Flashfire

1

When the dashboard clock read 2:40, Parker drove out of the drugstore parking lot and across the sunlit road to the convenience store/gas station. He stopped beside the pumps, the only car here, hit the button to pop the trunk lid, and got out of the car. A bright day in July, temperature in the low seventies, a moderate-sized town not two hundred miles from Omaha, a few shoppers driving past in both directions. A dozen blocks away, Melander and Carlson and Ross would be just entering the bank.

The car, a forgettable dark gray Honda Accord, took nine point seven two gallons of gasoline. The thin white surgical gloves he wore as he pumped the gas looked like pale skin.

When the tank was full, he screwed the gas cap back on and opened the trunk. Inside were some old rags and an empty glass one-point-seven-five-liter jug of Jim Beam bourbon. He filled the bottle with gasoline, then stuffed one of the rags into the top, lit the rag with a Zippo lighter, and heaved the bottle overhand through the plate-glass window of the convenience store. Then he got into the Honda and drove away, observing the speed limit.

2:47. Parker made the right turn onto Tulip Street. Back at the bank, Ross would be controlling the customers and employees, while Melander and Carlson loaded the black plastic trash bags with cash. Farther downtown, the local fire company would be responding to the explosion and fire with two pumpers, big red beasts pushing out of their red brick firehouse like aggravated dinosaurs.

The white Bronco was against the curb where Parker had left it, in front of a house with a For Sale sign on the lawn and all the shades drawn. Parker pulled into the driveway there, left the Honda, and walked to the Bronco. At this point, Melander and Ross would have the bags of money by the door, the civilians all facedown on the floor behind the counter, while Carlson went for their car, their very special car, just around the corner.

When there‘s an important fire, the fire department responds with pumpers or hook and ladders, but also responds with the captain in his own vehicle, usually a station wagon or sports utility truck, painted the same cherry red as the fire engines, mounted with red flashing light and howling siren. Last night, Parker and the others had taken such a station wagon from a town a hundred miles from here, and now Carlson would be getting behind the wheel of it, waiting for the fire engines to race by.

Parker slid into the Bronco, peeled off the surgical gloves, and stuffed them into his pants pocket. Then he started the engine and drove two blocks closer to where he‘d started, parking now in front of a weedy vacant lot. Near the bank, the fire engines would be screaming by, and Carlson would bring the station wagon out fast in their wake, stopping in front of the bank as Melander and Ross came running out with the full plastic bags.

Parker switched the scanner in the Bronco to the local police frequency and listened to all the official manpower in town ordered to the convenience store on the double. They’d all be coming now, fire engines, ambulances, police vehicles; and the fire captain’s station wagon, its own siren screaming and red dome light spinning in hysterics.

2:53 by this new dashboard clock. It should be now. Parker looked in the rearview mirror, and the station wagon, as red as a firecracker in all this sunlight, came modestly around the corner back there, its lights and siren off.

Parker wasn’t the driver; Carlson was. Leaving the Bronco engine on, he stepped out of it and went around to open the luggage door at the back, as the captain’s car stopped beside him. A happy Melander in the back seat handed out four plastic bags bulging with paper, and Parker tossed them in the back. Then Carlson drove ahead to park in front of the Bronco while Parker shut the luggage door and got into the back seat, on the street side.

Ahead, the three were getting out of the captain’s car, stripping off the black cowboy hats and long tan dusters and white surgical gloves they’d worn on the job, to make them all look alike for the eyewitnesses later. They tossed all that into the back seat of the station wagon, then came trotting this way. They were all grinning, like big kids. When the job goes right, everybody’s up, everybody’s young, everybody’s a little giddy. When the job goes wrong, everybody’s old and nobody’s happy.

Carlson got behind the wheel, Melander beside him, Ross in back with Parker. Ross was a squirrelly short guy with skin like dry leather; when he grinned, like now, his face looked like a khaki road map. “We havin’ fun yet?” he asked, and Carlson put the Bronco in gear.

Parker said, as they drove deeper into town, “I guess everything went okay in there.”

“You’d have thought,” Carlson told him, “they’d rehearsed it.”

Melander, a brawny guy with a large head piled with wavy black hair, twisted around in his seat to grin back at Parker and say, “Move away from the alarm; they move away from the alarm. Put your hands on your head; they put their hands on their heads.”

Carlson, with a quick glance at Parker in the rearview mirror, said, “Facedown on the floor; guess what?”

Ross finished, “We didn’t even have to say, ‘Simon says.’”

