"The Mourner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stark Richard)

The second book in the Parker series

Copyright Š Donald E. Westlake 1963

PART ONE

1

WHEN the guy with asthma finally came in from the fire escape, Parker rabbit-punched him and took his gun away. The asthmatic hit the carpet, but there’d been another one out there, and he landed on Parker’s back like a duffel bag with arms. Parker fell turning, so that the duffel bag would be on the bottom, but it didn’t quite work out that way. They landed sideways, jokingly, and the gun skittered away into the darkness.

There was no light in the room at all. The window was a paler rectangle sliced out of blackness. Parker and the duffel bag wrestled around on the floor a few minutes, neither getting an advantage because the duffel bag wouldn’t give up his first hold but just clung to Parker’s back. Then the asthmatic got his wind and balance back and joined in, trying to kick Parker’s head loose. Parker knew the room even in the dark, since he’d lived there the last week, so he rolled over to where he knew there wasn’t any furniture. The asthmatic, coming after him, fell over a chair.

Parker rolled to where the wall should be, bumped into it, and climbed up it till he was on his feet, the duffel bag still clinging to his back. The duffel bag’s legs were around Parker’s hips, and his left arm was around Parker’s chest. His right hand kept hitting the side of Parker’s head.

Parker moved out to the middle of the room, and then ran backward at the wall. The second time he did it, the duffel bag fell off. Across the room, the asthmatic was still bouncing back and forth amid the furniture. Parker went over that way, got the asthmatic silhouetted against the pale rectangle of the window, and clipped him. The asthmatic went down, hitting furniture on the way.

Parker waited a few seconds, holding his breath, but he couldn’t hear anybody moving, so he went over and shut and locked the window, pulled the Venetian blinds, and switched on the table lamp beside the bed.

The room was a mess. One bed had been turned at a forty-five-degree angle to the wall, and the mattress was half-pulled off the other one. The dresser was shoved out of position so it was blocking the closet door, and the waste-basket lay on its side in the middle of the floor with a big dent in it. All four chairs were knocked over. One of them had both wooden arms broken.

Parker walked through the mess to see what he’d landed.

Fifteen minutes ago it had started, with Parker lying clothed on the bed in the darkness, thinking about one thing and another, and waiting for Handy to come back. That was after eleven o’clock, so Handy was late already. The lights were off because Parker liked it that way, and the window was open because November nights in Washington DC, are cool but pleasant. Then through the window had come the faint clatter of somebody mounting the fire-escape, four flights below at street level. Parker had got off the bed and listened at the window. The somebody came up the fire-escape about as quiet as the Second World War but trying to be quieter, and stopped at Parker’s floor. Somebody with asthma. It was all so amateurish, Parker couldn’t take it seriously, which is why the second one surprised him. He’d waited, and the guy with asthma had waited outside probably to make sure there wasn’t anybody home in Parker’s room and then finally he came in and it all had started.

The nice thing about a hotel. Nobody questions any noise that lasts less than ten minutes.

They were both out, the duffel bag on his face and the asthmatic on his back. Parker looked them over one at a time, and then frisked them.

The asthmatic was short, scrubby, wrinkled as a prune, and fifty or more, with the withered look of a wino. He was wearing baggy grey pants, a flannel shirt that had once been plaid but had now faded down to a grey like the pants, and a dark-blue double-breasted suit coat with all but one button missing and the shoulder padding sagging down into the arms. He had white wool socks on and brown oxfords with holes in the soles.

Parker went through his pockets. In the right-hand coat pocket he found a boy-scout knife with all the attachments screwdriver, nail file, corkscrew, everything but a useful blade and in the left-hand pocket a hotel-room key. The board attached to the key was marked: HOTEL REGAL 27. In the shirt pocket was a crumpled pack of Camels and in the left-hand pants pocket forty-seven cents in change. From the hip pocket he took a bedraggled old child’s wallet of imitation alligator skin, with a two-colour picture of a cowboy on a bucking bronco on one side and a horseshoe on the other. Inside the wallet was a hundred dollars in new tens and four dollars in old singles, plus half a dozen movie-theatre ticket stubs, a long, narrow photo of a burlesque dancer named Fury Feline, clipped from a newspaper, and a Social Security card and membership card in Local 802, International Alliance of Chefs and Kitchen Helpers. The Social Security card and the union card were made out to James F. Wilcoxen.

That was all. Parker left Wilcoxen and went over to the duffel bag, who had started to move. He had long, straight, limp hair, dry blond in colour, and Parker grabbed a handful of it and slapped his head against the floor. He stopped moving. Parker rolled him over.

This one was just as short, and maybe even thinner, but about twenty years younger, with the face of a ferret. He was dressed all in black. Black shoes and socks, black pegged trousers, black wool-knit sweater. He had long, thin fingers and narrow feet.

Parker searched him. Under the black sweater was a blue cotton shirt, and in the pocket was a pair of sun-glasses. The right-hand pants pocket contained fifty-six cents in change and a key to room 29 in the Hotel Regal; the left, a roll of bills one hundred dollars in new tens. Left hip pocket, a Beretta Jaguar .22, with the three-and-a-half-inch barrel. Right hip pocket, a wallet containing seven dollars, plus a bunch of dog-eared clippings about the various arrests of Donald Scorbi on suspicion of this and that, mostly assault or drunk and disorderly, with one narcotics possession. The wallet also disgorged a laminated reduced photostat of a Navy discharge general discharge, for medical reasons with the same name on it, Donald Scorbi.

Parker kept the two stacks of new tens and the Beretta, but put everything else back in Scorbi’s and Wilcoxen’s pockets. Then he used their shoelaces to tie their hands behind them, and their belts to secure their ankles together. Scorbi started to come out of it again and he had to be put back to sleep, but Wilcoxen was still out, wheezing through his open mouth.

Parker looked them over, and decided to keep Wilcoxen. He used a washcloth and face towel to gag Scorbi, then dragged him into the bathroom and dumped him in the tub. He closed the door and searched around the room for the other gun, the one he’d taken from Wilcoxen early in the scuffle.

It was under the dresser, a Smith amp; Wesson Terrier, five-shot .32. Parker took it and the Beretta and stowed them away in his suitcase. His watch said eleven-thirty-five, which made Handy over half an hour later, so something had gone wrong.

Parker straightened the room and Wilcoxen still hadn’t come out of it. Parker dragged him over to the wall, propped him up in a sitting position, and pinched him awake. Wilcoxen came out of it complaining, groaning, and thrashing his head around and keeping his eyes tight shut. There was a sour smell of wine on his breath. His face was all wrinkled grey leather except for two bright red circles on his cheeks, like a clown’s make-up.

Parker said, “Open your eyes, Jimmy.”

Wilcoxen stopped complaining and opened his eyes. They were a wet, washed-out blue, like an overexposed colour photo. He took a while getting them to focus on Parker’s face, and then the red blotches on his cheeks got suddenly redder, or the rest of the face paler.

Parker said, “Good,” then straightened up and went away across the room to the nearest chair. He brought it over and sat down and kicked Wilcoxen conversationally in the ribs. “We’ll talk.”

Wilcoxen’s lips were wet. He shook his head and blinked a lot.

Parker said, “I got a partner. You had a partner. Scorbi.”

Wilcoxen looked around and didn’t see Scorbi.

“Your partner wouldn’t tell me about my partner. I threw him back out the window.”

Wilcoxen’s eyes got bigger. He stared at Parker and waited, but Parker didn’t have anything else to say. The silence got thicker, and Wilcoxen squirmed a lot. His feet jiggled, and he licked his lips and kept blinking. Parker sat looking at him, waiting, but Wilcoxen’s eyes kept darting all over the place.

Finally, he asked, “What you want from me?”

Parker shook his head and kicked him again. “Wrong answer.”

“I don’t know no partner. Honest to Christ.”

“What doyou know?”

“I got a hundred bucks. Donny and me both. Go to the Wynant Hotel, first fire-escape in the alley, fifth floor. If there’s nobody home, take everything there. Suitcases and like that.”

“And if there’s somebody home?”

“Don’t do nothing. Come back and report.”

“Back where?”

Wilcoxen’s blinking was getting worse. His eyes were closed more than they were open. “Listen,” he said. “It’s just a job, you know? A hundred bucks. Nobody hurt, just pick up some suitcases. Anybody woulda took it.”

Parker shook his head. He didn’t care about that. “Back where?” he asked.

“Howison Tavern. On E Street, down by Fourth Precinct.”

“Who do you see?”

Wilcoxen frowned, and the blinking settled down a little. “I don’t know,” he said. “He just told us go in there and sit down. If we got the stuff, somebody would come by, pick it up. If not, somebody would come by, get the report.”

“What time you supposed to be there?”

“By one o’clock.”

“Which E Street?”

“Huh? Oh, Southeast.”

“Who gave you the job?”

“The job? Listen, I got pins and needles in my hands.”

Parker looked at his watch. Quarter to twelve. He had an hour and fifteen minutes. “I’m in a hurry, Jimmy,” he said.

“How come you know my name?”

Parker kicked him in the ribs again, not hard, just as a reminder.

“I’m giving you the straight story. I ain’t going to lie for a hundred bucks. You didn’t have to throw Donny out no window.”

“Who gave you the job?”

“Oh, uh a guy named Angel. He’s a heavy, he hangs out around North Capitol Street, up behind the station. Donny and me, we was in a movie on D Street, and when we come out Angel grabs on to us and gives us the offer.”

“Is Angel going to be at the Howison Tavern?”

“He says no. He says somebody will come by, don’t worry, he’ll recognize us. We should sit in a booth and drink beer. Schlitz.”

“Where do I find this Angel?”

“I don’t know. Honest to Christ. Hangin’ around some place, up around behind the station. In around there, you know.”

It was no good. Parker thought it over, chewing his lip. The meeting couldn’t be faked, so there was no way to start a trail from there. And it would take more than an hour and a quarter to find somebody named Angel hanging around the Union Station area somewhere. If Handy was still alive, he’d be alive till one o’clock. Then, when Scorbi and Wilcoxen didn’t show up, whoever had Handy would know there was trouble. The easiest thing would be dump Handy.

So it had to be done from the other direction, through the girl.

Parker nodded to himself. “All right, Jimmy,” he said. “You can go. Roll over so I can untie you.”

“You mean it? Honest to Christ?”

“Hurry, Jimmy.”

Wilcoxen scrambled away from the wall and flopped over on his stomach.

“You’re all right, honest to Christ you are. You know it wasn’t nothing personal. There wasn’t even supposed to be nobody here, just suitcases and like that. We ain’t torpedoes or nothing.”

“I know,” Parker said. He untied Wilcoxen’s hands and stepped back. “Undo your ankles yourself.”

Wilcoxen had trouble making his hands work. While he was loosening the belt from around his ankles and putting his shoelaces back in his shoes, Parker got the Terrier out of the suitcase, and held it casually where Wilcoxen could see it. He left the Beretta where it was; he didn’t like .22’s much.

When Wilcoxen got to his feet, Parker said, “Scorbi’s in the bathroom. Go untie him.”

Wilcoxen suddenly smiled, beaming from ear to ear. “I know you didn’t throw Donny out no window,” he said. He hurried over and opened the bathroom door. “Donny! He’s lettin’ us go, Donny!”

After a while Scorbi came out, walking lame like Wilcoxen. He looked sullen, not joining in Wilcoxen’s happiness. Parker said, “Out the way you came in.”

“What about our dough?” Scorbi asked.

“Hurry,” Parker said.

“Come on, Donny,” said Wilcoxen. He tugged at Scorbi’s sleeve. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Our rods and our dough.”

Parker said, “Go on, Jimmy. Either he follows you or he don’t.”

Wilcoxen hurried over and climbed out the window on to the fire-escape. Scorbi hung back a second, but then he shrugged and went out the window. The two of them started down the fire-escape, making even more noise then they had coming up.

Parker stowed the Terrier away inside his coat and picked up the phone. When the operator came on, he made his voice high-pitched and nervous. “There’s somebody on the fire-escape! Get the police! Hurry! They’re going down the fire-escape!”

He hung up while the operator was still asking questions, switched off the light, and left the room. He took the elevator down and crossed the lobby and went outside. A prowl car was parked down to the left, with the red light flashing. Hotels get fast service.

Parker stood on the sidewalk, and a couple of minutes later two cops came out of the alley alongside the hotel, pushing Scorbi and Wilcoxen in front of them. So that was that. Because the Scorbis and Wilcoxens never talk to the law, it couldn’t get back to Parker. So no matter how good a story they thought up, they’d miss that one o’clock meeting and whoever had Handy wouldn’t be warned. It was better even than keeping them tied up in the bathroom.

Parker turned and walked the other way. A block later he hailed a cab.

2

IT WAS just over the Maryland line, in Silver Spring, a squat, faded apartment building called Sligo Towers. Built of dark brick aged even darker, the brick widely separated by the plaster, it looked like an old Thirties standing set left over on the Universal back lot. Thirties-like imitations of Gay Nineties gaslights, containing twenty-five-watt bulbs, flanked the arched entrance to the courtyard.

The courtyard was just concrete, but pink colouring had been added before it set. It was bounded on three sides by the building, rising eight storeys, and sprouting air conditioners here and there like acne. On the fourth side was a double arch with a concrete pillar, separating courtyard from sidewalk. Beyond, dark cars slept at the kerb, hoods mutely reflecting the street lights from down the block. A car purred by, without pausing.

Parker turned the far corner and came striding towards the Sligo Towers. He wore a grey suit and a figured shirt, the suit coat open despite the night chill. He looked like a businessman, in a tough business. He could have been a liquor salesman in a dry state, or the automobile company vice-president who takes away the dealerships, or maybe the business manager of one of the unions with the big buildings downtown around the Capitol. He could have been a hard, lean businessman coming home from a late night at the office.

He turned at the double arch and went into the courtyard, his shoes with the rubber soles and heels making no sound on the pink concrete. There were walls on three sides of him, all around the courtyard, with a door in each wall. Each was marked with a letter so rococo it looked like a drawing of an ivy-covered window.

He didn’t know which door. Slowing down would spoil the effect, stopping would tip any watcher that he was a stranger here. He kept on towards “B”, the door straight ahead. Three brick-lined pink concrete steps led up, and then the door was metal, painted to look like wood. It was a double door, and inside there was a metal bar like those found on the doors of schools and theatres. A half flight of metal stairs painted red led up to a hallway running at right angles. There was no interior door, which was a surprise. With no trouble at all, he was already in the building.

