The Steel Hit p-2

by Richard Stark

  Eleven thousand went into the box, which he then wrapped up and addressed: Charles Willis, c/o Pacifica Beach Hotel, Sausalito, California, Please Hold. Unless the Pacifica Beach had changed hands in the three years since he’d last been there, they would know enough to stick the carton into the hotel safe and forget about it till Parker showed up again.

  There was stationery and envelopes in the drawer of the writing desk in the room, and Parker addressed five envelopes to Joe Sheer in Omaha and put ten twenties in each envelope, wrapped in sheets of blank stationery. Joe wasn’t a drop and it wasn’t any kind of a debt, just a friendly gesture.

  There was still sixteen thousand in the suitcase. In the old days, before Lynn and the syndicate trouble had loused things up, he’d had small bank accounts here and there across the country. After a job he’d send off a lot of hundred-dollar money orders from different towns, and spread a few thousand of the take that way. Then when he needed money all he had to do was withdraw a little from here and a little from there, and avoid the kind of unexplained large bank transaction that might call attention to itself. But Lynn had closed out all those accounts when she’d thought she’d killed him and had run off with Mal. So now he had to start all over again.

  After he was finished distributing the money, he locked up the suitcase and went to bed. He fell asleep right away but within half an hour he was awake again, and he wasn’t sure why. He lay on his side, trying to go back to sleep, and finally he rolled over on to his back and smoked a cigarette and stared at the ceiling, wondering why he couldn’t sleep.

  And when he thought about it, it was simple. Another change from the years when he’d had Lynn. During the planning of a job, the build-up and the waiting, he’d never been any good with a woman, not even Lynn. But as soon as the job was done and turned out right he was always as randy as a stallion with the stud fee paid. After the jobs, before this, there’d always been Lynn, and before Lynn there had always been someone. This time there wasn’t anyone at all.

  He finished his cigarette, and then he gave up and got out of bed. He dressed in the dark, took all but a hundred dollars from his wallet, and stuffed the other nine hundred under the mattress. Then he went out to the Ford and drove back north to Richmond.

  He didn’t know Richmond very well, only having been through the town once or twice before, but finding a woman was never hard in any town big enough. You just go where the neon is mostly red.

  Chapter 2

  IN THE MORNING he left her and went back to the motel. He picked up his gear and headed south again. He stopped in Petersburg and opened a checking account in the Petersburgh & Central Trust Co., with an initial deposit of four hundred dollars. A bank in Raleigh got three hundred sixty and a bank in Sanford four seventy. After that it was too late in the day, the banks were all closed.

  He crossed into South Carolina that night and stopped at a motel just north of Columbia. He locked the money in the trunk of the car, so he could bring the whore from Columbia back to the motel. He sent her to the motel lunch counter alone for breakfast in the morning while he got some more cash from the car. Then he drove her back to town and stopped off to deposit four hundred twenty dollars in a Columbia bank.

  Augusta got three fifty, and for the rest of the day the towns were too small to take a chance. He crossed into Florida at nine-thirty and got just south of Callahan before picking his motel for the night. Jacksonville was twenty miles away, so that’s where he went for a whore. She was the same as the Richmond whore and the Columbia whore, disinterested all he hurt her a little. He didn’t get his kicks from hurting whores, it was just the only way he knew to get them interested.

  Thursday morning he put four hundred forty dollars into a bank in Jacksonville, and Thursday afternoon he deposited three hundred eighty more in a bank in Daytona Beach.

  The stopping at banks and the late starts because of the whores were slowing him down, so he didn’t make Miami Thursday night the way he’d planned. Around midnight he M stopped at Fort Pierce, a hundred and thirty miles north of the city. He slept alone that night, having rid himself of most of the urgency. He could now wait for something decent in Miami, something that wouldn’t have to be slapped before she’d get interested.

  A Fort Pierce bank got three hundred ten the next morning, and around noon he stopped at West Palm Beach, off the Sunshine State Parkway, long enough to leave three hundred and seventy more. Then he got back on to the Parkway, with thirteen thousand five hundred still in the suitcase.

