The Sour Lemon Score p-12

by Richard Stark

  Desire was completely physical and impersonal on both sides, and concentrated that way it made them clumsy with haste. Clothing was in the way, cumbersome and difficult to remove. Their arms were full of elbows, getting in their way. They fell over onto the bed, lying diagonally across it, all wrong, legs hanging out in mid-air from knees down.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, and she was very noisy.

  In the calm after the storm she opened her eyes and looked up and he was grinning at her. “You’re okay, Joyce,” he said, and she knew it was the first thing he’d actually said to her since coming in here. She smiled bashfully and reached up to touch his chest.

  He lifted away from her, looking somewhere else. Kneeling beside her he stretched and yawned and scratched his chest and said, “Boy, I’m beat. You still working up at the college?”

  Three words, that was all she was going to get. The moment was past already. She said “Yes.”

  “Don’t wake me, okay? I had a rough day.” He crawled over her as though she were a bunched-up blanket and lay down with his head on the pillow. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of day I had,” he said, he eyes closing. “Would you believe I drove from Philadelphia to Alexandria, Virginia, and from there to Washington, and from there to here? All in one day?”

  “That’s a lot of driving,” she said and sat up. She wanted to cry, but she wasn’t going to.

  “You’re damn right,” he said. He pulled the covers up over himself. “See you tomorrow,” he said, and rolled over on his side so that when she got into bed next to him his back would be to her.

  She looked at his shoulder covered by blanket. She didn’t think about tonight at all; she thought about the past. Other times with George. Things he’d done, things he’d said, things he’d failed to do. And other men, all of them like George one way or another. Things they’d done. Things they’d said. Things they’d failed.

  She got to her feet. He was asleep already. She picked up her pajamas from the floor, and the waist button on the pajama bottoms had been pulled off. She bit the inside of her cheek because she wasn’t going to cry. She dropped the pajamas on the floor again, picked up the robe instead, put it on, left the room, shut the door quietly behind her.

  The white pages phone book was under the telephone in the living room. She sat on the sofa, her chin trembling, and looked up the number, then dialed it. She listened to the ringing sound, wondering if she would hang up when it was answered.

  “Rilington Hotel.” • “Oh,” she said. “Uh.”

  “Yes?”

  She hunched over the phone, her voice low but steady. “I want to leave a message for Mr. Thomas Lynch,” she said.

  FOUR

  One

  The mirror reflected Parker’s pencil flashlight. He stood inside the door he’d just jimmied and moved the flashlight and saw that the mirror ran the length of the room and all the way up the wall, maybe twelve feet high. A huge mirror facing a bare, wood-floored room. A piano in a far corner of the room, a piano far away in a room corner in the mirror. Portable phonographs on wooden tables, real and image. A few chairs along the wall opposite the mirror facing the chairs far away against the back wall inside the mirror.

  The door was closed as far as it would go. Parker moved away from it, crossing the room in front of the mirror, ignoring the distracting image of himself and the echo of the flashlight next to him. He came to a curtained doorway and clicked off the light and then carefully moved the curtain an inch out of the way.

  Darkness. No light anywhere, no sound anywhere. He stepped through, the curtain brushing against him, smelling dusty, and when the curtain had fallen into place behind him again he hit the flashlight button briefly, just long enough to see where he was.

  A living room, small and crowded, full of spindly-looking Danish modern. An archway opposite, with a small dining room beyond it.

  There was no obstruction between here and the dining room. Parker moved slowly through the blackness, and when he thought he was to the archway he flicked on the light again.

  Formica-topped dining room table in a wood grain effect. Six chairs with red seats. Sideboard on the right, windows on the left. Left side of the opposite wall a doorway to what looked like a hall.

  He turned left in darkness, moved to the wall, traveled along it. When he felt the glass of the first window he stopped and tried to look out, but the blackness outside was unbroken. An air shaft, probably. He moved on and reached the doorway. He stopped and flicked the light again.

