Butcher's Moon p-16

by Richard Stark

  “That’s right.”

  Lozini turned and looked at Parker full-face. Now he, too, didn’t blink; he wanted Parker to know he was hearing the truth, the bottom line. “My trouble is,” he said, “I don’t have your money.”

  Parker shrugged, as though it was a minor matter. “You want time?”

  “That’s not what I mean. I mean I never had it. I didn’t find it in the amusement park.”

  “It isn’t there,” Parker said. “Where I left it.”

  “I didn’t get it,” Lozini told him. “I have never had your money.”

  “Some of your people got it, and kept it for themselves.”

  “I don’t think so.” Lozini shrugged and shook his head. “It’s possible, but I don’t think they’d try it. Not any of the people I had in there with me.”

  Parker said, “Nobody else would find it. Where I left it, no maintenance man would go near it, nobody else would stumble across it. The only way it’s gone is because somebody was looking for it and found it. That’s you and your people, nobody else.”

  “Maybe that’s what happened,” Lozini said. “I don’t say it couldn’t have been that way, somebody holding out on me. All I say is, I’m not the one who got the money. I never had it and I don’t have it now.” He leaned closer to the other man, put his hand out as though to touch his knee but didn’t quite complete the gesture, and said, “Listen, Parker, I’m on the level. Maybe ten years ago I wouldn’t have given you the time of day, I would have just put every one of my people on the street to hunt you down, and not care how long it took or how much noise it made or how many times you scored against me before I got to you. That’s ten years ago, when things were different.”

  Parker waited, watching him, still without expression.

  “But right now,” Lozini said, “I can’t do that. Things have been quiet around here for a long time, I’m not even organized for that kind of war any more. I don’t have enough of the right kind of people now; most of my people these days are just clerks. And right now this town is in an election campaign.”

  “I saw the posters.”

  “It’s a tough campaign,” Lozini said. “My man may be in trouble. The election’s Tuesday, and the one thing I don’t want is blood in the streets the weekend before election. This is the worst possible time for me, things are very shaky anyway and you could make them a lot worse. So that’s another reason I don’t want a war with you. Besides what Karns told me. All of that, it all adds up to me wanting to get along with you, work something out, figure out some kind of compromise.”

  “I left seventy-three thousand here,” Parker said. “Half of it belongs to my partner.” He made a head gesture toward Green back in the other car. “Neither one of us wants ten cents on the dollar, or a handshake, or a compromise, or anything at all except our money. Our full take, everything we took out of that armored car.”

  “Then you’ve got to look somewhere else,” Lozini said. At that moment a farm pickup truck with an old refrigerator standing up in the back passed them, the first traffic since they’d stopped here. Lozini pointed at it through the windshield as it went bumping away, disappearing around the stand of trees. “If you went to that farmer,” he said, “and told him you left seventy-three thousand dollars in Tyler two years ago and you want it back, he’d tell you you’re at the wrong door because he doesn’t have it and doesn’t know where it is. And I’m telling you the same thing.”

  Parker shook his head, betraying his impatience by a tightening of the lips at the corners of his mouth. “The farmer isn’t connected,” he said. “You are. Don’t waste my time.”

  Lozini cast around for something else. “All right,” he said. “I’ll look into it. Maybe it was one of my people—”

  “It was.”

  “All right. I’ll check them out, and let you know what I come up with.”

  Parker nodded. “How long?”

  “Give me a week.”

  The small sign of impatience again. “I’ll call you tomorrow evening, seven o’clock.”

  “Tomorrow! That isn’t enough.”

  “They’re your people,” Parker said. “If you’re in charge, run them. It won’t take long. I’ll call you at seven.”

  “I don’t promise anything by then.” Parker shrugged and looked away.

  Lozini was reluctant for the meeting to be over. He wanted an understanding he could live with, and he didn’t feel he had one. He said, “You want to take it a little easy, you know.”

  Parker faced him again, and waited.

  “I go for the easy way,” Lozini said. “That’s the situation I’m in right now, I go for the easy way. As long as the easy way is to cooperate with you, that’s what I’ll do. You lean too hard, you make it easier to fight back, then that’s what I’ll do.”

  Parker seemed to think that over. “I can see that,” he said. “I’ll call you at seven.”

  Fourteen

  From a street-corner phone booth, Parker put in a call to Claire. Usually she would be at their house on a lake in northern New Jersey, but for privacy they rented the place out to summer people in July and August, spending that time in a Florida resort hotel instead; she was waiting for him now at the hotel.

  She was in the room. When she answered, he said, “It’s me,” knowing she would recognize his voice.

  She did. “Hello,” she said, the one word filled with all her warmth. Neither of them expressed their feelings much in words.

  “I’ll be here a few more days,” he said.

  “All right,” she said; meaning not that it was all right, but that she understood he had no choice.

  “It might be a week,” he told her. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Any chance of my coming there?”

  “It could get pretty loud,” he said.

  There was a small hesitation, and then, in a fainter voice, she said, “All right.”

