Firebreak

3

"Mrs. Elkins?"

'Yes?" Wary, never knowing, when Frank was away, whether a phone call was good or bad.

"It's Parker." He'd never met the woman, but he'd left messages with her before.

'Yes?" Still wary; it could still be good or bad.

"Frank's on his way home," Parker told her.

"Good."

"Would you tell him my friends might drop in."

"Friends of yours?"

"He'll know," Parker said, and hung up, and went back to the Honda, where Lloyd was a pale disembodied face in the distant gas station lights. This was the same station where he'd talked with Elkins first, after getting rid of Charov, just a few miles from Claire's house, and it was three in the morning, the station closed.

Getting behind the wheel, he said, "We'll park at the lake, by one of the empty houses."

"A strange place to live," Lloyd said. "Where all the houses are empty."

There was nothing to say to that. Parker drove away from the gas station and up to the turn where the sign pointed to Colliver's Pond. He drove halfway from the turn toward Claire's house, then chose a driveway on the right leading up to one of the less desirable, less expensive houses without lake frontage.

Blank tan rectangles of plywood covering the windows stared down on them before Parker switched off the headlights. Most of the householders around here merely locked their places and went away at the end of each summer, but a few acted as though winter was the return of the Ice Age.

Parker and Lloyd walked along the road that circled the lake. There were no streetlights out here, so when the houses were empty the nights were very dark. A smallish moon low in the sky over their left shoulders helped them pick out the pavement of the roadway, and showed Parker the mailbox marked willis. Keeping his voice low, he said, "It's in there. I'll wait. Just don't go in the house."

"I don't have to. What electricity do you have on?"

"None. We shut it off at the box."

"Phone on?"

"Yes."

"Do you know where the service comes in?"

"Left corner, over the garage."

In his element now, playing with his machines, Lloyd was calm and confident. Taking a small device like a photographer's light meter from his pocket, he pressed the button on its side that made the dim light shine on the dial. Shielding that with one hand, he looked at the dial, turned the meter left and right, and said, "Something. Faint. Could be coming from in there. I won't be long."

Lloyd faded into the darkness of the driveway, under the trees, and Parker stood near the mailbox, watching the empty road. He remembered how smoothly and briskly Lloyd had done his work at Paxton Marino's lodge. If they could keep this other stress away from him, he'd be fine, but when he got emotional he was like a dog that needed to be shot.

Lloyd was back in less than ten minutes. "I guess there's something in there," he said, "but not sending, receiving. There's a signal coming in from down that way." Farther along the road.

'That's the base," Parker said. "Anybody opens that door, the camera will start to send. Can you find the base?"

"I should be able to," Lloyd said. "When we get nearer, the signal's going to be stronger. If we pass it, the signal will change, then get weaker."

"Good," Parker said.

Lloyd now carried a mini earphone, like ones used with cell phones, attached to that dial. Fixing it to his right ear, he started walking, slowly, listening to electricity in the night, while Parker walked beside him, watching, looking at the darkness, then seeing light ahead, amber light from the windows of a house on the lake.

Lloyd had seen it, too. "Not every house is empty," he said.

"There are some year-rounders," Parker agreed. "They're asleep now."

"This could be insomnia," Lloyd suggested. "But the signal is getting stronger."

Either the road was closer to the lake here or the house was set back farther from the shore, because it was more visible than Claire's house, nearer, through fewer trees. What looked like living room windows gleamed through the tree trunks on the left front of the low house, with darkness on the right. The driveway was farther left.

Lloyd said, "Should we go in?"

"No. Walk by, see if the signal changes."

"It's changing right now," Lloyd said. "This is where it's coming from."

The time for machinery was finished. "Wait here," Parker said. He backtracked to the next driveway, for the next house over, dark and silent. He walked down the driveway, then through the scrub and trees to the house with the lights.

This place didn't have a garage. The gravel driveway ended beside the house, with an older Volvo station wagon parked there. A side door with small windows in it led into a kitchen that he could see in lightspill from the doorway beyond.

He moved cautiously around the front of the house until he reached the first lit widow. Edging forward, he saw a doorway to the front hall, then a side wall with a low sofa surmounted by comical prints of fishermen, then the far wall, all windows for the view of the lake, and then, close to this window, a floor lamp with a yellow shade and, next to it, a man in a red tartan chair with wooden arms, reading a book.