  A hallway, fairly long, with linoleum flooring. Two doorways on the right, both doors open, a bathroom visible through the first, the second one too far away to see anything. What looked like a kitchen at the far end of the hall.

  Darkness again. He moved down the hall, touching both walls till he came to the emptiness of the second doorway. He stood in that doorway and he could see the vague outlines of heavily draped windows across the way. He listened and heard nothing and flashed light again.

  Somebody in bed.

  In the after-image, when the light was out again, he frowned at what he’d seen. A woman in bed, asleep, covers up to her neck, lying on her back. But there was something wrong with it, something wrong with the picture.

  He moved around the wall, around a chair, around a dresser, stopped when he knew he was near the bed. He listened.

  No sound. No breathing. Nothing.

  He leaned far over, straining in the darkness, listening.

  Inhale. Very faint, very slow, very long. Exhale, the same. A pause, a long pause, and then another inhale and another exhale.

  There was a bedside table right next to him, and when he reached out his hand he touched a lampshade. He reached under it, found the switch, turned the light on. He squinted down at the woman in the bed.

  She’d been worked over. Twice, the second time by a doctor. There were bruises on her face and a bandage on her jaw under the right ear. Her left arm, lying on top of the covers, showed dark bruises on the forearm and the three middle fingers in splints.

  There were bottles of pills and a glass of water on the bedside table. There was a recent puncture mark on her upper arm. Barri Dane was out and was going to stay out for a while.

  Parker shook his head. He looked around the room and saw a chair across the way with some ripped and rumpled clothing on it. He went over and dumped the clothing on the floor and sat down facing the bed. He looked at the woman lying there and wondered what to do next.

  His path had finally crossed Rosenstein’s, that much was obvious. Had Barri Dane had anything to tell? If she had, Rosenstein already knew it, and it could be a couple of days before she could tell it to Parker. So what else was there to do?

  It was well after midnight. He’d driven up and down the eastern seaboard all day today, starting with Grace Weiss in Wilkes-Barre this morning, then Lew Pearson in Alexandria, back north to Joyce Langer and Howie Progressi in New York, and now back south again to Washington. Almost twelve hours in the car, and nothing to show for it.

  If only Uhl had gone to Progressi. Rosenstein hadn’t tried that one, and Parker would have been clearly safely ahead of him. But Progressi hadn’t know a thing.

  Parker had made sure of that, though not as heavily as Rosenstein had done with Barri Dane. But Progressi was a loudmouth, a big talker with a belligerent facade, and that type never took long to empty. Just turn them upside down and everything they had spilled right out.

  Parker had found him in the third place he looked, a bowling alley off Flatbush Avenue. He kept it calm and quiet at first, just telling Progressi he had a message for him from George Uhl.

  Progress looked interested. “George? Something up?”

  “Come on outside.”

  “I’m in the middle of a game, pal.”

  “You’ll be back.”

  So Progressi shrugged and came out with him and they got into Parker’s car and Parker hit him in the throat. Then he sat there and waited till Progressi could talk again,
when he said, “I’m looking for George.”

  Progressi had a heavy face with a beard-blue jaw, but his skin was now white and unhealthy looking. Both hands were still up protectively around his throat, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse, “Whadaya hit me for?”

  “So you’ll tell me where I find George.”

  “You want his address? He’s in the phone book, for Christ’s sake. He’s down in Washington in the phone book.”

  “You’re gonna try my patience,” Parker said, and backhanded him.

  “Jesus!”

  “All I want to know is how I find George.”

  “I dunno! I dunno!”

  Parker hit him again.

  “What’s the matter with you? I don’t know. He isn’t home? I don’t know where he is, I swear to Christ I don’t.”

  Parker sat back. “Anybody else been asking about him?”

  “About George? No. My nose is bleeding. You got any Kleenex? My nose is bleeding.”

  “No. Where am I going to find George?”

  “Maybe his girl knows.” Progressi was snuffling, putting his head back. His fingers and wrists were bloody from his nose.

  Parker said, “What girl?”

