Firebreak

7

West of the Holland Tunnel, the Turnpike Extension rides high over the Jersey flats, where garbage and construction debris and used Broadway sets and failed mobsters have been buried for a hundred years. Arthur drove, with Parker and Rafe behind him on the backseat. Rafe had nothing to say until Arthur took one of the steep twisty ramps down from the Extension into the industrial wasteland of the flats. Then, not looking at Parker, he said, "I'd like to live through this."

"Everybody would," Parker told him.

The street they took south was flanked by warehouses and vast parking fields full of tractor trailers. There were no pedestrians in this part of the world, and almost no other traffic. Parker said, "Arthur, how far?"

'Ten minutes."

"Pull over at the next cross street."

Rafe blinked, but wouldn't look at Parker.

As the Volvo slowed, Parker said to Rafe, "Take off your shoes and socks."

"I'm not trouble to anybody," Rafe said, still looking straight ahead. Then, when Parker didn't answer, he stooped to take off the shoes and socks, saying, 'Just leave them on the floor?"

'Yes. Empty your pockets. Onto the floor."

Rafe did so, wallet and keys and coins and a penknife dropping down by his shoes.

Arthur had stopped the Volvo. Parker got out, on the curbside, and said, "Come out."

Rafe slid over and climbed out of the car. He looked very scared, and kept his eyes fixed on a point somewhere to Parker's right.

Parker said, "Walk somewhere."

Surprised he was going to stay alive, Rafe looked quickly at Parker's face, then down at his own bare feet, then started walking, stepping carefully, frowning down at the scarred broken concrete of the sidewalk.

Parker got into the front beside Arthur. "We'll be done before he calls anybody."

"Good," Arthur said. "I was afraid you wouldn't have an easy way." He put the car in gear and drove on south, Rafe picking his way slowly through the wasteland behind them.

It's called the Port of New York, but years ago most of the shipping businesses moved across the harbor to New Jersey, where the costs were lower and the regulations lighter. Newark, Elizabeth, Jersey City, and Bayonne are, along their waterfronts, a great sweeping tangle of piers, warehouses, gasoline storage towers, snaking rail lines, cranes, semi-tractor trailers, chain-link fences, guard shacks, and forklift trucks. Day and night, lights glare from the tops of tall poles and the corners of warehouses. Cargo ships ease up the channels and into the piers every hour of every day from every port in the world. The big trucks roll eastward from the Turnpike and the cargo planes lift from Newark International. The thousand thousand businesses here cover every need and every want known to man.

This was the home of Cosmopolitan Beverages, or at least the home of their legitimate business. On the roof of a broad three-story brick building a long time ago painted dull gray a sparkling red-and-gold neon sign read cosmopolitan in flowing script and, beneath that, beverages in smaller red block letters. The building stood alone, surrounded by frost-heaved concrete patched here and there with asphalt. Between the expanse of concrete and the equally choppy street stretched a chain-link fence across the front of the property, turning at right angles at both ends to stretch back toward the piers and Upper New York Bay. Gates in both front corners stood open, the one on the left leading to a mostly full parking area beside the building, the one on the right opening to a smaller and mostly empty space, with a sign on the fence near the gate reading visitor parking.

Arthur turned in at the visitors' gate, saying, "Same as last time?"

"No. I'll be Hargetty." Parker looked at Arthur's profile as the older man stopped the car near the front corner of the building. "You have any guns in this car?"

Arthur shook his head. "I've never owned a gun in my life," he said. "Fired rifles, a long time ago, in the army. Only at targets."

"If it turns bad," Parker told him, "drop flat and roll into a corner."

"And consign my soul to Jesus."

"If you want."

They got out of the car. "Don't lock it," Parker said, since Arthur was about to.

"Right," Arthur said.

