Firebreak

by Richard Stark

  Lloyd finally looked away from the dead man, blinking up at Parker. "I was just... scared," he said.

  "Come in here," Parker said again, and went back to the living room, where the furniture was a little messed up, not too bad, and the broken window

  didn't show very much under the dark porch roof. He stood looking at the room, considering it, until Lloyd came in, shaky, unsure of his balance. Then Parker sat on the sofa, put his feet on the coffee table, on the story Lloyd had been writing, and said, "You want to give this place up? Or you want to deal with what happened? Sit down."

  "Do I want to— What do you mean, give this place up?"

  "Sit down."

  Lloyd sat, on the chair angled to Parker's right. He stayed forward on the seat, knees together, hands clasped on knees, worried face turned to Parker. He said, "Move? How can I move?"

  "You've got two choices," Parker told him. "You can give up being on parole, hide out, take your profit from the Montana job and turn yourself into somebody else. Or you can clean up this mess."

  "I can't— I can't—"

  "You can do either one. They're both gonna be tough."

  Lloyd looked at the doorway. 'That man—"

  Parker said, "How much does the law watch this house?"

  "What? Oh, the patrol." Lloyd shook his head, to clear it. "City police keep an eye on me," he said. "In a car, the regular patrol car. Not often. They just drive by, I see them look at the place, they drive by."

  "They never come in?"

  "Once or twice, if something's different. A strange

  car in the driveway, other people here." He made a twisted smile. 'They want to be sure everybody knows I'm a felon."

  "What about when you drive away from here? Stop you, search the car?"

  "A few times they stopped me," Lloyd said, shrugging that away. 'Just ask me where I'm going, remind me I'm on a leash."

  "Search the car?"

  "Never."

  "Do you have a tarp?"

  Lloyd didn't seem to know the word. "A what?"

  "A large waterproof sheet," Parker told him. "Plastic, whatever."

  "Oh, yes, sure. In the basement. You mean for"—a glance at the doorway—"him."

  "You wrap him good," Parker said. 'Then you clean up in there. You got any caulk, for windows, anything like that?"

  "Yes, probably."

  'The bullet's in the wall," Parker said. "After you clean the wall, plug the hole with anything you got that'll dry hard. It's a small hole, don't worry about color. And it didn't come through on this side."

  Lloyd hadn't noticed that. Now he gave this wall a surprised look and said, "All right."

  "When everything's clean, and it's rolled in the tarp," Parker said, "call a glazier, say you were moving"—he looked around the room—"that bookcase, and it tipped and broke the window."

  "Shouldn't I say somebody threw a stone at the house? There is harassment here, sometimes. People around here know the story."

  'The glass is on the porch," Parker reminded him, "not in here. Say it's a rush job, you need it today. Then ..." Parker took the Honda keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Lloyd, who caught them two-handed. 'Then you go get your car. It's beyond the church, by the library. The opener's on the floor in the garage."

  "All right," Lloyd said.

  "Put the package in the trunk," Parker said, "and the other stuff you need in the car. Then wait for the glazier."

  "You mean he has to come today."

  "Sure he has to come today, it's an emergency, you can't leave a living room window broken overnight. Once he comes and fixes it and goes, you take a drive, get rid of the package where nobody sees you and it can't come back to screw you up later."

  'There's the river, I could do that."

  "Whatever you want. Then come back and get me and we'll get out of here."

  'This is gonna take hours," Lloyd said. "What will you be doing?"

  "Sleep," Parker said, and stood. "You got a spare room?"

  Standing, doubtful, Lloyd said, 'There's a cot in my office. Upstairs."

  "Good," Parker said.

