The Handle

by Donald E. Westlake

  “At last,” said England. He rubbed his hands together, like a man with lots to do. “Now we can get going.”

  England was a lot more chipper now, since he'd made the radio call and unloaded the responsibility. He no longer argued with Parker or stood around prophesying doublecrosses.

  It took a long while for the jeep to come the last stretch; for a while it looked as though it were just bouncing up and down out there, not coming forward at all. But it finally showed up, braking heavily, and the Mexican driver jumped out with a toothy grin as the dust cloud caught up with the car, surrounded it, and dissipated. The driver walked out of the cloud, still grinning, slapping now at his trousers to get the dust off. He was stocky, mustachioed, swarthy, in civilian clothes: short-sleeved white shirt and dark gray slacks. He made a comic flourish and said, “Señores, your auto.”

  England was snapping his fingers, snapping his fingers. All of a sudden he was in a hurry. “Where's Grofield?” he said.

  “Right here, never fear, right here.” Grofield came around the helicopter, walking, smiling his nonchalance, his left hand tucked into his trouser pocket. “Just the day for a ride,” he said.

  “Si, said the driver. “You know.” He and Grofield seemed pleased by each other.

  England got in front with the driver, and Parker and Grofield sat in back. Grofield had a little trouble getting in and Parker had to give him a boost, but once he was seated his smile flashed again and he said, “Ready as ever.”

  Parker slid into the seat beside him, and the jeep started around in a U-turn, heading back the way it had come. Behind them, the pilot was getting into his helicopter to take it back to its ship.

  “Once around the park, driver,” Grofield said. “I believe I'll take a nap.” His smile got glassy and he passed out, his head falling over on Parker's shoulder.

  Parker said, for England's benefit, “That's a good idea. Sleep the whole trip, why don't you?”

  The first part of the trip, cross-country, was rough, and it was just as well Grofield had passed out at the beginning of it. The road, when they finally reached it and turned north on it, was good only by comparison.

  They entered a village called Soto la Marina, a dirt street flanked by dirt houses. The main crop of this country seemed to be stones, so there were stone walls here and there.

  After Soto la Marina they turned left on a road just like the first one. They were heading west again now, passing through a town called Casas that looked exactly the same as Soto la Marina except the road had begun to improve a little.

  Just beyond Casas there were two men beside the road, an old one and a young one. The young one, big as a bull, was standing with his hands on his hips, watching the jeep go by. The old one, tired-looking, was sitting on an upended suitcase. The other suitcase was beside the young one's legs.

  Parker didn't look back after the jeep went by.

  They kept going, and a while later they passed through a town call Petaqueno. The road was getting better and better, and was blacktop by now. A sagging orange bus, wide as a whale, was taking passengers in the square, every passenger carrying a huge bundle wrapped in cloth.

  Just beyond Petaqueno, Parker shifted Grofield's body so his weight went the other way, leaving Parker's left arm free. He poked around the floor and between the seats, because every jeep in the world has tools rattling around inside it, and he found a screwdriver and a wrench. He hefted the wrench, nodded, and said, “Stop for a second, will you?”

  England turned around, frowning. “What for? We'll be in Victoria in fifteen minutes.”

  “This is an emergency. You, stop.”

  The driver smiled and shrugged and brought the jeep to a stop. “When you got to go,” he said, and Parker hit England with the wrench. The driver made an O with his mouth and started to bring his arm up against the swinging wrench, but he was a little late.

  Parker climbed out, lay Grofield across the back seats, pulled England and the driver out of the jeep onto the ground, got the .38 service revolver from England's pocket and put it in his own hip pocket, got behind the wheel of the jeep, and made a fast U-turn. He headed back for Casas.

  3

  They were walking along the road, toward Parker, and they didn't have the suitcases.

  The dust cloud had told them, the trailing tan puff this jeep carried around behind itself on these roads like a comet's tail. They'd seen it coming, and they'd remembered the jeep that had gone by the other way a quarter of an hour before, and just in case there was a connection between jeep and dust cloud, between dust cloud and the man who once had carried those suitcases, just in case there was a connection they'd hidden the suitcases.

  Near, very near. They were strolling along the road, and they couldn't have gone far from the road, so the suitcases were very near. Beyond them, the other side of them. They'd hidden the suitcases and started walking away from them, so that's where they had to be.

  They looked straight ahead as they walked. Neither of them looked at Parker or the jeep at all.

  Parker went on by them, and farther on another hundred yards, and then he stopped. He turned the jeep around and saw them standing still down there, the old man looking back and the young one tugging at his arm, trying to make him walk again. But then the young one saw it was too late, and let go the old man's arm, and the two of them watched.

  Parker got out of the jeep. To his right, off the side of the road, there was a swath of dry brown ground, littered with pebbles, the swath about ten feet wide, ending at a low stone wall. The stone wall was about knee height, but fluctuated, and was made of the orange-brown stones that were lying all over this country, the stones of all different sizes, no cement used but just the stones piled up one on top of another, the low wall meandering along beside the road, separating dry brown lifeless ground from dry brown lifeless ground.