  “Down in Washington. Barri Dane, her name is. With an i. She’d know where he is. Christ, what’s he done to you?”

  “Maybe he’ll tell you someday,” Parker said. “You can go back to your game now.”

  Progressi didn’t believe it. He blinked at Parker, blinked at the door handle. “I can go?”

  “Put some ice on the back of your neck,” Parker told him. “It stops the bleeding.”

  Progressi opened the car door. “You want to try this stuff on George,” he said. His voice was shaky. “You can’t push everybody around like this, not everybody.”

  Parker waited for him to get out of the car.

  Progressi licked blood from his upper lip. He was blinking and blinking, trying to figure some way to get his assurance back. “I’ll see you again sometime,” he said, saying it less tough than he wanted.

  Parker waited.

  Progress! got out of the car and stood there with the door open a second. “You’re a real son of a bitch,” he said. “You’re a goddam bastard, you know that?”

  Parker started the engine and drove away from there, and the acceleration shut the passenger door. He drove straight down the coast to Washington and here was his first sign of Matt Rosenstein, and Barri Dane wasn’t going to be answering anybody’s questions for quite a while.

  He shifted in the chair, looking across the room at her. If she’d wake up. But she wasn’t going to, she’d been doped to the ears. It would be tomorrow sometime before she opened her eyes at all, and she’d still be groggy then.

  And he didn’t even know for sure she had anything to tell. It looked as though Rosenstein had worked on her a long time, maybe for as long as she’d stay conscious for it, so it could be she didn’t know anything at all and Rosenstein had just been tough to convince.

  Why hadn’t Rosenstein brought along that drug of his? Maybe he preferred to ask his questions this way, if it was a woman.

  But the hell with Rosenstein. The question was, What was Parker going to do now? There was nothing left except the cop in New York, Dumek, the one Joyce Langer had told him about. A patrolman named Dumek. He might be tough to find, and even if he was found he was a real long shot to know anything. Dumek might be one hundred percent crooked, he might be on the take every way there was, but he was still an unlikely guy for Uhl to go to with his hands full of caper money. But what the hell else was there?

  He got to his feet, suddenly impatient. He wanted to go somewhere and there wasn’t anywhere to go. All this driving today, up and down, back and forth, hour after hour, and he hadn’t gotten anywhere at all. And he wanted to do more of it. His mind was full of the urge to get into the car and drive, just drive. Just to be doing something.

  He remembered having seen a phone in the living room. He left the bedroom and went back through the flat, this time switching on lights as he went, and in the living room he dialed New York information for the number he wanted, then dialed it. Not out of any expectation, but just to be doing something.

  “Rilington Hotel.”

  “Hello, this is Thomas Lynch. You have any messages for me?”

  “One moment, sir.”

  He waited, sitting on the edge of the chair, free hand dangling between his knees. He was tired, but he knew he couldn’t sleep. His shoulders ached; the back of his neck ached.

  “Sir?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you registered with us?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Well, we do have a message here, Mr. Lynch, but I have no record of your having made a reservation.”

  “I sent a wire. You’ve got a message for me?”

  “I have no record of the wire, sir. But if you could give me the information now, I’d be happy to see to the arrangements.”

  There was a message there. He wasn’t using that hotel for a drop with anybody but Joyce Langer. Sometimes the unexpected happens.

  But he had the desk clerk’s game to play first. He said, “I wanted a single for four days from Tuesday. What’s the message?”

  “That would be this coming Tuesday, sir?”

  “Naturally. Now if you don’t mind, it’s late and I’m tired. What’s the message?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. A Miss Langer called for you, not more than an hour ago. I didn’t take the message myself. Let me sec— She said she has what you were looking for, and if you will come by between eight and eleven in the morning the superintendent will have the key for you. She will not herself be at home.”

  “Good,” Parker said. His watch said nearly one o’clock. It was four hours back to New York; that meant five. Four hours sleep, he could be up to her place by nine-thirty. He said, “That means a change in the reservation. I want it to start tonight.”