  * * *

  It wasn't real sleep, but something close, learned a long time ago, a way to rest the body and the brain, a kind of trance, awareness of the outer world sheathed in unawareness. The dim room remained, shades drawn over both windows, the gray-canvas-covered synthesizer in which Lloyd kept his computer equipment not so much concealed as reconfigured, the shelves and cabinets, the closed door, the framed color photographs of machines, the small occasional sounds from outside the room, and the cot, narrow, with a thin mattress covered by a Canadian wool blanket in broad bands of gray and green and black that held him like a cupped hand. Inside it, farther within it, there was nothing except the small bubbles of awareness that surfaced and surfaced and found nothing wrong.

  Parker had told Lloyd, "Knock," because, before lying on the cot, he'd leaned the gangly metal synthesizer chair off-kilter sideways against the knob. When the knock sounded and Lloyd's distant small voice called, "Parker," he woke at once and sat up, and the gray rectangles of the shaded windows were now black.

  "All right," he answered. "I'll be down in a few minutes." And switched on the light, took the pistol from under the pillow, put on his shoes, moved the chair back from the door.

  When he came downstairs, face washed, rested, still stretching the sleep out of his shoulders, Lloyd was seated on the sofa in the living room. He stood when Parker entered. "All set," he said.

  Parker looked at the empty nighttime street through the new window glass. Lights in houses across the way seemed a canyon distant. He said, "Everything cleaned up?"

  "Oh, yes," Lloyd said, with grim emphasis.

  Parker looked at him. Lloyd was pale, but under control. "You're okay now," he said.

  "I think so." Lloyd grinned and shook his head. "When I went to jail," he said, "I told myself, now I've really learned not to lose control, the bad things that can happen if I lose control. I'll never lose control again, I said, I've learned my lesson."

  "Uh-huh."

  Lloyd looked over at the dining room doorway, then back at Parker. "I was wrong," he said. "But this time, if I haven't learned anything, there's no hope for me."

  "You did okay," Parker said. "Except when you got excited."

  'That's the part I'm talking about," Lloyd said. "The tarp was slippery, you know. Heavy, and slippery, and hard to get a grip on. I thought the washing, the wall, that was going to be the worst, but it was the slippery tarp."

  Driving west on the Mass Pike, not yet midnight, Parker at the wheel, Lloyd said, "I want to thank you."

  "Don't have to."

  "After I screwed up, after I... shot that fellow, you had every right to take it out on me, or just walk away. We did need him, talk to him, I know we did. But you stayed, you put me back together again, and I want to thank you for it."

  Parker shrugged, watching the trucks ahead. "We need you for the job," he said.

  3

  "Mrs. Elkins?"

  'Yes?" Wary, never knowing, when Frank was away, whether a phone call was good or bad.

  "It's Parker." He'd never met the woman, but he'd left messages with her before.

  'Yes?" Still wary; it could still be good or bad.

  "Frank's on his way home," Parker told her.

  "Good."

  "Would you tell him my friends might drop in."

  "Friends of yours?"

  "He'll know," Parker said, and hung up, and went back to the Honda, where Lloyd was a pale disembodied face in the distant gas station lights. This was the same station where he'd talked with Elkins first, after getting rid of Charov, just a few miles from Claire's house, and it was three in the morning, the station closed.

  Getting behind the wheel, he said, "We'll park at the lake, by one of the empty houses."

  "A strange place to live," Lloyd said. "Where all the houses are empty."

  There was nothing to say to that. Par
ker drove away from the gas station and up to the turn where the sign pointed to Colliver's Pond. He drove halfway from the turn toward Claire's house, then chose a driveway on the right leading up to one of the less desirable, less expensive houses without lake frontage.

  Blank tan rectangles of plywood covering the windows stared down on them before Parker switched off the headlights. Most of the householders around here merely locked their places and went away at the end of each summer, but a few acted as though winter was the return of the Ice Age.

  Parker and Lloyd walked along the road that circled the lake. There were no streetlights out here, so when the houses were empty the nights were very dark. A smallish moon low in the sky over their left shoulders helped them pick out the pavement of the roadway, and showed Parker the mailbox marked willis. Keeping his voice low, he said, "It's in there. I'll wait. Just don't go in the house."

  "I don't have to. What electricity do you have on?"