Parker looked in at him in one-quarter profile, seeing a wrinkled but bony face and neck, silver-framed eyeglasses, a nearly bald head with some remaining thin white hair, a prominent pale ear, hard jawline, red-and-black flannel shirt. The hands holding the hardcover book were gnarled and big-knuckled.

There was no one else in the room. There was no indication of anybody else around. Parker moved away from the light, listened to the night, heard nothing he didn't expect. He walked past the lit windows to the front door, knocked on it, and took the pistol from his pocket.

When the man opened the door, Parker saw he had to be in his seventies at least, tall but stooped, thinner than he used to be. He looked at Parker with only mild curiosity, surprised that anyone could come around at such an hour, then saw the pistol, just there, not pointed at him or anywhere in particular, and he gave a startled jerk, moving back a pace, saying, "Good God!" Then he blinked at Parker, realized he was being neither shot nor directly threatened, and said, "Well— I suppose you're coming in."

Parker, staying outside the doorway, said, "Who else is here?"

"My wife," the man said, nodding toward the other end of the house. "She's asleep."

Parker turned and called, not loud, "Lloyd." Then he stepped into the house, saying to the man, "Leave it open."

"Whatever you say."

Parker stepped into the living room, saw no weapons anywhere, saw the book now closed with a marker in it on the chair the man had been sitting in, and saw the television set on the other side of the room, next to the kitchen doorway, facing the sofa. There were two boxes on top of it, one for cable and one for something else. The set would be visible from where the man sat in the chair.

Lloyd came in, looking curiously at the older man. "What's happening?"

"Close the door," Parker said. "He says he has a wife asleep here and nobody else. Get her up."

"I wish you wouldn't," the man said. He was reasonable, neither afraid nor belligerent.

Parker looked at him, waiting.

The man said, "She has diabetes, among other things. She needs a regular pattern in her life."

"So she watches by day and you watch by night, is that it?"

The man smiled, as though at himself, and shook his head. "Of course that's who you are," he said. "Yes, that's what we do. But you can leave her out of it."

"I don't think so." Parker turned to Lloyd, pointing at the extra box on top of the television set. "Is that it?"

"It should be," Lloyd said. He went over to look at the box without touching it. "Yes, this is it."

Parker turned back to the man. "You want to get your wife yourself? Lloyd will go with you."

"It really isn't necessary," the man said. "I'll tell you what I know, and she knows less than I do. I'm prepared to cooperate, but I'd like you to bend just a little here. My wife's a sound sleeper, she'll never know you were even in the house."

Parker considered. Having him calm and talking was better, if possible. He said, "Is there a phone in the bedroom?"

"Yes."

To Lloyd, Parker said, "Go get it. If she wakes up, bring her along. If not, leave her there."

"Thank you," the man said, and to Lloyd, "It's the second door on the left."

Lloyd went through the hallway, and Parker said, "Any other phones in the house, besides that one?" Pointing at the phone on the round table to the left of where the man had been reading.

"In the kitchen, that's all."

Lloyd came back with a phone in his hand. "Snoring," he said, and put the phone down.

The man said, "That embarrasses her, but she can't stop. It's made it easier for me to be a night owl."

Parker said to Lloyd, "Did you look around?"

"No other people," Lloyd said, "and no other phones."

"Good." To the man, Parker said, "You're waiting for something to show on the television."

"That's right."

"What?"

"A living room," the man said. "It's in a house about a quarter mile down that way."

"What are you supposed to do when it comes on?"

"That depends," the man said, "If it's the cleaning lady, which it has been once, then I merely push the off button on the box and it shuts itself off. If it's you, on the other hand—"

Parker said, 'They showed you a picture of me?"

"No, a verbal description," the man said, "but accurate. A big man, hard but shaggy, with brown flat hair. They particularly mentioned the long arms and large hands, with prominent veins."

"All right. What are you supposed to do if it's me?"

"There's a phone number I'm to call, let it ring twice, hang up. Then Marie and I are to pack and go home and they'll send us a check for the rest of the money."

"Where's this phone number?"

The man pointed at the table next to where he'd been reading. "Over there, under the phone."

Parker went over, moved the phone, found a small square of white paper beneath it from a Marriott Hotel memo pad. A seven-digit number was on the paper, nothing else. He said, "What area code?"

