Ask the Parrot

6

Ed! Ed! You down there?”

Maybe ten minutes had gone by, no more than that, the two of them silent in the dark, and all at once this urgent hushed call came down from the top of the ramp. Lindahl, not in the clubhouse, after all, but up there, outside, by the gate and the two cars.

Parker kept his eye on the yellow window in the door as he sat up straighter, gun hand now resting atop his right knee. If Lindahl was outside, he’d made his way all around to that other door, the one they’d come in. If he’d done that, wouldn’t he have gone to look at the guards along the way, to see if they were alive or dead, and to take their guns? And if he’d done all that, he must not have left this room when Parker called the warning to him but earlier, the instant Parker had gone up the ramp and out of his sight. And he would have done that because he’d already had plans for the guards’ guns.

Defensive plans, or a double cross?

“Ed! Where the hell are you?”

“Come down.” It was Cory said that, from the other side of the black room, making his voice sound rough, indistinct.

But he hadn’t sounded like Parker, because Lindahl up there at the top of the ramp said, with a quick quaver in his voice, “Who’s that? Cory, is that you?”

There was a long pause, and then Cory called, in his own voice, “Yes. Come down.”

Parker aimed at that sound, but it didn’t go on long enough. If he couldn’t be sure of his shot, he wouldn’t take it.

Lindahl wasn’t coming down. Instead, he was saying, “Where’s Ed?”

“He killed my brother.” Again too short to home in on.

“I know that,” Lindahl said. “Did you kill him, Cory?”

Another long pause. “Yes.”

“Cory, listen,” Lindahl said. “You don’t have any complaint against me, do you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with him and Cal. It made me sick when he told me about it.”

No response from Cory; what response could he make?

Lindahl said, “Cory, come on, turn on the light down there, let’s figure out what to do here.”

“Where is it?”

“You see the window lit in the door there, to your left? It’s just beyond that, on the left side of the door.”

“Okay.”

Parker raised the gun. Cory was now going to cross that light.

But Lindahl, up there at the top of the ramp, was at an angle to see first when Cory went by the door to block the window light for just an instant, so it was Lindahl who fired one of the guard’s pistols. And missed.

Parker rolled to the floor on the far side of the duffel bag as Cory yelled and pulled open the door. He ran out of the room as Lindahl wasted two more shots from above.

There had been just that one instant of light when the door was open, and then dark again. Had Lindahl seen the shape of Parker, on the floor beyond the duffel bag, in that instant? Parker waited, listening, but didn’t hear Lindahl coming down, so he got to his feet, crossed over to the door, and looked quickly out through that window to see only the empty corridor. Cory had run fast.

What would Cory do now? Most likely find a place where he could protect his back, hunker down, hope for an opportunity to get to Lindahl before Lindahl could get to him. And why had Lindahl taken those shots? Because he’d understood, just as Parker had, that Cory wanted revenge against both of them for the death of his brother.

So what was Lindahl doing now? Parker walked up the ramp, and at the top he could hear rustling sounds, out ahead. He moved along the side of the Ford and saw that the Jetta was rocking slightly. Lindahl was doing something inside there.

It took him a minute to figure out what had happened. Cory’s first shot at Parker had smashed the rear side window of the Jetta on the driver’s side. He had, of course, locked the car, but Lindahl had reached through the broken window to unlock that door. From outside, though, he couldn’t reach far enough to unlock the driver’s door, so he was now inside the Jetta, climbing over from the backseat to the front, grunting with the effort, clumsy in his haste.

Let them play it out. Lindahl was too busy with what he was doing to notice anything else, so Parker turned away, to stride by the clubhouse wall past that door they’d used for entry and along the wooden wall toward the parked vehicles. He stopped when he came to the first of them, a big boxy horse carrier.

By now, Lindahl was getting out of the Jetta, finished with whatever he’d needed to do in there. Cory would have the keys with him, so all Lindahl could have done was put the car in neutral.

Yes. Lindahl’s Ford faced the gate and the ramp, its rear bumper against the rear bumper of the Jetta. Now Lindahl got behind the wheel of the Ford and backed it away from the gate, forcing the Jetta to roll forward. When he had the Jetta well out of his path, he looped around to back up against the gate and get out of the car.

Didn’t he plan to do anything about Cory? Or had he understood he wouldn’t be able to go back to his old life after this, so it wouldn’t matter if somebody from those days wanted to kill him? Did he think the two duffel bags would give him a stronger chance at escape than just the one? Or did he believe Cory that Parker was dead, although Cory had only said so to try to bring Parker into the open, or to convince Lindahl that the shooting was over.

Lindahl got out of the Ford long enough to open the gates wide, then backed the car down the ramp and out of sight. An instant later the lights down there switched on, and an instant after that the near door opened and Cory stepped out.