The Sour Lemon Score p-12

by Richard Stark

  They left the apartment and rode down in the elevator, Uhl leaning against the wall on the way down. They got out of the elevator on the first floor, and an old woman with a full shopping cart gave Uhl an odd look as she got aboard the elevator to go up.

  Parker dropped Joyce Langer’s key in the superintendent’s mailbox, then led Uhl outside to where his car stood illegally close to a fire hydrant. There was a ticket on the windshield.

  Uhl was still as docile as a lobotomized monk. Parker walked him around the car and settled him the passenger seat, then went around to the driver’s side, plucked the ticket from the windshield and dropped it in the gutter, got in behind the wheel, and drove away from there.

  Uhl quickly sagged against the door on his side. His eyes remained open, but he gave no indication of consciousness.

  Parker went down the West Side Highway and through the Lincoln Tunnel and down the Jersey Turnpike from exit sixteen to exit fifteen, where he got off and took a lot of slum like city streets until he wound up on a bumpy blacktop road past nothing but weeds. He was driving into a part of the Jersey swamp, where over the years a lot of things no longer wanted in New York have wound up. George Uhl wouldn’t be the first man among them.

  Parker stopped in a deserted area. The swamp was II m .mil green. Far away he could see bridges, factories, junkyard, oil refineries; but around here nothing but the flat green.

  He got Uhl out of the car and walked him out across a soggy field through waist-high weeds. After a while he stopped and said, “Lie down,” but when he let go of Uhl’s arm Uhl just went limp and fell down, lying in a crumped heap in the weeds.

  Parker took out his pistol and aimed it at Uhl’s head, but he didn’t fire.

  It was stupid. There was no sense in it, and things without sense in them irritated him. Uhl was too docile, too easy. Somehow he was too much like a trusting child. Today or tomorrow he would wake up with a blinding headache and he would be again the guy who had twice tried to kill Parker, who had turned a very sweet job sour, who had killed his partners and stolen money that belonged to Parker, who had caused him trouble and discomfort of all kinds for five days in a row. That’s who he’d been yesterday and that’s who he’d be tomorrow, and Parker wouldn’t think twice about exing that George Uhl out of the human race. But that wasn’t who George Uhl was today. Today he was a docile child, and with angry irritation Parker realized that today he wasn’t going to kill George Uhl.

  But neither was he going to leave Uhl capable of getting back into the action. Nothing could make him quite that stupid. He put his pistol away again and bent over Uhl and broke three bones, all fairly important. Uhl groaned once and frowned, but that was all.

  Parker walked back to the car and set off for Philadelphia.

  Five

  Twenty past one on a sunny spring Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia. Parker drove past Ed Saugherty’s house, noticing the blue Datsun with New York plates parked out front, noticing the drapes wide open in the picture window. He went by without slowing, knowing they’d be watching, not wanting anybody on the inside to pay any particular attention to his car. They shouldn’t be able to recognize him from over there; the house was set well back from the street.

  The houses were widely spaced, but there was activity around more than half of them. Children rode bicycles, men mowed lawns or washed automobiles — all the weekend business of the straight world. Parker continued along the curving street until the Saugherty house was just out of sight in the rearview mirror but the blue Datsun could still be seen partway around the curve, and then he pulled to the curb and parked.

  This was the worst possible place and the worst possible time for private business. If he parked here more than ten minutes the people in the neighboring houses would start to wonder about him, and within half an hour some busybody wife would send her husband out to smile at him in artificial friendliness and ask could he help, was Parker lost, was there anything in particular he wanted around here. But if he went away and waited till tonight to come back, Rosenstein and Brock might already be gone. It depended on how long it took them to squeeze the money out of Ed Saugherty. They didn’t have it yet, which was lucky, but how long would Ed Saugherty hold out against a Matt Rosenstein and a Paul Brock?

  But if he could neither go away and come back tonight nor stay here and keep them under surveillance, for many of the same reasons he couldn’t break into the house right now. They would be on the alert in there, and green lawn spread out bright and empty on all four sides of the house. The houses were well separated here, and between Saugherty and his neighbors there were no hedges, no privacy fences, nothing but lawn. Parker wouldn’t make it to the house alive, and a gun battle in the middle of a Saturday afternoon in this neighborhood wouldn’t be the brightest idea in the world anyway.

  Two boys on bicycles rode by, looking at him curiously.

  He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t bull his way in.

  Which left only one thing to do. He put the car in gear and drove three curving blocks before he found a telephone booth on a corner. He stopped the car, stepped into the booth, and dialed Saugherty’s house.

  Brock answered, and Parker said, “Hello, Brock, this is Parker. Put Rosenstein on.”

  All he got was a gasp.

  “Come on, Brock, we’re all in a hurry. Put your angel on, let’s go.”

  Brock didn’t say anything, but Parker heard the receiver thud down on a piece of furniture. He thought he could vaguely hear conversation going on far from the phone. He waited, and the next voice he heard was the same one that had questioned him that time at Brock’s place:

  “Parker?”

