The Black Ice Score
RICHARD STARK
With a New Foreword by Dennis Lehane
The University of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 60637
Copyright © 1965 by Donald Westlake
Foreword © 2010 by Dennis Lehane
All rights reserved.
University of Chicago Press edition 2010
Printed in the United States of America
19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-77109-0 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-77109-1 (paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stark, Richard, 1933–2008.
The black ice score : a Parker novel / Richard Stark ; with a new foreword by Dennis Lehane.
p. cm.
Originally published: London : Fawcett, 1967.
Summary: Emissaries from a small African nation ask Parker to help them steal back half of their country's wealth in diamonds.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-77109-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-77109-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Parker (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Criminals—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3573.E9B56 2010
813'.54—dc22
2009039264
eISBN: 9780226772813
Information about the complete list of Richard Stark books published by the University of Chicago Press—and electronic editions of them—can be found on our website: http://www.press.uchicago.edu
Foreword
I had drinks with Donald Westlake once at a crime fiction conference in the winter of 2000. We talked mostly about two terrific scripts he wrote in the late eighties, one for Stephen Frears (The Grifters), the other for Joseph Ruben (The Stepfather), but we never discussed his alter ego Richard Stark or Stark's indelible creation, Parker. This would be less surprising if I weren't such a geek about the Parker books. I'd read them all in the summer of ’86, (there were sixteen at that point.) Along with Elmore Leonard's work, they taught me nearly everything I know about how to execute violence on the page. As for Parker himself, he's a watershed character in American noir, nearly incomparable. So why didn't I fly my geek flag while hanging with the man who created him?
A sense of mystery, for one; I don't want to know too much about the artists who create the art that excites me. The collective dream that descends upon the reader of a fictional universe depends on believing that the dream is quite real, even while you know, of course, that it's not. I feared the more I learned about the mechanical strings behind Parker the more artificial he would seem. And finally, the writer is about the last person you should trust when it comes to interpreting his work. If we truly knew what we were doing, we probably wouldn't do it; it would feel too much like a straight job.
As to Westlake, himself, he matched my preconceived impression of the creator of the John Dortmunder novels-a wry, intelligent man, self-deprecating and steeped in irony. Such was Donald Westlake. Richard Stark, however, was nowhere to be found. Because as playful as Donald Westlake is, Richard Stark is all business. Where Westlake's writing is chummy, Stark's is clinical. If Westlake is the guy you'd love to find sitting beside you at the bar on a raw March night, Stark is the guy you'd hope to avoid in the parking lot on your way home.
As a stylist, Richard Stark's sense of economy is surgical. He has no time for flatulent prose; one senses he holds the decorous in contempt. He evokes a world of medium-sized, nondescript cities or dusty flatlands. A lot of the action takes place in motel rooms, either the kind with wrought iron fire escapes right out the window or those “with concrete block walls painted green, the imitation Danish modern furniture, the rough beige carpeting, not enough towels.” Like those motel rooms and like Parker, Stark is a model of efficiency. This isn't to say his style lacks amenities. The swift sentences move with a running back's fluid timing. He could no more be accused of soulless functionality than could Hemingway or Raymond Carver. Stark writes with economy, yes, and cold, cold clarity, but there's grace in the prose, a stripped-bare poetry made all the more admirable for its lack of self-consciousness.
And what did that cold clarity produce?
Parker. The greatest antihero in American noir. If Parker ever had a heart, he left it behind in a drawer one morning and never came back for it. He never cracks a joke, inquires about someone's health or family, feels regret or shame or even rage. And not once in the sixteen novels that comprise the FPE (First Parker Epoch, 1962-74) does he wink at the reader. You know the Wink. It's what the “supposedly” amoral character does to let the reader know he's not really as bad as he seems. Maybe, in fact, he's been the good guy all along.
Parker is as bad as he seems. If a baby carriage rolled in front of him during a heist, he'd kick it out of his way. If an innocent woman were caught helplessly in gangster cross-fire, Parker would slip past her, happy she was drawing the bullets away from him. If you hit him, he'd hit you back twice as hard. If you stole from him, he'd burn your house—or corporation—to the ground to get his money back. And if, as in Butcher's Moon, the sixteenth of the sixteen FPE novels, you were stupid enough to kidnap one of his guys and hold him hostage in a safe house, he would kill every single one of you. He'd shoot you through a door, shoot you in the face, shoot you in the back and step over your body before it stopped twitching.
