Parker

by Richard Stark

  “We've started a fund drive at our church,” he told the first banker. “We are in desperate need of a new roof.”

  The banker didn't yet know if he was about to be hit up for the fund drive, so his expression was agreeable but noncommittal. “That's too bad, Father,” he said.

  “The Lord has seen fit to give us three near-misses the last several years,” Parker told him. “Two hurricanes and a tornado, all just passed us by.”

  “Lucky.”

  “God's will. But the effect has been to loosen the roof and make it unstable.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Our fund drive is doing very well,” Parker told him, and the banker smiled, knowing he was off the hook. “Well enough,” Parker went on, “so we'll need to open a bank account, just temporarily, until we raise enough money for the repairs.”

  “Of course.”

  Parker pulled out the two white legal envelopes stuffed with cash. “I believe this is four thousand two hundred dollars,” he said. “Is cash all right? That's the way the donations come to us.”

  “Of course,” the banker said. “Cash is fine.” And under five thousand dollars meant that none of it would be reported to the Feds.

  Parker handed over the envelopes, and the banker briskly counted the bills: “Four thousand two hundred fifty dollars,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Parker said.

  There was a form to be filled out: “In what name do you want the account?”

  “Church of St. Ignatius. No, wait,” Parker said, “that's too long. Signing the checks …”

  The banker smiled in sympathy. “Just St. Ignatius?”

  “All right,” Parker said. “No, make it C. O. Ignatius, that's the same as ‘Church of.’”

  “And the address?”

  “We've opened a post office box for donations, so let's use that.”

  “Fine.”

  A little more paperwork, and Parker was given a temporary checkbook and deposit slips. “My deposits will be in cash, of course,” he said.

  “We recommend you don't mail cash.”

  “No, I'll bring it in.”

  “Fine,” the banker said, and they shook hands, and Parker went on to the next bank.

  That day, he opened accounts in nine Houston banks, never going to more than one branch of the same firm. When he was finished, thirty-eight thousand dollars was now in the banking system, no longer cash, with nearly eighty thousand still in the side panels of the Taurus.

  After the last bank, he drove on down to Galveston and spent the night in a motel with no view of the Gulf. In the morning, he rented a post office box under the name Charles Willis, for which he carried enough ID for any normal business scrutiny, then went to a bank not related to any of the ones he'd used in Houston. As Charles Willis, and using checks from two different St. Ignatius accounts, he opened a checking account with fifteen hundred dollars and a money market account with four thousand, giving the post office box in Galveston as his address. Then he took the free ferry over to Bolivar Peninsula and headed east.

  9

  The six theaters at the Parish-Plex out St. Charles Avenue had a total seating capacity of nine hundred fifty, ranging from the largest, two hundred sixty-five, where the latest Hollywood blockbusters showed, to the smallest, seventy-five, where art films from Europe alternated with kung fu movies from Hong Kong. When Parker put down his eight dollars for the final screening of Drums and Trumpets on Sunday night, it was the fourth time he'd paid his way into this building this week; it would be the last.

  Three runs per movie Friday night, five on Saturday, and five on Sunday. First thing Monday morning, the weekend's take would be delivered to the bank, but right now it was still in the safe in the manager's office. The entire multiplex had run at just under eighty percent capacity this weekend, which meant that, once Parker's eight dollars and the rest of the final intake were added, there would be just under seventy-eight thousand dollars in the safe, which was opened only when the cashier brought her money tray up from the box office.

  The first time he'd come here, Parker had watched how the system worked for moving the money. When the box office closed, the cashier brought that low flat open tray full of cash upstairs to the manager's office. The manager then closed and locked the door, and about five minutes later she unlocked and opened it again; that would be the time the safe in there stood open. Tomorrow, the cashier would bring starter cash for change back down to the box office in that metal tray.