Carlson took the right onto Hyacinth. It looked like just another residential cross street, but where all the others stopped at or before the city line, this one went on to become a county route through farmland that eventually linked up with a state road that soon after that met an interstate. By the time the law back in town finished sorting out the fire from the robbery, trying to guess which way the bandits had gone, the Bronco would be doing seventy, headed east.

Like most drivers, Carlson was skinny. He was also a little edgy-looking, with jug ears. Grinning again at Parker in the mirror, he said, “That was some campfire you lit.”

“It attracted attention,” Parker agreed.

Ross, his big smile aimed at the backs of the heads in front of him, said, “Boyd? Hal? Are we happy?”

Melander twisted around again. “Sure,” he said, and Carlson said, “Tell him.”

Parker said, “Tell him? Tell me?” What was wrong here? His piece was inside his shirt, but this was a bad position to operate from. “Tell me what?” he said, thinking, Carlson would have to be taken out first. The driver.

But Ross wasn’t acting like he was a threat; none of them were. His smile still big, Ross said, “We had to know if we were gonna get along with you. And we had to know if you were gonna get along with us. But now we all think it’s okay, if you think it’s okay. So what I’m gonna do is tell you about the job.”

Parker looked at him. “We just did the job,” he said.

“Not that,” Ross said, dismissing the bank job with a wave of the hand. “That wasn’t the job. You know what that was? That was the financing for the job.”

“The job,” Melander added, “the real job, is not nickel-dime. Not like this.”

“The real job,” Ross said, “is worthy of our talents.”

Parker looked from one to another. He didn’t know these people. Was this something, or was it smoke and mirrors? Was this what Hurley had almost but not quite mentioned? “I think,” he said, “you ought to tell me about the job.”

2

It had started with a phone call, through a cutout. Parker returned the call from a pay phone and recognized Tom Hurley’s voice when he said, “You busy?”

“Not in particular,” Parker said. “How’s the wing?” Because the last time they’d been together, in a town called Tyler, Hurley had wound up shot in the arm and had been taken out of the action by a friend of his named Dalesia.

Hurley laughed, not as though he was amused but as though he was angry. “Fucked me a little,” he said. “I feel it in cold weather.”

“Stay where it’s warm.”

“That’s what I’m doing. In fact, that’s why I’m calling.”

Parker waited. After a little dead air, Hurley did his laugh again and said, “You never were much for small talk.”

Parker waited. After a shorter pause, Hurley cleared his throat and said, “It’s a thing with some people I don’t think you know.”

“I know you.”

“Well, that’s just it, I won’t be there. If you want it, you’re taking my place.”

“Why?”

“I got a better something come up, offshore. I’m fixing to be a beachcomber. A rich beachcomber.”

“Because of the arm,” Parker suggested.

‘That, too,” Hurley agreed. “These three are good boys. They know how to count at the end of the day, you know what I mean.”

Parker knew what he meant; they wouldn’t try to hog it all, at the end of the day. He said, “Why don’t I know them? They civilians?”

“No, they just work different places, different people, you know how it is. But then, it could pan out with them, and then you know them, and who knows.”

“Who knows what?”

“What happens next,” Hurley said.

Letting that go, Parker said, “Where are they now?”

“They move around, like people do,” Hurley told him. “Lately, they’re based around the Northwest somewhere, or maybe Vancouver. Over there someplace.”

“Is that where this thing is?”

“No, they like to work away from home.”

So did Parker. He said, “Not around me.”

“No, in the Midwest, one of those flat states out there. I told them about you. If you’re interested I’ll give you a number.”

So one thing led to another, and here he was in the back of the Bronco with Melander and Carlson and Ross, and after all he was going to be told the who-knows that Hurley hadn’t wanted to talk about.

3

“It’s jewelry,” Ross said.

Parker wasn’t impressed. “That’s a dime on the dollar, if you’re lucky.”

“That’s right,” Ross said, “that’s what we’ll get.”

Melander said, “We got three buyers, ready to go. That’s what they all give us.”

Parker said, “Three?”

“There’s too much for one fence,” Ross explained.

Parker was beginning to get interested. “What are we talking about here?”

Carlson steered them up onto the interstate ramp as Ross said, “Four of us will walk home—”

“Ride home,” Melander corrected him. “In a limo.”

“Right,” Ross agreed. “Four of us will ride home with three hundred grand apiece.”

Parker looked from Ross to Melander and back. They both seemed serious, if happy. Nobody in the car was taking any mood changers. He said, “This is twelve million in jewelry?”

“That’s the floor,” Ross said. “That’s the appraisal. It’s a charity sale. If we let it alone, it’ll go higher, but what we’ll get is the floor.”

