Butcher's Moon

Forty-one

Parker put Faran on ice and went back to the living room, where the eleven men had formed themselves into small groups and were talking things over. He let them talk, waiting it out, knowing sooner or later they’d all decide to come in with him.

One of the groups was Devers and Wycza and Ducasse; they’d never met before, but they’d all flown in on the same plane from New York, Devers and Wycza connecting in New York, the two of them realizing that Ducasse was also a part of this once they’d landed in Tyler. Clustered around the sofa to talk were Wiss and Elkins, who always worked together as a team, plus Nick Dalesia, who’d done the driving on the busted jewelry-store job, and Tom Hurley. Handy McKay was listening to an opinion from Philly Webb, and both Ed Mackey and Mike Carlow were sitting off by themselves, thinking about it.

Parker had moved one of the chairs from the dining table to the end of the room nearest the door so he could face the entire group. He sat down now, saw by his watch that it wasn’t yet ten p.m., and waited for things to quiet down.

But they didn’t quiet, not exactly. Instead, Tom Hurley, who finally seemed to have forgotten his grudge against Morse, at least for a while, got to his feet and pointed at the papers scattered on the coffee table and called across the room, “Parker, where are you going to be while we’re running all this other stuff?”

The others all stopped talking and looked at Parker, who said, “Right here. I hold Faran, I keep this place for everybody to get back to, and I’m the phone drop you’re gonna need.”

Hurley pointed at the papers again. “So you’ve got these capers here,” he said. “We go do them, we hit all at once, that’s sensible, I like that. Keeps us clean of cops. You’re back here, you keep the coffee and the doughnuts.”

Quietly, Handy McKay said, “And he set them up. Every score is worked out there.”

Parker, jabbing a thumb back at the pistols piled on the dining table, said, “And I got you hardware from a gun store last night. All new pieces, with ammunition. I couldn’t test-fire them, but you shouldn’t need to shoot them.”

“That’s okay,” Hurley said. “That’s all very nice. My question is, what’s your piece?”

“No cash,” Parker said.

They all looked at him. Ed Mackey said, “Parker? You don’t want any cut?”

“There’s eleven of you,” Parker said. “You go out, you pull the action, you come back, you put all the take in one pile and split it eleven ways. So everybody gets the same piece.”

Hurley, frowning as though looking for the butcher’s thumb, said, “Except you?”

“That’s right.”

Fred Ducasse said, “What’s in it for you?”

“I want you to do a piece of work for me,” Parker said. “Tomorrow, after all this other stuff is done and you’ve all made your money.”

Hurley, looking satisfied, as though he thought maybe he finally did see that thumb resting on the scale after all, said, “What kind of a piece of work, Parker?”

Parker got to his feet, took the small white box from his pocket, took the top off it, and put the box on the coffee table amid the papers. Then he stood back and let them study it.

That wasn’t the butcher’s thumb; Hurley’s lips curled back in distaste and he said, “Who is it, Parker?”

“A guy named Grofield.”

Dan Wycza said, “Alan Grofield?”

“That’s right.”

Frank Elkins said, “Yeah, I remember him. He worked with us in Copper Canyon.”

“That’s right,” Wycza said. “He’s the clown brought the girl out with him. Telephone girl.”

Nick Dalesia said, “I worked with a guy named Grofield once. An actor.”

“That’s the one,” Wycza said.

Ralph Wiss said, “A very humorous type of fella.”

“Right,” Dalesia said.

“I don’t know him,” Hurley said. He made it sound belligerent, and his manner was aggressive as he looked around the room at the others. “Do I know this guy?”

Nobody answered him. Ed Mackey said, “I know him. We got together once on something that didn’t work out. Seemed like a good guy.”

Wycza said, “Wha’d he ever do with the telephone girl?”

“Married her,” Parker said. “They run a summer theater together in Indiana.”

“A love story,” Wycza said, and grinned.

Handy McKay said, “I know Alan. What happened to him? How’d he lose that finger?”