"None," the man said. "It's a local call."

Parker frowned. He didn't like that. Moving away from the table, leaving the paper out next to the phone, he said, "Sit down again, where you were."

"All right." He went over to pick up his book, then sit. With a small rueful smile, he said, "I don't believe I'll read," and put the book on the floor on the other side from the phone table.

Parker stood in the middle of the room, looking around, thinking. Lloyd watched him, then said, "What's wrong?"

"Don't know yet."

It should be the shooter here, not a watchdog. They're waiting for Parker to come home, walk into his house. The minute the camera sees him, the shooter should be on his way. But they do this thing instead, hire some couple to make a homey look, an extra phone call to a shooter somewhere nearby, but why? Why isn't the shooter the one looking at the television set?

Parker pointed to the sofa, and told Lloyd, "Sit there. Listen for the wife. Or anything else."

"You don't like this setup, do you?" Lloyd asked.

Parker crossed to the kitchen, took a wooden chair from there, brought it back to the living room, placed it where he could sit in front of the man but off-center, so Lloyd could still see them both. He said, "Tell me your name."

"Hembridge. Arthur."

"Arthur or Art?"

Another rueful smile. "I used to be Art. I seem to be Arthur these days."

"You took a strange job here, Arthur," Parker said.

"I don't get much of anything to do any more," Arthur said. "It's good to have a little extra in your kick."

"How come it's your job? Who hired you?"

"Fella I used to know in my working days," Arthur said.

"Where did you work, Arthur?"

Arthur leaned back, thoughtful, looking from Parker to Lloyd and back to Parker. "I don't believe I know you two," he said.

Parker said, "You worked on the wrong side of the law."

"Maybe we could leave it at that," Arthur said.

"This fella— You still in touch with him?"

"Hadn't heard from him in eight years."

"Gives you a call, offers you a job, money's good enough but not great, you aren't doing anything else, the wife says it might make a nice change, you say okay."

"That's about it."

'This fella isn't a close friend," Parker suggested.

Arthur shrugged. "We always got along. Never close, you know."

"I know." Parker leaned forward, elbows on knees, watching Arthur's face. "When you left to come out here," he said, "this fella gave you something you

were supposed to leave behind, for the people who'd take over after you made the phone call."

Arthur frowned at him. "I don't know where you're heading here," he said.

Parker leaned back. "Did they tell you what the surveillance was for?"

"A fella used to be with them," Arthur said, "they think flipped for Customs, then he disappeared. They want to know what he gave them, what they have to change."

"Talk to him. That what you believe?"

Arthur shook his head. "I don't know what's likely to happen after the conversation," he said. "That's not my department. But I believe it starts with talk, yes, so they know what their exposure is. Maybe it all turns out to be a misunderstanding, no problem after all." Arthur spread his hands, beginning to look baffled. "It's you we're talking about, after all," he said. "Don't you know what's going on?"

"I'm beginning to," Parker said. "I never worked for or with these friends of yours, Arthur. I don't have anything to do with Customs. These people have a contract out on me, a straight hit. So somewhere around here there's a shooter, waiting for your call. Right?"

"If it's just a contract," Arthur said, "then, sure, I suppose there is."

" You were never a hit man."

"Good God, no!"

"I didn't think so," Parker said. "So the shooter's somebody else. But why isn't he in this room, watching that TV?"

"Well, you would have found him, wouldn't you," Arthur said, "about five minutes ago."

"Arthur," Parker said, "he isn't here because you are it. When you dial that number, there's a house about a quarter mile from here that blows up."

Lloyd said, "Of course! That's the way to do it."

"How would you feel, Arthur," Parker asked him, "if you were watching the TV and dialing the number and that house blew up, close enough to wake your wife?"

"That wasn't the deal," Arthur said. He looked offended. "Right in the neighborhood? The cops could be on me, first thing you know."

"You know them," Parker said, "but you're not tight with them. They don't have to waste some useful guy's time here, they can just leave you and your wife in this house they rented in your name, and if I never do come home then after a while they pay you off and that's the end of it. But if I do come home, and you see me, and you dial that number, and you see and hear the house go up, why would they want to keep you around?"

Arthur watched him, eyes wide and jaw clenched.

Parker said, "Let's have a look at that package, Arthur, the one you were supposed to not open, just leave behind here after you go away."