Dirty Money

by Richard Stark

  “You mean we didn’t shake hands on it. We didn’t do a paper on it.”

  “No, I mean, so far it didn’t happen. If it happens, fine. If it doesn’t, I’ll make a deal with somebody else, and it’ll be the same story. It happens, or it doesn’t happen.”

  “Jesus, Parker,” Meany said, shaking his head. “I never thought I’d say this, but you’re easier to put up with when you have a gun in your hand.”

  “A gun is just something that helps make things happen.”

  “What I don’t get,” Meany said, “is how this finder’s fee that you call it is gonna give us reason to trust each other. That’s what you said, right?”

  “You’re gonna know my new straight name,” Parker pointed out. “And how I got it. So then we’ve both been useful to each other, so we have a little more trust for each other. And I know, if sometime you decide you don’t like me, you could wreck me.”

  “I don’t like you.”

  “We’ll try to live with that,” Parker said.

  Meany gave an angry shake of the head, then reached for notepad and pen. “The guy that’s gonna call me, he’s named Robbins?”

  “Kazimierz Robbins.”

  Meany looked at the notepad and pen. “Robbins will do,” he decided.

  As Meany wrote, Parker said, “The other thing is the money switch.”

  Meany put down the pen. “You wouldn’t just like to drop it off here.”

  “No. Tomorrow, at one p.m., one of your guys in the maroon coats drives onto the ferry at Orient Point out on Long Island that goes over the Sound to New London in Connecticut. He’s got our money in boxes or bags or whatever you want. On the ferry, he gets out of the car and one of us gets into it. If that doesn’t happen, he drives off, turns around, takes the next ferry back. At some point, we’ll take the car. He stays on the ferry while it goes back and forth, and after a while the car comes back with the money for you in it, and he takes it and goes.”

  Meany said, “And what if the car doesn’t come back? You’ve got our money, but we don’t have yours.”

  “Then how do you help me get my new ID? See?” Parker spread his hands. “It’s how we build trust,” he said.

  4

  On the way back to Claire’s place, Parker stopped at the usual gas station, phoned McWhitney’s bar, and when the man came on said, “I’m in a phone booth.” When McWhitney called back five minutes later Parker said, “It’s worked out with Meany.”

  “The ferry switch? No snags?”

  “Nothing to talk about. I’ll have Claire drive me to the city tomorrow morning, and then I’ll take the train out to your place.”

  “Doesn’t that get old?”

  “Yes. I’m working on that problem, too. I told Meany we’d do the switch around one. You call Sandra.”

  “Why do we want to bring her in?”

  “Because Meany doesn’t know her. If they try something after all, she can be useful.”

  “All right. I suppose it makes sense.”

  “She can earn her half of Nick. She can come to Orient Point and take the same ferry as us and not know us.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” McWhitney said, and hung up.

  When he got to Colliver’s Pond, the body of water Claire’s house was on, he drove past her place and a further mile on around the lake to another seasonal house where he had a stash. More than half of the money in the duffel bag from upstate New York had been spent.

  With a green Hefty bag on the seat beside him, he drove back to Claire’s house, and as he came down the driveway she stepped out the front door and signaled him not to put the car in the garage. He rolled his window down and she said, “I’ve been needing the car, I’ve got some shopping to do.”

  “We won’t have this crap much longer,” he said, getting out of the Toyota.

  “I know. Don’t worry about it.”

  He carried the Hefty bag through the house into the garage, then didn’t feel like being indoors, so went out around the back to the water. There were two Adirondack chairs there, on the concrete jetty beside the boathouse. He sat there and looked out over the lake and didn’t see any other people. Three months ago this whole area had been alive with vacationers, but now only the few year-rounders were left, and they were all in their houses.

  The strong breeze that ruffled the lake and blew past him had hints of frost in it. It was past five on an early November day, and the light was fading fast. Once these two problems were taken care of, the money and the new identification, it would be time for them to head somewhere south.