The old concrete surrounding the building was like broken ice on a lake after a thaw and refreeze, but slicing through it in a straight line from visitors' parking across the facade to the main front entrance was a four-foot-wide swatch of newer uncracked concrete. They took this walk, Parker going first, and inside the revolving door was a broad reception area, a wide low black desk on a shiny black floor, with no other furniture. The rear wall was curved, shiny silver, as though they were inside a platinum egg. On that wall were mounted, in a random pattern, bottles of the different liquors the company imported, each in its own clear plastic box; beside each was displayed that brand's Christmas gift box.

The receptionist was a black man, thin, thirtyish, with a thick brush of a moustache that made the face behind it seem slighter, less important. He wore jeans and a

dark green polo shirt under a maroon blazer with CB in ornate gold letters on the pocket. He watched Parker and Arthur cross to him as though their existence were baffling but unimportant, as though the idea of 'Visitors" had never been tested here before.

Parker reached the desk and said, "Frank Meany."

The man nodded, nothing more.

Parker said, "We want to see him."

Finally the man had something to say: "Did you phone him?"

"Yeah, just a little while ago."

"And he said to come here,?"

"He didn't say I was supposed to talk to you, he said I was supposed to talk with him."

The man looked around, as though there should be somebody else here to discuss this situation with, but then he shrugged and turned away, reaching for his phone.

Parker waited, watching him make an interior call. The man spoke softly, but could be heard: "Some people here for Mr. Meany." A little pause, and, 'That's what they say." Another little pause, and, "I'll ask him." He turned to Parker: "Who are you?"

"Rafe Hargetty."

The man repeated the name into the phone, then said, "Okay," and sat back in his swivel chair, looking at nothing, tapping the eraser end of a pencil on his belt buckle.

Parker looked around. There was nothing in this reception area but the desk and the wall display and the indifferent man in his maroon Cosmopolitan jacket. There was no seating area for visitors, no magazines laid out. Cosmopolitan did make some effort to look like a normal business, but the effort was halfhearted. Possibly they didn't know that business visitors were normally given a place to sit and wait; certainly they didn't care.

In the silver wall, near the right corner, was an unobtrusive door, the same silver, which now opened and three men came out. Even before Arthur said, in a quick bark, "Frank," and the first one through the doorway frowned in this direction, Parker knew this must be Meany. He was tall and bulky, with a bruiser's round head of close-cropped hair that fists would slide off. He'd been dressed very carefully by a tailor, in a dark gray suit, plus pale blue dress shirt and pink-and-gold figured tie, to make him look less like a thug and more like a businessman, and it might have done a better job if the tailor'd been able to do something about that thick-jawed small-eyed face as well. The four heavy rings he wore, two on each hand, were not for decoration. He had a flat-footed walk, like a boxer coming out of his corner at the start of the round.

But the second man through the doorway drew Parker's attention almost as much. He was another thug, less imposing than Meany, dressed in chinos and blue workshirt with the sleeves rolled partway up. There were white bandages on his forehead, right ear, right cheek, and the backs of both hands. He was the guy who'd gone through Larry Lloyd's picture window.

Parker stepped closer to the desk, drawing the

Beretta, knowing it wasn't enough in this large space against three, but having nothing else. The bandaged thug was reaching toward his hip, and so was the third man, a carbon copy without the bandages. Arthur was backing away, startled, ready to drop and roll into a corner.

But Meany immediately held both arms out in front of himself, palms out, like a referee telling the teams the down is over. "Hold it!" he said, with the absolute assurance he'd be heard.

Everybody stopped. Parker waited to see what would happen, the Beretta just visible to them all above the desk.

Meany looked aside at his own people, to be sure they'd stopped, then looked at Parker and said, with impatience, "What are you gonna do with that Mattel toy? Give it to Norm, come on back to the office, we'll talk it over. You're Parker, aren't you?"

"Yes," Parker said.

"So we've got things to talk about," Meany told him, and the small eyes shifted. "Arthur, hello," he said. 'You might not believe this, but I'm glad to see you walkin around. Come on back, let's talk this over." He looked again at Parker: "Well?"

"I'll keep the toy," Parker said, and put the Beretta away.