“A charity sale. Where?”

“Palm Beach,” Ross said.

Parker shook his head. “Deal me out.”

Ross said, “You don’t want to listen to the job?”

“I just heard the job,” Parker told him. “Twelve million in jewelry all in one place draws a lot of attention. Cops, private cops, guards, sentries, probably dogs, definitely helicopters, metal-detecting machines, all of that. Then you put it in Palm Beach, which has more police per square inch than anywhere else on earth. They’re all rich in Palm Beach, and they all want to stay that way. And besides that, it’s an island, with three narrow bridges, they can seal that place like it’s shrink-wrap.”

“All of this is true,” Ross said. “But we got a way in, and we got a way at, and we got a way out.”

“Then I still know the job,” Parker told him, “and I still don’t want it.”

Melander said, “Just out of curiosity, why?”

“Because to even think about doing your job,” Parker told him, “and to do it in Palm Beach, there’s two things you got to have. One is the insider, who’s the amateur, who’s gonna bring you down. And the other is a boat, which is the only way off the island, and which is even worse than an island, because there’s no way off a boat.”

Ross said, “That’s yes and no. We got the insider, that’s true, but he’s before the job. He’s nowhere near Palm Beach on the day, and he’s not exactly an amateur.”

Melander said, “He’s one of our buyers, we worked with him before.”

“What he is,” Ross said, “he’s an art appraiser, estate appraiser, he tells you what the paintings are worth, what the rugs are worth, what the jewelry is worth, for the taxes and the heirs.”

Keeping his eyes on the road, Carlson said, “He has a little trouble with nose powder, so he needs extra money. But he doesn’t let it make him a problem, at least not for us.”

“What his occupation is,” Melander said, “he spends his life casing the joint.”

“Then he tips off you guys,” Parker said.

“Right.”

“And then you go in and take out the best stuff. And how long before somebody notices, when this guy does the appraisal, step two is a robbery?”

“We don’t do it that way,” Ross told him. “Our agreement is, we never touch a thing until at least two years after he’s been and gone. And this time, the Palm Beach, he wasn’t one of the appraisers.”

“He gets access to the appraisals,” Melander added, “like anybody else in the business.”

“He’s done other stuff in Palm Beach,” Ross said, “so he knows the place, he knows the routine, he knows everything about it, but he isn’t one of the people that looked at this particular bunch of jewels.”

Melander said, “He’s moved in that territory, but on different estates, different evaluations.”

“If they’re looking for an insider,” Ross said, “they won’t look at him, because he wasn’t inside.”

“Possibly,” Parker said. “What about the boat?”

“No boat,” Melander assured him. “I a hundred percent agree with you about boats.”

“Then how do you get off the island?”

“We don’t,” Ross said.

“You stay there? Where? You know, you rent a condominium, the cops are gonna look at recent rentals.”

“Not a condominium,” Ross said.

“Then where?”

“At my place,” Melander said, and grinned like a bear.

Parker tried to see around corners, but couldn’t, not quite. “You’ve got a place there?”

“It’s fifteen rooms,” Melander told him, “on the beach. I think you’ll like it.”

“You’ve got a fifteen-room mansion on the beach in Palm Beach,” Parker said. “How does this happen?”

“Well, I looked at it a few weeks ago,” Melander said.

“But he’s just buying it today,” Ross said. “We got the down payment from that bank back there.”

4

The motel, and the car Parker would be using, was in Evansville. When they got there, while Melander and Ross counted the money on the bed, Carlson and Parker sat in the room’s two chairs, across the round table from one another, and Carlson told him more. “The mansion is cheap. I mean, for a mansion in Palm Beach.”

“Why?”

“It was sold maybe eight years ago to this movie star couple, you know, he’s a star and she’s a star, so when they make a picture, he gets twenty million, she gets ten million—”

From the bed, Melander said, “Still not equal pay, you see that?”

Carlson and Parker both ignored him, Carlson saying, “They bought the place, they thought they’d be stars in Palm Beach, but Palm Beach ignored them. They’re stars, but they’re trash, and in Palm Beach you can’t be trash. Or, if you are trash, you hide it, and you spread your money around.”

“Charities,” Melander said.

“They love charities in Palm Beach,” Carlson agreed. “But these stars didn’t do it right. They thought they were already entitled. They threw big flashy parties, they brought in rock bands, for Christ’s sake, and nobody came.”

“Well, a lot of people went to those parties,” Ross said.