  He didn’t hear the car coming back, but he heard the garage door lift open, and got up to go inside, help her unpack the groceries, and then go sit in the living room while she went to her office to listen to her messages. They’d eat out tonight; when she came back, they’d decide where.

  But when she walked into the living room, there was a troubled look on her face. “One’s for you.”

  It was McWhitney. “Evening, Mr. Willis. I hope I’m not interrupting anything. This is Nelson, the bartender from McW, and I’m sorry to have to tell you you left your briefcase here. Your friend Sid found it and turned it over to me. He doesn’t want a reward or anything, but he and a few of his pals are waiting around outside to be sure everything’s okay. I hope to hear from you soon. I hope there wasn’t anything valuable in there.”

  5

  Parker had had enough. But he knew this was exactly the kind of situation that makes an angry man impatient, an impatient man careless, and a careless man a convict. He was angry, but he would control it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I got to ask you to drive me to the city.”

  She gave him a curious look. “But that’s the place we went to, isn’t it? Where I met Sandra.”

  “Right.”

  “But that’s out on Long Island.”

  “I’ll take a train.”

  “You will not,” she said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “One minute,” he said, and went through to the pantry, where he took down from a shelf an unopened box of Bisquick. He turned it over and the bottom had been opened and reclosed. He popped it open and shook out, wrapped in a chamois, a Beretta Bobcat in the seven-shot .22, a twelve-ounce pocket automatic, which he put in his right pants pocket, then returned the chamois to the box and the box to the shelf.

  Claire had her coat on, standing by the door between kitchen and garage. Parker chose a loose dark car coat with several roomy pockets, and transferred the Bobcat to one of them. “Ready.”

  As they went out to the car, she said, “You can tell me what this is along the way.”

  “I will.”

  He waited till they were away from the house, then said, “This is about doing something with that money.”

  “Overseas. You told me.”

  “That’s right. On his own, Nels talked to a guy he knew that could maybe do that, but Nels didn’t know him as well as he thought.”

  “Is this Sid?”

  “You mean Nels’s message just now. The guy’s name is Oscar Sidd. I’ve never seen him, but he’s been described to me. It turned out, when Nels went up to New England to get the money, Oscar Sidd followed him.”

  “To see if he could get it all for himself.”

  “That’s right. Sandra saw what he was up to, and cut him out of the play.”

  “But now he’s back,” Claire said.

  “He has to know the money’s somewhere around Nels. So what Nels was saying is, Oscar Sidd’s outside the bar with some friends of his, or some muscle he bought. To keep things quiet, he’s waiting out there until the other customers leave. Then they’ll go in and ask Nels where the money is. They’ll have plenty of time to ask.”

  Claire nodded, watching the road. Full night was here now, oncoming traffic dimming its lights. “When will the customers leave?”

  “On a Monday night in November? No later than nine o’clock.”

  She looked at the dashboar
d clock, “It’s five-thirty.”

  “We’ll get there.”

  “Not if you take a train.”

  “Nels will hold them off for a while. It won’t be that sudden.”

  “That’s why I’ll drive you there.”

  “You don’t want to be at that bar, not tonight. Or anywhere near it. Let me off a block away.”

  “Fine. I can do that.”

  “And don’t wait for me, Nels and I were going to make the money transfer tomorrow anyway. So you just let me off and go back.”

  “I might stay in the city. Have dinner and go to a late show.”

  “Good idea.”

  “And if anything comes up, call me on my cell.” She looked at him and away, “All right?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  6

  At eight thirty-five on this Monday night McW was the only establishment showing lights along this secondary commercial street in Bay Shore. Parker walked down the block toward the place, seeing a half dozen cars parked along both sidewalks, including, across the way and a little beyond McW, a black Chevy Tahoe parked some distance from the two nearest streetlights. There were some people sitting in the Tahoe, impossible to say how many.