Facing the stairs, on the wall, was a double row of brass mailboxes, with name plates. Parker read the names, but didn’t find the one he wanted. He looked to right and left, and in both directions the hallway ended short at apartment doors, so the three sections of the building weren’t connected at this level. They would be, in the basement. He went back down the half flight, past the entrance doors, and down another half flight of a longer hallway, this one walled with rough plaster and dimly fit. He turned left.

At the far end, the hallway made a right angle to the left. Parker followed it, came to another flight of stairs, and went up. He was now in section A, and the name he wanted was under the fifth mailbox from the left on the bottom row. Miss Clara Stoper. Apartment 26.

There were four apartments to a floor, so 26 would be on the seventh floor. The elevator was to the right of the mailboxes. Parker got out at the seventh floor. Apartment 26 was to the left. Parker moved down that way and listened to the door, but could hear nothing. There was a thin crack between the bottom of the door and the floor, but no light showed through.

Parker rang the bell. There was no peephole in the door, so he waited where he was, in front of the door. Nothing happened for a while, so he rang the bell again. Then he saw light under the door, and a bolt clicked.

He frowned, trying to remember the name Handy was using with her. Pete Castle, that was it.

The door opened a few inches, held by a chain from opening any farther. A chain like that can’t keep anyone out; it only serves as an irritation. Beyond was a sleepy-eyed girl’s face. She was sleepy-eyed and holding a robe closed at her throat, but her hairdo was in perfect shape without a net.

“Who is it? What do you want?” she said, the voice a good imitation of sleepy blurriness.

But the hairdo had given it away. Parker didn’t have to ask any questions after all. His right foot went out and wedged in the doorway, so the door couldn’t be closed. His right hand reached through and grabbed a handful of hair on the top of her head. He slammed her forehead against the edge of the door. Her hands started to come up towards his wrist, and her mouth was opening wide to shout, so he did it again. The third time, she became a dead weight and collapsed straight downward, leaving several strands of hair in his fist.

It took two high, flat kicks with his heel to pop the chain loose from the doorpost. The door swung open, and beyond the lighted foyer and the dark living-room was a bright doorway. The silhouette of a fat man appeared in it and Parker dove for the rug, stabbing into his pocket for the Terrier. The fat man fired over his head. Parker rolled into a wall and came up with the Terrier in his hand. The bright doorway was empty. Parker moved quickly, slamming the hall door and flicking off the foyer light.

The fat man had the same idea. There wasn’t any bright doorway any more. The whole apartment was dark.

The fat man knew this place, and Parker didn’t. The fat man could sit and wait, and Parker couldn’t take the time. The fat man could stay where he was and listen, shoot at the first sound, or just wait for Parker to go away.

In the dark, Parker found the unconscious girl. He dragged her into the living-room and knelt beside her on one knee. In a conversational voice he said, “Fat man. Listen to me, fat man. You fired one shot. The light sleepers around here are awake now; they think it was a truck making a backfire. You turn on a light, fat man, and you come out here where I can see you, or I make more noises. I can scream like a woman, fat man. I can scream like a woman, and then very slow I can empty this pistol into your girl. Too many backfires, fat man. Somebody will call the police. Before I’m finished, somebody will call the police. Then I wipe the gun clean and put it down on the floor and beat it. No fingerprints of mine here, fat man. Nothing to connect me. But your fingerprints are everywhere. And somebody’ll connect you up with this woman.”

Silence.

“Now, fat man. The next thing I do is scream like a woman.”

“Wait.”

It was a soft voice, and from the left somewhere. Not in the room.

“Hurry.”

“I will not turn on the lights,” said the voice. It had a faint accent, something Middle European. “But it is possible we can talk.”

“Not in the dark.”

“You must be reasonable. We will effect a compromise.”

“Name it.”

“You want something here, quite obviously, else you wouldn’t have come. Yet I don’t know you. I cannot imagine what it is you want. Your reactions and movements are hardly those of a burglar or a rapist. Either you have come to murder me, at the behest of the opposition, or you are here seeking information of some sort. If murder is your purpose, it would hardly be sensible for me to show myself. If what you want is information, we can discuss it just as profitably in the dark.”

While the fat man was talking, Parker was crawling towards the sound of his voice, moving cautiously across the carpet on hands and knees. When the voice stopped, Parker stopped. He turned his head away, so he wouldn’t sound any closer. “I’m here for information. Where’s Pete Castle?”

“Ah!” The fat man seemed pleased to have the mystery cleared up. “He didhave associates.”

“Where is he?”

“Reposing in a safe place, I assure you. And relatively unharmed. I would suggest, by the way, that you come no closer. You are now nearly to the doorway, and I pride myself on my shooting. If you clear that doorway, and then are foolish enough to speak, it will take me no more than one backfire to dispose of you.”

“Why warn me?”

“Curiosity, just curiosity. The same motive that impelled me to have your friend taken away to where he could be questioned at leisure. Our operation is of a complexity and a delicacy. Your friend’s presence became quite naturally, of concern to us. We had to know whether his goal coincided with our own. Now I discover that there are two of you, perhaps more. You might tell me just what it is you want with Kapor. If our purposes are the same, it is possible we could come to an agreement.”

“All I want is Pete Castle. You’ll tell me where to find him, or I’ll start making that noise”

A body suddenly fell on him, grappling with him, and the girl’s voice shrilled in his ear, “I’ve got him, Mr Menlo! I’ve got him, I’ve got him!”

Parker struggled with her, hampered by the darkness, and over her shouting he heard the pounding of running feet. He flung her off at last in time to catch a glimpse of the hall door opening, and the back of the fat man. Parker headed that way, but the girl got him around the ankles, dropping him again. He kicked free, made it to the hallway, and heard the clatter of taps on metal stairs. The fat man was already halfway down.

Parker ran back into the apartment, switching on lights as he went. The girl was slowly and groggily getting to her feet. Her robe was disarranged, and beneath it she was fully dressed except for shoes. Parker ran past her to the first window he found, in the kitchen, but it faced the rear of the building. So did the bedroom window. No window faced the courtyard.

Parker came back to the living-room. The girl was on her feet but weaving, moving at a snail’s pace towards the door. Parker came after her, grabbed her by a shoulder, flung her back into the living-room. The chain attachment on the front door was broken but the bolt still worked. Parker shot it, and went back to the living-room.

The girl was no more than half-conscious. She’d been battered once too often in the last five minutes. She was standing in the middle of the room, frowning and squinting as though not sure what was going on. Parker took hold of her arm and steered her into the kitchen. She moved with no complaint, repeating under her breath, “Mr Menlo? Mr Menlo?”

Parker sat her on a kitchen chair and slapped her face to get her attention. “Where have they got Pete Castle?”

She frowned up at him, and then rationality came back to her and her face hardened. “You can just go to hell.”

Parker shook his head in irritation. He hated this kind of thing, hurting people to make them talk. It was messy and time-consuming and there ought to be a better way. But there wasn’t.

He found twine in a kitchen drawer, and tied her to the chair, and gagged her. She fought it, but not successfully. He left her right hand free and put paper and pencil on the table.

“Write the address when you’re ready,” he said. Then he reached for the kitchen matches.

3

THERE WAS a delivery truck out front, a small, dark panel truck with the name KELSON FURNITURE on the sides. It was way after one o’clock, but two men in white coveralls were carrying a rolled-up rug out of the dark bungalow.

This was in Cheverly, off Landover Road. Parker crouched in the back seat of the cab, watching them through the windshield. They were half a block ahead, and on the other side of the street. Just the two men in white coveralls and the rolled-up rug. No fat man.

Parker said, “Douse your lights.”

It was a lady cab-driver, a small, middle-aged coloured woman with a wild red hat. She glared over her shoulder at him. “What was that?”

Parker found a twenty and shoved it at her, wishing he had the Pontiac. But Handy had taken that with him. Parker said, “I want you to put out your lights. Then follow that delivery truck over there when it takes off.”

She now looked baffled, but just as suspicious. “Is this some kind of gag, mister?”

“No gag.”

“We’re not supposed to do nothing like that.”

“Just take the twenty.”

“How I know you ain’t a cop? Or a inspector or something?”

“Do I look like a cop?”

“Some cops, yeah.”

“All right,” Parker said. “We’ll do it the hard way.” He dropped the twenty in her lap and showed her the Terrier.

The gun she could understand. She doused the lights. “If you got robbery or rapery on your mind, big man,” she said, “you just forget it.”

“All you do is follow that delivery truck. Get ready now.”

“Sure. They got a body in that rug.” She thought she was being scornful.

“That’s right,” Parker answered.

“Huh?”

The delivery truck started away from the kerb. Parker said, “Give them a block. Keep the lights off till I say so. You can see by the street lights.”

“If I get stopped by a cop “

“Don’t worry about it.”

The cab, with its headlights off, trailed the tail-lights of the delivery truck out to Landover Road, where the truck turned back towards the city. As soon as it had made the turn and was out of sight, Parker said, “Put your lights on now.”

The truck barrelled along ahead of them, and didn’t seem aware it was being followed. There was no circling of blocks, or speeding up and slowing down, to check for a possible tail. The truck just ran on over to Bladensburg Road and down into the city. In the Trinidad section it made a right turn. Parker said, “Keep back a block and a half unless they turn.”

Ahead, the truck turned in at a driveway. This was a commercial section, shut down tight. Parker said, “Turn at the corner here. Don’t go past where they turned in. Now go half a block and stop.”

He had another twenty ready when the cab stopped. He tossed it to her. “This one’s to forget to call the cops.”

She shrugged and shook her head. “I sure hope you got your money’s worth,” she said. She sounded doubtful.

Parker hurried back around the corner, and down the block towards where the truck had turned in. There was no reason to hurry, except he wanted to know what the hell was going on.

Only thing he knew now Handy was still alive. If Handy were dead, they’d either have left him there or driven the body farther away from town. But he was alive, because they still wanted to know what he was up to, and they’d just moved him so they could question him some more. The fat man had hurried away, then set up his new place to bring Handy and called his friends to get Handy out of there. If Parker had taken three minutes longer getting the answer out of the girl, he’d have missed the move completely.

Whether Handy was alive or dead wasn’t the important part. The important part was who these people were and what they wanted. If they were after the mourner too, it would complicate things.

Parker came to the driveway. It was blacktop and narrow, hemmed in on both sides by brick walls. The one on the right was a garage and on the left was a dry cleaner’s. From the front, both looked dark and empty.

Parker moved cautiously down the driveway and found the truck at the end, against another wall. The truck doors were open, and the rug was gone.

Both side walls contained metal doors back here. Parker tried the one leading to the garage first, and it was unlocked. He stepped through into darkness, and listened. A dim murmur of voices came from his right and above. He moved that way, skirting first a workbench and then some machinery, and ahead of him saw a dim light. The ceiling was high, and a row of offices was built out from the rear wall, with a wooden staircase going up. The light was spilling down from one of the offices.

Parker moved forward, and then saw a cigarette glow for a second ahead of him. There was somebody sitting at the foot of the stairs.

Parker moved in slowly, staying back under the stairs, which had been built hastily, without risers. Parker held the Terrier by the barrel, reached through between two of the stairs, and put the guard out with the gun butt. He slumped, and slid down off the stairs to the floor.

Parker came around and checked him, and he was out. The voices were still murmuring upstairs, without a break. He went up the stairs, the butt of the Terrier in his hand now, and followed the sound of the voices.

There was a walkway outside the offices, with the office wall on one side and a wooden railing on the other. The wall was panelling halfway up, and glass the rest of the way. The light was coming through the glass down towards the other end of the walkway. Parker moved that way, and edged close enough to look in through the glass.

It was just a small office, with pale-green filing cabinets and pale-green partitions. There was a desk, and three chairs, and the usual office furniture, with a big calendar on the back wall showing a trout leaping in a mountain stream.

They had Handy sitting on the floor, his back against the wall under the calendar. He was tied with a lot of white clothes line, but not gagged. There was blood on his face, and his clothes were messed up. The two men in the white overalls were with him, talking to him. Handy’s eyes were shut, but from his posture he was probably awake. Or mostly awake.

Parker couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. And he was surprised that the fat man wasn’t there with them. But the way the fat man could run, he maybe never got too close to the action. He just stayed back by a telephone somewhere where he could be the general.

Parker turned back and retraced his steps. There was only one door leading into the offices, but each had connecting doors. Parker stepped into one from the walkway and moved along through three other dark offices, opening and closing the doors as he went without a sound. Then he was at the partition, standing in front of the inner door to the lighted office, and he could hear now.

“

but now we’ve got plenty of time. We’ve got all night, you know that? That partner of yours is pretty good, catching on so quick, but how’s he gonna find you here? Even if he gets anything out of Clara, so what? Off he goes to the house in Cheverly, right? And there’s the dead end.”

The other one said, “Or maybe you got another partner. How many of you in this thing, Pete? Just the two of you? Or maybe three, four? What do you say, Pete?”

There was silence, and then a thud, and the first voice said, “Take it easy, boy. You want to put him out again?”

“All he has to do is be civil, that’s all. Just answer a polite question, that’s all.”

“I tell you what, we’ll go over it for him again. Maybe he’s just a slow study.”

“Let me take my pliers to his fingers. He’ll be a real quick study.”

“No, Mr Menlo said don’t mess him up too bad till we find out what the score is.”

“You gotto mess him up. Look at him.”

“I figure he’ll listen to reason. Isn’t that right, Pete? You know we can’t do nothing drastic to you, but Pete boy, we got all night. Like, I could just take your hair like this, and just real gentle rap your head on the wall, see? Boom. And then again. Boom. See? The first time ain’t so bad. The second time’s a little worse. Now the third time. Boom. See? What do you think, Pete? Maybe forty times? We got all night, Pete.”

“So boom him and get it over.”

“Now wait a minute, let me talk to him. We got interrupted before; let me talk to him. Pete, listen to me. We don’t want so much. We ain’t greedy, Pete. But just listen. We’re getting this operation set up, getting everything ready, and all of a sudden you come into the middle of it. You make a play for Clara, so pretty soon Clara’s got it figured what you’re after is to get into Kapor’s house. You’re working on something, and we’re working on something. Now, all we want to know, Pete is it the same something? What do you want in Kapor’s house, Pete? And how many of you are in it? That’s all we want to know. What the hell, Pete, we were here first. I mean, fair’s fair, right? Boom. Pete. Boom. Isn’t fair, fair, Pete? Boom, Pete.”

There was no sense listening to any more. They wouldn’t be saying anything more about themselves. There was Clara, and the fat man, Menlo, and these two, plus the one downstairs and maybe the one named Angel. Maybe some others too. They were all after something that Kapor had, just as Parker was, and if they, like Parker, were after the mourner, they wouldn’t be volunteering that information to Handy. So Parker opened the door and went into the light, gun first. “Freeze.”