  “Rosenstein?”

  “Yeah. You the one called before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Had us a little confused here. What’s on your mind?”

  “I’ve got Uhl,” Parker said.

  “That’s good,” Rosenstein said. “Have fun with him.”

  “I used that serum of yours on him.”

  There was a little pause, and Rosenstein said, “You did?”

  “So now I know the situation,” Parker said. “I know I need Saugherty.”

  Rosenstein laughed. “Ain’t that the truth. Sorry, baby, he isn’t for sale.”

  “But you need Uhl,” Parker told him.

  Another little silence, and Rosenstein said, “How do you figure that?”

  “You don’t have the money, and you won’t get it without Uhl. Just like I won’t get it without Saugherty. You’ve got Saugherty. I’ve got Uhl.”

  “Are you talking deal?”

  “Better we each get half than nobody gets anything.”

  “Maybe. Maybe I don’t need Uhl at all.”

  “If you didn’t,” Parker said, improvising, “You’d have the money by now and be gone from there.”

  “If I had that damn serum— “

  “You need Uhl.”

  “Hold on a minute.”

  Parker held on. He didn’t know what Saugherty had done with the money, or why it was taking Rosenstein and Brock so long to get it out of him, but unless Saugherty fell apart in the next thirty seconds this idea ought to work.

  Rosenstein came back. “Just for the sake of argument, what’s on your mind?”

  “Fifty-fifty split.”

  “I know that. How do you want to work it?”

  “We’ll meet and talk things over,” Parker said, and knowing Rosenstein would object, he said, “We’ll figure out some place we can meet, and— “

  “You mean I leave here? That’s damn likely, isn’t it? Don’t be stupid, Parker.”

  “All right then. You tell me.”

  “Just tell me what Uhl told you. We’ll get the dough and leave you half. You’re in the neighborhood, right?”

  “I’m a few blocks away.”

  “In a phone booth on the corner? Yeah, I know that one. So just give me the story.”

  “And you’ll leave me half,” Park
er said.

  There was a little silence, and then Rosenstein chuckled. “It was worth a try,” he said.

  “We can’t stall around forever,” Parker said. “Neither of us is going to get more than half, so let’s face it.”

  Rosenstein sighed. “All right. But I’m not leaving here.”

  “Then I don’t know,” Parker said. He wanted the suggestion to come from Rosenstein so he wouldn’t be suspicious of it.

  It finally did. “Why don’t you come here?” Rosenstein said. “We can work out a way you can come in without exposing yourself. I don’t suppose you’ll take my word for a safe conduct or anything.”

  “I won’t.”

  “All right. Set it up any way you want.”

  Parker nodded, having gotten where he wanted to go. He said, “Is there a car in the garage?”

  “What? Yeah.”

  “Remove it. Park it down by the curb and leave the garage door open. But neither you nor Brock is to be in the garage. I’ll drive straight in. What room does the garage connect to?”

  “The kitchen.”

  “Is there a table in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You two be sitting at it with your hands where I can see them. You can leave the door to the garage open or shut, it’s up to you. I’ll come in empty-handed. You can have one gun on the table so you’ll know I won’t come in shooting.”

  “All right. What about Uhl?”

  “He’s in the trunk of my car. Don’t worry, he’s out of the play.”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  “Not here.”

  “All right. We’ll empty the garage for you.”

  “I’m on my way,” Parker said.

  Six

  The garage was at the left end of the house, its door like an open mouth. Parker drove into it with no hands on the wheel, looking for the doorway that had to be somewhere in the right-side wall, the one leading into the kitchen. His left hand was on the door handle beside him, and his right hand had a revolver in it.

  There was a slight blacktop slope up from the road, and then the flat garage floor. Parker went up, fast, into the garage too fast, stood on the brake at the last second, saw that interior doorway empty in the middle of the wall to his right, shoved the car door open with his shoulder, and went out of the car backwards, dropping toward the floor as the first bullet came from that doorway over there into the car through the windshield and out this side, six inches over Parker’s head.

  The car bumped into the rear wall. It was still in drive; the motor kept turning over, it kept pushing against the wall, but not hard enough to do any damage.

  Parker hit the floor between the car and the exterior wall, folded his arms in close against his body, and rolled under the car. He kept himself rolling across the cement floor, the car rumbling over his head.

  The garage door was sliding down. It must be run electrically, with a switch somewhere in the house.

  Parker rolled out from under the right side of the car. Brock, startled, was standing in the doorway on the landing there with the open kitchen doorway on his right and the cellar stairs behind him. Parker had been in the garage less than ten seconds. He fired, lying on his back, and Brock jerked and toppled backwards down the cellar stairs.

  Parker lunged for the wall as a shot was fired from the kitchen. It came through the angle of the two doorways and slapped into the side of the car.

  The garage door was down. There’d been three shots, only one with the door open. With any luck the neighbors were all too busy and too far away to have noticed anything, but there couldn’t be a lot of noise from here on.

  Exhaust was beginning to stink up the garage already. The car engine was still growling, pushing against the rear wall of the garage.

