Butcher's Moon

Thirty five

Parker drove a dozen blocks before he was certain Dulare hadn’t sent anybody to follow him and see what he did next. Good; a man who underestimates you is already half beaten.

There were still three hours or so of daylight left. Parker needed a new base of operations, and he wanted to be set before nightfall. He needed someplace he could use for the next few days without drawing any attention to himself, and where he could arrange for other people to meet him.

Usually the simplest way to make that sort of arrangement was to rent a local whore for a few days, pay her for her body and use her apartment. But this time he couldn’t take a chance on that, not when the people he was going up against were the ones who ran the local whores. If he rented one’s apartment and let her go out, she might talk too much to the wrong person. If he made the rental and didn’t let her out, she might be missed by the wrong person, who might come looking for her.

So the simplest way was out. And any hotel or motel was also out, partly because a determined effort to find him would get him caught at any hotel, and partly because of the phone calls he intended to make.

This was July, midsummer, and a lot of people would be away on vacation, so a possible alternative was to find an empty house or apartment and move in there. But there were problems with that; it would have to be a location where nosy neighbors wouldn’t be a likely annoyance, for one thing. For another, this was Sunday, which meant that late tonight some vacationers would be coming home, due to go back to their jobs tomorrow morning. He would have to make sure any place he holed up was occupied by people who had just left, and not people who were just about to come back.

To deal with nosy neighbors, he’d be better off in an apartment than in a private house. The clear spaces around houses made secrecy difficult, and people who lived in houses tended to know their neighbors better than people in apartment buildings.

The one section in Tyler that Parker knew of with large anonymous apartment buildings was Calesian’s neighborhood, so that was where he headed. He was still driving the Mercedes, having left the Impala behind at Lozini’s house; he knew he’d have to change soon to a less-identifiable car, but the pressure to have a home base was more urgent and at the moment nobody was actively looking for him, so he could wait until dark to make another switch of automobile.

There shouldn’t be any danger in using Calesian’s neighborhood, but it would be too risky to use the actual building he lived in. Parker drove by it, nine stories of windows winking orange at him from the setting sun, and kept on, looking for another building approximately the same size—big and anonymous.

He found it two blocks farther on, seven stories high, wider than Calesian’s building, red brick, with its identical rows of windows and with tenant parking in the basement. This time Parker drove around the block, to the rear of the building where it hulked over a row of small two-family houses across the street. The small houses looked diminished by their huge neighbor, like plants that have shriveled for lack of sun.

Parker walked back around to the front of the building. As with Calesian’s place, this one had a locked front door but an open basement-garage entrance. He went in that way, took the elevator up to the lobby, and strolled over to look at the mailboxes: two facing brass ranks in a tile alcove. The building was laid out with four apartments on the first floor and twelve on each of the higher floors, which meant seventy-six mailboxes. Eleven of these had mail inside, showing through the narrow slits in the doors.

In a building like this, tenants going away for a week or so would arrange with the superintendent to pick up their mail for them, to keep it from accumulating too much in the small boxes. But the super wouldn’t be working on Sunday, so these particular eleven tenants had apparently not been around since at least yesterday. Parker made notes of the apartment numbers.

The closer to ground level the better. None of the eleven apartments were on either the first or second floors, so he took the elevator up to three to check out the four potentials there.

3C. The doors were standardized, with a normal double-action lock. The third key that Parker tried opened this door, and would probably open every other door in the building. He stepped inside to darkness and a musty smell. When he shut the door behind himself, the only light came through narrow slits in the closed Venetian blinds at the far end of the living room. Patting the wall to his left, he found the light switch, turned it on, and saw at least a week’s accumulation of mail piled up on the coffee table in the middle of the room. More than a week; two copies of Time were there, one near the top of the pile and one near the bottom. Parker switched off the light again, left the apartment, and used the key to double-lock the door.