Nobody ever does. The two of them spun around, shock-eyed, and Handy opened tired eyes and grinned.

“Untie him,” Parker said.

The conversational one did it, while the one with the impatient pliers stood there and glowered. Then Parker had the one with the impatient pliers use the same ropes to tie up the conversational one. Parker only wanted to take one with him, and he had decided to take Pliers because in his experience the people who were the most anxious to use torture were also the ones most anxious to talk instead of being tortured themselves. Parker had been forced to ask questions the hard way twice already tonight. It hadn’t been bad with Wilcoxen, but with the woman, Clara, it had been very bad, because she was stubborn and Parker was in a hurry.

Handy couldn’t walk; his legs were numb from being tied so tight for so long. Parker had Pliers carry Handy, and the three of them left the office and went downstairs and out to the truck. Parker got the ignition key, and then arranged the three of them. There was no partition between the seats and the load area, so Handy lay in back with the Browning .380 automatic Parker had taken away from the conversational one upstairs. From there he could keep an eye on Pliers, in front. Parker drove.

He backed the truck down the driveway to the street, but for a second he didn’t know where to go. They hadn’t set up any place private yet, because the job wasn’t that close to being ready, and the hotel room wouldn’t be any good for questioning Pliers. Then Parker remembered the bungalow where they’d been holding Handy. Why not? If any place in the District was guaranteed empty right now, it was that bungalow.

They drove in silence. Parker had his questions, but he wanted the proper atmosphere in which to ask them. And among them, he was wondering if Harrow had been dumb enough to send two teams after the same ball. Could the fat man and his friends be working for Harrow too? That would be stupid, and dangerous, for everybody.

But Harrow wasn’t all that smart

.

4

THAT was two months ago.

For eighteen years, Parker had lived the way he wanted, to a pattern he liked. He was a heavy gun, in on one or two institutional robberies a year a bank, or a payroll, or an armoured car just often enough to keep the finances fat, and the rest of the time he lived in resort hotels on either coast, with a cover that would satisfy even the income-tax beagles. Then, because of a snafu in one job, he’d got fouled up with the syndicate. He’d thought he’d got that straightened out he’d even picked up a new face from a plastic surgeon and then, two months before in Miami, a syndicate heavy had tried for him, in his own hotel room, late at night. There’d been a girl in the bed with him named Bett Harrow, and when the syndicate heavy died, Bett had taken off with the gun that had helped kill him. The gun could be traced to Parker’s cover name, Charles Willis, and that was bad. There was a lot of money and time and preparation tied up in that cover.

Bett had let him know he could have the gun back for a price, but he’d told her she had to wait while he got the syndicate off his back. He’d got in touch with Handy McKay, who’d worked with him on other jobs in the past, and this time the syndicate question was settled for good. Then Parker went back to Miami with Handy to find out what Bett Harrow wanted.

But it wasn’t Bett who wanted anything, it was her father. Parker set up the meeting, but left Handy out of it. It might be useful sometime if neither Bett nor her father knew anything about Handy.

The Harrows came to Parker’s hotel room at one-thirty in the afternoon. They knocked on the door and when Parker opened it there was Bett, tall and slender and blonde, with vicious good looks, and next to her an older man, short and stocky and grey-haired. He had no tan at all, and the suit he was wearing was too heavy for Miami Beach, so he’d obviously just arrived in town. He was looking uncomfortable and carrying a book under his arm.

Bett said, “Can we come in, Chuck?”

He motioned them in. Bett came in first, and her father followed, clutching the book protectively to his chest. It was a large, slender book with a red binding and a picture on the cover of some people in a balloon.

“Dad, this isn’t Chuck Willis, but he says he is.” Bett was enjoying herself. It was the kind of scene she liked, which was one of the reasons she was living on alimony.

Ralph Harrow was fifty-three, the principal stockholder of the Commauck Aircraft Company. He owned 27 per cent of that company’s outstanding shares. And he was additionally a large stockholder in three airlines and one insurance company. He was also a member of the board of each of the five companies thus represented in his stock portfolio. He had been born to money, and had multiplied his inheritance. A staff of attorneys saw to it that nothing he did was technically illegal, and they earned their money.

He came into the room showing an unusual apprehension, and responded to his daughter’s introductions with a brief, wary nod. “This is my daughter’s idea, uh, Willis,” he said. “I assure you, coercion is not my normal, uh, my normal policy.”

“You haven’t coerced me yet,” Parker had answered. “First you got to tell me what you want.”

Harrow licked his lips and glanced at his daughter, but she was no help. “To begin with, I’d like you to read a brief article in this magazine.”

He said magazine, but it was obviously the book he meant. He held it up, and Parker saw above the picture a title: Horizon.And below the picture a date: September, 1958. So it was a magazine that looked like a book.

Harrow opened the magazine-book, muttering to himself, “Page sixty-two.” He found the page and extended the open book.

Parker shrugged, not taking the book. “Just tell me what you want.”

If it had been just the father he’d been dealing with, he’d squeeze the gun out of him now and throw him away. But the daughter was tougher stuff.

Harrow was looking pained, as though he had indigestion. “It would really be quicker if you’d read this first,” he said.

“Go on, Chuck,” Bett said. “It’s short.”

“Just two pages,” Harrow added.

Parker said, “You read it, didn’t you?”

“Well

yes.”

“So you can tell me about it.”

Parker turned away from the book and went over to sit at the writing desk, turning the chair around to face the room.

Bett was still smiling. She settled luxuriantly on the bed, catlike, and said, “You might as well do it his way, Dad. I don’t think Chuck’s a reader.”

“Well, but

” Harrow was confused and unhappy; this wasn’t the way he’d planned things.

Parker had had enough waiting around. “Either get to the point or get out,” he said.

Bett said softly, “And go to the police?”

“If you want. I don’t give a damn.”

Bett laughed and looked challengingly at her father. Harrow sighed. “Very well. It would have been easier if you’d

but very well. This article concerns a group of eighty-two statuettes in a monument at Dijon, in France.” He turned the book around so Parker could see. “You see the title? ‘The Missing Mourners of Dijon’, by Ferdinand Auberjonois.”

“You want me to steal a statue,” Parker said, and Bett laughed again.

“I want you to understand the background.” Harrow answered unhappily. “It is important that you understand the background.”

“Why?”

“Dear Dad’s a romantic,” said Bett, with honeyed venom in her smile.

Parker shrugged. He didn’t care what the Harrow family thought of each other.

“These statuettes, eighty-two of them, were made for the tomb of John the Fearless and Philip the Good, Dukes of Burgundy,” Harrow said. “John was murdered in 1419, but not before ordering the tomb to be built. Philip was his son, and survived till 1467, when he”

“The statues,” Parker said.

“Yes. The statues. They are sixteen inches high, made of alabaster, and were placed in niches at the base of the two memorials. No two of them are precisely alike, and they all express an attitude of mourning. Every possible variation on mourning, both true and false. There are monks, priests, choirboys Well. At any rate, they are priceless. And at the time of the French Revolution, many of them were stolen or lost. At the present time, seventy-four of the statuettes are still in Dijon; some were always there, others have been found and returned. Of the remaining eight, one is owned by a private collector in this country, in Ohio, and two are in the Cleveland Museum. The other three mourners are still missing.”

He closed the book, but kept his finger in the place. “That’s what this article would have told you,” he said, “and just as quickly as I have told it to you.”

Parker waited, controlling his impatience. None of this was necessary. Harrow wanted a statue stolen, that was the point. If the job looked easy enough, and if the price was right, he might do it. Otherwise, no. All this talk was a waste of time.

But Harrow wasn’t finished yet. “Now, for you to understand what I want, and why I want it, you must understand something about me.”

“Why?”

Ben said, “Let him, Chuck. It’s the only way he knows how to talk.”

“Elizabeth, please.”

“Get on with it,” Parker said.

“Very well. Very well. I, Mr Willis, am in a very small and special way a collector of medieval statuary. I say in a special way. My collection is small, but if I do say so myself it’s excellent. I have at present only eight pieces. This is because my criteria are very high indeed. Each piece must be unique, must be one of a kind, must have no counterpart anywhere in the world. Each must be valued so highly as to be for all practical purposes priceless. And each must have an unusual and fascinating history. My daughter is right, Mr Willis I am a romantic. I am fascinated by each piece in my collection, by its creation and by its history. You understand this collection is for my own satisfaction, and not on display.”

Bett laughed and said, “Because they were all stolen.”

“Not so!” Harrow looked indignantly at his daughter. “Every piece was paid for, and handsomely too.”

“But the fascinating history,”she said, mocking the words. “It always includes a theft or two, doesn’t it?”

“That is not at allmy concern. I myself have”

“Shut up,’ said Parker.

They stopped their bickering at once, and looked at him, startled. “You want me to steal one of these statues, right? From a museum?”

“Good heavens, no!” Harrow seemed honestly shocked. “In the first place, Willis, all the statuettes mentioned in this article are far too easily traceable. They’re unique,you see, each a separate and distinct figure. Here, look.” He came forward, opening the book again, shoving it under Parker’s nose. “Here are pictures of some of them. See? They’re all different.”

Five of the statuettes were pictured, and Parker looked at them, nodding. Five sad, robed, weeping mournful little people, in five different postures of grief.

“Besides,” added Harrow, “besides, none of these has the kind of history I mean, the sort of background I want for the pieces in my collection.”

Parker shoved the book away. “What then?”

“Let me tell you.” Harrow stood in front of him, suddenly beaming, a glint of excitement in his eyes. “You remember, three of the mourners are still missing? No one knows where they are. But I’ve located one of them!”

“And that’s the one you want me to get?”

“Yes. Yes. Now, the way it”

“Sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

“Oh, of course. I’m sorry. Yes, of course.”

Harrow retreated, and sat poised on the edge of the chair by the door. Parker’s tone had drained some of the excitement out of him, and he went on more normally. “The way I happened to discover this mourner was rather odd. My company, about three years ago, received a small order for cargo planes from Klastrava. Six planes, I believe. You know the country?”

“Never heard of it.”

“I’m not surprised. It’s one of the smallest of the Slavic nations, north of Czechoslovakia. For all I know it was a part of Poland at one time; most of those countries were. The point is, it’s a nation on the other side of the iron curtain, so of course we were somewhat startled to get this order from them. The satellite nations are encouraged to deal with the Soviet Union, you know.”

“No news reports,” Parker answered. “Just tell the story.”

“I’m trying to give you the background.”

Harrow was beginning to get petulant. Parker shrugged. Over on the bed, Bett was smiling dreamily at the ceiling.

“It turned out,” said Harrow, plunging on with his story, “that this was one of the de-Stalinization periods and Klastrava was taking advantage of the milder climate to do some of its purchasing in the more competitively priced Western market. Needless to say, we never sold them any more planes, but in the process of that sale I met a gentleman named Kapor, from the Klastravian embassy. What Kapor’s normal duties are I don’t know, but at that time he was handling the negotiations for the sale of the planes. I met him, as I say, and we discovered we had quite a bit in common”

This set the daughter to laughing again, and Harrow glared at her. Then, before Parker could say anything to hurry him along, he went quickly back to his story. “At any rate, he was a house guest in my home two or three times, and once or twice when I was in Washington he invited me to stay with him. And it turned out that he too has a small collection of statuary, but of no particular value. However, his collection did include an alabaster figure of a weeping monk, approximately sixteen inches high.”

Harrow smiled broadly, and rubbed his hands together. “I suspected what it must be at once, and learned that Kapor had no idea that it was anything more than an interesting piece of early-fifteenth-century statuary. I also discovered where he’d bought it. I made discreet inquiries, and gradually pieced together this little monk’s history, working backward, of course, to its original home in Dijon.”

“I don’t need all that,” Parker interrupted. Harrow seemed ready to play the romantic all week.

“Let him go, Chuck,” Bett said. “He’s just bubbling over to tell you all about it.”

“The information cost me quite a bit,” Harrow added defensively. “At one point, I even had to hire a French private investigator to check on a piece of information for me.

Parker shrugged.

“At any rate,” said Harrow, hurrying now in an attempt to keep Parker from interrupting, “this particular statue was one of those looted in 1795, when revolutionaries desecrated the tomb. Who stole it I have no idea, but it did turn up in Quebec as a result of the Rebellion of 1837. Economic reprisals against one Jacques Rommelle, a follower of Louis Joseph Papineau, forced him to sell most of his possessions and move to Nova Scotia. Among the household goods sold was this small alabaster statuette. Rommelle had a knack for aligning himself with the wrong people. He’d left France for Canada in 1795, primarily because he was one of the strongest supporters of Robespierre. It’s possible Rommelle personally stole the statue from Dijon, but unlikely, because he’d lived most of his life in Rennes, which is in Brittany, on the other side of France. I think it more likely that the original looter was killed during the Terror, and that Rommelle was the second owner.”

He paused, cleared his throat, rubbed his hands together briskly, and smiled. “There’s such a fascination in this,” he said. “At any rate, Rommelle sold the statue in 1838, to a dealer named Smythe. Smythe didn’t manage to re-sell it, and when he died in 1852, his business was inherited by a grandson who had emigrated to the United States and was at the time living in Atlanta. The grandson sold most of what he’d inherited but he did hold on to a few items he liked, among them the statue of the weeping monk, but it was stolen by a Captain Goodebloode, a Union cavalry officer in 1864, when General Sherman’s army captured the city. Captain Goodebloode brought the statue to Boston, where it remained in the family till 1932, when the Goodebloode finances were depleted by the depression, and the contents of the ancestral house were sold at auction. A Miss Cannel purchased the statue in Boston and brought it home to Wittburg, a small town in upstate New York, where, for some reason best known to herself, she was attempting to set up a museum. If she’d had the wit to hire a professional curator, of course, the game would have been up right then, but this was a one-woman museum, and Miss Cannel apparently had more money than sense. At any rate, the statue went into the museum and when Miss Cannel died in 1953, the entire contents of the museum were sold to various dealers. One of them, in 1955, sold the statuette to Lepas Kapor. Finis.”

Harrow looked back and forth from Parker to his daughter, beaming and happy. “A fascinating history,” he said, swelling on the words, “a fascinating history. A bloody revolution, a somewhat less bloody rebellion, a civil war, an economic crash all have touched this small statue and influenced its destiny. It has travelled from France to Canada to Atlanta to Boston and to a provincial upstate New York town. Now it is in Washington. It has been stolen at least twice, and possibly three times, and now it is to be stolen again. A fascinating, fascinating history.”