  The simplest thing for the problem at hand—and for the anger—would be to go over there and put the Bobcat to work, starting with the driver. But it was better to wait, to take it slow.

  To begin with, the people in the Tahoe wouldn’t be likely to let somebody just come walking across the street toward them with his hand in his pocket. And he didn’t know what the situation was right now inside the bar. So he barely looked over at the Tahoe, but instead walked steadily on, both hands in his pockets, then turned in at McW.

  Other than McWhitney, there were four men in the bar. On two stools toward the rear were a pair of fortyish guys in baseball caps, unzippered vinyl jackets, baggy jeans with streaks of plaster dust, and paint-streaked work boots; construction men extending the after-work beer a little too long, by the slow-motion way they talked and lifted their glasses and nodded their heads.

  Closer along the bar was an older man in a snap-brim hat and light gray topcoat over a dark suit, with a small pepper-and-salt dog curled up asleep under the stool beneath him as he nursed a bronze-colored mixed drink in a short squat glass and slowly read the New York Sun; a dog walker with an evening to kill.

  And on the other side, at a booth near the front, facing the door, sat a bulky guy in a black raincoat over a tweed sports jacket and blue turtleneck sweater, a tall glass of clear liquid and ice cubes on the table in front of him. This last one looked at Parker when he walked in, and then didn’t look at him, or at anything else.

  “I’ll take a beer, Nels,” Parker called, and angled over to sit at the club-soda-drinker’s table, facing him. “Whadaya say?”

  “What?” The guy was offended. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Another friend of Oscar.”

  The guy stiffened, but then shook his head. “I don’t know Oscar, and I don’t know you.”

  Parker took the Bobcat from his pocket and put it on the table, then left it there with his hands resting on the tabletop to both sides, not too close, “That’s who I am,” he said. “You Oscar’s brother?”

  The guy stared at the gun, not afraid of it, but as though waiting to see it move. “No,” he said, not looking up. “I got no brothers named Oscar.”

  “Well, how important is Oscar to you, then? Important enough to die for?”

  Now the guy did meet Parker’s eyes, and his own were scornful. “The only thing you’re gonna shoot off in here is your mouth,” he said. “You don’t want a lotta noise to wake the dog.”

  Parker picked up the Bobcat and pushed its barrel into the guy’s sternum, just below the rib cage. “In my experience,” he said, “with a little gun like this, a body like yours makes a pretty good silencer.”

  The guy had tried to shrink back when the Bobcat lunged at him, but was held by the wooden back of the booth. His hands shot up and to the sides, afraid to come closer to the gun. He stared at Parker, disbelieving and believing both at once.

  McWhitney arrived, with a draft beer he put on the table out of the way of them both as he said, calmly, “How we doing, gents?”

  “Barman,” Parker said, keeping his eyes on the guy’s face and the Bobcat in his sternum, “reach inside my pal there and take out his piece.”

  “You cocksucker,” the guy said, “you got no idea what’s gonna hit you.” He glowered at Parker as McWhitney reached inside his coat and drew out a Glock 31 automatic in .357 caliber, a more serious machine than the Bobcat.

  “Put it on the table,” Parker said. “And your towel,” meaning the thin white towel McWhitney carried looped into his apron string.

  McWhitney draped the towel on top of the Glock. “What now?”

  “Our friend,” Parker said, “is gonna move to the last booth, and sit facing the other way. He does anything else, I kill him. And you bring him a real drink.”

  “I will.”

  Parker brought the Bobcat back and put it in his pocket, his other hand on the towel on the Glock. To the guy he said, “Up,” and when the guy, enraged but silent, got to his feet, Parker said, “You got anything on your ankles?”

  “No.” The guy lifted his pants legs, showing no ankle holsters. Bitterly, he said, “I wish I did.”

  “No, you don’t. Go.”

  The guy walked heavily away down the bar, working his shoulder muscles as though in preparation for a fistfight.

