The Steel Hit p-2

by Richard Stark

  “You talk to all of us,” May said.

  Parker shrugged. He turned his back and walked into the doctor’s office. He hitched one buttock on to the corner of the desk and looked at them, all three of them standing just inside the doorway. “You want to sit down?”

  “Get to it,” May said. She was the spokesman for the trio, and the brains.

  “Ail right. Stubbs braced me about three weeks ago, with an elephant gun.”

  Lennie interrupted. “Where’d he get one of those?”

  “The automatic,” Parker said patiently. “I took it away from him and heard his story. I had proof I was in New Jersey the Saturday the doctor was killed. Stubbs heard me out, and he was satisfied. But then he wanted to go after the other two. He said there was three he was looking for.”

  The woman nodded. The other two just watched.

  “I didn’t let him go. Stubbs is willing, but he’s stupid. He braced me and a friend of mine, and we took the gun away from him with no trouble. If he went up against the guy who killed your doctor, he’s dead.”

  “That’s up to Stubbs,” said May.

  Parker shook his head. “It’s up to me. Stubbs told me you were set to blow the whistle on three people if he didn’t get back in time. So the killer gets Stubbs, and then you people get me.”

  “Don’t you worry about Stubbs,” May said. “He’s good with his fists, and he’s good with a gun.”

  “But he’s bad with his mind. That’s the part that bothers me.”

  “It’s probably all over now anyway,” she said. “He’s had three weeks.”

  Parker shook his head. “I put him on ice for two weeks. I was going to bring him back here, let him clear me with you. But he got away Monday, just before I was done with the job I was on.”.

  “Wait a second,” said May. “Back up there a second. Are you telling me you kidnapped Stubbs?”

  “I put him on ice. There was a job I was on, and I couldn’t spare the time away from it, so I was keeping him till the job was over. But he got away a day early.”

  “Why, you son of a bitch,” May said. “You stand there as cool as you damn please and tell me the way you treated Stubbs?”

  Parker shrugged, irritated. That part was over, there was no need to harp on it. “I’ve got a new face to protect. I didn’t kill your doctor, and I’ve got no stake in finding the guy who did. There was no reason to let you and Stubbs louse up a job I was working on.”

  Lennie said, softly, “Blue and I could take him, May, if we was to come at him together.”

  “No,” May said. “He hasn’t got to what he wants yet.”

  She was brighter than Stubbs anyway. Parker said to her, “I want to know who he’s going after now. Number two and number three. I want to catch up with him before he gets himself killed, and bring him back here so I’m in the clear.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” She put her hands on her hips and leaned towards him, her face outraged. “Are you stark staring crazy? You say you proved to Stubbs you didn’t kill Dr Adler, let’s see you prove it to me.”

  “I can’t, without Stubbs.”

  “Why not? How’d you prove it to him?”

  Parker shook his head. It was taking too long, and not getting anywhere. “I was in a diner that Saturday,” he said. “I had Stubbs check with a waitress who knew me there.”

  “So I’ll call her now. Long distance.”

  “She’s dead.”

  May nodded, as though he’d just proved a point for her. “That’s real convenient, isn’t it?”

  “I want to know where Stubbs is,” Parker said. “The reason I gave you is the truth. What other reason would make sense?”

  “Maybe you want to catch up with him and kill him because he knows you really did kill Dr Adler.”

  “Then why would he be still going after the other two?”

  May’s face was closed, she’d made up her mind. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  Parker tried one last time. “If I wanted to kill him, why didn’t I do it when I had my hands on him?”

  “Maybe you never did,” said Blue. His voice was yappish, like a terrier’s.

  “You’re as stupid as Stubbs. How would I know about you people here if I hadn’t talked to Stubbs?”

  “The hell with you, mister,” May said. “We don’t tell you anything. When Stubbs conies back, he can tell us about you himself.”

  “And if he doesn’t come back?”

  “We let the Outfit know about your new face.”

