Dirty Money

by Richard Stark

  “Until they count on it,” Parker said. “There’s a left turn coming up. Do you have a blanket or something in the trunk?”

  “I keep a mover’s pad back there,” she said. “It’s quilted, so I guess it’s warm, but it’s kind of stiff.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’re coming up on the church now. I don’t want you to stop. Church on the right, house on the left, both white. See?”

  “Very remote,” she said, as they drove on by.

  “One of Nick’s better ideas,” Parker said. “Will you be able to find it tomorrow?”

  “Oh, sure.” She laughed. “I can usually find money.”

  “Up ahead here,” he said, “there’s a little bridge over a stream. The road curves down to the right to the bridge, and just before it there’s a parking area on the right.”

  “For fishermen,” she suggested.

  “Probably. Stop there, and I’ll get out and take the blanket and walk back. And do you have a bottle of water?”

  “Right under your elbow there.”

  The road curved down and to the right, and ahead the old iron latticework of the bridge drew pale lines against the black. Sandra stopped the Honda. “See you sometime tomorrow.”

  “Right.” Carrying the bottled water, he got out of the car and opened the trunk to pull the stiff pad out. He shut the trunk, rapped his knuckles on it once, and she drove away, over the bridge, taking all the light with her.

  It would take a minute to adjust his eyes to the night. While waiting, he did his best to fold the blanket-size quilted pad into something he could carry. Finally, the simplest way was over his shoulders, like a cloak, which made him look more like a Plains Indian than anything else. But it was warm and not awkward, and easy to walk with.

  Twice on the way back he saw headlights at a distance and stepped off the road till they went by, once into some woods and the other time along a one-lane dirt road meandering uphill.

  And then, there ahead of him, were the two small pale buildings in the dark. Both were empty, but the house might be warmer and just a bit more comfortable, without the church’s high ceilings. He went there and let himself in and decided on the smaller of the bedrooms upstairs.

  It had been a long day; he spread the moving pad on the floor, rolled himself in it, and was soon asleep, and when he woke muddy daylight seeped through the room’s one window. He was stiff, and not really rested, but he got up and drank some of the water, then went outside to relieve himself. While he was out there, he went over to look at the church again, and nothing had changed.

  It was a long empty day. For part of it he walked, indoors or out, and other parts he sat against a wall in the empty house or curled into the moving pad again and slept. He woke from one of those with the long diagonals of late afternoon light coming in the window and Nick Dalesia seated cross-legged on the floor against the opposite wall. The revolver in his right hand, not exactly pointing anywhere, would belong to the dead marshal.

  Parker sat up. “So there you are,” he said.

  16

  Where’s your car?” Nick sounded strained, jumpy, a man without time for conversation.

  That’s the reason I’m alive, Parker thought. He came across me here, he would have killed me, but he needs wheels and he couldn’t find the ones that brought me here. “Don’t have one,” he said.

  Nick was all exposed nerve endings. Any answer might make him start shooting, just to do something. Twisting his lips, he said, “What did you do, walk? How’d you get here?”

  “Somebody dropped me off.”

  “Who?”

  “You don’t know her.”

  “Her? Don’t know her?”

  “It was just somebody gave me a ride,” Parker said. “What difference does it make?”

  “I need a car,” Nick said, low and fervent, as though giving away a secret. Leaning forward, his whole body tense, he said, “I’ve got to get away from here. North, I can get into Canada, I can stop running for a while, figure out what to do next.”

  There was only one way Nick would stop running, but Parker didn’t say so. Nodding at the gun, he said, “You’ve got that. That should help.”

  Nick looked at the gun with dislike. “I paid a lot for this, Parker,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  Nick made an angry shrug. “Some people,” he said, “would rather be a hero than alive.”

  “That’s not us.”

  “No.” Nick stared at Parker, as though something about him were both mysterious and infuriating. Then, abruptly, he punched the gun butt onto the floor next to his leg, with a hollow thud that made him blink. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, as though it mattered.

  “I wanted to look at the money.”

  “You wanted to take the money.”

  “Too soon for that,” Parker said. If he kept showing Nick this bland face, reasonable, no arguments, maybe Nick would calm down a little, just enough to listen to sense. But probably not.

  So, how to get to him from across the room? Five feet of wooden floor between them, with a gun at the far end.

  Still calm, still with the same even voice, Parker said, “The law put it out that you got away from them before they could ask you anything. I didn’t know if that was true or not. I figured, if the money’s still here, it’s true.”

  “It might have helped me with those people before,” Nick said. “But not now.”

  “No, not now.”

  Nick shook his head, moving from anger to disgust. “You know how they got me.”

  “It was almost me,” Parker told him. “If I hadn’t heard about you, I would have been passing that stuff myself.”

  “I’d rather it was you,” Nick told him, too caught up in his problems to pretend. “And I was the one that said, uh-oh, better throw that cash away.”

  “Just what I did.”

  “And came back here.” Nick’s confusion and exasperation and need were so intense he was forgetting the revolver, letting it point this way and that way as he gestured, trying to explain the situation to himself. “That’s what I don’t get,” he said, staring hard at Parker. “That was over a week ago. You were out, you were free and clear, and you came back.” Suddenly suspicious, he threw a quick wary look toward the door and said, “Is Nelson here?”