  Parker walked along the road toward the two men, and then he turned around and walked back toward the jeep. He passed the jeep and walked another twenty yards, and then turned around and did it all over again.

  On the second circuit he saw it, peeking up over the top of the wall, curved, plastic, black, alien.

  The handle.

  He let his lips spread in a smile. He started toward the handle.

  As soon as he took a step away from the road, toward the wall, the two men began throwing stones at him. The old one had no arm, and the stones he threw were short, but the young one had a good arm and a good eye.

  They were a nuisance, an irritation. Parker took England's revolver from his hip pocket and showed it to them. He didn't want to kill them, that was just stupid. There was no need for it.

  But they kept throwing stones even after he showed them the gun, and now the old man was shouting, too: “Hi! Hi! Hi!”

  Parker put a bullet in the dirt ahead of the young one's feet.

  They both stopped. They looked at the ground where the puff had come up, and they looked at each other. They they both dropped the stones out of their hands.

  But they wouldn't go away. They stood where they were, blankfaced, and they watched everything Parker did.

  Parker walked the rest of the way over to the wall and bent slightly over it and put his hand around the protruding handle and lifted. The suitcase came up into view, satisfactorily full. He carried it back to the jeep and put it on the floor in front on the passenger's side. Then he went back to the wall and walked along it, looking over the tip, until he found the other suitcase. He picked that one up and carried it back, too.

  On a hunch, he opened both suitcases. They were full of money, just as they were supposed to be, but the little flannel sacks of diamonds were gone.

  He looked up, and the two of them were talking together, low-voiced but angry. One of them wanted to do one thing, and the other one wanted to do the other. Then they saw him looking at them, and they saw the suitcases open on the hood of the jeep, and they came to an agreement. Elaborately casual, watching Parker every inch of the way,
they left the road, moved to the wall, clambered over it. The young one had to help the old one over the wall. When they were both over, they started walking. They walked straight out across country, away from the road.

  Parker let them go. They weren't carrying the diamonds with them, or they'd still be in the suitcase, so they were probably buried somewhere near where Baron was buried. Parker spoke no Spanish, and it was unlikely either of those two spoke any English, so questioning them would be too complicated. There was enough in the suitcases anyway, and hanging around looking for the diamonds would take up too much time. For all those reasons, Parker let them go.

  Way out there, they were walking faster and faster; now they were running. All in all, they were a comical pair.

  Parker turned back to the jeep, and Grofield was sitting up, his face gray underneath the dirt. “Is that the geetus, love?” he asked.

  “All but the diamonds.” Parker shut the suitcases, put one on the floor in front and one on the floor in back. “We'll let the diamonds go,” he said.

  Grofield said, “Where oh where has my Baron gone?”

  Parker pointed at the two dots running north along the rubbly ground. “I figure those two took care of him. They had the goods.”

  “England will be sad,” Grofield said. He smiled, and looked around a little, and then frowned, saying, “Where is he? England, where is he?”

  “We left him.”

  “You're a wonder, Parker.”

  Parker got behind the wheel. “Lay down,” he said. “I can't drive this thing slow.”

  “I know you're doing the best you can, old man, but if you could fit a doctor in the schedule somewhere…”

  “That's next,” Parker told him. “Lay down.”

  “No sooner said.” Smiling, Grofield lay down again, across the seats. When he closed his eyes, he looked dead.

  4

  Parker walked into American Express with one hundred dollars and walked out with one thousand two hundred fifty pesos. Same difference.

  Downstairs on the ground floor at American Express there was a counter where people could have mail delivered, and a steady stream of vacationing Americans passed by there, looking for letters or money from home. There were young schoolteachers on vacation, in groups of three and four, middle-aged couples awkwardly overdressed in clothing too dark and heavy for the climate, groups of shaggy young expatriates looking exactly like their brothers and sisters in Greenwich Village or the Latin Quarter of North Beach.

  Parker hung around outside for about ten minutes, until a shaggy loner went in looking hangdog and didn't get any mail at the counter. He came out looking even sadder. His shoes were unshined, his trousers were unpressed, his flannel shirt was unwashed, his hair was uncut.

  Parker said to him, “You. One minute.”

  “What? Me?”

  “You speak Spanish?”

  “Spanish? Sure. How come?”

  “You want to make a fast ten?”

  “Dollars?”

  Everything this kid said was a question. Parker nodded. “Dollars.”

  The kid grinned. “Who do I kill?”

  “You come with me and you translate.”

  “Lead on.”

  “Come on, then,” Parker said, and started down the street. He was in Mexico City, on Avenue Niza. He led the way to the corner, which was the Paseo de la Reforma, the main east-west street in Mexico City, and turned right. Reforma is a broad avenue, with grassy walks on both sides and statues at almost every major intersection.

  Parker turned right on Reforma and walked down to the Avenue de Los Insurgentes, the main north-south street. At the intersection of Reforma and Insurgentes there was a regal statue of an Indian named Cuauhtemoc.

  On Insurgentes, Parker flagged apesero, a cab that would take him as far as he wanted to go on Insurgentes for one peso, or eight cents. Peseros worked both Insurgentes and Reforma, tearing back and forth in red or orange Chevies and Opels and Taunuses, carrying from one to five passengers.