  There was no sense talking any more. Parker looked at Lennie and Blue, trying to decide which was the common-law husband, and picked Blue, the one with the moustache. He took the Sauer out from under his jacket and shot Blue in the left elbow. It was a quick loud clap of sound in the room, and Blue screamed and sat down on the floor. His face drained white, and his right hand came over, shaking, to touch his shattered elbow.

  Parker looked at May. “The next one I give him is in the knee. That’s even tougher to fix. He’ll never walk right again as long as he lives.”

  May and Lennie were both staring at the gun, their faces as white as Blue’s. May’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

  Parker felt the heft of the gun in his hand. “The simplest way,” he said thoughtfully, talking more to himself than to them, “would be to kill the three of you. Then Stubbs gets himself killed, and from then on everything is roses.”

  “Wait,” May said, her voice an octave higher than before.

  “It would be simplest.”

  “Number two is named Wells,” said May, talking so fast the words tripped all over each other. “His real name is Wallerbaugh, but he’s calling himself Wells. And number three is named Courtney.”

  Parker lowered the gun. There wasn’t enough reason to kill these three. It was dangerous to kill when there wasn’t enough reason, because after a while killing became the solution to everything, and when you got to think that way you were only one step from the chair. Parker had killed without enough reason twice, both times because he was impatient, and one time the killing could be matched to an FBI card with his prints on it. He wasn’t going to make any more mistakes like that.

  “All right,” he said. “You give me the details. And then you wait out the month, just like you planned. If neither Stubbs nor I come back by then you can do whatever you want. That’s only a week from now.”

  “All right,” May said. “All right. All right.”

  Chapter 4

  PARKER took the Carey bus from La Guardia to the East Side Terminal building on 37th Street in Manhattan. A rented Chevrolet was waiting for him there, but he let it wait a little longer, while he went up to Grand Central. It was five o’clock Sunday afternoon, and the station was doing a thriving business. Parker worked his way through it to the phone booths and the telephone books.

  Buying a house had meant suburb to Parker from the beginning. The East Side Airlines Terminal had the phone books for the boroughs of New York — except for Staten Island — but the man Parker was looking for would be in Nassau County or Westchester County, or maybe even in Fan-field County up in Connecticut.

  There was a “Wells, Chas. F.”, in Nassau County. Parker knew from May that Stubbs had planned to go through the phone book for all the possibilities and then go visit each one. He also knew that Stubbs would start with the city itself.

  But sooner or later it would have to occur to Stubbs that Wells lived outside the city, and Stubbs was six days ahead of him. There wasn’t time to do it the way Stubbs was doing. Parker looked at the phone number for this Nassau County Wells, got some change out of his pocket and went into one of the booths.

  He talked with an operator first, and fed some more money into the slots. Then the ringing sounded in his ear. He was just about to give up, after ten rings, when the phone was answered by a male voice. Parker said, “I want to talk to Charles F. Wells.”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Wallerbaugh.” />
  If he was the wrong Wells, he’d be baffled. If he was the right Wells, the naming coming at him this way might throw him off base.

  It did. There was a pause, and then the voice, wary and careful. “What was that name, please?”

  “Dr Adler,” Parker said. Just to be absolutely sure.

  The wait was longer this time, and the voice this time was low and vicious. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  Parker hung up. He left the booth and went back across the crowded terminal floor and took a cab back to the Airlines Terminal. It was the right Wells, and he was still alive. That could mean Stubbs hadn’t found him yet, even though he’d had six days. Or it could mean Stubbs had found him and Wells had proved his innocence. It could also mean that Stubbs had found him and was now dead.

  The address wasn’t much to go on. Reardon Road, Huntington, Long Island. There was a map in the glove compartment of the rented Chevrolet, and Parker found Huntington and figured out his best route. The Queens Midtown Tunnel, because it was handy to the Terminal, and then the Long Island Expressway. Glen Cove Road up to North Hempstead Turnpike, which was also 25A, and that road into Huntington. When he got there, he could ask directions to Reardon Road.