  He knew what that was. Three times since they’d known one another his violent world had gone pushing in at her—during the coin convention robbery when they’d first met, and later when some people had kidnapped her to force Parker to help them in a diamond robbery, and finally when two men had broken into the house at the lake looking for him—and she wanted no more of it. Which was fine with him. “Good,” he said.

  He was about to hang up, but she said, “Wait. Handy McKay called.”

  Handy McKay was a retired thief, running a diner in Presque Isle, Maine. He was a sort of messenger service between Parker and some other people in Parker’s business, and his calling meant somebody wanted to invite Parker in on a score somewhere. He said, “Tell him I was busy?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” she said. “He was calling for himself. He said he wants to talk to you.”

  “All right.”

  “He didn’t sound good,” she said. “In what way?”

  “I don’t know. He sounded—unhappy, I think. Or worried about something. I’m not sure.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Parker said.

  “Fine.”

  “I’ll get back when I can.”

  “I know you will,” she said.

  He broke the connection, and called Handy McKay. Waiting for the call to go through, he remembered old Joe Sheer, another retired safecracker, who used to handle the messages for Parker until he’d got himself killed in some local stupidity, costing Parker an entire legitimate front in the process. Was the same thing going to happen again?

  Handy’s gravelly voice came on at last, saying, “McKay’s Diner.”

  Without preamble Parker said, “Claire said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Hello, there,” Handy said. “The fact of the matter is, I need to come out of retirement.”

  That was a surprise. It had been nine years since Handy had done anything in the way of business; he and Parker had gotten involved in stealing a statuette for a rich man, and in the course of it Handy had been badly shot in the stomach. That’s what had led to his retire
ment in the first place. Hesitating, Parker said, “I thought you were through for good.”

  “So did I. Little money trouble. The new interstate took all my truck business away, and this just ain’t a family joint.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “So if you’ve got anything going,” Handy said, “or hear about anything—”

  ”All right,” Parker said. He could understand the situation now. “Nothing right now,” he said, “but I’ll keep you in mind.”

  “Thanks,” Handy said. “Not as a favor, you know, but because I’m still good.”

  “I don’t do favors,” Parker reminded him. “I’ll let you know if anything turns up.”

  “Good. So long.”

  Parker hung up and went out to where Grofield was waiting in the Impala. He slid in behind the wheel, and Grofield said, “We got the evening off, boss?”

  “We just hang loose,” Parker said, “till we call Lozini tomorrow at seven.”

  “Then I do believe,” Grofield said, “I’ll make a little call of my own.” Opening the door, he hesitated halfway out of the car and, grinning, said, “Should I ask her if she has a friend?”

  “No,” Parker said.

  Fifteen

  While standing in the phone booth, receiver hunched between shoulder and ear as the phone did a lot of clicking and beeping before going into the ring sound, Grofield breathed on the glass wall, drew a heart in the steam, and inside the heart put AG and a plus sign. Then he paused, suddenly at a loss. What the hell was the girl’s name?

  It was ringing. What was her name, for the love of God?

  Click. “Hello?”

  Dori! Dori Neevin; it came to him in a flash at the sound of her voice, bringing him both the look of her as he’d last seen her in the library and the earlier sound of her telling him her name. “Hi, there, Dori,” he said, pleased with himself, and then fumbled for a second as he tried to remember his own name. That is, the name he’d given her. Green, that’s right. “This is Alan,” he said. “Alan Green.”

  “Oh, hi,” she said as he scribbled in a quick DN inside the heart. “How are you?” She sounded very pleased to hear from him; that business of the overreaction again, her trademark.

  “I just couldn’t get away last night,” he said. “Business, you know.”

  “Well, you told me that might happen,” she said. He could hear in her voice her willingness to forgive him anything, anything at all.

  “But tonight,” he said. “Ah, tonight.”

  “You’re free?”

  “Totally.” He looked at his watch. “It’s just seven now. Why don’t I come around for you at eight?”

  ”That would be just wonderful.”

  “I don’t have your address.”

  “Oh, ah . . .” He could practically hear the wheels spinning in her head as she worked something out. “I’ll, um,” she said, “I’ll meet you at the corner of Church Street and Fourth Avenue, at eight. Okay?”

  Parent trouble. Possibly also a boyfriend to be cooled out. “Fine with me,” he said.

  “There’s an old monastery on the corner there,” she said. “Lancaster Abbey. Do you know it?”

  “I can find it.”

  “I’ll be waiting right in front.”

  “Fine. See you then.”

  He left the phone booth and went back over to the Impala. Parker was sitting at the wheel, listening to the seven o’clock news. Grofield slid in next to him and said, “My love life bubbles.”

  “You’re all set?”

  “Just fine.”

  Parker put the car in gear, and headed out toward the southern end of town, where a number of motels were clustered together. They’d arrange a place for tonight, and then Grofield would take the car for his date. Parker, aside from the fact that he seemed to be monogamous with Claire, never did have anything to do with women while he was working. Grofield understood that in a theoretical sort of way, but it wasn’t natural for him not to have something stirring in his own life, and he’d never tried to emulate Parker’s monkishness.

