Ask the Parrot

8

Three minutes after Jane Thiemann left, the door opened and Cal Dennison sauntered in, saying, “That lady had a gun.”

“She’s looking for the bank robbers,” Parker said.

As Cory entered, shutting the door behind himself as he nodded a cautious greeting toward Lindahl, Cal laughed and said, “Well, I bet she come to the right place.”

“No, the wrong place,” Parker said.

Lindahl said, “Cal, you’re jumping off half-assed again.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Cal said, and pulled a much-crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket. Smoothing it as best he could on his dark gray shirtfront, he held it out toward Lindahl and said, “You tell me, Tom. You just go right ahead.”

Lindahl, not touching it, reluctantly looked at the now familiar artist’s rendering and grudgingly said, “Well, they look a little alike, I can see how they’re a little alike.”

“A little alike?” Cal swung to hold the paper out with both hands at its side edges, arms straight out as he aimed the picture at Parker and said, “Whadaya say, Ed? If you saw this fella comin down the road toward you, would you say, ‘Looks like I got a long-lost twin brother,’ or what?”

“He could be a thousand guys,” Parker said.

“Not a thousand.”

Lindahl said, “Cal, if this picture looks so much like Ed here, and everybody up at the meeting at St. Stanislas had a copy of the picture, and Ed was standing right there with us, how come nobody else saw it? How come everybody in the goddam parking lot didn’t turn around and make a citizen’s arrest?”

“It was that story in school,” Cal said, and frowned deeply as he turned to hand the sketch to Cory. “That writer we had to read, all that spooky stuff. Poe. The something letter. All about how everybody’s looking for this letter, and nobody can find it, and that’s because it’s right out there in plain sight, the one place you wouldn’t think it would be. So here’s a fella, and a whole bunch of guys get together to find him, and where’s the best place he oughta hide? Right with the bunch looking for him, the one place nobody in the county’s gonna think to look.”

Voice arched with sarcasm, Lindahl said, “And you, Cal, you’re the only one there figured it out.”

“Could happen,” Cal said, comfortable with himself. “Could happen.”

“Not this time,” Parker said, and Cory said, “Look at that.”

They all turned to the television set, and there was the artist’s rendering again, this time with superimposed red letters: FUGITIVE BANDIT STRIKES AGAIN.

“Jesus!” Cal said. “Where’s the goddam sound on that thing?”

Lindahl stepped quickly over to the remote on top of the set and brought the sound on, an off-camera female voice saying, “—possibly still working together.” The picture on the screen switched from the artist’s rendering to a wide shot of the shopping mall where Parker and Lindahl had been this morning. “It was a slow morning at The Rad in Willoughby Hills Center until the bandit—or bandits—put in their appearance.”

As the television picture cut to the exterior of the clothing store Parker had robbed, showing uniformed police going in and out of the place, Parker was aware of Lindahl vibrating beside him, shock and anger working their way through him but so far not erupting into speech. Parker’s hand went into his right trouser pocket, lightly touching the pistol there. It would have to be all three of them, if it started now.

“Clerk Edwin Kislamski was alone in the shop at eleven-forty-five this morning when a man entered, threatened Mr. Kislamski with a handgun, and robbed the cash register of over three thousand dollars.”

The clerk himself now appeared, seated on a wooden bench against a green wall in what looked like the front room of a state police barracks. For some reason, he was wrapped in a thick cream blanket, as though he were a near-drowning victim. He clutched the blanket to himself with both hands. Above it, a kind of terrified half-smile flickered across his face like distant searchlights as he spoke: “I recognized him right away.” An apparent cut, and then, “Oh, yeah, I got a real good look at him. I got a better look at him than I wanted.”

“Hah!” Cal crowed. “I bet that’s true! Change your pants, sonny!”

“Shut up, Cal,” Cory said.

Now, on the television screen, outside The Rad, a woman reporter was seen interviewing some sort of senior police officer, with a lot of braid on his cap bill, but the sound was still the voice-over: “Captain Andrew Oldrum of State CID says there’s reason to believe the other fugitive from the recent Massachusetts bank robbery was the driver of the getaway car.”

Lindahl stared at Parker, who didn’t look back, but shook his head. He needed Lindahl to remember not to act up in front of the Dennisons.