  His second visit, coming to an early show, Parker had waited until the manager left on one of her rounds, then tried the four keys he'd brought with him against the lock in the office door and found the one that worked. The third time, he'd watched the ticket-taker at the door, the only other employee in here except for the concession-stand girl. He was a college kid in a maroon and gray uniform; what did he do when the money was in motion?

  Nothing, or nothing that mattered. Once the box office closed, the kid crossed the lobby, went through an Employees Only door and down a flight of stairs to change out of his uniform. So the cashier and the manager were all he had to think about.

  Tonight, he stood looking at a poster for a coming attraction, mounted on the wall down the corridor from the manager's office. He read the names and looked at the colored drawing of an exploding train going over a cliff, as the cashier went by behind him, carrying the metal tray. Farther down the hall, the manager stood in the open doorway. She and the cashier had been doing this routine for years. Neither of them was wary, neither of them looked at the customer reading the poster. The cashier went into the office, the manager shut the door, and Parker heard the sound of the lock as it clicked shut.

  He waited just over a minute, then slipped on the surgical gloves and moved quickly down the hall. The key was in his right hand, the Sentinel in his left. He opened the door with one quick movement, stepped into the office, and shut the door.

  The manager was on one knee in front of the open black metal box of the safe in the corner behind her desk. The cashier had put the money tray on the manager's desk and was just starting to hand the cash to her. They both had stacks of bills in their hands. They looked over at Parker, and neither of them was yet alarmed, just startled that somebody had come through that door.

  The manager's name was on a brass plate on her desk. Stepping forward, showing the Sentinel, Parker said, “Gladys, keep that money in your hands. Turn toward me. Turn toward me!” He didn't want her thinking about hurriedly slamming shut the safe.

  Gladys merely gaped, thinking about nothing at all yet, but the cashier, a short stocky round-faced woman, stared at the gun in openmouthed shock, then sagged against the desk, the stacks of bills falling from her fingers. Her face paled, sweat beaded on her forehead, and her eyes glazed.

  Parker said, “Gladys! Don't let her fall!”

  Gladys finally got her wits about her. Scrambling to her feet, tossing onto the desk the money she'd been holding, she leaned toward the cashier, stretching out an arm while she snapped at Parker in a quick harsh voice, “Put that gun away! Don't you know what you're doing?”

  A short green vinyl sofa stood against the sidewall. Parker said, “Come on, Gladys, help her to the sofa.”

  Gladys had to come around the desk to reach the cashier, but she still glared at Parker. “She's from Guatemala,” she said, as though that explained everything. “She saw…”

  The cashier was moaning now, sliding down the desk, the strength giving out in her legs. Parker said, “Get her to the sofa, Gladys, and she won't have to look at the gun.”

  “Maria,” Gladys murmured, helping the other woman, moving her with difficulty away from the desk and over toward the sofa. “Come on, Maria, he won't do anything, it's all right.”

  That's right, Parker wouldn't be doing anything, at least with the Sentinel, not this time. He wanted to not use it unless he absolutely had to, because that, too, could become a pattern, a series of robberies that always began with th
e wounding of one of the victims.

  The two women sat on the sofa, Maria collapsed into herself like a car-crash dummy, Gladys hovering next to her, murmuring, then turning to glare again at Parker and say, “Are you robbing us? Is that actually what this is? Are you actually robbing us?”

  “Yes,” Parker said, and moved around the desk toward the safe.

  “For money?” Gladys demanded. “The trauma you're giving this poor woman; for money?”

  “Keep her calm,” Parker said, “and nobody's going to get hurt.”

  He had brought with him a collapsible black vinyl bag with a zipper, inside his shirt at the back. Now he took it out, put the Sentinel handy on the desk, and stuffed cash into the bag. When it was full, he zipped it shut and put the rest of the money in his pockets.

  There was one line in here for both phone and fax. He unplugged the line at the wall and at the phone, rolled it up, and pocketed it, then carried the vinyl bag and the Sentinel over to the two women on the sofa. “Gladys,” he said.