Carlson said, “Not the right people. Also, the parties were playing hell with the house, messing it up. Then the stars went away to be stars someplace else—”

“Where stars are looked up to,” Melander said.

“So the house was abandoned,” Carlson said, “and the alarm systems would break down all the time, and bums would sneak in there from the beach, and they had a couple little fires, and the cops finally said, we can’t keep a man on this house twenty-four hours a day, you got to put in your own security patrol, and the stars said fuck it, and put it on the market.”

Laughing, Melander said, “A fixer-upper for sale in Palm Beach. A do-it-yourselfer.”

“These stars couldn’t do anything right,” Carlson said. “If they do the fix-up, they make a lot more money when they sell the place. But they’re not interested, they’re off somewheres else, and the house sits there until Boyd comes along.”

Melander got off the bed and took a stance, shoulders squared, big body relaxed, big smile, big wavy hair framing his head. He said, in a strong Texas accent, “I do like this little town you got here, I’d like to contribute if I could, make it even better. I like that ocean you got, you know, it’s bigger than the Gulf, I like the idea of that whole ocean out there and then Europe on the other side, not Mexico. Not that I have anything against Mexicans, hardworking little fellas, most of them.”

Melander sat down to the money again while a grinning Carlson said to Parker, “Boyd can fit right in. And with all that oil money in his family, he’ll fix up that mansion good as new. Better. And when he’s got the house all done, he wants to host the big library benefit there.”

Parker nodded. “All right, he can be plausible,” he said.

Carlson looked pleased. “So you’re in?”

“No,” Parker said.

All three were disappointed, gazing at him as though he’d let them down in some unexpected way. Carlson said, “Could I ask why?”

‘You’ve got a place to stay,” Parker said. “If I ask, you’ll tell me how the mansion won’t trace back to any of you after it’s all over.”

“Sure,” Carlson said.

“But that isn’t the job,” Parker told him. “That’s nothing but the safe house. The job is still a whole lot of jewelry, twelve million dollars’ worth of jewelry, completely surrounded by people with weapons who don’t want you to get your hands on it. From this idea today — blow up something a little farther out of town as a distraction — I can see you guys like to be gaudy. That’s fine, fires and explosions have their place, but I think you mean to be gaudy in Palm Beach, and it won’t work out for you any better than it did for the movie stars.”

Carlson wanted to say something, but Parker held up his hand. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “I’m not in this, so I don’t want to know what the plan is, and you don’t want me to know.”

The three of them looked at one another. Parker watched them, waiting to see what his move should be, but nobody seemed ready to offer any threat. At last, Carlson said, “How’s the count coming?”

“Done,” Ross said. “Eighty-five and change.”

“That’s short,” Carlson said.

Melander said, “Well, we knew it could be.”

Carlson turned back to Parker. “The down payment on the place is a hundred grand. It was higher, but Boyd haggled them down to that, but that’s it, rock bottom. Two days from now, this cash here is gonna be an electronic impulse out of a bank in Austin, but it isn’t enough. As it is, we’re gonna have to borrow black to top it up.”

Parker waited.

From the bed, Ross said, “You see how it is. We gotta borrow fifteen, that means we gotta pay back thirty. Man, if we give you your” — he consulted a slip of paper on the bed in front of himself — “twenty-one thousand three hundred nineteen bucks, we’re gonna have to borrow almost forty, that’s a payback eighty, that begins to cut in.”

“Also,” Carlson said, being very reasonable about it all, “we still need a fourth man, the way we got it set up, so somebody has to get that fourth share. That’s why we want it to be you.”

“No,” Parker said.

Again they looked at one another, and again Parker waited for them to make a move, but again it didn’t happen. Melander simply said, “He isn’t gonna change his mind.”

“Well, that’s a bitch,” Carlson said.

Melander said, “We knew it could happen.”

“Still.”

Meanwhile, Ross was counting out a little stack of money onto the bed while Carlson got to his feet and crossed over to the closet. Opening the closet door, he pulled out two of the three suitcases in there, leaving Parker’s. Ross got off the bed and came over to hand the little stack of cash to Parker, saying, “Sorry it didn’t work out. We’ll catch up with you later.”

Parker looked at the money, and it wasn’t enough, nowhere near enough. He said, “What’s this?”

“Ten percent,” Ross told him. ‘Just over two grand. When we’re done in Palm, you’ll get the full amount, so this is like interest on the loan.”

“I’m not loaning you anything,” Parker said.

Melander and Carlson were stuffing the rest of the cash into the two suitcases. Melander said, “I’m afraid you got to, pal. You don’t have a choice, and we don’t have a choice.”