  He put the map back in the glove compartment.

  Chapter 5

  PARKER walked into the bar and ordered a beer. Outside, evening was coming on, and this was the first bar he had come to in Huntington. All of the normal bar bric-a-brac was on display — the Pabst Blue Ribbon antique car; Miss Rheingold; the Budweiser hanging clock; the Miller’s High Life dancing lights; the light shaped like a 7; the Schlitz clock against a pattern of spangled blue. Haifa dozen locals sat along the length of the bar, and three more were playing the bowling machine in the back. One of them was a lefty.

  Parker drank half the beer. “I’m looking for Reardon Road.”

  The bartender looked at him and said, “You, too?” Then he turned to somebody else sitting at the bar. “Here’s another guy looking for Reardon Road.”

  “Is that right?”

  “You mean my brother’s been here already?”

  “Your brother?”

  “Older than me. Short and stocky and looks maybe a little punchy.”

  “Well I’ll be damned,” said the bartender.

  The local the bartender had talked to come over to Parker. “He was hi here maybe half an hour ago.”

  “Less than that,” said the bartender.

  Parker drained the rest of the beer. “I thought I was ahead of him. Which way did you say it was?”

  “Reardon Road?” The customer looked at the bartender. “How did we tell his brother to go?”

  Another customer came down the line. “I was the one told him. Look, Mac, you go straight on through town on this street, see? And then you keep on going straight till you see the golf course.”

  “The Crescent,” said the first customer.

  “Right. The Huntington Crescent. And you make a left just the other side of the golf course.”

  “First left,” said the bartender.

  “Right,” said the second customer again; he didn’t like to be interrupted. “And then you make the second right and the first left.”

  The other customer and the bartender nodded. That’s the way we told him.”

  Parker repeated it back. “First left after the golf course, then second right and first left.”

  They all told him that was right, and he thanked them. Then he went back out to the car and drove through town, staying within the speed limit all the way. This was no time to waste fifteen minutes arguing with a cop.

  The golf course was farther from town than he’d expected, but maybe that was because he was in such a hurry. Stubbs was less than half an hour ahead of him. But because of the phone call, Wells was forewarned.

  Distances are deceiving on narrow blacktop country roads. The second right was for ever after the first left, and the next left was across the rim of the world in Asia some place. Then at last he was on Reardon Road, and he had to crawl to be sure of reading the names on the mailboxes. He spotted Wells’s name at last, and pulled the Chewy off the road. He couldn’t see the black Lincoln parked anywhere, so Stubbs must have just blundered on in, driving the car.

  Parker got out of the Chewy, locked it, and walked down the private road among the trees, He came around a turn and there was the Lincoln, parked, blocking the road. He took the Sauer out and moved up slowly, but the car was empty. He went beyond it, saw the house, and cut away to the right into the woods.

  If Stubbs had any sense, he was working his way around through the woods to the back of the house. Or he’d done it already. There were lights on in the house and Parker caught occasional glimpses of them through the trees. He kept bearing right, until he knew he was beyond the house, and then he angled to the left around it.

  All of a sudden there was blacktop in front of him, and he was looking at the three-car garage. He cursed under his breath and took a backward step, and then he heard the shot to his left. He rushed out to the blacktop and looked down to the left and saw Stubbs there, in the evening gloom, folding forward into himself. Beyond Stubbs was another man, distinguished-looking and white-haired, holding a gun. Wells looked past Stubbs and saw Parker, and his eyes widened as the gun came up, ready for another shot.

  Don’t kill him yet, Parker told himself, and don’t ruin his right hand. He fired low, and the bullet shattered Wells’s ankle. Wells made a strange high-pitch “Aaahh”, and pitched forward on to the blacktop. The gun skittered away and stopped next to Stubbs’s ear.

  Parker checked Stubbs first, and he was dead. Then he checked Wells, who was unconscious. He ripped the sleeve from Wells’s shirt and made a hasty tourniquet around Wells’s leg to keep all the blood from pumping out through the ankle. Then, holding the Sauer again, he trotted across the blacktop and into the house.