  Parker said to McWhitney, “Time to close the place.”

  “Right.”

  McWhitney went away behind the bar again and Parker put the Glock and the towel in another of his pockets. He closed a hand around his beer glass but didn’t drink, and McWhitney called, “Listen, guys, time to drink up. I gotta close the joint now.”

  The customers were good about it. The two construction guys expressed great surprise at how late it was, and comic worry about how their wives would take it. Livelier and more awake once they were on their feet, each assured the other they would certainly tell the wife it was the other guy’s fault.

  The newspaper reader simply folded his paper and stuffed it into a pocket, got to his feet, picked up his dog’s leash, and said, “Night, Nels. Thank you.”

  “Any time, Bill. Night, guys.”

  Down at the rear, the bulky guy’s back was to the room, as he’d been instructed. Quietly the newspaper reader and more loudly the construction men left the place, Parker trailing after. All called good night again through the open door.

  The other three all went off to the left, the dog walker more briskly, his dog trotting along beside him, the construction men joking as they went, weaving a little. Parker angled rightward across the street, then down that sidewalk past the Tahoe, hands in his pockets.

  When he was a few paces beyond the Tahoe, he heard its doors begin to open. He turned, taking the Glock and the towel from his pocket, and three men were coming out of the Tahoe, both sides in front and the sidewalk right side in back. All were concentrating on what was in front of them, not what was behind them.

  The guy from the front passenger seat was tall and skinny, to match the description of Oscar Sidd. He shut his door and took one pace forward toward the front of the car when Parker shot him, holding the Glock straight-armed inside the towel.

  Sidd dropped and the other two spun around, astonished. Parker held the Glock in the towel at waist height, pointed away to the right, and called, “Anybody else?”

  The two stared at him, then across the Tahoe roof at each other. The guy on the street side couldn’t see Oscar. The other one looked down at the body, looked at his partner, and shook his head.

  The driver jumped behind the wheel and the other one into the backseat. The engine roared and the lights flashed on, showing the Tahoe had dealer plates. The driver at first accelerated too hard, so that the wheels spun and smoked, but then he got under control and the Tah
oe hurried away from there.

  Parker carried the Glock and the towel back into the bar. The bulky guy was still in position in the rear booth. Parker called to him, “Come here,” and the guy, sullen-faced, came down along the bar to stand in front of him, look at the Glock, and say, “Yeah?”

  “I hope you got your own car here.”

  The guy frowned at the front door. “Where are they?”

  “Gone. Except for Oscar. He’s dead out there. He was shot with this gun of yours.” Putting it on the bar, Parker said, “Hold on to it, Nels.”

  “Will do.”

  Parker looked at the guy. “Did somebody hear me fire one shot? I don’t know. Did somebody call the cops? I don’t know. Will Oscar be there when they get here? That’s up to you.”

  “Jesus Christ,” the guy said, and it was equal parts curse and prayer. He hurried out the door and Parker said to McWhitney, “Let me use your phone.”

  “Sure.”

  Parker called Claire’s cell phone. “Are you still on the Island?”

  “Yes. Are you finished already?”

  “Come back, we’ll get dinner around here somewhere together—”

  “I’ll tell you where,” McWhitney said.

  “—and spend the night down here, and then you go home tomorrow and I’ll come back to Nels.”

  “What happened?” she said.

  “I’m not angry any more,” he said.

  7

  The sign in the window of the door at McW read closed at nine-thirty the next morning, and the green shade was pulled down over the glass, but the door was unlocked. Parker went in and McWhitney was seated at the first booth on the left, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the Daily News. He looked up when Parker walked in and said, “Claire get off?”

  Parker sat on a stool with his back against the wood of the bar. “Yes.”

  McWhitney nodded at the wall above the backbar, where a television set on a shelf was switched on with the sound turned off. “There’s news on the news.”

  “For us?”

  “They found Nick’s body.”