Ross showed Parker a pistol but didn’t exactly point it at him. “You shouldn’t stand up,” he said, “and you shouldn’t move your hands off the table.”

Parker said, “Tom Hurley told me you guys weren’t hijackers.”

“We aren’t hijackers,” Ross said with simple sincerity. “You’ll get your money. The job goes down two months from now, and then the money’s yours. With interest.”

Melander said, “Pal, I’m sorry we got to act this way, but what’s our choice? We thought you’d come in with us, and then everything’d be fine. I’m sorry you feel the way you do, but there it is.”

Carlson said, ‘You can count on us to pay you. I never stiffed another mechanic in my life.”

You’re stiffing me now, Parker thought, but what was the point talking?

The three exchanged glances, as though they thought there might be something more to say, and then Melander turned to Parker and spread his hands: “You know where we’re going.”

“Palm Beach.”

“If we were hijackers, we’d kill you now.”

The only thing to do, Parker thought, and waited.

Carlson said, “But that isn’t our style.”

Then you’re dead, Parker thought, and waited.

Melander said, “It’s just, we’d like you to stay at home the next couple months. We’ll phone you sometimes, we’d like to know you’re there.”

Parker shrugged. There was nothing to say to these people.

Apparently, they now themselves thought they’d said enough. They moved toward the door, Ross putting the pistol away, and left, not looking back at him.

Parker sat there, hands palm-down on the table, little stack of bills between his hands. His money was gone, about to become an electronic impulse in Texas. This wasn’t what it was supposed to be, and it wasn’t what it was going to be.

He got to his feet, and crossed to the phone, and called Claire, at the house up in New Jersey. When she answered, without identifying himself he said, “You remember that hotel with the shark scare,” meaning a place they’d stayed once in Miami Beach.

“Yes.”

“Go there for a couple months, I’ll call you.”

“Now?”

“You can wait a couple days, till the phone rings, but don’t answer,” he said, and hung up.

5

He was starting from Evansville, and he had two months to get to Palm Beach. In that time, there would be preparations to make, and preparations cost money. So what he had to do, most of the time, for the next month and a half, was collect money.

Cash is harder to find than it used to be. There are no cash payrolls. Stadium box offices, travel agents, department stores, all deal mostly in credit cards. An armored car can’t be taken down by one man working alone. A bank can be taken by a single-O, but all he gets is what’s in one teller’s cage, which isn’t enough for the risk. So it’s hard to find cash, in useful amounts. But it isn’t impossible.

What he had, including the “interest” his three former partners had given him, was a little over three thousand dollars in cash. The car he was driving, a tan Ford Taurus with Oklahoma plates, was clean enough for a traffic stop, not clean enough for an in-depth study of the paperwork. Clipped under the dash of the Taurus, to the right of the steering wheel column, was a.38 Special Colt Cobra, while under his shirt on the left side, in a narrow suede holster, was a Hi-Standard snub-nose Sentinel .22, useless unless the target is within arm’s reach. He also had a few changes of clothing of utilitarian type, to make him look like somebody who works with his hands, and that was it.

What he needed first was better guns, then more money, then better clothing and luggage, then better wheels. He needed to change his appearance, too, not for the three guys he was going to kill but for the Palm Beach police; he needed to be somebody who wouldn’t make the law look twice.

Melander had paid for this motel room with a credit card that would probably self-destruct by tomorrow, so the first thing to do was get out of here. Parker carried his bag, lighter than it should have been, out to the Taurus. Five minutes later he was on Interstate 164, headed south into Kentucky.

Throughout the South, there are more gun stores out along the state highways than there are in downtowns or shopping malls, and there’s a number of reasons for that. The stores need good parking areas, they don’t want to have to deal with antsy neighbors or troublesome landlords or the wrong kind of pedestrian traffic, and most of their customers are rural rather than urban.

So the stores are in the country, but they aren’t countrified. They have first-rate security, with solid locks, burglar alarms wired to the nearest state police barracks, shatterproof glass in their display windows, iron bars, and some even have motion sensors.

Parker chose a place called “A-Betta-Deala — GUNS,” mostly because it didn’t have a dog. It was a broad one-story building beside a state road in central Kentucky, with its name in red letters on a huge white sign on the roof. Flanking the barred and gated double front doors were two wide display windows on either side, three of them featuring rifles and shotguns, the fourth showing handguns.