3F. The key worked with a little more difficulty. Parker entered a room lit with a weird blue-purple glow. The light came from a fluorescent fixture over a large potted plant; the plant was nearly six feet high, with long bladelike green leaves. A glass-topped table near the front door contained a pile of mail plus a long chatty typewritten note of instructions to the superintendent. In with the directions to Herman concerning plants, birds and mail, there was included the date that Caroline would return: today.

3K. Parker, pausing at the door, heard a television set going inside. He turned away and took the stairs to the fourth floor.

4A. The key worked smoothly, but Parker entered a cool room dominated by the hum of an air-conditioner. This was someone who had gone away only for the weekend.

4J. Again no trouble with the key. The apartment smelled somewhat of rotting garbage. Parker switched on the light and saw disorder and dirt in a living room furnished in odd pieces probably bought secondhand. No pile of mail. A door on the left led to a small sour bedroom in which a fat man wearing only a gray T-shirt slept moistly. His legs were pocked with scabs from hard things he had walked into, and several empty bottles were on the floor around the bed. Parker withdrew, making a note of the place; if nothing else worked out, the fat man could be kept in a closet for a couple of days.

5B. The key didn’t work. A different key finally worked, reluctantly. Parker entered a living room with one lamp burning in the far corner, giving a low yellow light. The room was neat, furnished in the style of a decorating magazine, and it contained no pile of mail. There were two bedrooms, one for adults and one for two male children who used bunk beds. The closets seemed full and there were pieces of luggage on the shelves, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything one way or the other. But the refrigerator in the small neat kitchen contained an open bottle of milk, half a homemade chocolate cake, and leftover casserole in an orange oval pot with lid. The people in this apartment were too neat to leave things like that in the refrigerator if they planned to be gone for a week or so; they would be back tonight.

5D. The first key worked. The living room was dark, dry, and hot. Parker switched the light on, looked around, and saw no pile of mail. Green drapes were drawn across the window at the far end of the room. The furnishings were ordinary: a sofa and two chairs all arranged so that they faced the television set, and with the appropriate tables and lamps. One bedroom, dominated by a king-size bed and apparently occupied by a couple. No luggage on the closet shelves, and visible spaces amid the clothing, particularly on the woman’s side. No razor or toothbrushes in the bathroom. An almost completely cleaned-out refrigerator.

This one looked good. Parker went back to the living room, where a secretary stood against the wall near the front door. Opening the desk part of the secretary, he found papers in pigeonholes, and went through them looking for an indication of this couple’s travel plans.

Brochures describing the Caribbean. A pencil-written list of woman’s clothing and accessories, each item checked off. And a telephone bill inside its opened envelope; the cancellation date on the envelope was three days ago, Thursday. Since the payment card and return envelope were both gone, the bill had been paid, no earlier than Friday.

All right. Parker had left his and Grofield’s luggage—one small bag each—in a locker down at the railroad station, and he’d go down there tonight to get them back. At the same time he would switch cars. Before then, though, he had other things to do.

The phone was in the living room, next to the sofa. Parker switched on the air-conditioner mounted in the wall under the windows, sat on the sofa, and called Handy McKay collect, using a name that Handy would know: Tom Lynch. Handy, sounding surprised and confused, accepted the charges, and when Parker came on, Handy said, “How come collect?”

“I don’t want your number to show up on this phone bill.”

“Ah.”

“You still looking for something to do?”

“I still eat.”

“I have something. It’s a little different from regular.”

“Will it pay?”

“Yes.”

“Where and when?”

“Tyler. The address is 220 Elm Way, apartment 5D. Get here between noon and sundown tomorrow. Arrive quiet.”

“On tiptoe,” Handy said, meaning that he understood he shouldn’t merely take a cab direct from the airport or railroad station to 220 Elm Way.

“See you,” Parker said, and broke the connection and made another collect call.

He phoned a total of twenty-five men. Some of them took two or three calls to locate. By the time he was finished, full night had descended on Tyler and eleven of the twenty-five had said they were in.