“Yeah,” said Parker. He lit a cigarette and threw the match towards an ashtray. “The point is, you want me to get it for you.”

“Exactly. I will give you, of course, full particulars”

“What’s in it for me?”

“What? Oh.” Harrow looked puzzled for a second, but now he smiled radiantly. “Of course, you expect to be paid. You’ll get the gun, for one thing, and a certain sum of money.”

“What sum?”

Harrow sucked on his cheek, studying Parker’s face. Finally, he said, “Five thousand dollars. In cash.”

“No.”

Harrow raised his eyebrows. “No? Mr Willis, I consider the gun to be the major item of payment. Any cash would be in the nature of a bonus.”

“Fifty thousand,” Parker said.

“Good God! You aren’t serious?”

Parker shrugged, and waited.

“Mr Willis, I could buythe statuette for little more than that. I’ve told you, the present owner has no idea”

“You can’t buy it at all,” Parker said, “or you would.”

“Well.” Harrow pursed his lips, glanced with an aggrieved look at his daughter, sucked on his cheek again, drummed his fingers on the book in his lap. “I’ll go to ten thousand, Mr Willis. Absolutely my top offer. Believe me, the statuette is worth no more than that to me.”

“I’m not bargaining,” Parker replied. “Fifty thousand or get out.”

“And shall we go to the police, Mr Willis? Shall we go to the police?”

Parker got to his feet, went over to the closet, and took out a suitcase. He opened it on the bed and turned to the dresser.

Harrow said, “Very well. Twenty-five. Half now, and the balance when you get the statuette.”

Parker opened the top dresser drawer and began transferring shirts to the suitcase.

Harrow watched him a minute longer, and Bett watched them both. The father was frowning, the daughter smiling.

“Thirty-five.”

Parker started on the second drawer.

“Damn it, man, we have the gun!”

Bett said, “Give up, Dad, he won’t change his mind.”

“Ridiculous,” Harrow said. “Absurd. We have him over a barrel.” He frowned in petulance at Parker. “All right. All right, stop that asinine packing, you’re not fooling anyone.”

Parker started on the third drawer.

“I said you could stop packing. Fifty thousand. Agreed.”

Parked paused, “In advance,” he said. “The fifty thousand now, the gun after I get the statue.”

“Half now.”

“I told you I don’t bargain.”

Harrow shook his head angrily. “All right. The money now, the gun afterwards.”

Parker left the suitcase and went back to the chair by the writing table. “All right,” he said. “Come over here. Bring your chair. I want this Kapor’s address. You’ve been in his house, I want as detailed a ground plan as you can give me. I want to know what room the statue is kept in, and if he’s got more than one there I want a detailed description of the one I’m after. I want to know how many people are in the household, and what you know about the habits of each of them.”

It took a while. Harrow wasn’t an observant man, and his memory had to be prodded every step of the way. It took half an hour to get even an incomplete ground plan, with half the interior still terra incognita. As for the people living there, there was Lepas Kapor himself, and some servants. Harrow didn’t know how many, or if any of them lived in. Kapor was unmarried, but Harrow thought that occasionally a woman stayed in the house overnight.

When Parker finally had everything from Harrow he was likely to get, Harrow was put on the send for the fifty thousand. Bett wanted to stick around for bed games, but Parker wasn’t in the mood. He was never in the mood before a job, always in the mood right after.

After they’d gone, Parker went down to the bar and got Handy. Together they went over the ground plan and the sketchy information they had, and the next day, after Harrow had turned over the attaché case full of cash and Parker had checked it in the hotel safe, they took off for Washington.

Kapor lived in a sprawling colonial brick house with white trim off Garfield, four blocks from the Klastrava embassy. A five-foot hedge surrounded the property. The two-car garage was behind the house, like an afterthought. A gravel driveway led in from the street through a break in the hedge, made a left turn at the front door, and then continued on around to the garage.

Parker and Handy took turns three days and nights watching the house, and by then they’d filled in some of the holes in Harrow’s information.

There were five servants, but only one slept in. The chauffeur did not sleep in, nor did the gardener-handyman, the cook, or the maid. The butler-valet-bodyguard did sleep in. His room was on the second floor front, right corner. Kapor’s room was in the back somewhere.

The house was not in an isolated neighbourhood. Also, because it held an important man attached to the embassy of a country generally considered unfriendly to the United States, it was given unusually complete police surveillance. Prowl cars passed at frequent and erratic intervals day and night. There was also the possibility that the FBI or some other government agency was watching the house. It didn’t look like an easy house to break into undisturbed.

Handy suggested the old tried-and-true maid ploy. Meet the maid, gain her confidence, and eventually get a chance to make an impression of the keys in her purse. With the keys, a bold frontal attack walk straight up to the door at a relatively early hour of the night, unlock it, and go on in.

Because it was Handy’s idea, and because he had a more pleasant personality, he went after the maid. He was in his early forties, tall and strong-faced, like a lean Vermont sheriff. The maid, Clara Stoper, was about thirty and good-looking in a harsh sort of way. She spent her Monday and Thursday nights in a bar on Wisconsin Avenue, and it was there that Handy made the meet. That was a week ago, and tonight he’d been going to her apartment, where he was sure he would be able to get his hands on the keys. She’d already given him a ten-thirty deadline, so he’d told Parker he’d be back by eleven. But eleven o’clock had passed and he hadn’t shown up, and then the two amateur bums had come up the fire-escape and gradually all hell had broken loose. So if Harrow had sent this second group after that goddamn statue, Harrow was in trouble.

PART TWO

1

PARKER left the truck a block from the bungalow, and said to Handy, “Can you keep him tight?”

“No trouble.” Handy was sitting up now, and looked in better shape. He held the .380 loosely in his lap, his eye on Pliers. “He won’t go anywhere.”

“You guys are wasting your time,” Pliers said. He looked surly and belligerent, but not very tough.

Parker got out of the truck and walked to the bungalow. It was still dark. All the houses around here were dark, and even the street lights seemed dimmed, because of the trees along the sidewalks, which cut off some of the light. Parker was the only thing moving on either sidewalk and there were no cars in sight.

There was a driveway next to the bungalow, but no garage. The driveway was just a double dirt track. Parker used it to go around to the rear. The kitchen door was locked, but it jimmied quickly and quietly. Parker stepped inside.

The house had four rooms. Living-room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and a bath. Without turning on any lights, Parker moved through them and found them all empty. He went out the front door and walked back to the truck. He started it and drove to the bungalow, up the driveway, and around to the back yard. “Hold him a minute more,” he said to Handy, and got out of the truck again. He went into the house and turned on the kitchen light. Enough light spilled out the rear window so he could switch off the truck lights.

Handy could walk now, but stiffly. The three of them went into the bungalow, and while Handy covered Pliers with the .380, Parker frisked him. Back at the garage he’d only gone over him for hardware; now he was emptying everything out of the man’s pockets. Under the white coverall Pliers was wearing brown slacks and a green flannel shirt.

His goods gradually stacked up on the kitchen table. A wallet, a pack of Marlboros in the box, a Zippo lighter with some sort of Army insignia on one side, a pair of pliers with electrician’s tape on the handles, a screwdriver, a switchblade knife, a small flat black address book, an inhaler, and a tin packet of aspirin. The wallet contained thirty-three dollars, two pictures of a girl in a bathing suit, a picture of Pliers himself in a bathing suit, and a lot of cards Army discharge, driver’s licence, chauffeur’s licence, membership card in a Teamsters local, membership card in a gym all made out to Walter Ambridge of Baltimore.

Finished with the wallet, Parker dropped it on the table. “All right, Wally, sit down.”

“I’m called Walter.” Pliers said it truculently, and he didn’t sit down.

Parker hit him just above the belt. The wind whooshed out of him and he sagged. Parker pushed his shoulder slightly, to guide him, and he sat down. Handy was leaning against the refrigerator, still casually holding the .380.

Parker sat down in the other kitchen chair and rested his hands on the table. “All right, Wally,” he said. “Who’s Menlo?”

“Up yours.”

Parker shook his head and picked up the pliers. He extended them towards Handy. “Take off his left thumbnail.”

Ambridge came out of the chair roaring. They had to hit him hard enough to stun him before they could get him to sit down again. Parker waited until comprehension came back into Ambridge’s eyes, and then he said, “Do we have to tie you to the chair, Wally? Do we have to hurt you? I’ve been doing nothing but ask questions all night long. I don’t like that. You answer in a hurry, Wally.”

Ambridge glared harder than ever, to cover the fact he was frightened. He said, “You birds are in trouble, you know that? You didn’t get cleared or nothing.”

“Cleared? What the hell are you talking about?”

“With the Outfit, Goddamn it. You don’t make any play around here without you clear it with the Outfit first. What the hell are you, amateurs?”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Parker. He knew what Ambridge was talking about, but he was surprised. He knew the Outfit it was what the syndicate was calling itself that year didn’t like action in its territories without its approval, and he knew there were people in his line of work who never took on a job without letting the Outfit know about it first. But Parker himself would never work on a job that had been tipped to the Outfit, and he didn’t know why anybody else did. The Outfit always wanted a piece, 5 or 10 per cent, for giving its permission, and permission was all it ever gave. Whatever local fix the Outfit had was no good for the transients if their deal went sour.

“So Menlo cleared this job with the Outfit. Which was you with, Menlo or the syndicate?”

“Outfit. I’m with the Outfit, on loan. Menlo didn’t have no sidemen of his own.”

Handy said, “He still doesn’t have any worth a damn. These guys had me for three hours and didn’t get me to say one word.”

“Nobody knew you had a partner.” Ambridge sounded resentful, as though Handy hadn’t played fair.

“Now we get to the question again,” Parker said. He picked up the pliers and held them loosely in both hands. “Who is Menlo, and what’s he after?”

“It don’t make no difference,” Ambridge said. “I can tell you and it don’t make no difference at all. You guys have had it anyway. You ought to know better. You can’t buck the Outfit.”

Handy laughed then, because Parker had bucked the Outfit twice in the last year and hadn’t done too badly either time. And when it came to operating without Outfit permission, Parker and Handy and most of the people they knew had been doing it for years.

Ambridge looked at Handy the way a patriot looks at somebody who forgets to take off his hat when the flag goes by. “You’ll get yours,” he said.

“Quit stalling,” Parker replied.

Ambridge shrugged. “I’ll tell you. It don’t make no difference. This guy Menlo came around” He looked suddenly startled, and stared at their faces. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Are you guys Commies?”

Handy laughed again. “Not us, bo. We’re capitalists from way back.”

“Who is Menlo?” Parker was getting tired asking the same question and he was holding the pliers tighter now.

“Menlo’s a defector.” Ambridge said it the way a man says a good word he just recently learned. “He’s from one of the Commie countries. They sent him over here to do a job for them, but he’s copping out. He says this Kapor’s heavy, and it’s all got to be in the house, so we’re taking it away from him.”

“How heavy?”

“Maybe a hundred G.”

Handy whistled low, but Parker said, “Crap. In cash? Where’d he get all that?”

“Don’t ask me. This Menlo made a contact and talked to Mc talked to the boss here, and the boss figured it’s worth the chance for a fifty-fifty split. Menlo’s got the goods, the Outfit’s got the manpower. It don’t make no difference what I tell you; you can’t buck the Outfit.”

Maybe if he said it often enough, about his talking not making any difference, he’d start to believe it himself. Better than believing he’d been scared into it with nothing but threats.

Which meant he was probably telling the truth. The fat man, Menlo, had convinced the Outfit that Kapor’s house was full of money. But where was an embassy aide from a small and unfriendly country likely to pick up a hundred thousand dollars? Either Menlo was pulling a fast one, giving the Outfit a tale in return for some muscle, or there was more to this Kapor than Harrow knew about.

The next one to see was Menlo. Parker asked, “Where’s Menlo now?”

Ambridge shook his head. “I don’t know. He’s got the wind up, on account of you guys. He was going to stick at Clara’s place, but he won’t be there now.”

“Don’t get cute, Wally. You were supposed to get in touch with him after Handy talked. Where?”

“He didn’t say. That’s the straight goods, I swear to God. He just called us here and said take that guy to the garage, that he’d get in touch with us later.”

Handy shifted his position against the refrigerator. “He’ll be going deep now. We left the other two breathing back there.”

“That’s all right. Wally knows where he’d go.”

“How the hell would I know?”

“He’ll go where the rest of you can find him. He wants his muscle close to him. Where is it, Wally?”

“I don’t know. That’s the straight”

Parker lifted the pliers again. “First we tie you,” he said. “Then we take your fingernails off. Then we take your teeth out.”

“What do you want from me? I don’t know where he is.” Ambridge was sweating now, his forehead slick under the fluorescent light. “I been telling you what you want, what the hell do you think?”

“I think you’re afraid of somebody finding out you let us know where to find Menlo. I think you’re afraid of these pliers too. Which you afraid of most, Wally?”

“I don’t knowwhere he is!”

Parker turned his head to Handy. “Take a look in the drawers. People usually keep twine around. We’ll have to tie him down this time.”

“Wait wait a second. Wait now, just wait a second.” Ambridge was a big man, but he was fluttering now like a little man. “I mean, maybe I”

“Don’t make up any addresses, Wally. You’ll give us the address and we’ll keep you on ice here till we check it out, and if Menlo isn’t there we’ll come back and talk to you again.”

“I can’t be surehe’s there! For Christ’s sake, maybe he”

“Take a chance.”

“Well

” Ambridge wiped bis palm across his forehead, and it came away wet. He looked at his wet hand with a sort of dull surprise. “I’m a coward. I’m nothing but a coward.”

Handy took pity on him. “The information didn’t come from you. It’ll never get back to your boss.”

“What good am I?” Ambridge asked himself.

It was dangerous. They’d had to push him, but there was always the chance with somebody like Ambridge, a bluffer, that you’d push him too hard and he’d be forced to look at himself and see the truth. You take a coward, and you force him to look at himself and see that he isa coward, he’s liable all of a sudden to not give a damn any more, to get fatalistic and despairing. If he gets to that point, all of a sudden nothing will work on him any more, no threats, no punishment. He’ll just sit there and take it, thinking he deserves it anyway, thinking he’s dead anyway so what difference does it make?

Ambridge was on the edge of that, and Parker could see it. A few more seconds, and Ambridge would be unreachable. Parker reached out and slapped him across the face, open-handed, a contemptuous slap, and said with scorn, “Hurry it up, punk. You’re wasting my time.”