Two and a quarter miles to the south of the gun shop was the garage and storage lot of the County Highway Department, and four miles beyond that was the nearest state police barracks. Parker left the Taurus at the side of A-Betta-Deala at quarter after three in the morning, where it wouldn’t be readily noticed from the road. Then he walked the two and a quarter miles south along the hilly, curvy road through mostly scrub forest. The four times he saw headlights coming, he stepped off the road into the trees until the vehicle went past.

There was much less security at the Highway Department garage; just a bolted chain to keep closed the two sides of the chain-link gate. First putting on the surgical gloves, Parker climbed over the gate and found his way in the darkness to a yellow Caterpillar backhoe with a four-foot-wide bucket. Briefly using his pencil flash, he found the number painted on the side of the cab, then went over to the garage. The side door had a simple lock and no alarm system; he went through it, and used the pencil flash to find the locked plywood cabinet on the wall where the keys were kept. A nearby shovel made a good lever; he popped the cabinet door open and found the backhoe key. He also picked up a yellow hard hat to wear, to look legitimate, then went back outside.

The backhoe was loud but powerful. He had to back it out of its parking space, and it went ping ping ping until he shifted into Drive. Then he swung it around, extended the bucket, rotated it so the open part was facing rearward, and drove it through the locked gate.

The machine’s top speed was around twenty miles an hour, and it didn’t like to do that much on curves. It took eleven minutes to drive back north to A-Betta-Deala. In that time, one pickup passed, headed south, loud country music trailing from its open windows.

There were no headlights visible up or down the road when Parker reached the gun shop. Without pausing, he angled the bucket with the maw forward and down, then drove directly into the window displaying the handguns. He rotated the bucket, scooping up the window and everything in it, then backed away from the building while the backhoe pinged some more. Clear of the building, which was now screaming a high-pitched alarm wail, he rotated the bucket to spill everything onto the blacktop parking lot, then shut off the backhoe’s motor, took off the hard hat, climbed down from the cab, and picked through the rubble, shining the pencil flash. He chose four pistols, went away to the Taurus, put the handguns under a motel blanket on the back seat, stripped off the gloves, and drove north, away from the gun shop, the Highway Department garage, and the state police.

6

Six days later, in Nashville, at eight-thirty in the morning, Parker sat in the Taurus on Orange Street, across the way and up the block from AAAAcme Check Cashing. The place wasn’t open yet, so all that showed on the ground floor of the narrow three-story building, one of a row of similar structures along here, was the gray metal of the articulated grille that was drawn down over the facade at night. Once that was raised, the storefront was merely a small-windowed metal door in the middle of a brick wall, with a small wide window high on each side, both windows containing red neon signs that said “Checks Cashed.”

This was Parker’s fourth morning here, and he now was sure of AAAAcme’s opening routine. The business hours of the place were nine A.M. to six P.M., Monday through Saturday. At about eight forty-five every morning, a red Jeep Cherokee would pull up to the store with two men in the front seat. The driver, a bulky guy in a windbreaker no matter how warm the weather, suggesting a bulletproof vest underneath, would get out of the Cherokee, look carefully around, and cross to unlock and lift the metal grille. Then he’d unlock and open the front door, and stand holding it open, looking up and down the street. The other man, also bulky and in a wind-breaker, would get out of the Jeep, open its rear door, take out two heavy metal boxes with metal handles on the tops, and trudge them across the sidewalk and into the store. The first man would let the door close, then go back to the Jeep, shut the rear door his partner had left open, and drive half a block to a private parking lot reserved for the bailsmen, pawnshop owners, used musical instrument dealers, liquor store owners, dentists, and passport photographers who ran businesses in the neighborhood. After parking the Jeep in its labeled spot, he’d walk back to the store, knock, and be let in. Fifteen minutes later they’d open for business.

This was more of a late-night than an early-morning neighborhood. There was almost no traffic at this time of day, rarely a pedestrian until midmorning. The three days Parker’d watched, AAAAcme hadn’t had a customer before nine-thirty, so their opening time must be merely a long-standing habit.

This morning, the routine was the same as ever. Seeing the Cherokee approach in his rearview mirror, Parker got out of the Taurus, made a show of locking it, and walked down the street toward AAAAcme. The Cherokee passed him and stopped at the curb, and he walked by between Cherokee and storefront. He continued to walk, pacing himself to the normal speed of their movements behind him, and the Cherokee passed him again just before he got to the entrance of the parking lot.

Today he was dressed in a gray sweatshirt over black chinos. The Sentinel was in the right pants pocket, and a Colt.45 from Kentucky was tucked into the front of the chinos under the sweatshirt. Turning in at the entrance to the parking lot, he put his hand in his right pocket.

