The Sour Lemon Score p-12

by Richard Stark

  Two

  With enough volume to drown out a sonic boom, the loudspeaker over the doorway blared out the voices of a rock quartet declaiming the end of civilization as we know it. Album jackets hung turning from wires in the tall, narrow window beside the entrance. Rain streaked the window, further distorting the distorted photographs on the jackets.

  Parker had left the car around the corner on Sixth Avenue. Discodelia, Brock’s record shop, was on Blecker Street in Greenwich Village on one of the tourist blocks. Parker walked up the block in the rain and he was the only one on the sidewalk. It was late morning, too early for tourists, and a weekday. And it was raining.

  He turned and went in through the open doorway under the yowling speaker. Because the sound was aimed outward, away from the shop, it was quieter inside, almost cosy.

  It was a long, narrow room with a yellow floor and ceiling. A high counter and a cash register and a glum male cashier were just to the left of the entrance, and beyond that both side walls were lined with record bins. The rear wall was a montage of posters, newspaper clippings, publicity photos, and pages from old comic books. More album jackets filled the upper half of both side walls above the record bins. More records were stored underneath the bins. Three boys of about twenty were scattered through the store, flipping through the records in the bins.

  Parker said to the cashier, “I’m looking for Paul Brock.”

  He shook his head. “He ain’t in in the mornings. Try again around two, two thirty.”

  “I’m in a hurry,” Parker said. “I’ll try him at home.”

  “Okay,” the cashier said.

  Parker stood there looking at him.

  The cashier frowned, not understanding. “What’s the matter?”

  “His address.”

  “Who? Paul’s?”

  “Naturally.”

  “I can’t give out Paul’s home address. I thought you knew it.”

  “If I knew it,” Parker said, “I wouldn’t be asking you.”

  “Well, I can’t give it out,” the cashier said. “He’d fire me, I start giving out his home address to everybody off the street.”

  “You know his phone number?”

  The cashier shook his head. “I can’t give you that either. You better come back around two, two thirty.”

  “I didn’t ask for it, I asked do you know it.”

  “Sure, I know it.”

  “Call him.”

  The cashier wasn’t getting it, and that was making him mad. “What the hell for?” he said.

  “Ask him should you tell me his home address. Tell him there’s a guy here wants to talk to him about Matt.”

  “The hell with that,” the cashier said. “I got work to do here. You come back this afternoon.”

  “Don’t mess around when there’s things you don’t understand,” Parker told him.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Maybe Brock won’t be happy that you wasted my time. Maybe you ought to find out.”

  The cashier hesitated. Parker knew if Paul Brock was Matt Rosenstein’s go-between it was likely Brock was himself into a few things here and there, and an employee on close enough terms to speak of him by his first name would have to know at least that there were things happening under the surface of Brock’s life, whether he knew exactly what they were or not. So although the feeling of urgency here was all on Parker’s side, the cashier couldn’t be sure of that, and he was going to have to cover himself just in case Parker was somebody important.

  But the cashier’s back was up, and he was resisting. He frowned, and hesitated, and looked past Parker at his three maybe-customers as though hoping one of them would interrupt them by buying something, and in general he let the seconds tick by without doing anything. Parker looked at his watch finally and said, “I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “I’ll see what he has to say,” the cashier said sullenly and pulled a telephone out from under the counter. He was sitting on a stool and he dialed the phone in his lap, protecting it jealously so Parker wouldn’t be able to see what the number was. Parker didn’t bother to watch.

  The cashier held the receiver to his ear a long time with nothing happening, and Parker had about decided Brock wasn’t home and he was going to have to come back here this afternoon after all when the cashier suddenly said, “Paul? Artie. Listen, Paul. There’s a guy here. He came in lookin’ for you. He wants me to give him your address.” He listened and said, “I don’t know, I never saw him before.” He sounded aggrieved, as though it was Parker’s fault they hadn’t met before. Then he listened again and said, “All I know is what I told you.”

  Parker reached across the counter and closed his thumb and first finger on the cashier’s nose. “Don’t tell fibs,” he said, and squeezed, and let go.

  “Ow!” Eyes watering, the cashier jumped to his feet, the stool clattering over behind him. He still kept the phone to his face, but he looked as though he’d forgotten about it. Putting his other hand over his nose, cupping the nose protectively, he said, “What are you doing? You crazy?”

  “I told you it was about Matt,” Parker reminded him. “Tell Brock I want to talk to him about Matt.”

  “Hold on, Paul,” the cashier said and put the receiver down on the counter. He put both hands to his face and squinted past his bunched fingers at Parker. “That hurt, goddammit,” he said. “Hey!”

  Parker had picked up the receiver. The cashier lunged for it, but Parker grabbed his wrist and held. He said into the receiver, “Brock?”

  A thin voice said, “Hello? Artie? What the hell’s going on there?”

  “I want to talk to you about Matt,” Parker said.

  There was a little silence, and then the thin voice said, “Who’s this? Where’s Artie?”

  “I’m the one wants to talk to you about Matt,” Parker told him. “I’m in a hurry, and I figured you wouldn’t want me talking in public here, so I thought I’d come by and talk to you at home.”