It was enough. The slap didn’t hurt, but it stung. So did the words, and the tone behind them. It was enough to snap Ambridge out of his introspection. He threw up the old defences again, came back with the bluff as strong as ever. He glared at Parker and started up out of the chair. Parker and Handy had to work a little to get him to sit down again, then Parker said, “You started to give us the address. Now give.”

It was the old Ambridge who answered. “You think it makes any difference? You think you can just walk in and take him? You think he’s alone? You go after him and you’re both dead.”

“Let us worry about that.”

“You’ll worry about it. There’s a house in Bethesda, on Bradley Boulevard. Menlo’s got the borrow of it from the Outfit till the job’s done. We were supposed to call him there after we found out what your partner was up to. Go on out there, get your heads blown off. I only wish I could be there to watch.”

They had him write the address down, and then they tied him and left him in a closet. They never did remember to go back.

2

ON THAT block was a row of two-family houses, built before the war. The one they wanted was on the corner. What the Outfit used it for normally they didn’t know, but right now Menlo was living in the downstairs flat, and the upstairs flat, according to Ambridge, was empty.

They’d stopped off on the way to get rid of the truck and pick up their own car, where Handy had left it earlier in the evening. The car was a Pontiac, two years old. It was hot, but not on the East coast, and the papers on it were a good imitation of the real thing.

Handy was driving, and a block from the address he took his foot off the accelerator. The car slowed. There were tail-lights ahead. A car was double-parked in front of the house they wanted, lights on and motor running.

“Go on past,” Parker said. “Then around the block.”

Parker looked the car over on the way by. It was a black Continental. The man at the wheel wore a chauffeur’s cap and was reading the Star.The car carried New York plates, and they started DPL. Diplomat. Beyond the car was the house, the ground floor all lit up, the upper story dark.

It was almost three o’clock in the morning. The Continental out front with diplomat plates at three in the morning wasn’t a good sign. Parker said, “Hurry around the block. Park on the cross street.”

“I’m ahead of you,” Handy answered. “What did that guy say Manlo was? A defector?”

“Yeah.”

They left the Pontiac half a block from Bradley, on the side street that flanked the house they wanted. This way they could get to the back door without tipping the chauffeur in the Continental.

There was a white picket fence separating the back yard from the sidewalk, with a white picket gate. The gate opened with no trouble and no squeaking, and they went across the slate walk to the stoop and up on to the back porch. The kitchen door stood wide open, and the storm door was closed but not locked. The kitchen was empty, but casting bright, wide swatches of light out through the window and doorway.

Handy’s touch with doors was the lightest. The storm door never made a sound. They stood on linoleum with a black-and-white diamond design, and listened. The refrigerator hummed, and on a different note the circular fluorescent light in the ceiling also hummed. The rest of the house was silent. Bright and silent.

An open door to the right led to the bedroom, but with no bed in it. The ceiling light was on two seventy-five-watt-bulbs unshielded and in the glare the bedroom was a bleak cubicle full of unmarked cardboard cartons, stacked along the walls. The Venetian blinds were down across both windows.

A hall led off the kitchen. Midway along it was a brace of doorways facing each other. The one on the left opened on to the bathroom, gleaming with white tile and white porcelain and white enamel, with a brightly burning white fluorescent tube over the mirror above the sink. The doorway on the right led to another bedroom, this one containing a bed. This too was garishly lit, and looked like a whore’s crib. A double bed dominated the room, covered by a cheap tan spread, and without pillows. A scarred dresser stood on the opposite wall, and the bed was flanked on one side by a black kitchen chair and on the other by a small wooden table containing nothing but a chipped ashtray.

At the end of the hall was a dining-room, lit by a rococo ceiling fixture of rose-tinted-glass. The cream-and-tan wallpaper was a faded pattern of ivy and Grecian columns. Centred beneath the light was a poker table, round and covered with green felt, with eight wells around the outer edge for the player’s money and drinks. Eight chairs crouched around the table, on a faded Oriental rug. There was no other furniture in the room.

The third bedroom, off the dining-room, was apparently the one Menlo was using, for there was clothing draped on the chair, hairbrush and cuff-links and other things on the dresser, and an expensive-looking alarm clock on the night table.

A wide archway led from dining-room to living-room, which was furnished in an old-fashioned way, in dark colours and heavy overstuffed furniture.

Every light in the house was on, and the Continental still waited out front, though all the rooms were empty.

Handy caught Parker’s eye, and pointed at the floor. Parker nodded. Still moving cautiously and silently, they went back to the kitchen. The first door they tried opened on to the pantry, but the second showed cellar stairs angling away to the left. Light came up from below, and the sound of someone talking, softly and conversationally. And there was another sound, a steady scraping and chuffing, slow and rhythmic.

Handy already had the .380 out. Parker unlimbered the Terrier, and led the way down. The stairs angled sharply to the left, and then went straight down the rest of the way, towards the rear wall of the house, so that most of the basement was behind Parker as he came down. He came halfway, then crouching on the stairs, ducked his head under the banister and looked back at the rest of the cellar.

Three hundred-watt bulbs were spaced along under the I-beam that ran down the middle of the ceiling. All were unshielded, and all were lit, throwing the dirt-floored cellar in stark, almost shadowless, relief. An old coal furnace hulked on one side, with its squat oil converter crouched in front of it. Several barrels of trash were standing alongside two deep metal sinks.

Down at the other end, the fat man was digging his own grave, while three men surrounded him, watching. Two of the three stood silently, pistols in their hands. The third had brought a kitchen chair down with him or had someone bring it down for him and was sitting comfortably on it, his back to Parker. He seemed nattily dressed, and he was the one doing the talking, a steady soft flow of easy conversation, a monologue almost, in a language Parker didn’t recognize. It was guttural, but not in a Germanic way.

Handy had seen too. He grinned and motioned for them to go back upstairs, but Parker shook his head. Handy looked puzzled and leaned forward to whisper. “They’re getting rid of the competition. Why not let them?”

Parker whispered back, “If there’s more than a statue in Kapor’s house, I want to know what it is and where to find it. The fat man knows.”

Handy shrugged. “I’ll take the one on the left.”

They leaned out on different sides of the suitcase, showing only their heads and gun hands. The shots roared out in that confined space like a cauvette blowing up.

Before the two gunmen had hit the ground, the talkative one was out of his chair, spinning around, a flat white automatic coming out from under his coat. Parker and Handy both fired again, and the automatic sailed into the air as he toppled backward into the grave Menlo had only half dug.

Menlo, again moving faster than any fat man should, threw himself off to the side and rolled over against the side wall. But when there weren’t any more shots, he got to his feet cautiously. His white shirt was a sweaty, dirty mess, his black trousers rumpled and baggy. He was barefoot, and his face and hands were also covered with dirt. He stood peering towards the stairs until Parker and Handy moved towards him, and then suddenly he smiled. “Ah!” he said. “How glad I am I did not pause to kill you at poor Clara’s.”

“Let’s go,” Parker said.

“So soon? But I have not yet expressed my appreciation. You have saved my life!”

“We’ll talk later, what do you say?” Handy added.

Menlo looked around at the three scattered bodies. “There is much in what you say,” he said. “Have you dealt with the chauffeur?”

“We won’t have to. Come on.”

“Most certainly.”

Parker went first, and then Menlo, with Handy last. They filed upstairs to the kitchen, and as Parker reached for the storm door, Menlo said, “Please! Would you take me away in such a condition?”

“You can wash up later,” Handy said.

“But my shoes! My coat! My personal possessions!”

“Come on,” said Parker.

“Let him get his stuff,” Handy said. “What the hell?”

“You watch him, then.”

“Sure.”

Parker waited in the kitchen. They were gone two minutes by the kitchen clock, and when they came back Menlo was wearing shoes and a topcoat. The topcoat was too tight for him, making him look like somebody on a Russian reviewing stand. He was carrying a black attaché case covered with good leather.

Parker pointed at it. “What’s in there?”

“I checked it,” Handy said. “Just clothes and a flask.”

“And a toothbrush,” Menlo added. His face was still dirty, and when he smiled he looked like the fat boy in a silent movie comedy. “I am most proud of my teeth.”

“Let’s go.”

They went out the back way and down the block to their car. Parker got behind the wheel, and Handy and Menlo sat in back. “Where do we go from here?” Handy asked.

“Back to the hotel.”

“What if they come looking there again?”

Parker shook his head. “The only ones who looked were Menlo’s people. And Menlo doesn’t have people any more. Do you, Menlo?”

Menlo smiled again with mock wistfulness, and spread dirty hands. “Only you,” he replied. “My two newly found friends.”

Parker started the car. When they crossed the intersection, the Continental was still waiting out front the lights on, the motor running, the chauffeur deeply immersed in the Star.

3

BETT Harrow stretched lazily and got up off the bed. “It’s about time you came home. Three-thirty in the morning. Who are these nice people? And what happened to that man’s face?”

Parker said, “Get the hell out of here.”

“Daddy sent me for a progress report, sweetie. All that money spent and not one word from you. He got nervous. Fifty thousand dollars is fifty thousand dollars.”

“An axiom, my dear,” said Menlo, smiling and advancing, his hand extended. “You have stated what is possibly the ultimate truth. I am Auguste Menlo, yours to command.” She gave him her hand, smiling, and he bent low over it, kissing it.

“Sit down, fat man, and shut your face,” Parker said, “Bett, tell your father I’ll see him when I’m done. Now get out of here.”

Menlo shrugged prettily, smiling his quixotic smile. He had a way of moving as though he were making fun of his weight. “I must obey,” he said to Bett. “Your friend has just saved my life. The least I owe him is obedience.”

He sat down on the chair with the broken arm, crossed his ankles, and discovered the damage. “I had expected better from American hotels,” he said, frowning.

Bett strolled casually towards the door, detouring slightly to cross close to Parker. “I know you must have important things to discuss,” she said. “We can talk later.” She moistened her lips, and her eyes gleamed. “My room is just down the hall. Five-twelve. It was the closest I could get to you, Parker. Don’t take too long. You never know what I might do if you upset me.” She went on out.

Menlo kissed his fingertips in appreciation, and made a small salute towards the door. “A beautiful creature,” he said. “A magnificent woman.”

Parker lit a cigarette and pulled a chair over close to Menlo. “That isn’t what we’ll talk about.”

“No, of course. I quite understand.”

“That’s good.”

“Might I have a cigarette?”

Handy came over and gave him one, and a light to go with it. Menlo made a production out of how much he liked the cigarette, blowing smoke at the ceiling. “Ah! One of the few things for which America will be remembered. If you have ever smoked European cigarettes, you must know what I mean.”

Handy was still standing next to Menlo. He leaned down now, and said, “Listen to me, friend. My partner’s a very impatient man. Besides, he’s sore about her being here. You keep horsing around, he’ll take it out on you.”

“I am most sorry.” Menlo sat forward at once, uncrossing his ankles, sitting at attention, an expression of concern on his face. “It is my way, Mr”

“Parker.”

“Parker. Yes. It is only my way, Parker. I mean no offence by it, I assure you. I will come most directly to the point.”

“That’s good,” Parker said.

Menlo smiled. “Yes, that’s good. And the point, Mr Parker, is: Why did you save my life?” He looked brightly from Parker to Handy and back again. “Eh? Isn’t that interesting? Why did you save my life?”

Handy said, “Go a little faster, huh? Quit repeating yourself.”

“Yes, of course. But the question, you see, the question has many aspects. It is prismatic. With such a question, one can see around corners. With such a question, one can receive many other answers. For example I am trying to hurry, I most honestly am for instance, when I became aware of you, Mr Castle Mr Castle?”

Handy shrugged. “It’ll do.”

“Of course. When I became aware of you, I said to myself, is this coincidence? Could you possibly be interested in the same goal towards which Iwas directing myself? Thus I had you summoned for questioning, and thus the additional events which have transpired. But now you and Mr Parker have saved my life, and all at once the answer is clear. Your goal is notthe same as mine. Or at least it was not, until tonight. Did you save my life for humanitarian reasons? Hardly. There could be only one other reason. To keep me alive until such time as you would know what I already know. Which means that for all your threatening statements and glowering expressions, you cannot risk having me dead.”

“Nobody said anything about having you dead,” Parker said.

“I must explain,” said Menlo. He smiled again, pleased with himself. “Because of my occupation these past fifteen years, I have been equipped for instant self-annihilation. One of my teeth is false; it contains a capsule. Should I bite down hard in a certain way a rather awkward way, to avoid doing to unintentionally I would break that capsule. Should that happen, my breath would smell pleasingly of almonds, and I would very soon be dead. That is what Spannick was talking to me about tonight, in the cellar, while I was digging my own grave. He was suggesting to me that I save the state the price of a bullet. But where there is life, as your proverb so succinctly puts it, there is hope. In this case, well-founded hope.” He smiled some more. His teeth gleamed.

“If we try to hurry you,” Parker said, “you’ll kill yourself. Is that it?”

“If you try to hurry me in too physical and violent a fashion, yes. I have an extremely low pain threshold. The price is high intelligence and self-indulgence. Ah, this is really a most excellent cigarette.” Menlo leaned back again in the chair, and recrossed his ankles. “I will now tell you the facts. In my own way. And at my own rate of speed. If you find yourself becoming too impatient, Mr Parker, you might perhaps spend your time instead with that charming lady who was earlier here. Your associate could rapidly and succinctly tell you the highlights later.”

Parker shook his head, got to his feet, and went over to lie down on the bed. The world was full of people who never did anything but talk. “Any time you feel like it,” he said.

“You are most gracious.” Menlo took a deep breath, thought for a second to organize his thoughts, and began talking. “Our mutual target, Lepas Kapor, has for the past eight years been one of our most important liaison agents with our espionage network in this country. As an aide at the embassy of such a small and insignificant nation as Klastrava, he was far less likely to come under the scrutiny and suspicion of American counter-intelligence. His duties have been twofold. First, he transmits information from the network to the Soviet Union. Second, he furnishes funds to pay for the network’s continued existence, to cover the cost of bribes and payoffs and so on. Just recently, we discovered that Kapor has systematically been cheating us ever since getting this assignment. His method is simplicity itself. Say a particular document cost one thousand dollars to obtain. In his report he would state that it cost fifteen hundred dollars, and the overage he would merely transfer to his own pockets. How much he has accrued for himself in this way we can only guess, but the estimate is that he has stolen more than ten thousand dollars a year for eight years. Perhaps in all, one hundred thousand dollars.”

