The Black Ice Score

by Richard Stark

  Jock looked from Parker to the one on the floor and back to Parker. His mouth was open but he wasn't saying anything.

  Parker said, “Formutesca, take that one to the cellar.”

  Formutesca said, “Kill him?”

  “Up to you. Jock, if you want to live through this you'll tell me where she is.”

  Formutesca was dragging the other one across the floor, neither of them making a sound. Jock, staring at them, said, “You can't do that. You can't just drag him away and murder him; you can't do it.”

  Parker said to Formutesca, “Hold it.” To Jock he said, “We'll leave him there. You take me to where she's being kept; then you can come back here and take care of him.”

  The one on the floor cried, “Don't tell him, Jock! Aaron can still make another try for the diamonds.”

  Everybody looked at him. Jock, in bewilderment, said, “Why can't he go for the diamonds anyway? What difference if we tell where the woman is?”

  Parker said, “Is that where he's going? Not the apartment on Riverside Drive?”

  Jock blinked, staring now at Parker. “You know about the apartment?”

  Parker put his hand on Jock's shoulder. “Where is she, Jock?”

  7

  “You turn left,” Jock said. “You see where that big tree is up there? Just past it.”

  They were in Connecticut. They'd crossed the state line from New York a little north of Brewster, and the last sign they'd seen had pointed toward East Lake off to the right. It was six thirty in the morning now, with vague daylight edging up over the mountains straight ahead.

  Parker was at the wheel of Hoskins' rented car with Jock beside him. Formutesca was in the back seat, a pistol at Jock's head. Beside Formutesca were the machine guns and the shotgun. The closet where they'd been stored back at the museum now held Jock's wounded friend.

  The tree was an elm, old and thick-trunked and broad, its bare branches looking in the headlights as though they were knotted together. Parker slowed the car, saw the dirt road just past the tree, and made the turn. Accelerating again, the car jouncing on the packed earth, he said, “How much farther to the house?”

  “About two miles,” Jock said. “We have to go up over a hill. There's a woods.”

  “In the daytime I wouldn't be able to see the house from here?” What Parker meant was, Can Marten see my headlights if he's here?

  Jock said, “Oh, no. The hill's in the way; it's the other side of the hill. There's a lake there, past the house. The road goes down to the house and then makes a left and follows the lake for a ways and then stops.”

  There had been cleared land on both sides when they'd first entered this road, but now they were moving into woods. The road began to twist back and forth as though originally it had been made by somebody who hadn't wanted to chop down many trees.

  Parker hunched over the wheel, pushing the car as hard as he could, not knowing whether Marten was out in front of him or not. Jock seemed to think that Marten would lie low in the city, but the other one seemed to be sure that Marten would come up here. Why? To kill Claire, or ambush Parker, or both? The other one had refused to say any more, and there hadn't been time to force answers out of him. Marten had started with about a ten-minute lead, and though Parker had pushed hard all the way up—doing ninety and ninety-five on the Saw Mill River Parkway on the assumption that even state troopers don't like to be out at five or six o'clock of a cold, damp March morning—he had to take it for granted that Marten had done the same, if he was coming this way.

  Jock had said Marten was driving a two-year-old Ford Mustang, and Hoskins had rented himself a current model Ford Falcon, so in simple terms of automobile Marten had himself a slight edge. It all depended on which was the better driver. Parker had overtaken no Mustangs along the way, so Marten was either back in the city or still out in front of him.

  Parker wasn't sure what Marten might do. He was an arrogant man who would be enraged at Parker having conned him, but he was also a cautious man. It was unlikely he'd come up all this way just to kill Claire, but he might think it worth the effort to rid himself of Parker.

  The road was beginning to climb. This must be the hill Jock had mentioned. Parker's foot jabbed back and forth at accelerator and brake as he slued around the curves, lunged up the brief straightaways, and skidded past the trees. Clenching the wheel, staring straight ahead through the windshield, he said, “Let me know when we're almost to the top.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jock, and the windshield starred in the middle, just under the rearview mirror, and Jock said, “Oh!” He fell sideways, his head hitting Parker's right arm and then landing in his lap.

  They were in the middle of a curve. Parker spun the wheel hard, slammed his left foot on the brake, and cut the lights and the ignition. He heard Formutesca make a sudden sound. Jock's limp body came rolling into him more because of the tight turn they were in, and the rear tires scraped and gouged sideways across the dirt and the roadside weeds. Parker couldn't move with Jock all over him, and he kept trying to push the body away.

  The left rear of the car hit something, and they jolted to a stop. Parker shoved Jock hard and called to Formutesca, “Out of the car!” At the same time, he leaned over the back seat for the guns.

  Formutesca was lying on them. Either he'd been hit by another bullet or he'd knocked himself out when Parker slammed on the brakes. In any case, he was out of the action. Parker pulled him out of the way, and he rolled on to the floor. Parker grabbed a gun butt, pushed open the door, and dove out of the car. The interior light had gone on when he'd opened the door—there hadn't been anything he could do about that—and he heard the sound of two quick shots as he leaped into the darkness at the side of the road.

  He rolled, came up against a tree trunk, and scrambled around to the other side of it. The car door was still open, lighting the center of the stage. When he stopped there was no longer any sound.

  It was the shotgun he'd grabbed. Disgusted, he almost threw it away, but changed his mind and kept it. Holding it in his left hand, he took out his pistol and waited behind the tree for whatever would happen next.

  It had been impossible to tell where the last two shots had come from. He'd been in motion himself at the time they were fired, and they could have come from any direction at all. The first shot, having hit the middle of the windshield and then the person on the right side of the front seat, must have been fired from in front and off the road to the left, but that had been while they were in the middle of a curve. The car had slued farther around the curve after the shot, and by now that guide to Marten's direction was almost useless. The only thing that could be said for sure, since the curve was to the right, was that Marten had to be on this side of the road.