  There was a faint call from the cellar: “Matt! Help me, Matt!”

  “Damn you, Parker!”

  That was Rosenstein’s voice from somewhere in the kitchen. Parker was pressed against the wall to the right of the doorway. There were two steps up to the doorway, and then the little landing inside and the kitchen doorway on the left.

  There couldn’t be a stalemate now. He had to keep moving, keep Rosenstein from getting himself reorganized. There was a pegboard mounted on the wall to Parker’s right, the other way from the door, with tools hanging on it. He grabbed a hammer, stepped away from the wall so he could see on a diagonal through the two doorways into the kitchen, and threw the hammer at the far wall in there to give Rosenstein something else to think about for two seconds. He followed the hammer in, running low, diving across the threshold, firing blindly to his right as he went in. Not to hit anything, just to keep Rosenstein off balance, surround him with movement and noise.

  A bullet ripped cloth above Parker’s shoulder blade, and then he was on the floor, on his side. Rosenstein was in the doorway at the far end of the right-hand wall. Parker had two hands on the gun for stability, his arms were outstretched and he fired as Rosenstein dove out of the doorway. Rosenstein roared and crashed somewhere out of sight.

  Was he hit? Parker was on his feet and running. He went fast around the corner and almost tripped over Rosenstein lying on the living room floor. Rosenstein was trying to bring his gun hand up. Parker kicked his wrist and the gun went sailing across the room. Rosenstein grunted and fell back. His breathing sounded clogged but there was no blood visible.

  Any more of them? Parker crouched over Rosenstein, looking around, but the house was full of silence.

  Rosenstein was looking up at him. Talking as though his throat was closing up on him he said, “You broke my back.”

  Parker straightened. There’d been only the two of them. He went farther into the living room and picked up Rosenstein’s pistol and put it in his hip pocket.

  Rosenstein coughed and said, “You had luck. I could have taken you, but you had luck.”

  Parker walked back to him.

  Rosenstein’s eyes were red; they looked veiled. “I should have killed you when I had you,” he said, his voice very thick now.

  Parker reversed his gun and bent down and chopped once across Rosenstein’s head.

  Now to find Saugherty. He straightened, keeping the gun in his hand, and walked down the hall, opening doors. In one room was a woman, naked, tied and gagged and lying on a bed. She had bruises on her face and body, but she was conscious, and the one eye glaring at Parker looked wild. In another room three children in pajamas were tied and gagged and lying on beds. They moved like chipmunks when he opened the door. But in no room at all was there a man.

  He went back to the living room. Rosenstein hadn’t moved. He went through the kitchen and switched on the cellar light and saw Brock lying on the floor down there. Brock’s head moved, and he called, “Matt?” His voice trembled.

  Parker went down the stairs. He hunkered beside Brock and said, “Where’s Saugherty?”

  Brock’s eyes had trouble finding him, and then he said, “You.

  You ruined my apartment.”

  “Where’s Saugherty?” Parker said.

  “Why did you break everything? You didn’t have to break everything.”

  Parker took Brock by the shoulder and moved him. Brock gasped, his eyes widened, his face went white, and he looked as though he’d pass out. “Don’t. I can’t move like that, it hurts!”

  “Then pay attention,” Parker told him.

  Brock blinked rapidly. He breathed in quick gulps and said, “Where’s Matt?”

  “Upstairs. He says he’s got a broken back. The sooner I’m done here the sooner the both of you get a doctor. Where’s Saugherty?”

  Brock closed his eyes. “Dead,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “He tried to fight Matt.” Brock was talking now in a monotone, his eyes shut. “Matt went after his wife; he tried to — Matt got mad and wouldn’t quit. I tried to get him to quit, but he just kept at the poor bastard. He wouldn’t quit.” He opened his eyes and said, “He’s back in the other part of the c
ellar. On a glider back there.”

  “And the money?”

  “The wife doesn’t know anything. We asked her after you called the first time. Matt leaned on her a little, but she doesn’t know anything. Just that Uhl called at dinnertime yesterday, and after he called Saugherty went out of the house with a suitcase and came back without it.”

  “She doesn’t know where he went?”

  “If she knew, she’d have told Matt. She really would.”

  Parker believed it. Saugherty hadn’t told his wife where he’d hidden the money, and now Saugherty was dead, and that meant the money was gone for good. At least there was no way Parker would ever get his hands on it. If Saugherty had left the suitcase with a friend, which was more than likely what he’d done, the friend would probably sooner or later return it to Saugherty’s widow. Or maybe look inside it and keep it for himself. Whatever happened in the future, though, was going to be way too late, and there was nothing to be done in the present. The money was gone.

  “Well, you two really did it,” Parker said and got to his feet again. “Good-bye, Brock,” he said and started up the stairs.

  Brock called after him, “Parker!”

  Parker looked down at him.

  “You’re going to leave us to the law?”

  “I’m doing better than that,” Parker told him. “I’m going to leave you to Saugherty’s wife.”

  The end.

  ––––––––––––

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