  She looked up at him. She was calmer now, and Maria was getting over her faint. Gladys was ready to stop being angry and start being worried. “You wouldn't dare shoot that,” she said. “Not with all the people around.”

  “Gladys,” Parker said, “there's gunshots going off in the movies all around us. I could empty this into you, and nobody'd even look away from the screen.”

  Gladys blinked, then stared at the gun. She could be seen braving herself to stare at it. Maria moaned again and closed her eyes, but wasn't unconscious.

  Parker said, “I'll wait out in the hall for a few minutes. If you come out too soon, I'll shoot you. You know I will, don't you?”

  She looked from the Sentinel to his face. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “You decide when to come out, Gladys,” he told her. “But take your time. Think what a trauma it would be for Maria, to see you lying in a lot of blood.”

  Gladys swallowed. “I'll take my time,” she said.

  10

  From a pay phone in Houston, Parker called a guy he knew named Mackey and got his girlfriend Brenda. “Ed around?”

  “Somewhere,” she said. “I don't think he's looking for work.”

  “I don't have any. What I want is a name.”

  “Yours or somebody else's?”

  “Both,” Parker said. “Maybe he could call me at—wait a minute—two o'clock your time.”

  “You're in a different time?”

  “Yes,” he said, and gave her the number of another pay phone, backward.

  “I'll tell him,” she promised. “How've you been keeping yourself?”

  “Busy,” he said, and hung up, and went away in his dog collar to make today's cash deposits into his nine bank accounts, and then shift more of that money into the accounts in Galveston.

  At three, changed out of the religious clothes, he went to that second pay phone, mounted on a stick to one side of a gas station, by the air hose. He stopped the Taurus in front of the air hose, got out, stepped toward the phone, and it rang.

  Ed Mackey sounded chipper, like always. “Brenda says you're looking for a name.”

  “There was somebody you knew, in Texas or somewhere, could give me a name.”

  “I know who you mean,” Mackey said. “I think he specializes in Spanish names, though, you know? People that wanna bring their money north.”

  “That doesn't matter,” Parker said.

  “Okay. He's in Corpus Christi, he's in the phone book there, he calls himself Julius Norte.” He pronounced the last name as two syllables: Nor-tay.

  “Julius Norte,” Parker echoed.

  Mackey laughed. “I think maybe his first customer was himself.”

  “Could you give him a call? Tell him Edward Lynch is coming by.”

  “Sure. When?”

  “Tomorrow sometime,” Parker said, and the next day, when he'd finished his bank transactions, he drove south the two hundred miles to Corpus Christi, the southernmost Texan port on the Gulf, nearest to Mexico and South America.

  Corpus Christi International Airport is just west of town, down Corn Products Road from Interstate 37, and near there he found tonight's motel. A Southern Bell phone book for the area was in the bottom drawer of the bedside table, and Julius Norte was listed. Parker dialed the number and got an answering machine: “You've reached Poco Repro, nobody in the office right now. Please leave your name and number and we'll get back to you.” Then it repeated the same thing in Spanish.

  “Edward Lynch,” Parker said, and reeled off the phone and room numbers here. Then he went back to the phone book and a local map for restaurants, but hadn't made his decision yet when the phone rang. So Julius Norte was home after all, and screening his calls.

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Lynch?”

  “Yes.”

  “A friend of yours said you might call.”

  “Ed Mackey.”

  “That's the fellow. Where are you?”

  “Near the airport.”

  “You want to come down now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Know where Padre Island Drive is?”

  “I can find it.”

  “Okay,” he said, and gave quick precise instructions, and Parker followed them and found himself in a neighborhood that could have been anywhere in the south or west of the United States, from Mobile to Los Angeles: small one-story pastel stucco houses without garages or porches, a little shabby, on small weedy plots of land, with not a tree or a tall bush within miles.

