kapor’s house, until maybe two or three in the morning? Menlo, will Kapor be coming home alone?”

  “Alas, no. Kapor is notoriously a party giver. A select group of friends, perhaps fifteen or twenty, will probably return with him from the dinner. This is always his habit, and I see no reason to expect that it will differ on Friday.”

  Parker shrugged. It wasn’t good. Eighteen minutes on the road; with Friday’s traffic, probably twenty or more. Their direction would be obvious before they were six blocks from Kapor’s house. Twenty minutes was plenty of time to set up a block in front of them. He shook his head. “Let’s go inside and study the map.”

  They clambered out of the car, Menlo with difficulty, and went up the stairs to their second-level rooms. Parker and Handy had a double, Menlo a single, three rooms down the hall.

  In the room, Menlo settled in the most comfortable chair, while Handy stretched out on his bed. Parker got out the Washington area road map and studied it, frowning. “We could go over to a parallel street, but coming back’s no good. The lights along the road out there give maximum red to the side streets. We’d just sit there, half a minute or more.”

  “Then we work a switch,” Handy said. “Use another car on the job, and stash the Pontiac along the way.”

  “That’s better. Adds more time, but it’s better. Who knows about the Pontiac?”

  Handy considered. “Nobody,” he said. “Clara knew that’s all. Menlo’s boys grabbed me in Clara’s place.” He looked over at Menlo. “Were they following us?”

  “No, no. They waited at poor Clara’s apartment for you to arrive.”

  “OK. So the Pontiac’s clean.”

  Parker folded the road map and put it away. He turned to Menlo. “Next question. What tools do we want?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Tools, tools. The dough isn’t just sitting out on a coffee table, is it?”

  Menlo’s smile was faintly surprised. “My dear friend, you most certainly don’t expect me to tell you where to find it. My usefulness would then be at its end, would it not? You have been so kind as to include me only because of this one piece of information I have and you do not.”

  “I’m not asking you where it is. I’m asking you what we do need to get at it. Like if it’s buried under c
oncrete we need a pick, and maybe a couple caps of dynamite. Or if it’s in a safe, we need a drill and a set of pullers for the combination or maybe some nitro, depending on what kind of safe it is.”

  “Ah, I see. The professional mind at work once again. But there is no difficulty, I assure you. No special tools will be required other than our own efficient hands.”

  Parker nodded. “All right. What size do we want? How big a bundle?”

  “Well, I have not as yet seen this cash in actuality, only in my imagination. But from the manner of its secretion, let us say, I would suppose a container approximately the size of your suitcase would be more than sufficient.”

  “I’ll get another one tomorrow, just like it.” Parker got to his feet and lit a cigarette, pacing back and forth across the room. “Once more, to be sure. Kapor’s leaving the house at five o’clock. The chauffeur’s driving him, and will wait for him until the dinner is over. His bodyguard’s going with him too. The cook will fix stuff for the party later on, but she’ll be out of there by six, and so will the gardener. Kapor won’t be back before ten, and maybe later. Between six and ten nobody’s home.”

  “Most precisely.”

  From the bed, Handy said, “We like to be precise.”

  “What about this party after ten o’clock? No servants?” Parker asked.

  “Oh no. It will not be that sort of party. Morgan, Kapor’s bodyguard, will serve as bartender. No other servants will be needed.”

  “There’s no burglar alarms in the house?”

  “Clara was quite certain on that point.”

  “All right.” Parker sat down on his own bed, flicked ashes into the nearest ashtray. “So now we wait two days.”

  6

  HANDY was driving. They were working the side streets, back and forth, Handy sitting casual at the wheel and Parker beside him, studying the parked cars. Menlo was back at the motel.

  It was seven-thirty Friday night, and already dark. The occasional major streets they crossed were full of slow-moving traffic, people heading downtown for a night out or uptown for a weekend out of town. The side streets were quiet, with few moving cars and only an occasional pedestrian.