  “About what? Who the hell are you, for the love of God?”

  “About Matt,” Parker said.

  “Matt? Matt who?”

  “Matt Rose. You want more identification? A longer name, for instance?”

  There was another silence, and then, in a quieter voice, Brock said, “No, I get you. You want to talk about him, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You got a message for him?”

  “I want to talk about him.”

  “Christ, you’re a one-track mind. You want to talk about him, you want to talk about him, you want to talk about him. What did you do to my cashier?”

  Parker was still holding the cashier’s wrist. He’d tried to get away a couple of times, but each time Parker had bent his arm for him, so now he just stood there, breathing hard, glowering at Parker, making no trouble. None of the three browsers had so much as looked up when the stool had gone over; they were all absorbed in their quests.

  Parker said, “He’s all right. He’s right here. You want to talk to him?”

  “What for? And what do I want to talk to you for?”

  “I’m not trouble for you. All I want is to talk about— “

  “Yeah, I know, you want to talk about Matt. Okay, okay. You know where Downing Street is?”

  “I can find it.”

  “It’s the next block down on Sixth, west side of the street. I’m in number eight, near the corner. Second floor.”

  “I’ll leave now. You want to talk to your boy?”

  “No. I’ll see you.”

  Parker let go the cashier’s hand and gave him the phone. “He doesn’t want to talk to you,” he said.

  The cashier put the receiver to his head anyway and said, “Paul?” But Brock had already hung up, so now the cashier looked needlessly foolish and he knew it. He hung up the phone with an angry gesture, put it away under the counter, and said, “You didn’t have to get tough.”

  “I didn’t,” Parker told him.
r />   Three

  “You sound like your voice. Come in.”

  Parker walked into a decorating magazine’s idea of the perfect masculine den. Wood was everywhere, massive and darkly stained. Knurled posts, heavy rough-finished tables, lamps with deep-grained wooden bases. And leather, and black iron, and a few discreet touches of brass. The wall-to-wall carpet was vaguely Persian, with an intricate swirling design in tans and creams and dull orange against a background of black. The windows sported wood-grain shutters. Even the air-conditioner in the wall beneath the window had a wood veneer face. And through an arched open doorway done in purposely rough plaster Parker could see another room done in exactly the same style and dominated by a heavy wooden trestle table and high-backed wooden chairs with leather seats.

  The outside of the building hadn’t led him to expect anything like this. It was four stories high, narrow, hemmed in by similar buildings on both sides, each building having three windows facing the street on each floor and a high stoop up to a fairly ornate entrance-way. They were old buildings, old enough so that even their facelift false fronts were old — the one on this building was fake red brick - and a hallway inside had continued the same sort of first impression. Long, creaking staircases with rubber treads, bare peach-colored walls.

  Paul Brock had not merely moved into the second-story floor-through apartment in this building, he’d moved an entirely different world into it. He’d put a hell of a lot of money into the place where he lived without much chance of ever getting a return on his investment, and it was a safe bet he hadn’t done it all on the kind of income he was getting from that hole-in-the-wall record store. Brock was a man with other things going for him, that much was sure.

  Parker turned from his scanning of the apartment to study its tenant instead. The room distracted one from the man who lived in it, made him tend to disappear into the background, and maybe that was a part of the intention.

  Because Paul Brock wasn’t very much. Slightly under medium height, very thin, he had a long, bony neck and an Ichabod Crane sort of face, except that there was a well-worn expression of friendliness and amiability on this face. Brock wore heavy horn rimmed glasses that made his eyes look huge and his cheeks look as though they sagged. He was about thirty. He was wearing loafers and grey slacks and a pale blue short-sleeved polo shirt, and he looked like the kind of guy in the office who’d go around with a cigar box to take up the gift collection every time one of the secretaries was quitting to get married.

  He shut the door now and said, “Do you have a name you give out, or do I just clear my throat when I want to attract your attention?”

  “Parker.”

  “Parker. Nosy or pen? Ha! Well, that wasn’t very funny. It’s too early to offer a drink, but I— it is too early to offer a drink, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Parker said.

  “I thought it was. Coffee?”

  “I don’t have the time,” Parker said.

  “Then let’s get down to business, Mr. Parker. Have a seat.”

  Parker sat in a wooden-armed chair with an orange seat-cushion, and Brock settled opposite him on the black leather sofa. Brock tucked his legs under himself like a woman, but it seemed an unselfconscious gesture, and in no other way did he behave overtly like a faggot. The position was somehow more childlike than sexual.

  Parker leaned forward and put his elbows on knees. “First of all,” he said, “I’m in the same business as Matt Rosenstein. He doesn’t know me, but we’ve got some mutual acquaintances also in the profession. If you want, I can give you some names till we come to one you know, and then you can check me out to see if I’m what I say I am.”

  “I have no doubt you’re what you say you are,” Brock said. “You couldn’t be anything else. In fact, you remind me of Matt in a lot of ways. Not in appearance so much, and probably with more personal control, but still you two are obviously both in the same bag. I don’t have to check on you.”