  The address Parker wanted was on a corner, with a carport added on the side away from the intersection, and the first surprise was the car in the carport: a gleaming black Infiniti with the vanity plate 1NORTE1. This car cost more than all the other vehicles up and down the block, all combined together.

  Parker left the Taurus at the curb and walked up the cracked concrete walk to the small stoop at the front door. Beside the door was a bell button, and above the button on a small hook hung a sign that read “Ring And Walk In.”

  So now Parker knew a number of things. This was not where Norte lived. He wasn't worried about who might walk through his door. And he was richer than this neighborhood.

  He rang the bell, as instructed, and pushed open the door, and stepped directly into what had once been the living room but was now an office, with two desks. The desk to the left rear, facing this way with its side against the wall under the carport window, was a simple gray metal rectangle, and seated at it, just putting down a fotonovela to give Parker the double-O, was a guy who looked like a headliner in TV wrestling: long greasy wavy black hair, a neck wider than his forehead, and a black T-shirt form-fitting over a body pumped up with weights. His nose was mashed in, mouth heavy, eyes small and dark under forward-thrusting eyebrows. The look he gave Parker was flat but expectant, like a guard dog's.

  The other desk, nearer the door and off to the right, was a much bigger affair, more elaborate, a warm mahogany that took the light just so. A green felt blotting pad, brass desk lamp and gleaming desk set, family photos in leather frames; it had everything.

  And the guy seated at the desk had everything, too. He wore a white guayabera shirt that showed off his tan, and his head was topped by a good rug, tannish brown, medium long, nicely waved. Below, his bland nice face had the smooth noncommittal look of much plastic surgery, and when he rose to smile at his visitor it was as though he were holding the smile for somebody else. “Mr. Lynch,’ he said.

  “Mr. Norte,” Parker said, and shut the door behind himself.

  Norte came around the desk to offer a strong workingman's hand that had not had plastic surgery and so was more truthful about where he came from. Parker shook it, and Norte gestured with it at the brown leather armchair facing the desk. “Sit down, Mr. Lynch,” he offered. ‘Tell me about it. Our friend Ed is well?”

  “He didn't say,” Parker said.

  Norte gave him a quick smile as they both sat, on opposite sides of the desk. The guard dog h
ad gone back to his fotonovela. “Down to business, eh?”

  “Might as well,” Parker said, but took a second to look around. Gray industrial carpeting, a few beige filing cabinets, a closed interior door opposite the entrance. A paper company calendar and a few diplomas on the wall. “You call this place Poco Repro,” he said. “What's that?”

  “Printing,” Norte explained. “Mostly yearbooks, annual reports, banquet programs. More Hispanic than Anglo. But that's not what you want.”

  “No,” Parker agreed. “What I want is ID.”

  “How good?”

  “Real. Good enough to buy a car, take out a loan. I don't need it forever.”

  Norte nodded. A fat gold pen lay on the green blotter in front of him. He rolled it in his fingers and said, “You must know, real is the most expensive.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “It doesn't matter how long you want it for, you can't sell it back, or even give it back. Once you've got it, it's yours.”

  Parker shrugged. “Fine.”

  “Do you care about the backstory?”

  “Just so there's no paper out on the name.”

  “No, of course.” Norte considered, looking past Parker at the front window. “The Social Security won't be real,” he said. “I can't get a legitimate number that works in their system.”

  “That should be okay,” Parker said.

  “I'm thinking of some friends of mine,” Norte said, “naturalized citizens. Is that okay?”

  “I gotta have a name that looks like me.”

  “Oh, yes, sure, I know that. You could be Irish, no?”

  “I could be.”

  “Many Irish went to South America,” Norte told him, “in the nineteenth century, did well, the names survive. In Bolivia, other countries, you've got your José Harrigan, your Juan O'Reilly.”

  “I can't use Juan,‘” Parker said.

  “There are names that cross over,” Norte said. “Oscar. Gabriel. Leon. Victor.”

  “Fine.”