  He hit Miami in mid-afternoon, got back on to route 1, went south past Coral Gables, and stopped at the Via Paradise Hotel, a huge lumbering white sand castle that looked like a pueblo rebuilt by Frank Lloyd Wright. The doorman who helped him out of the car and the bellboy who ran to get the two suitcases both looked dubious, because he was rumpled and mean-looking from the trip. But both had been working there long enough to know you couldn’t tell a guest by the way he looked when he showed up.

  Parker gave the doorman a half and asked him to take care of his car. Then he went inside, following the bellboy. This was a resort hotel, which meant too many bellboys, so they had to work the guests’ luggage in a sort of relay race. Parker was ready with another half dollar when the bellboy abandoned his suitcases at the desk.

  Tourists tip quarters and spenders tip dollar bills and people who live in resort hotels as a way of life tip half dollars. Now both the doorman and the bellboy knew that the rumpled clothing and the unprepossessing Ford could be discounted.

  The desk clerk caught the tone in the bellboy’s “Thank you, sir,” and came over smiling. “You have a reservation?”

  “Yes, I have.” Parker’s voice was softer now, his expression more civil. He wasn’t working now. “The name is Willis. I wasn’t expected till Monday, but there was a change in plans. I hope it isn’t inconvenient?”

  “Not at all, not at all.” The desk clerk went away, and came back with an outsize card. “Is that Charles Willis?”

  “That’s right.”

  “No trouble at all, Mr Willis.”

  A couple of months from now, when it got colder up north, it would be a lot of trouble, but not now.

  “Is Edelman around?” Parker asked.

  “Yes, sir, I believe he is. His office is–-“

  “I know where it is.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The desk clerk got him signed in and told him his room number, and bellboy number two appeared. Parker gave him a half dollar and the suitcase with the clothes in it. “Take this up to my room, will you? I’ll hold on to the other one.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The bellboy went away, carrying the suitcase, and Parker went around the corner and down the hall to the door marked “Samuel Edelman, Manager” on the frosted glass. He went inside and the, secretary stopped typing and looked at him.

  “Charles Willis to see Mr Edelman.”

  “One moment, please,” The girl went inside to the inner office, and Parker waited, holding his suitcase. After a minute she came out. “Mr Edelman will see you.”

  “Thank you.” Parker went inside, and she closed the door after him.

  Edelman was standing up behind his desk, a stocky thin-haired man who gave the impression of being tightly girdled. He looked the same as ever, but Parker didn’t, because of the new face, and that’s why Edelman looked anxious and indignant. “I thought you were a different Charles Willis. One I used to know.”

  “I am.” Parker put the suitcase down and smiled, waving a hand in front of his face. “Plastic surgery. I know, my wife told you I was dead.”

  “She was quite certain of it,” Edelman said. He sounded oddly prim, as though he suspected some sort of blasphemy.

  “Lynn, you mean. She had to act that way.” Parker sat down in the brown leather chair in front of the desk. “I ran into a little trouble and had to change things around a little. ‘Charles Willis’ is a common name, and I still have a lot of friends I don’t want to lose tra
ck of, like you, so I kept it. But I had to be out of sight, so I had to get a new face.”

  Edelman remained standing, but doubt furrowed his brow. “She took the two packages, you know.”

  Parker nodded. He knew she’d cleaned out all the caches. “Of course she did,” he said. “But now everything’s all right again. I’ve got the new face, and everything is straightened out.”

  Edelman’s eyes narrowed, showing he was thinking. “Is Mrs Willis with you?”

  “Unfortunately, no. We had a tense time there for a while, and she didn’t like having to play-act, tell everybody I was dead and so forth. It got on her nerves, and we quarrelled a lot, and — ” he shrugged ” — we parted.”

  “There’s some similarity,” Edelman said, studying Parker’s face, “but I don’t like it. First Mrs Willis tells me her husband is dead, and then you come in and say you’re Mr Willis and your wife has left you. I don’t like it.”