Nothing personal, by the way. He gets no pleasure from the shooting or the twitching. He's not a psychopath, after all, he's a sociopath. But first and foremost, he is a professional. He's the progenitor of many a fictional criminal antihero, but those progeny are always redeemed by a need to connect with the human race. James Ellroy's antiheroes come immediately to mind, and it's hard to think of a more resolutely scumbag act than the protagonist of White Jazz throwing a mentally handicapped man out a window in chapter one. Yet by chapter thirty, he's reached out to the reader along the lines of shared humanity, and he's garnered our empathy, if not our love. Similarly, in the films of Michael Mann, many of the protagonists, from Frank in Thief to Dillinger in Public Enemies, share Parker's emotional retardation and consummate professionalism, but in that very professionalism Mann finds nobility. Cop Vincent Hanna in Heat clearly admires the work ethic of criminal Neil Mc-Cauley, while Frank in Thief asks the cops who shake him down why they don't try, as he does, to actually work for a living. But in the moral universe of the Parker novels, the very idea of nobility is laughable—Parker is a sociopath. The world he inhabits, however, is worse.
It's a world of absolute rot. Nothing and no one is above it and most are happiest that way. The Outfit sits atop a pyramid comprised of luckless thugs, idiot muscle, hustlers, grifters, hookers with hearts of bile, and bloody avarice so banal yet so all-encompassing as to wallpaper every room in every scene of every one of the sixteen Parker novels. The Outfit casts its shadows everywhere. It's the grimy engine that runs the grimy car with the faulty brakes and the crap transmission, yet when the brakes blow and the transmission seizes, the Outfit tells you it's your fault. And your bill.
Who can fight against this? Not the hero with the heart of gold. Not the Nice Guy or the Good Guy or the Morally Compromised But Ultimately Nice Good Guy. No. Only a cog in the machine can screw up the machine. A piece of the machine as grimy and hard as the rest of it. A chunk of steel. Or pipe of lead.
Parker is the lead pipe. He has no illusions about the machine—not a single ideal left to shred or a romantic notion left to dispel. Like the machine, he is heartless. And this is where he differs from every other antihero in noir. James Ellroy's protagonists have heart, however deeply buried. Jim Thompson's characters might not have heart or sentimental notions, but they are ultimately punished for that lack. Same goes for
James M. Cain's lecherous ids-run-amok. Hammett gave us Sam Spade, he of the physical resemblance to the devil, who finds his partner's killer not out of noble principle but solely because it would be bad business not to. But while Spade may have no feelings for Archer, he is in love with Brigid O'Shaughnessy. Again, humanity creeps in whether the protagonist wants it to or not. This is a foundation brick of literary narrative-the antihero discovers his humanity, which allows us, the readers, to recognize ourselves in him and feel communion with the human race as a whole.
To which Parker says, screw that. Parker refuses to reveal his heart. Parker authentically and resolutely eschews sentiment. Or emotion. Parker never asks for understanding or grasps for a common cord between himself and the reader. (If the common cord held monetary value, he'd steal it. Otherwise, it's all yours.) What Parker represents, at least to me, is the abolition of the wish fulfillment that forms the firmament of narrative literature, a firmament I, myself, usually require, both as a reader and a writer. The wishes being fulfilled are familiar—good wins out, love conquers all, crime never pays, the check is in the mail. Well, in this case, the check was in the mail, but Parker intercepted it. And cashed it. And used it to finance a crime that paid double what you'll make this year.
So why do we like him for it? Why do we root for him? Why is it, after reading sixteen novels depicting the adventures of a heartless sociopath in the summer of ’86, did I feel the desire for more? Why do I still look back on these novels, as a reader, with great affection and, as a writer, with wonder?
I still don't know the answer. Not absolutely. I suspect. I suspect we all recognize the Lie, even as we wrap our arms around it and hug it tight to keep us warm. The Lie is the illusion that we are safe, that we are watched over, that we will go gently and that the night is good. Not so, says Richard Stark. Not so, says Parker.
We are not safe. No one is looking out for us. And the night? The night is dark. So let's get to work before the sun comes up. Before someone catches us at it. Before the world wakes up.
Dennis Lehane
CONTENTS
One
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Two
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Three
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Four
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
One
1
Parker walked into his hotel room, and there was a guy in there going through his suitcase laid out on his bed. He looked over when Parker came in and calmly said, “That'll be all right.” He had some kind of accent.
And he hadn't been talking to Parker. Parker looked behind himself, and number two was shutting the door. Number three was to the left, over by the window; he was the only one with hardware showing, an automatic held negligently in his right hand pointed nowhere in particular.
The faces were all strangers. They were all about forty, tall, in good physical condition, well dressed, deeply tanned. They might be law, but they didn't smell like it. They smelled like something new, something Parker didn't know anything about.
He said, “Where's the woman?” because Claire was supposed to be in here; she was here when he'd gone out, and he didn't like the idea of her being around guns.
The one at the suitcase nodded his head toward the closed bathroom door. “In there,” he said. “On a promise of good behavior.”
Number two, standing directly behind Parker, said, “Hold your arms out from your sides, please.” He had the same sort of accent as the first one, and the “please” was a surprise. Like some levels of law, maybe federal. But not with the accents. And not with the feel of them, the general manner.