Menlo looked smilingly at Handy, and then at Parker. “Interesting? Yes. Of course it is. And even more interesting is the question, what has he done with this money? Has he spent it? Hardly. An obscure aide in an obscure embassy? If he were to live beyond his means, it would be noticed at once. Shall he bank it? Considering the political orientation of Klastrava and the passion for voluminous records among bankers, this too seems hardly the answer. Nor can he invest it. He can, in fact, do nothing with it so long as he remains in his present post. He can only secrete it, somewhere in his own house, against the day when he will suddenly disappear. He intends to retire, of course, in some out-of-the-way place. South America perhaps, or Mexico. Or it is entirely possible that he will remain in the United States, in Vermont or Oregon or Nebraska. A man with a hundred thousand dollars can arrange to disappear almost anywhere.”

Handy interrupted. “How do you know for sure it’s in cash, and that it’s in his house? Maybe he’s got it buried out in the country some place.”

“Ah, wait. I’m coming to that. Please be patient.”

Parker sat up and lit a fresh cigarette. For half of a hundred thousand dollars, he could make himself be patient.

“Now comes my own entry into the story,” Menlo continued. “I am, in a way, a policeman. Not precisely the sort you two have undoubtedly encountered at one time or another in your careers. My occupation has no true counterpart in your country, except unofficially, among the members of some stern-jawed American society or the more belligerent American Legion posts. My duties are, in a way, religious, with an analogy drawn from the Spanish Inquisition. I am an inquisitor, a seeker of heretics, of those whose heresies are against the state. It was felt that a man of my background and unquestioned loyalty would be best suited to the task of punishing Lepas Kapor and of regaining the embezzled funds. It was decided not to trust this delicate task to our espionage organization; news of his impending doom might perhaps somehow reach the ears of our suspect. And so, for the first time in my life, I left my native land armed with a valid passport and a map to a cache containing one hundred thousand American dollars!’

Menlo threw his head back and laughed, a full booming laugh of delight. “It was wonderful! The opportunity of a lifetime!” Then his laughter subsided and he leaned forward confidentially. “Do you know what my pension would be, were I to live to the retirement age of sixty-seven? In American money, it would be let me see approximately five hundred and thirty dollars a year. And yet they expected me to find this hidden cache of one hundred thousand dollarsin American money, and bring it back!”

He shook his head. “I am not a fool. My dear friends, you will discover that about me. I am most shockingly overweight, and far too self-indulgent, but you will find that I am not a fool.”

“So you figured to take the money and run?” Handy asked.

“Would you not? Of course. Let me tell you what I did. Laboriously, I managed to contact members of the American underworld. I was then introduced to an organization which calls itself the Outfit. It claims to exert total control over crime within the areas of its control but having met you two, it is only natural that I begin to doubt this claim. Nevertheless, I met with these people, and I discussed the situation with them. It was agreed that they would furnish me assistants and protection from local law-enforcement agencies, and what do they call that? Protection from local law-enforcement agencies.”

“The fix,” Handy said.

“Yes! The fix is in. That’s what it was. I was delighted with the phrase. The French are so pleased with their criminal argot, but I assure you the Americans in this regard have nothing to be ashamed of. The fix is in.”

“Get on with it,” Parker said.

“You have no interest in your native idiom? A pity. As I was saying, I met with these people, and we came to a financial agreement which of course I had no intention of honouring. And thus the operation was set in motion. We moved most cautiously, I assure you, not wanting to flush our bird prematurely from the nest. What had led to the discovery of Kapor’s ingeniousness in the first place were some small slight indications that he might be planning to make a sudden move, to defect or disappear. There is a large amount of money due to pass through his hands very shortly, and we were convinced he was waiting only for its arrival before making his own departure. Unavoidable delays have kept that money from reaching him thus far, so he still rests upon his perch, awaiting my pleasure.”

“How close were you?” Parker asked.

“We had intended to enter the house this coming Friday. Kapor will be at an official dinner most of the evening, and we intended to be in the house already upon his return.”

Menlo shifted his bulk in the chair and looked with an innocent smile at Parker. “This plan could still be effected,” he went on. “Without the minions of the Outfit, of course. I doubt that they were ever really happy with the operation. They disliked the thought of being connected even indirectly with international politics, but the harvest was too tempting to be missed. Now, because of all the trouble you two caused tonight, they have abandoned the plan completely. Spannick informed me of this with great pleasure tonight, while watching me dig. The Outfit recalled those who had helped me, and recouped its losses by selling to Spannick the information that I had intended in my own turn to steal the money. So the Outfit is no longer concerned with Kapor. Spannick is dead, and if I know that egotistical idiot, he would not have made any report on me until he had already done me in. He always preferred telling his superiors about a problem only after he had already solved it. Which means that Kapor has been left to us.”

Parker studied the fat man’s face. “Us?”

“But of course. You have business of your own with Kapor, though I confess I cannot imagine what it is. In addition, you would no doubt like to share in that hundred thousand dollars. I need assistance, which you can give me. You need to know the location of the money, which I can give you.”

“You know where it is?”

“The exact spot. I must say, it is exceedingly well hidden. I hardly think you could find it without me.”

“How come you know where it is?” Handy asked.

“Clara told me. She had weeks to look for it, and eventually she found it. Poor Clara.”

Menlo smiled again, his ingenuous smile. “I forgot to tell you. I returned to Clara’s apartment tonight, Mr Parker, after you had left. You had mistreated the poor girl most terribly. The only humane thing I could do was end her misery.”

He beamed.

Parker stubbed his cigarette. “I didn’t ask her enough questions,” he said.

“You are hardly to be blamed. You must have thought of her as only a pawn in our game. How could you know she was the key?”

“So you want to team up with us?”

“It seems most logical, does it not? My information, your experience. And we will, of course, split evenly. Half for me, half for you.”

The fat man wouldn’t be getting any of it, but Parker, for appearance’s sake, made a complaint. “That’s no even split. A third for each of us.”

Menlo spread his hands and smiled. “If you insist. I am not greedy, I assure you.”

So the fat man was planning a double-cross too, Parker thought, and asked, “You still want to do it Friday?”

“That strikes me as the best time, yes. By the way, could you possibly tell me what it is that you two are concerned with in Kapor’s house? That lovely girl mentioned the sum of fifty thousand dollars.”

“Kapor’s got a statue, supposed to be one of the lost statues from some tomb in France. A collector gave us fifty thousand to steal it for him.”

“One of the mourners of Dijon?” Menlo smiled in surprise. “I have read of them, of course. How romantic! And a collector, you say? That charming girl’s father, no doubt. I would most like to meet him.”

“Maybe I can arrange it,” Parker said.

4

HER full name was Elizabeth Ruth Harrow Conway. She was, as the fat man had said, a magnificent female, twenty-nine years old, and with honey hair made to gleam in candlelight. She had the hollow-cheeked aristocratic face that comes of generations of breeding and inbreeding, and the tall, lush, well-proportioned body of a stripper crossed with a Channel swimmer. She was rich now, and had been all her life, living currently on a combination of alimony from her ex-husband and atonement gifts from her father. She was well-sexed, with an occasional liking for self-cruelty, and she kept her hotel room door unlocked.

Parker came in and closed the door and stood there looking at her. “Whose idea was this? Yours or your father’s?”

She was in bed, with the covers up to her neck, and two pillows under her head. She smiled languorously and stretched, her body moving lazily under the blanket. “It was mine, Chuck, don’t you know that? But Daddy thinks it was his.”

“Either you take off, or there’s no job.”

“Now, don’t threaten me like that, Chuck. Be nice.” She slid one arm out from under the covers and patted the bed next to her hip. “Come sit down beside me and we’ll talk.”

He shook his head. “Forget it.”

“Be nice, Chuck,” she murmured. “Be nice to me, and I’ll go away first thing in the morning. If you still want me to.”

That would have been a solution, but he rejected it without bothering to think about it. This was the way he always was before a job. He lived to a pattern. Immediately after a job he was a satyr, inexhaustible and insatiable. Then gradually it would taper off, and by the time the next job was in preparation he was a total celibate. When a job was being set up, he could only think of one thing. Bett’s offer slid past him as though it had never been made. It simply didn’t interest him.

“You’ll go away first thing in the morning, or the deal’s off,” he said. “And you won’t come back. I’ll see you after I give your father the statue.”

“Maybe I won’t feel like it then.”

He shrugged.

She was still trying to be coy and seductive, but the edges were getting ragged. “What if I decided not to be an obedient little girl, Chuck?”

“Your father’s out fifty grand.”

Her languorous smile all at once turned sour, and she popped to a sitting position, her face twisted in a frown of anger. The sheet and blanket fell to her wrist. She was nude and her breasts were heavy but firm, and tanned as golden as the rest of her. She said, bite in her voice, “What’s the matter with you, Chuck? This is little Bett, remember? We’re not exactly strangers.”

It was true. For most of two weeks they’d shared the same bedroom, though they’d seen each other only twice since.

“I’ve got other things to think about,” Parker said.

“You want to be careful, Chuck,” she said. Her voice was hard as a stone. “You want to be very careful with me.”

“I’ll see you when the job is done.”

“I’m not so sure. And just a minute, don’t leave yet. We’ve got more to talk about.”

He kept his hand on the doorknob. “Such as?”

“Such as those other two men. The one that looks like you, only more pleasant, and the funny fat one. You didn’t say anything to Daddy about working with anybody else.”

“How I work is my business. Don’t be here in the morning.”

She was going to say something else, but he didn’t give her a chance.”

The other two were already asleep when Parker got back to his room. Menlo was staying here tonight, sleeping on the floor, and the three of them would move to another location tomorrow. Parker stepped over Menlo, stripped, and got into bed. He fell asleep the way he always did, completely and immediately.

He was a light sleeper. Normal predictable sounds traffic outside a window, a radio playing that had been playing when he’d gone to sleep didn’t disturb him, but any unusual noise would have him completely awake at once. So when Menlo got up from the floor and crept cautiously towards the door, Parker came awake. He lay unmoving on the bed, watching Menlo through slitted eyes. Menlo took the time to pick up his suit coat and tie and shoes, but nothing else. He went out, the shoes in his hand, the coat and tie over his arm.

There was no point stopping him. Parker went back to sleep.

He awoke again when Menlo returned. The fat man was once again carrying shoes and coat and tie, but now he was carrying his shirt as well, and in the faint light from the window Parker could see that he was smiling to himself. So Bett had got what she’d come for after all. He wondered if Menlo had.

5

“Go,” said Handy. He thumbed the stop-watch; it read just about nine o’clock.

Parker edged the Pontiac away from the kerb in front of Kapor’s house. Moving with the traffic, they went straight over to Garfield to Massachusetts Avenue, and then turned right on Wisconsin. That took them through Georgetown and on north out of the city into Chevy Chase, and then Bethesda. It was a commercial road all the way, with more traffic than Parker liked on a getaway route, but it was the quickest, shortest way.

Menlo, sitting on the back seat like a renegade Buddha, watched with interest. At one point he said, “I still don’t see why this is necessary. Kapor will hardly be in a position to notify the authorities.”

Parker was busy driving, so Handy explained. “You say the Outfit’s given up on this job, and maybe they did and maybe they didn’t. You claim Spannick was the only one of your old crowd that knew what you were up to, and maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. We’re going through the play the same night you planned, because it’s a good setup. Besides, now that Clara’s dead there’s nobody inside to let us know when the next good time is. But we’re running it an hour earlier than you figured just in case there is still somebody interested in you or Kapor’s hundred grand. And we’re working out the best route for the same reason.”

“Then why go only so far as the motel? Why not continue on our way as rapidly as possible? We might go to Baltimore, for instance, and come to rest there.”

Handy turned farther around in the seat, so he could talk full-face with Menlo. “Listen. If what we wanted was to get a confession out of Kapor, we’d let you handle it all the way. That’s what you’re a pro at; we’d follow anything you said. But what we’re doing is breaking into Kapor’s house and grabbing his goods, and that’s what we’repros at. So you just let us do it, OK.”

“My dear friend,” said Menlo, looking concerned, “please not to misjudge me. I mean no distrust of your abilities. You are most certainly professionals at your craft, and I appreciate this. It is in a spirit of curiosity only that I ask these questions. I would like to learn more.” This was all said too earnestly to be sarcasm; Menlo was perched forward on the seat, his hands pressed to his chest in a gesture of honesty.

Parker would have just told him to keep his mouth shut and watch and learn, but Handy didn’t mind talking. “All right,” he said, “I’ll explain it to you. There’s three ways to handle the getaway. You can do like you said, just take off and keep going, maybe a couple hundred miles. Or you can just go two blocks and hole up there till the heat’s off. Or you can go a few miles and hole up and wait four or five hours and thentake off and go your couple hundred miles. Now, if you do the first, take off and keep going, you’re on the road all the time you’re the most hot, and that’s the way to get yourself picked up fast. If you hole up real close and stay there a week or two, you’re right where the most cops are doing the most looking, and that’s the way to get picked up six or seven days after the job, when you go out for more groceries. But if you hole up nearby for a few hours, you throw everybody off stride. If the law is after you and they’ve thrown up roadblocks, they stay up for a few hours and then the cops figure you either got through quick or you’re holed up, and they take the roadblocks down. See what I mean? Right after the job is when they do their looking on the roads, and later on is when they do their looking in town. So right after the job is when we stay in town, and later on is when we’re on the roads. It’s a feint, like in basketball. You go,but you don’t go, and thenyou go.”

Menlo nodded happily. “Yes, I follow. I can see where that would be the method most difficult for the authorities to counteract. But in this case, we need have no fear of authorities. Kapor will feel his loss most deeply, of course, but he will not contact the police.”

“Not Kapor, no. But suppose some servant sees it first, that somebody’s broken in, and calls the cops before he tells his boss? So whether Kapor likes it or not, the law will be in on it. Or maybe the Outfit is still hot for that money, and they’ll show up at nine-thirty, the way you originally figured. They find out the swag is gone, the Outfit’s after us. Or maybe it’s your old group, friends of Spannick’s. We do it the safe way, the reliable way, and we never get jugged.”

Menlo smiled with a touch of sadness. “I must say you remove the romance most utterly from all this. I had been seeing myself in quite dramatic terms. The defecting policeman, meting out poetic justice to the embezzler by depriving him of his ill-gotten gains, then disappearing again, quite for ever, an enigma to all who seek to find him. But now I find I am merely a participant in a dreary and pedestrian series of quite normal activities opening doors, driving automobiles, sitting in motel rooms.” He shrugged and spread his hands.

Parker slowed the car. The motel was just ahead the Town Motel. They’d picked it because it was on the right side of the road, and because it was built in a U shape, on a slope down from the road, so that parked cars could not be seen from the street.