  “No, Nick.”

  “Did he drive you? He’s off getting some food, is that it?”

  “I don’t travel with McWhitney,” Parker said. “You know that.”

  “I know you got a ride here,” Nick said. “You got a ride here, and you’re gonna stay a while, you’re gonna sleep— Somebody’s got to bring you food. Somebody with a car. Why don’t you have a car?”

  “I’m not gonna drive around this part of the world, Nick. I’m not gonna draw attention. I don’t have good ID.”

  “You wouldn’t even be—” Nick stopped and frowned, then said, as though suddenly seeing the answer to some riddle, “You’re waiting.”

  “That’s right,” Parker said, and flipped the mat off his legs.

  Nick clenched, the gun now pointing at Parker’s eyes, trembling only a little. “Don’t move!”

  “I’m not moving, Nick. I got stiff, that’s all, sleeping here.”

  “You could get stiffer.”

  “I know that, Nick.” He’s getting ready to shoot, Parker told himself. There’s nothing more he’s going to get from talking and he knows it. And he doesn’t dare let me live.

  “Parker . . .” Nick said, and trailed off, sounding almost regretful.

  “We could help each other, Nick,” Parker said. “Better for both of us. And I got water,” he said, holding the bottle up in his left hand. “To keep me going till my ride gets here. It’s just water. Check it out for yourself,” he said, and slowly lobbed the bottle underhand, in an arc toward Nick’s lap.

  Nick looked at the bottle rising and falling through the air and Parker’s right hand grabbed up a corner of the mat. He snapped the mat around at
Nick’s head, and his body lunged after it.

  The bullet first went through the quilted mat.

  TWO

  1

  One week earlier, just two days after the big armored-car robbery, Dr. Myron Madchen’s week of horror began in earnest, and just when he’d thought his near-connection to the affair was buried and gone as though it had never been.

  In a way, it had never been. He had not after all provided an alibi for one of the robbers, and he had not shared in the proceeds of the robbery. In fact, when the time finally came, he had had nothing to do with the matter. Everything had resolved itself with no action from him, and he was home free. Or so he’d thought.

  That Sunday evening, two days after the robbery, he and Isabelle shared a fine dinner in a roadside restaurant called the Wayward Inn, where they cemented their plans for the future. A little patience was all they’d need. After all, the doctor was now a recent and unexpected widower, and it would be unseemly if he and Isabelle were publicly to make much of one another so soon.

  So they’d driven to the Wayward Inn in separate cars, dined together, laughed together, gazed into each other’s eyes, and parted with a chaste kiss in the parking lot. All the way home the doctor, a heavyset man in his fifties with thick iron-gray hair combed straight back and large eyeglasses, sang at the wheel, loud and off-key, a thing he’d never done before.

  His house when he entered it seemed larger than before, and warmer. Also, it was empty, since he’d given Estrella a week off, with pay, feeling he’d rather be unobserved until he became more familiar with the new situation.

  He’d forgotten to turn lights on when he’d gone out this evening. It hadn’t been dark yet, and he wasn’t used to the house being empty in his absence. Now he wanted light, all the light there was, and he went through the large house room by room, switching on lamps and track lighting and wall sconces and chandeliers everywhere, until he reached the small room off his bedroom, laughably known as his office—he’d be moving now to a larger space—and when he pushed the button for the ceiling light the voice in the corner said, “Turn that off.”

  He very nearly fainted. He clutched to the doorjamb so he wouldn’t fall over, and stared at the robber.

  One of the robbers, the one who’d been caught and then escaped, one of the two who’d threatened him last week when they were afraid he’d let something slip about their plans for the robbery. Which he was never going to do, never; it was important to him, too, or it had seemed vitally important before Ellen . . . had her heart attack.

  “Off.”

  “Oh! Yes!”

  He’d been staring at the man, not even listening to what he’d said, but now he hit the button again and the room went back to semidarkness. The light from the bedroom behind him still showed his desk and chair, his filing cabinet, his framed degrees and awards, and in the darkest corner that hunched man in Dr. Madchen’s black leather reading chair, just watching him.

  “What—” He shook his head, and started again: “You can’t be here.”

  “I can’t be anywhere else,” the man said. Dalesia; the television news had said his name was Dalesia.

  “You can’t be here.”

  “Well, let’s look at that, Doctor,” Dalesia said. He was tense but in control, a hard and capable man. He said, “Why don’t you go over and sit at your desk there, swivel the chair around to face me. Go ahead, do it.”

  So the doctor did it, and then, in a low and trembling voice, said, “I can’t let anybody even know I know you.”

  “If I leave here, Doctor,” Dalesia said, “I’m gonna be sore. I’m gonna be sore at you. And then, in a couple hours, a couple days, when the cops get me again, guess who I’m gonna talk about.”

  The doctor felt as though invisible straps were clamping every part of his body. He sat tilted forward, feet together and heels lifted, knees together, hands folded into his lap as though he were trying to hide a baseball. Slowly blinking at Dalesia, he said, “Talk about me? What could you say about me? I didn’t do anything.”