  Not at home, though. Around the theater he limited his activities strictly to Mary; partly because he liked her enough to be content with no one but her, and partly because he liked her too much to humiliate her. But away, while working, he almost always found some girl to help brighten the laggard hours.

  “Listen!”

  Grofield looked at Parker, frowning, and saw him pointing at the car radio. The newscaster was talking about a dead policeman, a uniformed cop named O’Hara, shot dead in a diner this afternoon. Possibly, the newscaster said, the work of the same people who had done those robberies last night.

  Grofield said, “What’s the matter?”

  “O’Hara,” Parker said. “That’s one of the cops from Fun Island. He helped them look for the money.”

  “Oh ho,” Grofield said.

  “Watch for a phone booth,” Parker said. “We have to call Lozini.”

  Grofield sighed. “And I’d better call my little Dori back,” he said.

  Sixteen

  Parker got out of the Impala three blocks from the address. “Luck,” Grofield said. Parker nodded, acknowledging the meaningless word, and walked away. Behind him, the Impala U-turned as Grofield went off to position himself.

  Not quite nine o’clock on a Saturday night in July; two hours since he’d heard the news report about O’Hara. Tyler was a big enough city to have a substantial downtown, and a small enough city to have its office buildings and its weekend entertainment area all in the same place. Dark office blocks loomed over blinking movie marquees, and the traffic on London Avenue and Center Street was thick and slow-moving.

  It was another clear night; high above, the sliver of moon was thinner even than last night, giving off no illumination to speak of, shining no more brightly than the white dots of the stars. Tuesday would be the new moon; no moon at all.

  The Nolan Building took up a city block, bounded by London Avenue and Center Street and West Street and Houston Avenue. The ground floor was taken up mainly by a bank on the Center Street side and a stock brokerage and a large restaurant called the Riverboat on the London Avenue side. Next to the Riverboat was the entrance to the office building lobby, the elevators and the building directory.

  Parker got there a few minutes early, and spent a while studying the copy of the Riverboat menu taped to one of the restaurant windows. In five minutes he saw four men enter the lobby, none of them Lozini. Was he there already, earlier than his assistants? It didn’t sound right.

  Parker was about to go on in when one more car stopped at the curb in front of the lobby entrance, the same black Oldsmobile Lozini had used this afternoon. Watching, Parker saw Lozini and another man get out of the Olds and walk across the sidewalk as the Olds drove immediately away. The second man was fat and ungainly, walking as though he’d be more comfortable with a cane. Or more comfortable sitting down.

  Fine. Parker let another two minutes go by, then followed the rest of them in.

  The lobby reminded him of the one they’d been using in that jewelry-store robbery that went bad. It even had the same kind of skinny old man in uniform as the night guard, except that this one seemed awake and alert. He also had an assistant, a grinning young Puerto Rican, in a blue uniform jacket and tattered dungarees, who operated the elevator. Parker signed a name and destination in the night book—”Edward Latham, City Property Holdings, 1712”—and was about to get into the elevator when another man arrived. Parker, looking at him, knew that this was somebody else for the meeting, and waited for him.

  The other man gave Parker an ironic smile of acknowledgment, and said to the guard, “Sign me in, will you, Jimmy?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Calesian.” Parker could hear in Jimmy’s voice a well-concealed resentment.

  To the smiling Puerto Rican boy, Calesian said, “We’ll take ourselves up. I’ll send it back down.”

  “Okay,” said the boy. Nothing altered in the smile, just as nothing in the
external world could explain it.

  Parker and Calesian got into the elevator, and Calesian shut the doors and pushed the button for the seventeenth floor. “This thing’s self-service anyway,” he said. “The building management thinks it’s classier to have an operator.” He spoke in a quiet, self-assured, humorous manner—a more restrained version of Grofield. A small smile on his face, he said, “So you’re Parker.”

  “You’re some sort of cop,” Parker said.

  Calesian’s smile broadened; he was pleased. “How’d you work that out?”

  “An employee wouldn’t show up later than his boss. A cop on the payroll would, just to show he’s still his own man.”

  Calesian didn’t entirely like that, but he kept his good humor. “You’re a detective yourself,” he said. “You’ll be happy to hear we got a negative on you from Washington.”

  “A negative on what?”

  “The name Parker, and a physical description.”

  That was all right. He was in fact wanted under several different names, and his fingerprints were listed under the name of Ronald Casper, from a time he’d been on a prison farm in California, but the name Parker had never been officially linked up with any felony. As to the description, the face he wore he’d gotten new from a plastic surgeon ten years ago.

  The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Calesian pushed the lobby button before they stepped out to the hall, and the elevator went away again. “This way,” Calesian said.

  1712 was to the right. The door, unlocked, led to a furnished but unpopulated receptionist’s office, with an open doorway on the other side through which he could see several men sitting on leather sofas or armchairs. Calesian went first, and Parker followed him through the doorway, to find Lozini seated at a broad mahogany desk, its surface empty except for a telephone, an ashtray, and a pack of Viceroys. Lozini, looking sour and angry, glared at Parker and then at his watch, but said nothing about time. Instead, after a quick snap glance at Calesian, he looked past Parker and said, “You’re alone?”