  It was a fine old house; the original owners had probably been Tories.

  Parker went from room to room, switching on the lights, leaving them on in his wake. The light gleamed on polished mahogany and brass, on rich flooring and rich woodwork, on muted oil paintings and shelves of books.

  In the kitchen, the light was fluorescent, and shone on porcelain and stainless steel and formica. Parker went upstairs and prowled all the rooms, and then went down into the basement, where he found the servants’ quarters. But there was no one in the house.

  Finally he went back outside, leaving the house ablaze with light. Outside it was fully night. Parker looked at the windows on the second storey of the garage, but they were uncurtained except for a film of dust. He went across the blacktop to where the two men were lying, and found Wells crawling towards Stubbs and the gun.

  Parker kicked him on the bad ankle, and he fainted again. Then Parker picked him up and carried him into the house and dropped him on the leather sofa in the living-room. He’d never seen a leather sofa before; it must have cost around a thousand.

  When Wells came to again, Parker was sitting in a chair near the sofa, the Sauer held easy in his lap. Wells blinked in the light, and whispered, “My leg. My leg.”

  “I know you killed Stubbs. Did you kill Dr Adler, too?”

  “My leg,” Wells whispered.

  Parker grimaced. He’d have to start with an easier question. “Where are the servants?”

  Wells closed his eyes. “I need a doctor.”

  “Answers first.”

  “I gave them the evening off.”

  Parker nodded. “So there’d be no witnesses when you killed Stubbs? You killed Dr Adler, too?”

  “My leg. I need a doctor, I can’t stand the pain.”

  “Answers first. You killed Dr Adler?”

  “Yes! Yes, you knew that already.”

  “I wanted to hear it.” Parker got to his feet and walked out of the room.

  Behind him, Wells cried, “For the love of God, I need a doctor!”

  Parker remembered a study. He found it and sea
rched through the desk drawers till he found pen and paper. On the way back he passed through the music room and took down an LP in its jacket to write on.

  Wells was still on the sofa, his eyes closed. When Parker came in he opened them. “Did you call a doctor?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The pain, man.”

  “That’s nothing.” Parker lifted Wells to a sitting position, the bad leg straight out in front of him, heel on the floor. Then he loosened the tourniquet. “Watch the ankle.”

  Wells watched, and saw the blood suddenly spurt. It had practically stopped before, and started to coagulate, but when the tourniquet was released the clot broke down. Wells groaned, and reached for the tourniquet.

  Parker slapped his hand away. “You’ve got something to write first.” He gave Wells the LP and the paper and the pen. “Write how you killed Dr Adler and Stubbs.”

  “I’m too weak! I’m losing blood!”

  “You could die,” Parker said, “if you waste time arguing.”

  Wells’s hands were shaking, but he managed to write: “I leaned in the window from the porch, and shot Dr Adler as he was sitting at his desk. I fired four times. I waited in the woods for–-“

  He paused and looked up. “What was the chauffeur’s name?”

  “Stubbs. With two b’s.”

  ” — Stubbs and shot him when he came into the open in front of my house.”

  Parker read over his shoulder. “Sign it.”

  “Charles F. Wells.”

  “The other name, too.”

  “C. Frederick Wallerbaugh.”

  “Fine.”

  Parker took the confession away so no blood would get on it, and then fired the Sauer once. The bullet caught Wells in the heart.

  Parker put the Sauer away under his jacket and waved the confession in the air till the ink dried. The he folded it up and put it in his pocket, and went out to the kitchen to find a knife.

  Chapter 6

  IT TOOK him only three days to drive to Lincoln, because he was on turnpikes most of the way. They’d given him a Pontiac instead of a Chevrolet for the one-way rental from New York to Lincoln, and it was just old enough to be broken in, so he made good time. He took only one side trip, to pick up the typewriter case full of money from the motel outside Pittsburgh.