Parker put his hands out to his sides, and number two patted him up and down. It was a thorough frisk but not a professional one. He took too long to cover the territory, as though he wasn't sure of his ability to get it right.
When the patting was done, number two said, “Right.” Parker put his arms down again.
“If you don't mind,” number one said, “I'll just finish up here.”
Parker looked at number three's gun. He didn't say anything.
Number one didn't wait for an answer. He kept on poking through Parker's suitcase, not being unnecessarily sloppy but not trying to be too careful either. Most of the drawers in the room were partly open, so the suitcase was the last thing to be searched.
What were they looking for? Parker had no idea, so he stood in the middle of the room and waited to find out who they were and what they wanted and what his best move was. Number one poked at his gear in the suitcase, number two stood with his back against the hall door, and number three leaned against the wall near the window, the automatic in his hand filling the room with a silent buzz. Outside the window and seven stories down, the New York City traffic inched along making muffled noises. The sky out there was gray, mid-March gray. Wherever these three had picked up their tans, it wasn't in New York.
Parker looked at the closed bathroom door. What shape was Claire in? Violence shook her up, even the hint of violence; it reminded her of a time she didn't want to think about. If they'd leaned on her she was probably having silent hysterics in there now. She could do anything, react in a million different ways. She might come screaming out with a pair of nail scissors in her fist; it was impossible to say.
Parker said, “Let me talk to my woman while you're doing that.”
“Just finishing up.” He turned away from the suitcase, leaving it open on the bed, and gave Parker a wintry smile. “She hasn't been hurt, I assure you,” he said. “Not so far, at any rate.”
Parker felt his shoulder muscles tensing. He wanted to move out of this, switch the odds on this trio, find out what they thought they were doing. The only sensible thing to do was wait, but that was the thing he was bad at.
Number one said, “You can sit down, if you like, while we talk.”
“I'll stand.”
“Suit yourself.” He sat on the foot of Claire's bed. He produced a pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”
“No.”
He shrugged and lit a cigarette for himself, then took it. from his mouth and looked at it. “Overrated, American cigarettes,” he said. “Though I suppose it's what one grows used to.”
“Do you have something you want to get to?” Parker asked him.
He raised an eyebrow. He seemed to be trying for the studied British effect, but it didn't quite work. There was farmer in him somewhere, farmer or cattleman, something like that. He said, “I think you can guess, Mr Parker, what we're here for.”
Parker didn't like that. He was here under his other name, Matthew Walker, the name he used when he wasn't working. He didn't like it that these people knew so much about him and he knew nothing about them. He said, “I don't make guesses. You're here, you're going through my goods, you're making muscles. I don't know why. Right now you're having fun, taking your time. Later on you'll tell me.”
Number three, over by the window, said, “A very hard case, this one.” He seemed amused.
Number one shook his head. He said to Parker, “Very well, you're a cautious man. So I'll make things plain for you.
We're here to talk to you about your current project.”
“I have no current project,” Parker told him. It was the truth, but he didn't expect these three to believe it.
They didn't. Number one smiled and shook his head. “There's no point in any of this,” he said. “We know everything about you. Your name is Parker, you travel with a woman named Claire—the young lady now in the bathroom—and you are a professional thief. Your s
pecialty is planning the details of large-scale robberies.”
That was all true. Parker said nothing.
Number one waited, looking at Parker, asking for a response. Finally he said, “You don't deny it? Don't admit it? Nothing?”
“Get to the point,” Parker said.
“That is the point,” he said. “You have been approached on a certain project. There's no need to go into details, for God's sake.” He was suddenly nettled, as though Parker were delaying him in some important series of events.
“Go into details,” Parker said.
“No. How do I know how much or how little they've told you?”
“Who?”
“This is very foolish.”
Number three said, “The point is, are you going in with them?”
Parker turned his head and looked at him. “Going in with who?”
Number three smiled sardonically at number one. “I think he is,” he said. “That's why he's carrying on like this; he's already committed himself to the other side.”
“Perhaps,” said number one. “Or perhaps he's merely undecided.” He looked at Parker. “I'm going to assume that's the case,” he said. “And I'm going to suggest to you that you not get involved.”
Parker said, “In what?”
“Don't waste my time!”
Number two, at the door behind Parker, said, “Two or three lost teeth would be the best convincer.”
Number one shook his head. “Only if it's absolutely necessary,” he said. To Parker he said, “Ostensibly, you and your lady friend are here from Miami on a shopping trip.
Content yourself with that. Make it a shopping trip. And bring it soon to a conclusion, and return to Miami. Do not get involved. If you don't already know the caliber of the people who've approached you, allow me to tell you they are useless. Worse than useless. Liabilities. You know the kind they are, you seem to be a sensible man. You aren't simply bucking the Colonel's stooges, you're bucking us. I don't think you'll want to do that.”
Parker said, “If I ever find out what you're talking about, I'll bear what you said in mind.”
The Black Ice Score Page 1