  “You killed your wife.”

  The doctor’s mouth popped open, but at first all he did was expel a little puff of air. But then, needing to have that accusation unsaid, never said, he protested, “That’s— Nobody’s even suggested such a thing.”

  “I will.”

  The doctor shook his head, still feeling those invisible bonds. “Why would anybody believe you?”

  “They didn’t do an autopsy, did they?”

  “Of course not. No need.”

  “I’ll give them the need.” Dalesia was much more comfortable in this room than the doctor was. “If I stay here until the heat dies down,” he said, “your wife had a heart attack. If I leave, you stuck her with a hypodermic needle.”

  “They won’t believe you,” the doctor insisted. “There’s no reason to believe you.”

  “Doctor,” Dalesia said, “we had our very first meeting about the robbery in your office. Your nurse and your receptionist saw me. You told us the money you’d get from us was your last chance, you were desperate, you had serious trouble.” He shrugged. “Wife trouble, I guess.”

  “I was going to run away.”

  “Now you don’t have to.”

  The doctor’s mind filled with regrets, that he had ever involved himself with these people, but then regrets for the past were overwhelmed by horror of the present. What could he do? He couldn’t force the man to leave, Dalesia really would take his revenge. Let him stay, and somehow find a way to stick him with a hypodermic needle? But Dalesia was tough and hard, he’d never give Dr. Madchen the opportunity. So what could he do?

  Dalesia said, “There’s a little bedroom downstairs, by the kitchen. Whose is that?”

  “What? Oh, Estrella.”

  “Who’s that, your daughter?”

  “No, the maid, she’s our maid.”

  “Where is she?”

  “With her family in New Jersey. I gave her the week off.”

  “Well, that’s good, then,” Dalesia said. “I’ll stay down there. I’ll take off before this Estrella gets back, take your car, and that’s the end of it.”

  “Oh, no,” the doctor said. “You can’t take my car!”

  “I gotta have wheels.”

  “But you can’t take my car.”

  “Why not? You report it stolen.”

  “But that would be the same thing,” the doctor told him. “I’m safe because nobody’s looking at me, that’s what you said. I just had the one patient who was in the robbery with you, that’s all. But if you tell them about me, they’ll look at me.” Dr. Madchen leaned earnestly forward. “Mr. Dalesia,” he said, “this has all been an emotional nightmare for me. I’ll let you stay, but when you go, steal someone else’s car.”

  Dalesia nodded at him. “I could just kill you, you know.”

  Humbly, the doctor said, “I know you could.”

  Dalesia shook his head, as though angry with himself. “I’m not a nutcase,” he said. “I’m not gonna hurt you unless I don’t have any choice.”

  “I know that,” the doctor said. “You can stay. Use Estrella’s room. But please don’t take my car.”

  “We’ll see,” Dalesia said.

  The next week was harrowing, Dr. Madchen lived his normal life by day, doing his office hours in downtown Rutherford, seeing his patients, but always aware of that lurking demon waiting for him at home. If only he could just stay all night in the office, sleep on an examination table, eat at the luncheonette up at the corner.

  But he didn’t dare do anything outside his normal routine. Get up in the morning, eat breakfast with Estrella’s closed door seeming to shimmer with what lay behind it, then go off to his office and return as late as possible at the end of the day.

  He took Isabelle out to dinner twice that week, but the strain of this new secret was just too much for him. He couldn’t possibly tell her what had happened. All he could do was wait for this horror to end.

  A
t least the man Dalesia didn’t intrude too much into the doctor’s life. Estrella had her own television set and Dalesia seemed to spend most of his time in there watching it. From the sound, it was mostly the news channels. The doctor bought bread and cold cuts and cans of soup, and steadily they were consumed, but not in his presence.

  The few times he did see Dalesia that week were unsettling, because it soon became clear that Dalesia was becoming more and more disturbed by the fix he was in. He’d gotten this far, to this temporary safety, but it couldn’t last, and where could he go next? He had killed a US marshal, and every policeman in the Northeast was looking for him. The doctor began to fear that the man would eventually snap under the strain, that he would do something irrational that would destroy them both.

  But it never quite happened, and on Friday evening, when Dr. Madchen got home and knocked on Estrella’s door, Dalesia appeared in the doorway more haggard than tense, as though now the strain were robbing him of strength. “Estrella’s coming back tomorrow,” the doctor said. “I’m picking her up at the bus depot at three. You’ve been here almost a week. You really have to go.”

  “I know,” Dalesia said, and half turned as though to look at the television set still running in the room behind him. “They’re not letting up,” he said.

  “I’ve been stopped at roadblocks three times this week,” the doctor told him.

  Dalesia rubbed a weary hand over his face. “I gotta get away from here.”

  “Please don’t take my car. It won’t do you any good, and it can only—”

  “I know, I know.” Dalesia’s anger was also tired. “I need a car, but I can’t use one all the cops are looking for.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay,” Dalesia said. “Tomorrow, when you go get this Estrella, you’re gonna drive me somewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll show you tomorrow,” Dalesia said, and went back into Estrella’s room, and closed the door.