  “You must have my signature around on something.” Parker reached out and took the gold pen out of the ornate pen holder. There was a memo pad on the desk, and he wrote the name “Charles Willis” on it five times. “Go ahead and check it.”

  “You could have practised the signature.”

  Parker shrugged. “Ask me something. Let me make like that Princess Anastasia for a while. Ask me something only Willis would know.”

  Edelman closed his eyes. “The voice sounds right.” He opened his eyes again. “You understand, it’s a surprise. I’m not sure what to believe.”

  “People get into trouble.” Parker shrugged. “I was in trouble for a while, that’s all. If someone had come around looking for me, you could have told them you’d heard from my wife that I was dead. If someone comes around now and wants to know am I the same Charles Willis who used to come here, you say no — that Charles Willis is dead, this is another one.”

  Edelman at last sat down behind the desk. “All right. What problem did you help me solve seven years ago?”

  “Cantore, the bookie that wanted to open an office in the hotel. He had somebody working in the kitchen, lousing up the food with Tabasco sauce, and you asked me to talk to Cantore. I did, and the problem went away.”

  Edelman nodded. “You could have heard that from Willis.”

  It was time to show impatience. Parker said, “Damn it, man, I am Willis. I know you can’t stand your middle name, which is Moisha. I know you like to be called Sam and hate to be called Ed or Eddy. I know you drink nothing but wine, but you’ll drink any kind of wine that can be poured. I know you’ve got a boat called the Paradise and I was on it when you caught a marlin one time, and I was on it when you let marlins get away half a dozen times. All right now?”

  Edelman slowly smiled. “Like Mark Twain, the reports of your death are greatly exaggerated. But at least Twain came back with his own face.”

  Parker shrugged. It was time for a light remark, but he had trouble thinking of light remarks. “You satisfied now?”

  “Yes, I suppose I am.”

  “Fine.”

  Now that the matter was settled, Edelman could be the hotel manager again. “You’ll be staying with us for a while?”

  “A couple of months at least. But I’m going to have to be away for a few days. I’m just settling in for now.” He kicked the suitcase. “I want to leave this in your safe.”

  “Of course. Wait, I’ll give you the receipt for it.”

  They talked a while longer, so Edelman could get used to the fact that Parker was still alive, and then Parker went up to his room. He had a view of the beach, with the bright umbrellas and the bright beach mattresses and the people in their bright bathing suits. He unpacked the suitcase and loafed around the room a while, unbending, and then went downstairs to the hotel men’s shop.

  He bought a bathing suit, and some clothing, and had them sent up to his room. Then he went around to the garage and got the Ford. He drove out south on route 1 to Homestead, and then took 27 in towards the Everglades. At a deserted spot he turned right on to a dirt road and followed that deep into the swampy area, and then stopped the car.

  He searched it carefully, under the seats, on the floor, for anything that might lead to him, then did the same in the trunk. When he was satisfied it was clean, he took the licence plates off. Jersey plates could lead to trouble. He carried them away into the swamp and buried them.

  He left the key in the ignition. Now someone else could have the Ford, and if the law ever got interested in it Parker would be too far back in the chain of events to be traced.

  And Charles Willis didn’t own a car.

  He walked back to 27 and hitched a ride to Homestead. From there he took a cab back to the hotel.

  Chapter 3

  THE CAR rental agency was as good as its advertising. Parker got off the plane in Lincoln at three-thirty on Saturday morning and the Chevrolet was there waiting for him. He signed the papers, showed the driver’s licence he’d bought in New Jersey, and drove off.

  He was in a hurry, but it was too late at night. He was in a hurry because it was now nearly a week since Stubbs had escaped from the farmhouse, but it was too late at night because he was tired and he wasn’t sure what sort of reception he’d get at the sanitarium. Stubbs had said something about the cook having her common-law husband with her. So Parker drove the rented Chevvy into town where he got a hotel room and slept till ten o’clock. He had a hurried breakfast and then drove out to the sanitarium.