  “Tonight, sir?”

  “I’ll be there in four hours.”

  “That would be five in the morning, sir.”

  “I know that.”

  “We’d have to charge you the full rate for tonight, sir. I hope you understand that.”

  “I understand that,” Parker said.

  “Very well, sir. We’ll be looking forward to serving you.”

  Parker hung up and went back to the bedroom. The woman hadn’t moved. Her breathing was still slow and faint. He switched off the lamp beside the bed and then left the apartment, turning out lights as he went. He paid no attention to his reflection as he crossed the long studio to the jimmied door. He went out, closed the door behind him as far as it would go, went back to his car, and started to drive again.

  Two

  Parker poked George Uhl in the stomach with the barrel of the pistol. “Wake up,” he said.

  Uhl groaned and thrashed a little in the rumpled bed, not wanting to be awake. Then his eyes did open, unfocused, as though his sleeping brain was just starting to listen to the voice that had spoken to him, listen to it and identify it.

  Uhl jolted up to a sitting position, wide-eyed. He’d been sleeping naked. He stared at Parker, and for a long minute neither of them said anything. Then Uhl said, “No.”

  Parker had backed away a few steps, and now he motioned with the gun, saying, “Get up out of there. Get dressed.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Up,” Parker said.

  Uhl looked around as though just now noticing where he was. “That bitch,” he said and showed a sudden flare-up of anger. “That little bitch, she turned me up.”

  “Don’t let it worry you, George,” Parker said. “Just get out of bed. Don’t make me lose my patience.”

  Uhl glanced at him as though Parker were suddenly the secondary problem, as though he didn’t want to be distracted from thinking about Joyce Langer. He said, “You don’t have any patience to lose. You never had any patience.” He threw the covers back and got
out of bed.

  Parker leaned against the wall and kept the gun pointed generally in Uhl’s direction while Uhl dressed. Uhl was wrong about his not having any patience. He’d been impatient up till now, impatient since Uhl had turned the robbery sour Monday morning, just this time of the morning five days ago, but now that he had Uhl in front of him again he wasn’t impatient at all. He was very relaxed, very calm, ready to take his time and do the rest of this right.

  He’d gotten here fifteen minutes ago, at nine forty. The super had given him the key and he’d come up, let himself in quietly, found Uhl asleep in the bedroom, and proceeded to search the place. If Uhl was carrying the money with him, it was all over and Uhl would never wake up again.

  But the apartment was clean. He hadn’t been able to give it the kind of thorough frisk he’d given Paul Brock’s place, but it didn’t need it. That wad of money Uhl had taken off with was large and bulky, no matter what sort of container it was put in. If it had been anywhere in the apartment Parker would have found it in the ten minutes he’d spent looking. But it wasn’t here, and that meant George Uhl got to greet one more morning.

  They didn’t say anything while Uhl dressed, but obviously he’d been thinking things over because once he was dressed he looked at Parker and said, “You want the dough or I’d be dead now.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That means we can work out a deal.”

  “Maybe,” Parker said.

  Uhl shrugged. “Why not? If I’m dead you’ll never get the money. If I don’t give you the money I’m dead. So why can’t we work out a deal? Should be the simplest thing in the world. You had breakfast?”

  Uhl was being calm too, showing casual, unruffled, untroubled surface, and that had to mean he was waiting to see where his edge was coming from. Parker told him, “Don’t think about breakfast, think about the money you took. Where is it?”

  Uhl shook his head. “Uh-uh. It isn’t going to work that way, Parker. I tell you now where to find it, and what happens? You go bang and you walk out of here and go get the cash, and I’m not breathing anymore. I said a deal, Parker, and I meant a deal. I meant I’m going to buy my life from you, and the whole question is how much it’s going to cost me.” Uhl smiled with one side of his mouth. “I’m going to go on living, Parker,” he said, “and that means I’m going to be needing breakfast. Don’t shoot me while I go through this doorway here.”