  "None. We shut it off at the box."

  "Phone on?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you know where the service comes in?"

  "Left corner, over the garage."

  In his element now, playing with his machines, Lloyd was calm and confident. Taking a small device like a photographer's light meter from his pocket, he pressed the button on its side that made the dim light shine on the dial. Shielding that with one hand, he looked at the dial, turned the meter left and right, and said, "Something. Faint. Could be coming from in there. I won't be long."

  Lloyd faded into the darkness of the driveway, under the trees, and Parker stood near the mailbox, watching the empty road. He remembered how smoothly and briskly Lloyd had done his work at Paxton Marino's lodge. If they could keep this other stress away from him, he'd be fine, but when he got emotional he was like a dog that needed to be shot.

  Lloyd was back in less than ten minutes. "I guess there's something in there," he said, "but not sending, receiving. There's a signal coming in from down that way." Farther along the road.

  'That's the base," Parker said. "Anybody opens that door, the camera will start to send. Can you find the base?"

  "I should be able to," Lloyd said. "When we get nearer, the signal's going to be stronger. If we pass it, the signal will change, then get weaker."

  "Good," Parker said.

  Lloyd now carried a mini earphone, like ones used with cell phones, attached to that dial. Fixing it to his right ear, he started walking, slowly, listening to electricity in the night, while Parker walked beside him, watching, looking at the darkness, then seeing light ahead, amber light from the windows of a house on the lake.

  Lloyd had seen it, too. "Not every house is empty," he said.

  "There are some year-rounders," Parker agreed. "They're asleep now."

  "This could be insomnia," Lloyd suggested. "But the signal is getting stronger."

  Either the road was closer to the lake here or the house was set back farther from the shore, because it was more visible than Claire's house, nearer, through fewer trees. What looked like living room windows gleamed through the tree trunks on the left front of the low house, with darkness on the right. The driveway was farther left.

  Lloyd said, "Should we go in?"

  "No. Walk by, see if the signal changes."

  "It's changing right now," Lloyd said. "This is where it's coming from."

  The time for machinery was finished. "Wait here," Parker said. He backtracked to the next driveway, for the next house over, dark and silent. He walked down the driveway, then through the scrub and trees to the house with the lights.

  This place didn't have a garage. The gravel driveway ended beside the house, with an older Volvo station wagon parked there. A side door with small windows in it led into a kitchen that he could see in lightspill from the doorway beyond.

  He moved cautiously around the front of the house until he reached the first lit widow. Edging forward, he saw a doorway to the front hall, then a side wall with a low sofa surmounted by comical prints of fishermen, then the far wall, all windows for the view of the lake, and then, close to this window, a floor lamp with a yellow shade and, next to it, a man in a red tartan chair with wooden arms, reading a book.

  Parker looked in at him in one-quarter profile, seeing a wrinkled but bony face and neck, silver-framed eyeglasses, a nearly bald head with some remaining thin white hair, a prominent pale ear, hard jawline, red-and-black flannel shirt. The hands holding the hardcover book were gnarled and big-knuckled.

  There was no one else in the room. There was no indication of anybody else around. Parker moved away from the light, listened to the night, heard nothing he didn't expect. He walked past the lit windows to the front door, knocked on it, and took the pistol from his pocket.

  When the man opened the door, Parker saw he had to be in his seventies at least, tall but stooped, thinner than he used to be. He looked at Parker with only mild curiosity, surprised that anyone could come around at such an hour, then saw the pistol, just there, not pointed at him or anywhere in particular, and he gave a startled jerk, moving back a pace, saying, "Good God!" Then he blinked at Parker, realized he was being neither shot nor directly threatened, and said, "Well— I suppose you're coming in."

  Parker, staying outside the doorway, said, "Who else is here?"

  "My wife," the man said, nodding toward the other end of the house. "She's asleep."

  Parker turned and called, not loud, "Lloyd." Then he stepped into the house, saying to the man, "Leave it open."

  "Whatever you say."