The driver was getting out of the Cherokee. He gave Parker an incurious look, turned to lock the Cherokee, and Parker stepped rapidly toward him, taking the Sentinel out of his pocket, holding it straight-armed in front of himself, aiming as he moved. He fired once, and the .22 cartridge punched through the meat of the driver’s left leg, halfway between knee and hip, then went on to crack into the door panel of the Cherokee, leaving a starred black dent.

The driver sagged, astonished, falling against the Cherokee, staring over his shoulder at Parker: “What? What?”

Parker stepped very close, showing him the Sentinel. “I shot you,” he said. “The vest doesn’t cover the leg. It doesn’t cover the eye, either. You want one in the eye?”

“Who the fuck are you?” The driver was in shock, the blood drained from his face. He pawed at his left leg.

Parker held the Sentinel close to his face. “Answer me.”

“What’d I do to you? I don’t even know you!”

“I’m robbing you,” Parker told him.

“Jesus! You want my — oh, my God!” he cried, staring at his blood-red hand. “For a fucking wallet?”

“The store,” Parker said. “We’ll go there, and we’ll go in together.”

“My partner—”

“Will do what you tell him. You do right, in a few minutes you’re on your way to the hospital. You do wrong, in a few minutes you’re on your way to the morgue.”

The driver panted, trying to catch up, get his wits about him. “They’ll get you, you know,” he said.

“So don’t sweat it,” Parker told him. “It’s only money, you’re insured, and they’ll get me. Let’s go.”

“I can’t walk.”

“Then you’re no good to me,” Parker said, and brought the Sentinel up to his face again.

“I’ll try!”

He could walk, with a limp. He kept looking at his red hand, in disbelief. “This is crazy,” he said. “You don’t just shoot people.”

“Yes, I do,” Parker said. “What’s your name?”

The driver blinked at him, bewildered again. “What?”

“Your name.”

“Bancroft. Why, what’s—”

“Your first name.”

“Jack. John — Jack, people call me Jack.”

“Okay, Jack. What’s your partner’s name?”

“First?”

“First.”

“Oliver.”

“Ollie?”

“No, he’s no Ollie, he’s Oliver.”

They were approaching the shopfront. Parker said, “Tell him, ‘I’m shot, this man helped.’ Nothing else. Show him your hand.”

Jack nodded. He was panting pretty badly, limping more. His face was still ashen.

As they reached the shopfront, Parker put the Sentinel away and took out the Colt. Jack knocked on the glass in the door, and it was opened partway by Oliver, who stopped abruptly with the door less than a foot open when he saw Parker. He said, ‘Jack?”

Jack held up his red hand. “I was shot, Oliver, this man helped.” He gestured at his leg.

“What?” Oliver looked at Jack’s trouser leg, now wet with blood. “Jesus Christ!”

Oliver backed away, and Jack limped in, Parker following, shutting the door behind himself, pushing Jack to one side, showing Oliver the Colt. “Oliver, don’t move,” he said.

Oliver looked tough and angry, but he hadn’t been shot. “You son of a bitch, you—”

He was starting to make a move when Jack called, “He knows about the vests!”

Oliver stopped, frowning at his partner.

“That’s right,” Parker said. “Your chest is safe from me. Oliver, help Jack to lie on the floor, facedown.”

Oliver hesitated. Jack said, “Oliver, I’m hurting. Get this over with, let the cops have it.”

Oliver nodded. He told Parker, “They’ll get you, you know.”

“Jack already told me. Move, Oliver.”

Oliver helped Jack to lie facedown on the linoleum floor in front of the counter. The counter was stained wood panel, chest-high, with bulletproof Lucite above and small openings where checks and cash could be passed through. A windowless gray metal door was at one end of the counter, to give access to the rear.

When both men were facedown on the floor, arms behind them, Parker put the Colt away and took from his back pocket a small roll of duct tape. He taped their wrists and ankles, Oliver first, then got Jack’s keys from his pocket. He made sure he had the right key to get back into the shop, and left to walk up the block toward the Taurus.

There was still almost no morning traffic around here. Parker drove the Taurus down to AAAAcme, went back inside, and found Oliver and Jack where he’d left them. Jack was breathing like a whale. When he heard Parker move around, he said, “Willya call 911, for chrissake?”

“Somebody will,” Parker told him, and went through the metal door to the rear part of the shop, where the two metal cases stood unopened on the floor. He lifted their lids and found the stacks of bills he’d expected.