  Dawn was coming. Here in the woods on the hillside it was still pitch black night, but Parker remembered the vague paleness against the mountains in the eastern sky. In half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, it would be possible to see in here.

  The question was, should he wait or not? The alternative was to try to get past Marten and on over the hill and down to the farmhouse. Marten himself might try that, preferring to be safely hidden indoors when daylight came. But it would be impossible to get to the farmhouse in the dark without sticking to the road, which could be dangerous.

  If Marten would make a noise, any kind of noise, it would help. But he was silent; the woods were silent. Far away Parker could faintly hear birds starting to announce morning to each other, but the gunfire in this part of the woods had silenced everything.

  Could he draw Marten's fire? Parker felt around on the ground, picked up a small stone, and tossed it in the direction away from the road and the car. It fell into a bush with a faint rustling noise.

  Nothing.

  Parker waited, watching and listening. No response.

  He didn't dare wait for daylight. Marten could be on his way to the farmhouse now. Aside from Claire, there was the problem of letting Marten get set inside the hou
se.

  Parker moved. He inched around the tree and moved away at a diagonal away from the lit automobile in the road. When he could barely see the light through the trees he angled back toward the road again. He moved silently, the pistol in his right hand and the shotgun in his left, going in quick spurts from tree to tree, stopping and listening, hearing nothing, moving on.

  He reached the road and crossed it in three running leaps. He progressed again on the other side, going uphill now, keeping the light from the car just barely in sight. He knew the road curved over there, and he curved too, planning to come back to it far enough along so he wouldn't be silhouetted on it in the light from the car.

  It was black here, totally black. He could see only objects between himself and the car; otherwise he had to move by feel. He'd put the pistol away now and was holding the shotgun down along his left side so it wouldn't bump into anything and make noise. He moved along with his right hand out in front of him guiding him along among the tree-trunks.

  He knew he'd reached the road again when his hand found no tree. He stood where he was a minute, the dim light from the car down to his left and behind him, and listened to the silence of the woods. The bird sounds were closer now but still not in this immediate area. Parker turned right and began moving cautiously along the road.

  He bumped into the car, not seeing it. He felt his way around to the left side, but the window was rolled up and if he opened the door the interior light would go on.

  This had to be Marten's Ford Mustang. Parker would have preferred to put the car out of commission some way, but he had no knife with him and so had no silent way to do it. He felt his way on past the car and continued on down the road.

  He'd gone three steps, when he was suddenly bathed in light. He spun around in the glare of four headlights, hearing the Mustang's engine kicking into life.

  Marten had gone back to his car. He'd been waiting there, probably for daylight, figuring that inside the car was the one place Parker wouldn't expect to find him. He'd known that sooner or later Parker would have to come up this road.

  Parker reacted at once, almost without thinking. The lights flashed on, he spun and saw them, he heard the engine turning over, and he raised the shotgun and fired. The right barrel. The left barrel.

  The lights went out.

  8

  There was no one in the Falcon, though the door was still open and the light still on. Parker walked deliberately within range of that light and called softly, “Formutesca.”

  “Here.”

  Formutesca came grinning from the woods at the roadside. “I heard you blast away up there,” he said. “Then I heard the pistol shot, so I didn't know who was the winner.”

  “The pistol shot was me too,” Parker said. Marten had been wounded by the shotgun blast but not killed, and Parker had had to finish him at close range with the pistol.

  Formutesca said, “So what now?”

  “We go to the house. Where's Jock?”

  Formutesca jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the woods. “In there. He's dead.”

  Parker didn't ask if Jock had died from Marten's shot or from something else. He just nodded and said, “Get in. We'll drive on up to he house.”

  “Fine.”

  There was a faint paleness in the air now. Day was beginning, hesitantly. Parker and Formutesca got into the Falcon and Parker started the engine. The car seemed none the worse for wear, except for the starred hole in the windshield and a new dent in the left rear fender. Parker switched on the lights and they drove on up to the Mustang. Parker stopped the Falcon.

  He said, “You bring this car down. Get rid of Marten first. Put him in the woods where he can't be seen from the road.”

  “Right.”

  They got out of the car and walked up to the Mustang.

  Parker got behind the wheel, and Formutesca opened the passenger door and dragged Marten out. He shut the door again and Parker started the engine.

  The Mustang would still run. Its headlights were smashed and both front tires were flat, its windshield was mostly gone and there were bloodstains on the black leatherette of the bucket seats, but it would run. Parker put it in gear and drove it slowly on up the hill.

  The car didn't want to go. The flat front tires made it buck from side to side of the road, and Parker had to hold the wheel by force to keep the Mustang moving forward. But it did move and took him over the top of the hill and down the other side, and now ahead of him he could see the rambling structure of the house and beyond it the lake.

  Gray-white mist lay over the lake. The sun hadn't cleared the mountain ridges to the east yet, but the sky was increasingly gray, and a bleak gray light lay on the world. The trees around the lake looked like dead black skeletons, and the water looked as cold as an underground river.

  Parker drove the Mustang off the road and over the shabby lawn to the side of the house. He left it there and went into the house and began to search from room to room.

  He found her locked in a bedroom upstairs, lying on her side on the bed tied hand and foot and with a gag in her mouth. He couldn't see her wrists, but her ankles looked raw and burned from the ropes. Her face looked puffy, the eyes closed, and at first he thought she was dead, but then he saw she was asleep.

  He heard Formutesca bring the Falcon to a stop out in front of the house. He walked across the room and put a hand on Claire's cheek.