Now the interview was heard, or at least part of what Captain Oldrum had to say: “Given where they’d been spotted in the past, it looks as though they may be backtracking now, which would be a smart move on their part, if they can get into an area we’ve already cleared.”

“Captain Oldrum, why would they risk so much to commit what, in comparison, is a very small robbery, after the multi-hundred-thousand-dollar robbery in Massachusetts?”

“Well, Eve, we have reason to believe, from the one bandit we’ve apprehended so far, that they no longer have that money on them. Also, even if they still have some of it, the other two know from that first arrest their stolen money’s too dangerous to spend, because we’ve got the serial numbers. So what they need is cash they can use without drawing attention to themselves. Still, this robbery seems like a pretty desperate move, so it looks like we’re a lot closer to them than we thought earlier in the day.”

Now the cut was to the television studio, where the same woman reporter smiled at the camera and said, “Police are asking anyone who might have been shopping at Willoughby Hills Center at the time of the robbery, and might have seen the fugitives, or their vehicle, or anything at all that seemed suspicious, to phone the special number on your screen—”

“Let’s call it,” Cal said. “We got him right here.” Laughing at Lindahl, he said, “And you got to be the driver!”

“Shut up, Cal,” Parker said. “Tom, switch off that set.”

Cal, suddenly bristling, said, “My brother tells me to shut up. You don’t tell me to shut up.”

As Lindahl killed the sound on the television set, Parker took a step forward and slapped Cal hard, open-handed, across the cheek, under the patch. Cal jolted back, astonished and outraged. Parker stood watching him, hands at his sides, and Cal, fidgeting, wide eyed, tried to figure out something to do.

“Okay,” Cory said, stepping forward, not quite between them, but just to the side, like a referee. “Okay, that’s enough. If it goes any further, you got me, too.”

Parker half turned to him. “They say it was definitely one of the guys they’re looking for, and they say he was at this mall, and I’m not. But let’s say your brother’s right. They just said on the TV the bandits don’t have the money any more, or if they do, they can’t pass it because the law’s got the serial numbers. So if I am the bandit, I either don’t have the money or I have money nobody can use. And if I am the bandit, why weren’t you two dead last night?”

Cory had nodded through all of that, thoughtful, and now he said, “I don’t know.”

“What do you know?”

“Something doesn’t smell right.” Cory nodded toward his brother but kept looking at Parker. “Cal and me, we both noticed it, and we talked about it.”

Cal had apparently decided the slap on the face was now far enough in the past that he didn’t have to react to it at all, so, his aggressive style back, he said, “What are you doin here, that’s the point. Whether you’re him or you’re not him, and I still know goddam well you’re him, but even so, how come you’re here? What are you doin here?”

“Visiting my old friend Tom.”

“Bullshit,” Cal said. “Maybe those old farts at the gun club bought it, but we don’t. We never did. I took one look at you up at St. Stanislas and I said, ‘What’s goin on with that fella?’ That was even before I looked at the picture.”

Lindahl now stepped forward. He was paler than usual, and Parker could see he still hadn’t completely adapted himself to what he’d just learned from the television set, but his expression was determined. “Cal,” he said, “you never called me a liar before.”

Cal turned to glower at him. “You gonna punch me now? I don’t think so, Tom.”

“Then don’t call me a liar.”

“Cal,” Cory said, crowding in on top of whatever Cal had meant to say, “we’re done in here.”

Cal now had reason to glower at everybody. “Done in here? Whadaya mean done in here? Now the guy’s knocking off shopping malls!”

“That’s nothing to do with us,” Cory told him. “Come on, Cal. Tom, I’m sorry we busted in on you.”

“Anytime,” Lindahl said, though he sounded angry. “Just knock first.”

“We will. Come on, Cal. Sorry if we upset you, Ed.”

“You didn’t,” Parker said.

“Well . . .” Cory herded Cal to the door and out, Cal wanting to yap on about something or other, Cory pushing him out with nods and hand gestures, the two finally outside, Cory closing the door without looking back.

Parker continued to stand and frown at the closed door. After a minute, Lindahl gave him a puzzled look. “What is it?”

Parker nodded at the door. “Cory’s scheming,” he said.