Parker made the turn, drove down into the court, and parked. Handy thumbed the watch and read it. “Just over eighteen minutes.”

“Not good,” Parker said.

“It’s the fastest way,” Handy said.

They’d spent most of the afternoon trying various suburbs and motels, and this one had been the quickest by far. So now they had run it again at the same time of night they would be coming over it Friday. It was Wednesday, and they could expect a little more traffic on Friday, but they’d still done well. The traffic had been heavy, with the majority of the drivers like the majority of all eastern drivers spending the majority of their time in the passing lane. Parker had driven mostly in the right-hand lane, and had made better time than any other car on the road.

Still, he wasn’t satisfied. “What if we holed up right at Kapor’s house, until maybe two or three in the morning? Menlo, will Kapor be coming home alone?”

“Alas, no. Kapor is notoriously a party giver. A select group of friends, perhaps fifteen or twenty, will probably return with him from the dinner. This is always his habit, and I see no reason to expect that it will differ on Friday.”

Parker shrugged. It wasn’t good. Eighteen minutes on the road; with Friday’s traffic, probably twenty or more. Their direction would be obvious before they were six blocks from Kapor’s house. Twenty minutes was plenty of time to set up a block in front of them. He shook his head. “Let’s go inside and study the map.”

They clambered out of the car, Menlo with difficulty, and went up the stairs to their second-level rooms. Parker and Handy had a double, Menlo a single, three rooms down the hall.

In the room, Menlo settled in the most comfortable chair, while Handy stretched out on his bed. Parker got out the Washington area road map and studied it, frowning. “We could go over to a parallel street, but coming back’s no good. The lights along the road out there give maximum red to the side streets. We’d just sit there, half a minute or more.”

“Then we work a switch,” Handy said. “Use another car on the job, and stash the Pontiac along the way.”

“That’s better. Adds more time, but it’s better. Who knows about the Pontiac?”

Handy considered. “Nobody,” he said. “Clara knew that’s all. Menlo’s boys grabbed me in Clara’s place.” He looked over at Menlo. “Were they following us?”

“No, no. They waited at poor Clara’s apartment for you to arrive.”

“OK. So the Pontiac’s clean.”

Parker folded the road map and put it away. He turned to Menlo. “Next question. What tools do we want?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Tools, tools. The dough isn’t just sitting out on a coffee table, is it?”

Menlo’s smile was faintly surprised. “My dear friend, you most certainly don’t expect me to tell you where to find it. My usefulness would then be at its end, would it not? You have been so kind as to include me only because of this one piece of information I have and you do not.”

“I’m not asking you where it is. I’m asking you what we do need to get at it. Like if it’s buried under concrete we need a pick, and maybe a couple caps of dynamite. Or if it’s in a safe, we need a drill and a set of pullers for the combination or maybe some nitro, depending on what kind of safe it is.”

“Ah, I see. The professional mind at work once again. But there is no difficulty, I assure you. No special tools will be required other than our own efficient hands.”

Parker nodded. “All right. What size do we want? How big a bundle?”

“Well, I have not as yet seen this cash in actuality, only in my imagination. But from the manner of its secretion, let us say, I would suppose a container approximately the size of your suitcase would be more than sufficient.”

“I’ll get another one tomorrow, just like it.” Parker got to his feet and lit a cigarette, pacing back and forth across the room. “Once more, to be sure. Kapor’s leaving the house at five o’clock. The chauffeur’s driving him, and will wait for him until the dinner is over. His bodyguard’s going with him too. The cook will fix stuff for the party later on, but she’ll be out of there by six, and so will the gardener. Kapor won’t be back before ten, and maybe later. Between six and ten nobody’s home.”

“Most precisely.”

From the bed, Handy said, “We like to be precise.”

“What about this party after ten o’clock? No servants?” Parker asked.

“Oh no. It will not be that sort of party. Morgan, Kapor’s bodyguard, will serve as bartender. No other servants will be needed.”

“There’s no burglar alarms in the house?”

“Clara was quite certain on that point.”

“All right.” Parker sat down on his own bed, flicked ashes into the nearest ashtray. “So now we wait two days.”

6

HANDY was driving. They were working the side streets, back and forth, Handy sitting casual at the wheel and Parker beside him, studying the parked cars. Menlo was back at the motel.

It was seven-thirty Friday night, and already dark. The occasional major streets they crossed were full of slow-moving traffic, people heading downtown for a night out or uptown for a weekend out of town. The side streets were quiet, with few moving cars and only an occasional pedestrian.

They’d been looking for twenty minutes, and finally Parker said, “There it is.”

Handy saw it too. He stopped the car.

Parker got out and closed the door, and Handy drove the Pontiac away. Parker crossed the street and strolled down towards the car.

It was a Cadillac, gleaming black, four or five years old. Being in this neighbourhood, it had to be on its second owner by now, or maybe third. Still, whoever owned it kept it clean. It wouldn’t look out of place turning into Kapor’s driveway.

The street was empty. There were no faces in any of the house windows that Parker could see. He stopped next to the Cadillac and tried both doors. He was in luck; the rear one was unlocked. It was the rear door that people forgot most often. He hadn’t needed the luck. He could have got into the Cadillac in thirty seconds even if it had been locked, but this way he didn’t have to break the side vent. He opened the rear door slightly, reached around and pulled the front lock button by the front window. Then he shut the rear door, opened the front, and got in.

He lay down on the seat and took out a pencil flash. He studied the underpart of the dashboard and found he would have to remove a small, flat plate. He put the flash away, got out a small screwdriver and, working by feel, removed the three screws that held the plate in place. Then he used the flash again, for ten seconds, and that was it. He sat up, slid over behind the wheel, and took a jumper wire out of his pocket, with sticky electric tape at both ends. He unpeeled part of the tape and then, working by feel once more, reached down under the dashboard and put the jumper on. The starter caught, and slipped, and caught again, and then the engine was purring. He put the automatic transmission in Drive, and pulled away.

On Wisconsin Avenue there was a movie theatre, and there was a supermarket, and a blacktop parking lot between them. In the daytime the supermarket customers used the lot, and at night the movie customers used it. Parker drove there, parked the Cadillac so there was a space on his left, stalled the car, and removed the jumper wire. Then he got out and opened the hood. He stood looking down for a minute, and then went to work. It was now twenty minutes to eight.

Handy and Menlo showed up in the Pontiac on schedule, at ten minutes to eight. They parked in the slot next to the Cadillac, and got out. Parker was just finishing. He closed the hood and said, “All ready.”

“Once again,” Menlo said, looking at the Cadillac with distrust, “I can only reassure myself with the knowledge that you are professionals in this type of activity. The idea of driving to a robbery in an automobile just recently stolen would never have occurred to me. Having occurred to me, it would terrify me so completely I would reject it.”

“This car won’t be hot for a couple of hours. By then we’ll be done with it,” Handy said.

“I trust your judgment implicitly,” Menlo assured him, “having seen you in action against those poor specimens supplied me by the Outfit. I have every confidence in you.”

“That’s good. Get in the car,” Parker said.

“Most certainly.”

Menlo got in the back again, and Parker and Handy up front. There was now a set of wires by the steering shaft, ending in a small oblong fixture with a push-button. This was the new starter. Parker tested it out, and it worked fine. He backed the Cadillac out of its parking slot and drove it slowly out on to Wisconsin Avenue.

Kapor’s house, when they got there, was in darkness, the way it was supposed to be. Parker spun the wheel and the Cadillac entered the driveway. The tyres crunched on the gravel. The Cadillac looked right at home here as Parker tooled it around behind the house and left it in front of the garage, hidden from the street by the house.

It was eight-thirty. They were right on schedule.

There were two back doors to choose from and they picked the one that Clara had reported led to the kitchen. Handy went to work on it. He was very good with doors. It opened almost immediately.

They went in, and Parker turned on the pencil flash. From Clara, through Menlo, they now had a good ground plan of the house. His voice soft, Parker asked, “All right, Menlo. What room do we want?”

“We’ll get your statuette first,” Menlo said. “I have a desire to see it. This bit of romanticism you will not deprive me of.”

Parker shrugged. It didn’t make any difference. He crossed the kitchen and opened the door on the other side, which led to the rear staircase, the servants’ stairs.

The staircase ended on a squarish room, with a large table along one wall. On the other side was a doorless entranceway, leading to an L-shaped hall. Parker opened the third door on the left, and because this room faced the rear of the house, he switched on the light.

It was a long and narrow room, with a dark-red paper covering the walls. The lighting was soft, furnished by fluorescent tubes in troughs spaced along the upper walls, and a rich green carpet covered the entire floor.

It resembled a room in a museum. Glass-topped cases contained coins, resting on green velvet, and on squarish pedestals of varying height were statues of varying styles of plaster, bronze, terra cotta, alabaster, wood none over three feet tall. Around the walls fancy swords were hung, and a tall, narrow, glass-doored bookcase at one end of the room was half full of ancient-looking volumes. Most of them were thick and squat, with peeling bindings.

“It is all garbage,” Menlo said, with something like contempt in his voice. “Kapor is indiscriminate in his artistic affections. He buys because a particular item is for sale, not because it adds anything artistically. Look at this gibberish! What a confusion of styles and periods. What would Kapor do with a hundred thousand dollars, if he were allowed to retain it? Create an entire house of monstrosities such as this? Such tastelessness deserves no hundred thousand dollars!”

He moved deeper into the room, frowning. “There are good pieces here,” he said. “A few, but only a few. There’s a Gardner over there, one of the better moderns. But in such surroundings, how can anything reveal its true value? Ah! Here is your mourner!”

It stood in a corner, near the bookcase, on a low pedestal nearly hidden from view. White, small, alone, bent by grief, the mourner stood, his face turned away. A young monk, soft-faced, his cowl back to reveal his clipped hair, his hands slender and long-fingered, the toes of his right foot peeking out from under his rough white robe. His eyes stared at the floor, large, full of sorrow. His left arm was bent, the hand up alongside his cheek, palm outward and shielding his face. His right hand, the fingers straight, almost taut, cupped his left elbow, the forearm across his midsection. The broad sleeve had slipped down his left forearm, showing a thin and delicate wrist. His whole body was twisted to the left, and bent slightly forward, as though grief had instantaneously aged him. It was as if he grieved for every mournful thing that had ever happened in the world, from one end of time to the other.

“I see,” said Menlo softly, gazing at the mourner. He reached out gently and picked the statue up, turning it in his hands carefully. “Yes, I see. I understand your Mr Harrow’s craving. Yes, I do understand.”

“Now the dough,” said Parker. To him the statue was merely sixteen inches of alabaster, for the delivery of which he had already been paid in full.

“Of course. Most certainly.” Menlo’s old smile popped back into place. He walked over and handed the statuette to Parker. “As you so ably expressed it, now the dough.”

He turned, looking around the room and murmuring to himself, “Apollo, Apollo” Then he snapped his fingers. “Ah! There!” He moved through the clutter of statues, a fat man weaving lithely, and stopped at a grey figure of a nude young man seated on a tree stump.

Parker and Handy followed him, Handy carrying the suitcase. Menlo patted the statue’s shoulder with pudgy fingers and smiled happily at Parker. “You see? A most ingenious solution. You have a figure of speech for this, I believe. One cannot see the forest for the trees. In this case, one cannot see the tree for the forest.”

“In there? In the statue?” Parker asked.

“Most certainly! Watch.” Menlo put his hands on the statue’s head, and twisted. There was a grating sound, and the head came off in his hands. “Hollow,” he said. “The young Apollo and his tree trunk packed with money.”

He stuck his hand down inside and brought out a batch of greenbacks. “You see?”

“All right. Let’s pack it,” Parker said. Handy opened the suitcase and as Menlo brought forth handful after handful of bills, Parker and Handy stowed it all inside.

The bills were all loose. There were hundreds and fifties and twenties, handful after handful, and gradually they filled the suitcase. They made no attempt to count, just stowed it away, quickly and silently.

When the suitcase was full, there were still some bills left over. “Alas, I misjudged,” said Menlo, smiling at the double handful of bills he held. “Who would have thought a small statue could have held so much?”

He stuffed the bills into his own pockets, and suddenly his right hand emerged holding a derringer, a Hi Standard twin-tubed .22. It packed hardly any power at all, but at this close range it could do the job as well as anything.

Menlo’s smile was now broad and cherubic. “And now, my dear professionals,” he said, “I am most afraid we must part company. You have been of such excellent assistance to me, I truly wish I could at least repay you with your lives. But you have already demonstrated once your ability in tracking your quarry, and I should prefer not to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I hope you appreciate that.”

Parker and Handy both moved, each in opposite directions, but Menlo in his own way was also a professional. His face tightened as he fired twice, and both were hits. Handy slammed into the wall, and collapsed in a crumpled heap. Parker flailed backward, arms pinwheeling, scattering statues, as he crashed into a pedestal.

Menlo paused a moment, but both bodies lay still, and the derringer was empty. He gathered up the suitcase and statuette and hurried from the room, a round lithe fat man in a black suit, the suitcase hanging at the end of one short arm, the small white statuette tucked under the other.

The last thing he did before he left was switch off the lights.

PART THREE

1

AUGUSTE MENLO was forty-seven years of age, five feet six inches tall, weight two hundred thirty-four pounds. His title was Inspector, his occupation that of spy on his fellow-citizens. During the Second World War, when he was much younger, no taller, but quite a bit thinner, he had been active in the anti-Nazi underground movement in Klastrava, spending the last fifteen months of the war living in the mountains with a guerrilla band, every member of which had a price on his head, set by the Nazis.

An underground movement is primarily a destructive social force, and only secondarily a constructive political force. Whatever political ideology is present invariably reflects the political ideology of whichever outside nation supplies its materiel. Because of Klastrava’s geographical location, that outside nation was the Soviet Union. The support originally came, for the most part, from the United States through Lend-Lease, but this was never mentioned by the Russians, who were not born yesterday.

Klastravian soil was liberated from the Nazis by the Red Army. The collaborationist puppet government of wartime, having been summarily done away with, was replaced by men from the wartime resistance movement, and their political orientation was reinforced by the presence of the Red Army. Klastrava was quietly and efficiently absorbed, and shortly became one of the Soviet Union’s smallest but least troublesome satellites.

Before the war, Auguste Menlo had had no particular trade, being a young man content to be supported by his doctor father. During the war, and particularly during the last fifteen months of it, he had learned a trade, though this trade at first glance seemed to have no peacetime application. Then, in early 1947, through resistance comrades, he received an appointment to the National Police. At last Auguste Menlo had found his true vocation. He did his work well, and with enthusiasm, and his promotions came rapidly.