  It had only been three weeks since the death of Dr Alder, but already the place looked as though it had been abandoned for years. Parker drove up past the neglected lawns to the front door and stopped the Chevvy where the sign marked “Visitors’ Parking”.

  This was going to be a delicate situation, and the best thing would be to come in openly, as though there was nothing to hide.

  He got out of .the car and walked up to the front door, which opened just before he got to it. A broad-shouldered heavy-browed man in corduroy pants and a flannel shin stood in the doorway glowering at him. “What you want?”

  “I want to talk to–-” He couldn’t remember the cook’s name. “I want to talk to the cook.”

  “You mean May?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Hold it a second.” But he didn’t go anywhere, just stood in the doorway staring distrustfully at Parker. “What you want to talk to her about?”

  “About Stubbs,” Parker said, “and why I didn’t kill him.”

  He frowned massively at that, and took a step back from the doorway, but held on to the door. “Who are you supposed to be?”

  Parker said, “Let me talk to May.”

  From deeper inside the building, a woman’s voice called, “Who is it, Lennie?”

  Lennie turned to shout, “Hold on a goddam minute!” Then he looked at Parker again. “What’s the name?”

  “Let me talk to May. She’ll recognize me.”

  But then May was at the door, staring out at him. “That’s one of them!” she shouted. “That’s Anson, the last one!”

  “He said something about Stubbs.”

  “Don’t let him get away!” May shouted.

  “Yuh.” Lennie came out across the threshold, his arms reaching out, and Parker hit him under the ribs. He made a dull sound and bent forward, and Parker said over his shoulder, “Tell him to back up.”

  But May was ignoring him. She was turned away from the door, screaming, “Hey, Blue! Hey, Blue!”

  Lennie was getting his wind back. In a minute, he’d try again, and maybe by then he’d have Blue to help him. Parker didn’t like the way it was starting out, but the thing to do now was to simplify the situation as much as possible, and the first way to simplify it would be to remove Lennie. So Parker chopped him in the Adam’s apple and clipped him on the temple, and then kneed his face as he was going down. And then Blue came through the door.

  Blue was a yapping terrier of a man, short and wiry and ferocious, with a sandy moustache to match his sandy hair.
He came in holding his arms like a man who’d taken a correspondence course in judo, so Parker stuck out his right hand for Blue to play games with. And while Blue was grabbing the arm and getting set for an over-the-shoulder toss Parker hit him with a left to the kidney and a left to the ear and a knee to the groin. Blue folded, letting go of Parker’s arm, and Parker used the right on his jaw.

  Blue and Lennie were both out now and Parker looked around to see May racing down the hall deeper into the building. Knowing she was headed for a gun, Parker took off after her. He caught her just as she was going into Dr Adler’s office. He grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and slapped her openhanded across the face. The slap shocked her, but it was the spin that threw her off balance. She sat down on the floor, heavily, and Parker stood over her and showed her his fists. “Do you listen, or do I beat your head in?”

  “Blue!” she wailed.

  “They’re out of it. Both of them.”

  But May wouldn’t give up. She came off the floor trying to kick him in the groin, and he grabbed her ankle and dumped her again. Then he knelt on her chest and slapped her till she stopped waving her arms around. “Now,” he said. “You ready to listen now?”

  “Get off me.”

  She sounded calm, so he got off her. She sat up, slowly, as if checking for broken bones. “When Blue wakes up,” she said, “he’ll murder you.”

  “If he tries, I’ll put him to sleep again.”

  She looked up at him then, and finally it seemed to dawn on her that he could do exactly what he said. She rubbed her chest where he’d knelt on her. “What do you want here, anyway?”

  “Tell Blue and Lennie to leave us alone while we talk.”

  She thought it over, and then nodded.

  He helped her to her feet, and she walked back down the hall towards the front door. Parker stood by the doctor’s office, watching her. When she got to the entrance-way, Blue and Lennie were both getting up, unsteadily. She talked to them, and they glared at him past her shoulder. After a while, they both nodded reluctantly, and then all three came back down the hall.