Firebreak

2

Parker stepped forward, knocked the Beretta away, knocked Lloyd to the ground, but it was too late. The thug's head was splattered on the wall now, and his body had dropped like a sack of doorknobs.

Lloyd, on his side on the floor, stared in horror at the man he'd just killed. "My God," he whispered.

"I needed him," Parker said. "You needed him. And you don't need this mess."

"I didn't— I don't know what I—"

"You got tough all of a sudden," Parker told him. "Get up. Stop looking at him, get up, come into the other room, we'll work this out."

Lloyd finally looked away from the dead man, blinking up at Parker. "I was just... scared," he said.

"Come in here," Parker said again, and went back to the living room, where the furniture was a little messed up, not too bad, and the broken window

didn't show very much under the dark porch roof. He stood looking at the room, considering it, until Lloyd came in, shaky, unsure of his balance. Then Parker sat on the sofa, put his feet on the coffee table, on the story Lloyd had been writing, and said, "You want to give this place up? Or you want to deal with what happened? Sit down."

"Do I want to— What do you mean, give this place up?"

"Sit down."

Lloyd sat, on the chair angled to Parker's right. He stayed forward on the seat, knees together, hands clasped on knees, worried face turned to Parker. He said, "Move? How can I move?"

"You've got two choices," Parker told him. "You can give up being on parole, hide out, take your profit from the Montana job and turn yourself into somebody else. Or you can clean up this mess."

"I can't— I can't—"

"You can do either one. They're both gonna be tough."

Lloyd looked at the doorway. 'That man—"

Parker said, "How much does the law watch this house?"

"What? Oh, the patrol." Lloyd shook his head, to clear it. "City police keep an eye on me," he said. "In a car, the regular patrol car. Not often. They just drive by, I see them look at the place, they drive by."

"They never come in?"

"Once or twice, if something's different. A strange

car in the driveway, other people here." He made a twisted smile. 'They want to be sure everybody knows I'm a felon."

"What about when you drive away from here? Stop you, search the car?"

"A few times they stopped me," Lloyd said, shrugging that away. 'Just ask me where I'm going, remind me I'm on a leash."

"Search the car?"

"Never."

"Do you have a tarp?"

Lloyd didn't seem to know the word. "A what?"

"A large waterproof sheet," Parker told him. "Plastic, whatever."

"Oh, yes, sure. In the basement. You mean for"—a glance at the doorway—"him."

"You wrap him good," Parker said. 'Then you clean up in there. You got any caulk, for windows, anything like that?"

"Yes, probably."

'The bullet's in the wall," Parker said. "After you clean the wall, plug the hole with anything you got that'll dry hard. It's a small hole, don't worry about color. And it didn't come through on this side."

Lloyd hadn't noticed that. Now he gave this wall a surprised look and said, "All right."

"When everything's clean, and it's rolled in the tarp," Parker said, "call a glazier, say you were moving"—he looked around the room—"that bookcase, and it tipped and broke the window."

"Shouldn't I say somebody threw a stone at the house? There is harassment here, sometimes. People around here know the story."

'The glass is on the porch," Parker reminded him, "not in here. Say it's a rush job, you need it today. Then ..." Parker took the Honda keys out of his pocket and tossed them to Lloyd, who caught them two-handed. 'Then you go get your car. It's beyond the church, by the library. The opener's on the floor in the garage."

"All right," Lloyd said.

"Put the package in the trunk," Parker said, "and the other stuff you need in the car. Then wait for the glazier."

"You mean he has to come today."

"Sure he has to come today, it's an emergency, you can't leave a living room window broken overnight. Once he comes and fixes it and goes, you take a drive, get rid of the package where nobody sees you and it can't come back to screw you up later."

'There's the river, I could do that."

"Whatever you want. Then come back and get me and we'll get out of here."

'This is gonna take hours," Lloyd said. "What will you be doing?"

"Sleep," Parker said, and stood. "You got a spare room?"

Standing, doubtful, Lloyd said, 'There's a cot in my office. Upstairs."

"Good," Parker said.

* * *

It wasn't real sleep, but something close, learned a long time ago, a way to rest the body and the brain, a kind of trance, awareness of the outer world sheathed in unawareness. The dim room remained, shades drawn over both windows, the gray-canvas-covered synthesizer in which Lloyd kept his computer equipment not so much concealed as reconfigured, the shelves and cabinets, the closed door, the framed color photographs of machines, the small occasional sounds from outside the room, and the cot, narrow, with a thin mattress covered by a Canadian wool blanket in broad bands of gray and green and black that held him like a cupped hand. Inside it, farther within it, there was nothing except the small bubbles of awareness that surfaced and surfaced and found nothing wrong.

Parker had told Lloyd, "Knock," because, before lying on the cot, he'd leaned the gangly metal synthesizer chair off-kilter sideways against the knob. When the knock sounded and Lloyd's distant small voice called, "Parker," he woke at once and sat up, and the gray rectangles of the shaded windows were now black.

"All right," he answered. "I'll be down in a few minutes." And switched on the light, took the pistol from under the pillow, put on his shoes, moved the chair back from the door.

When he came downstairs, face washed, rested, still stretching the sleep out of his shoulders, Lloyd was seated on the sofa in the living room. He stood when Parker entered. "All set," he said.

Parker looked at the empty nighttime street through the new window glass. Lights in houses across the way seemed a canyon distant. He said, "Everything cleaned up?"

"Oh, yes," Lloyd said, with grim emphasis.

Parker looked at him. Lloyd was pale, but under control. "You're okay now," he said.

"I think so." Lloyd grinned and shook his head. "When I went to jail," he said, "I told myself, now I've really learned not to lose control, the bad things that can happen if I lose control. I'll never lose control again, I said, I've learned my lesson."

"Uh-huh."

Lloyd looked over at the dining room doorway, then back at Parker. "I was wrong," he said. "But this time, if I haven't learned anything, there's no hope for me."

"You did okay," Parker said. "Except when you got excited."

'That's the part I'm talking about," Lloyd said. "The tarp was slippery, you know. Heavy, and slippery, and hard to get a grip on. I thought the washing, the wall, that was going to be the worst, but it was the slippery tarp."

Driving west on the Mass Pike, not yet midnight, Parker at the wheel, Lloyd said, "I want to thank you."

"Don't have to."

"After I screwed up, after I... shot that fellow, you had every right to take it out on me, or just walk away. We did need him, talk to him, I know we did. But you stayed, you put me back together again, and I want to thank you for it."

Parker shrugged, watching the trucks ahead. "We need you for the job," he said.