In any religion, it is the priest who is likely to ask the most pertinent questions; and if there are flaws in the religious structure, it is the priest, being closest to it and most learned in it, who is most likely to discover them. And Auguste Menlo became, in a way, a priest of Communism. In a quite literal way, he became a confessor; in the silent and private rooms of stone beneath the ground he listened to the halting confessions of the wrong in heart. Over the years, Auguste Menlo came upon the flaws that bothered no one else, and patched them as best he could, and efficiently went on about his business.

Till someone waved a hundred thousand dollars in front of his face. One hundred thousand dollars American.

Auguste knew instantly what he was going to do, the very second he was informed of his assignment. He knew it as though he had known it all his life, as though his entire career had been only a preparation for this great moment when he would come into one hundred thousand dollars American. The circumstances were too perfectly joined for there to be any alternative.

Auguste Menlo had been chosen for the job in the first place because he had such a perfect record, without a blemish of any kind. He had been married, since 1949, to a plump, practical woman, a good housekeeper and an efficient mother to his two teen-age daughters. So far as the record showed and the record was exhaustive he had never once been unfaithful to his wife, any more than he had ever been derelict in his duty to the state. He was the logical and inevitable choice.

There is a kind of man who is perfectly honest so long as the plunder is small. This kind of man has chosen his life and finds it rewarding, so he will not risk it for anything less rewarding. And while Menlo had long since lost interest in his Anna, the occasional woman who became available seemed to him hardly much of an improvement, certainly not worth the risk of losing his comfortable home. Nor were the financial temptations that cropped up along his official path worth the comfort and security he already enjoyed. As time went by, his reputation grew and so did the trust it inspired. Who better to trust with one hundred thousand dollars, four thousand miles from home?

There is no way for officialdom to protect itself from such a man. Can a man be mistrusted for being toohonest?

So Auguste Menlo was informed of his mission and given his round-trip jetliner ticket to the United States. Outwardly, it was the same sober and industrious Auguste Menlo who walked out of the Ministry that day, was driven home, packed his suitcase, and kissed the leathery cheek of his wife good-bye. But inside he was a totally different man. On the train to Budapest, where he would make connections with the plane for the West, he allowed himself, concealed by a newspaper, the first outward indication of his feelings. A broad and delighted smile, as infectious as a giggle, spread over his face. It made him look like a depraved and ageing cherub.

The first plane took him from Budapest to Frankfurt am Main, that foggy valley in the middle of Germany so ill-suited to the landing and taking off of airplanes. But they landed without incident, and an hour later he boarded the jet that would take him in six hours non-stop to Washington National Airport, an ocean and a continent away. A world away.

The stewardess was slender, in Western fashion, with pale-blue skirt taut over pert and girdled rump. Menlo feasted upon her, his eyes bright, almost feverish, his mouth frozen in a delighted smile. It was a foolish and dangerous way to behave. Had the Ministry chosen to keep him under surveillance But the Ministry’s trust was complete, and only the stewardess noticed the funny, happy fat man with the glazed eyes. She merely thought he was full of vodka, and hoped he wouldn’t be sick. He wasn’t.

In Washington, sanity returned to him. He boarded the airport bus and rode to the G Street terminal, and in the course of that ride he regained control of himself. Until he actually had the money, he must be circumspect. He must be cautious.

His hotel reservation had already been made for him. He checked in, bathed luxuriously in steaming hot water and rose from the tub a bright pink, round and flushed and happy. He donned fresh clothing, and paid his courtesy call to Spannick.

Spannick, of course, did not know the fat man’s mission. No one knew what it was, save for Menlo himself and three men back home, all in the Ministry. But Spannick did know Menlo, and was cordial and deferential to the point of nausea, for who knew what the Inspector’s quest might be? Spannick tried to pump him, to find out at least that it was not to liquidate himself that Inspector Menlo had travelled all this distance. But Menlo evaded his questions. The meeting was brief; Spannick offered whatever assistance Menlo desired, and Menlo declined the offer with expressions of gratitude. Once this was over he was on his own.

His orders had been specific. His primary mission was to deal with Kapor; remove him, and in such a way that there would be no troublesome questions from local police. The secondary task was to recover, if possible, all or part of the misappropriated funds. If they could not be located, too bad; the important thing was to deal with Kapor.

Those were his orders, but for Menlo the emphasis was all wrong. He didn’t particularly care what happened to Kapor; let him live to a ripe old age if he wished. But as to the money that was the primary mission.

Had he intended to follow orders, he could have done so single-handed, with little or no difficulty. But he recognized his limitations. He knew that to get his hands on Kapor’s money he was going to need experienced and professional help. Like policemen everywhere he had often diverted himself by reading American detective novels, and so had a fairly clear picture of American crime, at least as it was described in fiction. It was all organized together, like an American corporation. So Menlo began by looking for some place to gamble.

Four taxi drivers and two doormen responded to his questions with blank looks, but the fifth cabby admitted to knowing such a place, and was willing to take Menlo there for ten dollars. Menlo paid. He was driven across the Arlington Memorial Bridge and down into Virginia, and deposited at a place that called itself Long Ridge Inn. It seemed to be an old colonial house. Menlo entered, armed with the cab driver’s instructions, and found himself in what seemed a perfectly legitimate restaurant, with a softly lit bar beyond an archway to the right.

The cab driver was gone, with Menlo’s ten dollars. Menlo was suddenly convinced that he had been played for a sucker. He very nearly turned around and left without saying a word to anyone, but the headwaiter was already there, armed with a stack of outsize menus. Feeling like an idiot, Menlo repeated what the cab driver had told him: “I’m looking for the action.”

The headwaiter, without a flicker of expression, replied, “Up the stairway at the end of the bar, sir. And good luck to you.”

So that was how he made his contact with the Outfit. The people he talked to at Long Ridge Inn were not of the sort he needed, but he told a circumlocutious story and they assured him he would be contacted once his story had been “checked out”. He left his name, and the name of the hotel where he was staying, and went on back to Washington.

Three days in the hotel room. He was still living on the Ministry’s miserly expense budget, and so could have distracted himself with nothing more exciting than a motion picture. But he didn’t even go out for that, afraid he would miss the contact. He stayed in his room, ordering his meals from room service, and stared forlornly at the telephone. Finally, at one o’clock in the morning of the fourth day, it rang and a voice told him to leave the hotel and walk slowly west.

He was met by a Cadillac with gland trouble, huge and rounded and with drawn curtains at the side windows. It rolled along beside him for a few seconds as he walked, and then a voice from its black interior called him by name. He entered the Cadillac, feeling a moment of irrational fright, and for the next two hours was driven hither and yon about the city, while he talked with the two men in the back seat.

He intended, of course, to ask for help in getting the money, then to pull a double cross. He didn’t want any percentage of one hundred thousand dollars, he wanted it all one hundred thousand dollars. But the two men in the Cadillac seemed so confident, so competent, and so sinister, that he was no longer sure his original plan would work. He told them the story, and they agreed to join him in the venture, offering him 10 per cent of the take for supplying the information. He smiled, in mock surprise and mock bashfulness, and told them he had been planning to offer them10 per cent for performing the physical labour. They ordered the chauffeur to stop the Cadillac, and ordered Menlo to get out.

Menlo opened the car door, and then paused to remind them he had told them everything except the name of the man who now possessed the hundred thousand dollars. He told them that if he must handle the whole thing himself he would, though he had hoped for a more sensible and businesslike attitude from any American organization, whichever side of the law it happened to be on. They said they just might be able to see their way clear to letting him have a quarter of the loot, so he shut the door, sat back, and smiled. Then the bargaining got under way in earnest.

Because he found them so impressive that he was no longer sure he would be able to get away with the whole boodle, he bargained tenaciously and well, and when he emerged from the car he had the fat end of a sixty-forty split. He also had the uneasy conviction that the Outfit really intended to try for 100 per cent. Ah, well. Though the members of the Outfit were impressive in their grim stolidity, Menlo was the product of fifteen years of Communist bureaucratic intrigue, and he thought he might be able to handle himself adequately in this situation.

His assistants came to see him the following day, and slowly the operation took shape. He revealed Kapor’s name, no longer having any choice, and it turned out the Outfit had an indirect connection with a maid in Kapor’s home named Clara Stoper. The connection was made more direct, and when Clara was offered a 10 per cent cut she would never receive she became a willing and eager member of the group. Events progressed without a ripple until the unexpected and somewhat frightening appearance of Handy McKay, who began playing up to Clara in a manner that was definitely suspicious.

Could someone else be after the money? Could there have been a leak among the higher echelon of the Outfit? There was too much uncertainty here and that was dangerous. Menlo gave the order that Handy be taken and questioned, and from that point events barrelled onward like a plane in a tailspin. Menlo had shifted this way and that, always retaining his balance by the narrowest margin, and when the dust settled, there had been a total realignment. The Outfit was no longer a part of the scheme. Spannick was dead, and Menlo’s bridges were burned; he could no longer change his plans and go home now, even if he wanted to. So Menlo found himself in an uneasy alliance with the two newcomers, Parker and McKay.

Menlo had much to be thankful to Parker and McKay for. They had, initially, saved his life. They had additionally simplified the actual mechanics of the robbery, far more so than the Outfit’s plan. And also they had, indirectly, reintroduced the fat man to sex.

Bett Harrow. So long, so lean, so firm! So active and eager a participant! This was what he had been looking forward to while gaping at the airline stewardess, this was what he had been thinking of whenever the hundred thousand dollars recrossed his mind. Bett Harrow.

He had waited that night till he was sure that Parker and McKay were asleep, and then he had risen from his bed on the floor. He carried his shoes and his jacket and necktie out to the hall, and there donned them, smoothing his somewhat oily black hair into place with his fingers and running thumb and forefinger down his trouser crease.

He knocked softly at the door of room 512 and after a few seconds he heard a bed creak and then her soft call: “It’s unlocked.”

He went in. The table lamp beside the bed offered the only light, amber and intimate. She was lying supine on the bed, the covers outlining her incredibly long body, her face framed by the blonde hair on her pillow. She looked up at him with surprise. “Oh, it’s you.”

“You expected our friend again?” The prospect of Parker coming down the hallway now did not please him.

“That son of a bitch!” She seemed very angry with Parker. “Get me a cigarette, will you? Over on the dresser there.”

“Most certainly. I will, if I may, join you.”

“Be my guest.”

The tendency to goggle and giggle, as it had on the jetliner, was growing stronger and stronger. He fought it away, retaining an urbane and practised exterior as he carried her cigarettes over to the bed and leaned over to offer her a light. Her eyes were hazel, and deep, and knowing, and they gazed up unblinking into his own. He held her gaze, and smiled pleasantly.

“Thanks,” she said, and blew smoke, but not towards his face. She patted the bed next to her mounding hip. “Sit down.”

“You are most kind.” His weight sagged the mattress, and she slid just slightly towards him.

“What are you to Parker?” she asked suddenly.

“Ah,” he said. “How coincidental. Much the same question I had in my mind to ask you, though of course since you are a lady I would have phrased it somewhat differently.”

“Parker’s a pain in the ass,” she said. “Sorry if I shocked you.”

She had. Women at home did not speak in such a manner. He smiled to cover the instant of shock. “Precision in all things, my dear. And that phrase has admirable precision. My name, which our mutual friend neglected to tell you, is Auguste Menlo.”

“You told me yourself, remember?”

“Ah, yes, so I did.”

“What are you so nervous about?”

“I am most sorry. I hadn’t realized I was.”

“Parker won’t be back, if that’s it,” she replied.

That was, of course, part of it.

He said, “As to Parker, my own connection with him is most transitory, and for convenience only.”

“I could say the same thing,” she said bitterly. “I’d like to push the bastard off a cliff.”

“Dear lady, how rapidly we have come to a meeting of minds.”

She didn’t get it at first. She frowned slightly at him as she sorted out the words, and then all at once she responded to his smile with a dazzling smile of her own. “I’m Bett Harrow,” she said.

“I am charmed.” And he meant it. He leaned forward to stub his cigarette in an ashtray. “Parker has told me of the statuette.”

“I didn’t know Parker ever told anybody anything.”

“He is not a blabbermouth, no. But he did tell me of the statuette. It was, you might say, a mutual sharing of confidences. My own is irrelevant at the moment, really. We might speak of it another time perhaps.”

To have a woman like this, and in her company to spend one hundred thousand dollars. What a glorious dream! What a more glorious reality! “If I understand aright, your father has paid for this statuette in advance? Fifty thousand dollars?”

“Cash in advance,” she replied. “We’ve got something else Parker wants too. He gets that later.”

“Anything of, uh, value?”

“Not to anybody else.”

“Ah. Alas. My dear, I would like to ask you a hypothetical question.”

“He would,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“My father would pay again. If Parker didn’t have the statue, and you did, and you wanted to sell, he’d pay again.”

“Another fifty thousand?”

“He might not go that high. But you could probably get twenty-five.”

Menlo shrugged. “I am not greedy.”

“I bet you’re not.”

He leaned over closer to her. “Another question, my dear.”

“What this time?”

“In my country,” he said, “women go to bed wearing great white sacks made of cotton. In the United States what do women wear when they go to bed?”

“Depends on the woman.”

“Well, you, for instance?”

“Skin.”

“Skin? You mean, no garment at all?”

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“Incredible,” he said.

“You don’t believe me?” There was a mock challenge in her eyes, and her hands gripped the top edge of the covers.

“If you endeavour to prove that statement to me,” he replied, “I wish you to be warned that I can take no responsibility for whatever might transpire thereafter.”

“Is that right?” She flicked her arms, and the covers shot back, baring her to the knee.

He’d never undressed so quickly in his life. One sock was still half on when he lumbered into the bed, loomin over her like a dirigible. Her hazel eyes darkened, her body seemed to grow firmer and more taut, and all at once he found himself in congress with a panther. He said a lot of things in his native tongue, until he no longer had breath to spare on talk, and from then on he merely clung.

When it was over, and they’d smoked a cigarette together and talked a bit more, he got up and began to get dressed. “I will see you in Miami. Very soon, I hope. And with the statuette.”

“You’ll remember the hotel?”

“It is imprinted firmly upon my memory.” He took one last cigarette from her pack, and lit it. “It might be best were you to leave in the morning, as Parker requested. He is taciturn and unpredictable, and I would want nothing to go wrong.”

“All right,” she answered.

“Until Miami, then.”

“I’ll be seeing you.”

He returned to Parker’s room and fell into pleasantly exhausted sleep, garlanded with sweet dreams