  Parker stepped into the living room, saw no weapons anywhere, saw the book now closed with a marker in it on the chair the man had been sitting in, and saw the television set on the other side of the room, next to the kitchen doorway, facing the sofa. There were two boxes on top of it, one for cable and one for something else. The set would be visible from where the man sat in the chair.

  Lloyd came in, looking curiously at the older man. "What's happening?"

  "Close the door," Parker said. "He says he has a wife asleep here and nobody else. Get her up."

  "I wish you wouldn't," the man said. He was reasonable, neither afraid nor belligerent.

  Parker looked at him, waiting.

  The man said, "She has diabetes, among other things. She needs a regular pattern in her life."

  "So she watches by day and you watch by night, is that it?"

  The man smiled, as though at himself, and shook his head. "Of course that's who you are," he said. "Yes, that's what we do. But you can leave her out of it."

  "I don't think so." Parker turned to Lloyd, pointing at the extra box on top of the television set. "Is that it?"

  "It should be," Lloyd said. He went over to look at the box without touching it. "Yes, this is it."

  Parker turned back to the man. "You want to get your wife yourself? Lloyd will go with you."

  "It really isn't necessary," the man said. "I'll tell you what I know, and she knows less than I do. I'm prepared to cooperate, but I'd like you to bend just a little here. My wife's a sound sleeper, she'll never know you were even in the house."

  Parker considered. Having him calm and talking was better, if possible. He said, "Is there a phone in the bedroom?"

  "Yes."

  To Lloyd, Parker said, "Go get it. If she wakes up, bring her along. If not, leave her there."

  "Thank you," the man said, and to Lloyd, "It's the second door on the left."

  Lloyd went through the hallway, and Parker said, "Any other phones in the house, besides that one?" Pointing at the phone on the round table to the left of where the man had been reading.

  "In the kitchen, that's all."

  Lloyd came back with a phone in his hand. "Snoring," he said, and put the phone down.

  The man said, "That embarrasses her, but she can't stop. It's made it easier for me to be a night owl."

  Parker said to Lloyd, "Did you look around?"

  "No other people," Lloyd said, "and no other phones."<
br />
  "Good." To the man, Parker said, "You're waiting for something to show on the television."

  "That's right."

  "What?"

  "A living room," the man said. "It's in a house about a quarter mile down that way."

  "What are you supposed to do when it comes on?"

  "That depends," the man said, "If it's the cleaning lady, which it has been once, then I merely push the off button on the box and it shuts itself off. If it's you, on the other hand—"

  Parker said, 'They showed you a picture of me?"

  "No, a verbal description," the man said, "but accurate. A big man, hard but shaggy, with brown flat hair. They particularly mentioned the long arms and large hands, with prominent veins."

  "All right. What are you supposed to do if it's me?"

  "There's a phone number I'm to call, let it ring twice, hang up. Then Marie and I are to pack and go home and they'll send us a check for the rest of the money."

  "Where's this phone number?"

  The man pointed at the table next to where he'd been reading. "Over there, under the phone."

  Parker went over, moved the phone, found a small square of white paper beneath it from a Marriott Hotel memo pad. A seven-digit number was on the paper, nothing else. He said, "What area code?"

  "None," the man said. "It's a local call."

  Parker frowned. He didn't like that. Moving away from the table, leaving the paper out next to the phone, he said, "Sit down again, where you were."

  "All right." He went over to pick up his book, then sit. With a small rueful smile, he said, "I don't believe I'll read," and put the book on the floor on the other side from the phone table.

  Parker stood in the middle of the room, looking around, thinking. Lloyd watched him, then said, "What's wrong?"

  "Don't know yet."

  It should be the shooter here, not a watchdog. They're waiting for Parker to come home, walk into his house. The minute the camera sees him, the shooter should be on his way. But they do this thing instead, hire some couple to make a homey look, an extra phone call to a shooter somewhere nearby, but why? Why isn't the shooter the one looking at the television set?