“He and I did a job here a couple years ago,” Parker said, and told them the story in a few quick highlights: the money in Fun Island, Lozini, Buenadella, Dulare. When he finished, Tom Hurley said, “I get it. These are mob places we’re hitting.”

“That’s right.”

Fred Ducasse said, “We put pressure on them, then you tell them to turn over Grofield and the cash or they’ll get hit again.”

Ralph Wiss had been sitting there paying no apparent attention to the conversation, seeming to be sunk in his own thoughts. Now he said, “That won’t work.”

“I know it,” Parker said. “That’s not what I have in mind.”

Ducasse, turning to Wiss, asked, “Why won’t it work? They’ll want their places left alone, won’t they?”

“I know this kind of people,” Wiss said. “They’re not used to losing a fight, they don’t know how to go about it. They’ll spend double the money to bring in more talent, guard everything they own, and start hunting for Parker.”

Stan Devers said, “While they send him a finger a day. That’s sweet.”

Hurley said, “So what do you want, Parker?”

“I want Grofield back,” Parker said, “and I want my money. And I want those people dead.”

Hurley gestured, wanting more. He said, “So?”

“So I set you people up with scores, you go do them, you’ve got good money you wouldn’t have had. You’ll all be finished, back here, by when? Three, four in the morning?”

Most of them shrugged in agreement. Hurley bobbed his head, saying, “Probably. Then what?”

“Then you come with me,” Parker said. “The twelve of us hit Buenadella’s house and get Grofield out of there. And if they moved him somewhere, we find out where and go hit that place.” He checked off names on his fingers, saying, “And we make them dead. Buenadella. Calesian. Dulare.”

His intensity had startled them a little. Nobody said anything until Handy McKay, speaking very quietly, said, “That’s not like you.”

What kind of shit was this? Parker had expected a back-up from Handy, not questions. He said, “What’s not like me?”

“A couple things,” Handy said. “For one, to go to all this trouble for somebody else. Grofield, me, anybody. We all of us here know we got to take care of ourselves, we’re not the Travelers Aid Society. You, too. And the same with Grofield. What happens to him is up to him.”

“Not when they send him to me piece by piece,” Parker said. “If they kill him, that’s one thing. If they turn him over to the law, get him sent up, that’s his lookout. But these bastards rang me in on it.”

Handy spread his hands, letting that point go. “The other thing,” he said, “is revenge. I’ve never seen you do anything but play the hand you were dealt. Now all of a sudden you want a bunch of people dead.”

Parker got to his feet. He’d been patient a long time, he’d explained things over and over, and now he was getting itchy. Enough was enough. “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s like me or not. These people nailed my foot to the floor, I’m going around in circles, I’m not getting anywhere. When was it like me to take lumps and just walk away? I’d like to burn this city to the ground, I’d like to empty it right down to the basements. And I don’t want to talk about it any more, I want to do it. You’re in, Handy, or you’re out. I told you the setup, I told you what I want, I told you what you’ll get for it. Give me a yes or a no.”

Tom Hurley said, “What’s the goddam rush? We got over an hour before we can hit any of these things.”

Stan Devers, getting to his feet, said, “Just time enough for a nap. I’m in, Parker.” He turned to Wycza, beside him. “Dan?”

Wycza wasn’t quite ready to be pushed. He frowned up at Devers, frowned across the room at Parker, seemed on the verge of telling everybody to go drop dead, and then abruptly-shrugged and said, “Sure, what the hell. I like a little boom-boom sometimes.”

Handy said, “Parker, I was never anything but in, you know that.”

Ed Mackey said, “Shit, we’re all in. I know Grofield, he’s a pleasant guy, we don’t want anybody out there dismantling him.”

Mike Carlow, the driver who hadn’t had anything at all to say up till now, said, “I don’t know this guy Grofield from a dune buggy. In fact, I don’t even know any of you people. But I know Parker, and I’m in.”

They were all in. Parker, looking from face to face, saw that none of them was even thinking of bowing out. Some of the tension eased out of Parker’s shoulders and back. “All right,” he said. “All right.”