  There were already three passengers in the back of this cab, so Parker and the kid got in front with the driver, and they went shooting north.

  Parker and the kid were the last passengers off, up at Avenue Paganini near the city limits. Parker had to break a ten peso note, and the cabby made change in a hurry; he wanted to turn around and race south again. As soon as Parker had his eight pesos and was out of the cab, the driver tore away.

  “This way,” said Parker, and walked down Avenue Paganini, passing the jeep where he'd left it for good.

  Mexico City was five hundred miles farther from the American border than Casas, but it made sense to come here and so Parker had come. England and the rest of his crowd would be looking hard for Parker now, but they'd be looking in all the wrong places. Up at the border and down around Ciudad Victoria, depending whether they thought he was trying to break away to find Baron. So the thing to do was stay away from Ciudad Victoria and stay away from the border.

  And the other thing to do, until he could get out of Meixco completely, was go where Americans were the least noticeable, and that was Mexico City. So when he'd left Casas with the suitcases he'd retraced the original route back through Soto la Marina and south from there past where they'd picked up the road in the first place when they'd come inland from the sea, and from there on down to Aldama, where there was a government station selling Pemex gas, the only brand available in Mexico. They didn't have any Fasolmex, the premium grade, so Parker had them fill the jeep and the spare five-gallon can with Supermexolina, the cheaper grade. With luck this would carry him all the way to Mexico City, and he wouldn't have to make any more stops along the way, leave any more signs of his trail.

  Below Aldama the road improved. He continued south to Manuel, the west to Ciudad Mante, a fair-sized town full of men and boys but short on visible women, where he picked up route 85, a main north-south route that took him straight into Mexico City. They slept on the road above Zimapan Monday night, and got into Mexico City a little before noon on Tuesday, and Parker was no sooner across the city line than he found a doctor for Grofield and he ditched the jeep.

  He'd decided Grofield could wait for a doctor, rather than waste time on the road before they could get rid of the jeep. Grofield's wound wasn't bleeding, and he was unconscious most of the time, so he was no trouble to transport. Every now and then he'd wake up, do some of his comic routines, and then fade away again.

  Now, with Grofield at the doctor's, with pesos in his pocket, with a good Spanish-speaking guide who looked too naive to do anything but keep his mouth shut, Parker felt he had breathing room again. He walked down Avenue Paganini and when he got to the doctor's house he said to the kid, “Don't ask any questions. Don't say anything at all. You're a clam.”

  The kid nodded. “I'm a clam,” he said. He no longer looked hangdog; excitement and curiosity danced in his eyes.

  Parker went into the doctor's house, a white stucco building behind a white stucco wall with a black metal gate in it. The gate was open now, but at night it would be locked. Glass shards were embedded in the top of the wall. The gap between the haves and the have-nots was wider here than in the States, which made the haves a lot warier.

  Inside, the doctor was coldly indignant. “This man,” he said, “should have been to a doctor two days ago. He should be in a hospital. I don't care how severe he thinks his marital problems are, his medical problems believe me are much worse.” He was a short, slender, olive-skinned man with a thin mustache, large outraged eyes, and perfect accent-free English.

  Parker had given him a song and dance about Grofield being a husband caught in bed with another man's wife, being shot by husband number two, being terrified that his own wife would find out about it because she was the one in the family with money. It was a story of intrigue, romance, danger, and derring-do that he and Grofield had worked out beforehand, the kind of story Grofield could act with a lot of gusto and the doctor could take a Latin pleasure in.


  But now the doctor was indignant, outraged. “He seems to have no comprehension of the severity of his wound,” he said, motioning angrily at the closed door behind which lay Grofield, “but you're his friend, you should have forced him to come here before this.”

  “There wasn't anything I could do. Doctor. He's got a mind of his own.”

  Then it went on like that for a while, the doctor talking out his sense of outrage, Parker being as patient with him as he could, the kid watching with bright-eyed lack of comprehension.

  Finally the doctor was done. Parker had had to let him run out his string, so there wouldn't be any trouble later on, but he was glad when it was finally done. “I'll see he takes care of himself from now on,” he said. “Can I take him with me now?”

  “He's a very sick man.”

  “I know that.”

  “I've removed the bullet and bandaged the wound, and I've given him a sedative. He's asleep.”

  “What does that mean?”

  The doctor said, “It means he's asleep. He should be allowed to rest.”

  “That's all right with you, if he sleeps here awhile?”

  “Of course.”

  Parker looked at his watch. “What if I come back at six o'clock?”

  “Very well.”

  “Good. You want me to pay you now or then?”

  “Then. It doesn't matter.”

  “I'll take my bags now.”

  “All right. They're in the corner there, where you left them.”

  Parker had told him the suitcases were his, but had offered no explanation. People don't explain themselves to one another when they're on the up-and-up; let the doctor work up his own theory about the suitcases.

  Now, Parker took them and motioned to the kid to come on, and they left the doctor's house and went back out to the street. The kid said, “You want me to carry one of those?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  They walked back up to Insurgentes, each carrying a suitcase. They had to wait awhile for apesero, because not many of them came out this far.