  “Good. There’s another guy also in the same business, and I know he worked with Rosenstein once. I want to find this guy, and I don’t have any way to get in touch with him. Maybe Rosenstein does. That means I have to ask Rosenstein. I asked around and I found out that if I want any answers from Rosenstein I have to ask the questions of you.”

  Brock nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “I am Matt’s post office. Who is the man you want to find?”

  “George Uhl,” Parker said. “U-h-1.” He watched Brock’s face and saw nothing happen there.

  “I wouldn’t know him,” Brock said, “but then I don’t know all of Matt’s friends. Why do you want to find him?”

  “Business reasons,” Parker said.

  “None of mine, eh?” Brock smiled amiably. “That’s fair enough. So what you want me to do is ask Matt how you get in touch with this man Uhl, is that right?”

  “Or send me to Rosenstein,” Parker said, “and I’ll ask him myself.”

  Brocks smile got thinner. “I don’t think that would be the way to handle it. Though I see no reason not to make a phone call for you. You say this man’s name is George Uhl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Odd name,” Brock said. He untucked his legs and put his feet on the floor. “I’ll make the call,” he said, “and then we’ll wait a while before Matt calls back. You understand that.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “You’re making me a nervous host,” Brock said. “May I at least offer you some coffee while you wait?”

  “Make the call first,” Parker said.

  “Naturally.”

  Brock slid to his feet, made a smiling half-bow to excuse himself, and left the room.

  Parker sat in the chair and waited. The room forced itself on his attention much more than an ordinary room. His eyes kept traveling from detail to detail, distracting his mind.

  He vaguely heard the murmur of speech from deeper within the apartment. That would be Brock on the phone. Then there was silence for a while, and then Brock came in with a silver coffee service on a silver tray with a dish of chocolate chip cookies. “The cookies are homemade,” he said, putting the tray down. “I think you’ll find them quite good. How do you take your coffee?”

  “Black.”

  Brock poured. The cups were ornate, with tiny, slender curved handles and fragile saucers. The spoons were smaller than ordinary. Brock put a cookie on the saucer with the cup and passed it over to Parker.

  It was like Madge again. Waiting for a phone call and spending the meantime in somebody else’s idea of social fun. Coffee and cookies. Parker ate some of the cookie, and it had a good taste to it.

  Brock perched on the edge of the sofa, stirring milk and sugar into his own coffee, said, “Artie phoned me back, you know. After you left the store.”

  “He did?”

  “He said you tweaked his nose.” Brock smiled merrily. “What a strange thing to do,” he said.

  Parker shrugged. He drank some of the coffee, and that was good,too.

  Brock kept a small conversation going awhile longer, talking about Artie, about the record store, about the rain beating down outside, and Parker answered him the way he’d answered Madge, with nods and monosyllables. But the combination of small talk, hot coffee, and the distracting detail-full room were soporific. Also the vague shush of rain outside the shuttered windows. Parker sat back in the chair and let his body relax while he waited.

  After a while Brock said, “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”

  Parker nodded, and Brock left.

  The room was full of details. The rain whispered outside. The coffee was warm in his stomach. His eyelids were drooping When he realized he’d been drugged it was too late to do anything about it. He was too weak to stand. A swirling dizziness was spinning up from his stomach, clouding his sight. befuddling his brain.

  He managed to turn his head and look at the doorway to the dining room, the rough plaster arch. It was empty. The dining room beyond, heavy with wooden furniture like a room in
a monastery, was empty.

  The guns were heavy, his pockets confining, but he got the guns out, he got them out. He pushed forward and went to his knees onto the rug, the rug muffling the thump. He swayed forward and made it to the sofa, a revolver loosely held in each hand. He stuffed the guns under the pillows, deep in under tin pillows.

  Night was closing in, full of swirling mists. On hands and knees he moved his heavy dead body away from the sofa, back toward the orange chair. He wasn’t making it. He lunged forward, and miles away some rocky cliff that was his forehead blundered into the wooden chair arm, and he fell, turning, and darkness wrapped a black wool blanket around him hours before he hit the floor.

  Four

  Floating. Floating. Blue and blue and black. Bottom of the ocean. Outer space, between the stars. Tiny winking lights millions of miles away. Soft floating, wrapped in dark blue cotton candy. Soft blankets. Endlessly turning. Slow.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Irritation. A rip in the fabric. But still the floating.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Answer. Easier that way. “Yes.”

  “What do you want with George Uhl?”

  “Money.”

  “What money?”

  “My money. Our money.”

  “George Uhl has money belonging to you? Does he?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did he get your money?”

  “Double cross.”

  “On a robbery?” , “Yes.”

  “Tell me about the robbery.”

  Complicated question. Irritation. Painful.

  “Tell me about the robbery.”

  Easier to answer. “Bank. Four string. Benny Weiss. Phil Andrews. George Uhl. Thirty-three grand. Uhl shot Weiss. Shot Andrews. Burned house down.”

  “How did you get away?”

  “Out window.”

  “Does he know you’re still alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was thirty-three thousand your piece or the whole pie?”

  “Whole.”

  “Do you know where George Uhl is?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know how to find him?”

  “Matt Rosenstein. Ask Matt Rosenstein.”