Looking around, he saw an open safe, which Oliver must have just unlocked for the start of the day. Inside were more stacks of bills, and on top of the safe was a lockable gray canvas money sack. Parker put the bills from the safe in the sack, then opened the cash drawers under this side of the counter, and found more bills. There was change, too, which he left.

The two boxes and the sack were now full. Parker carried everything through to the front door. Oliver kept twisting around to glare at him, but Jack merely lay there, eyes closed, cheek on the floor, mouth open, wheezing.

It took two trips to get everything from the store to the Taurus. Parker propped the store door slightly open, so the first customer would be able to get inside and find Oliver and Jack and make that 911 call, and then, at seven minutes to nine, he drove away, looking for the signs to Interstate 65.

7

In this part of Memphis, integration was complete. There were as many white junkies in this neighborhood as there were black. A number of old-fashioned drunks wandered around here, too, and that’s what Parker was passing himself off as.

For nine days, while getting to know this territory, he’d been living in a small bare room in a moth-eaten residence hotel, blending in with the misfits and losers, paying cash, one day at a time. The Taurus, with most of AAAAcme’s thirty-seven thousand dollars in the door panels, was stashed in the long-term-parking lot out at Memphis International. Parker kept a bottle of fortified wine sticking out of his hip pocket, and sat around on the sidewalks with the other boozers, though he wasn’t the friendly type. He was the sort that kept to himself.

The problem with snooping in a neighborhood like this is not that people will think you’re a heister, but that they’ll think you’re a cop. Whatever might be going on at higher levels, at the street level the cops around here were on the job, not on the take. The drug dealers had lookouts to warn them when legal trouble was near, and all at once the bazaars would disappear, into alleys and doorways and the back seats of rusted-out cars.

If these people were to decide that Parker was undercover, marking them, they would be determined not to let him live. But he needed to be curious, he needed to trail them, identify them, he needed to follow the money.

It was the scarcity of cash again. AAAAcme had been fine, very easy, but he couldn’t keep doing that. If he cut a swath of check-cashing heists across the Southeast, the law would scoop him up before he had anywhere near the amount of money he needed. Every job had to be different, in order to lay no trails, leave no patterns. He didn’t want anybody to even think there might be one man out there, doing his work, aiming at something.

So here he was, living on the street in Memphis, letting his beard grow, looking and acting like a stumblebum drunk. It was drug money he wanted now. The dealers are swimming in cash; they concentrate it on and around their persons. But they’re constantly getting ripped off, sometimes killed, because that much cash attracts attention, and because everybody knows a robbed drug dealer isn’t going to complain to the law. So they’re not easy to get at.

On these streets, it seemed as though there were as many dealers as users, and while the dealers were mostly young and combined the cocky with the furtive, the users came in all kinds, from twitching hobos handing over wrinkled dollar bills they’ve just panhandled to men in suits driving into the neighborhood in Lotuses and Lexuses, pausing for a conversation out a window and an exchange of package for cash.

But it wasn’t the street dealers Parker was interested in, not money at that level. What he wanted was higher.

The last nine days, he’d started to work out the delivery system. There were two cars he’d marked, one a black TransAm with fire streaks painted on the hood, the other a silver Blazer with Yosemite Sam brandishing his revolvers on the spare wheel cover. Each would come around two or three times a night, starting and stopping, and the dealers would come out of their holes, and this time the exchange of package for cash would be in reverse: money into the car, package out.

There were at least three people in each of those cars, and Parker was sure there were others as well, scouts who moved ahead of the deliveryman and trailed along behind, looking for law, looking for trouble. Some of the scouts carried walkie-talkies, and all of them were suspicious of every single thing they saw, stumblebum drunks included.

It was the Blazer he started following, on the ninth night, moving away from the area where he’d been hanging out, shuffling six blocks to where he’d seen the Blazer turn onto a side street, then going one block down that side street.

This was a somewhat better neighborhood, but at eleven-thirty at night he didn’t look totally out of place. He sat on the sidewalk, back against the front wall of a closed drugstore, and half an hour later the Blazer went by, not moving too fast. Parker watched it, and it ran at least a dozen blocks in a straight line before it went over a small ridge and disappeared.

Different neighborhood; different style from now on. Parker shuffled back to his fleabag, shaved everything but the mustache, which hardly existed yet, and dressed in somewhat better clothes; good enough to hail a cab. Then he packed everything into the small dirty canvas sports bag he’d bought at a pawnshop, left the hotel, walked half a mile, and caught a cab out to Memphis International. Collecting the Taurus, he checked into an airport hotel and paid cash for one night. After room-service dinner and a long shower, he felt more like himself.

The next afternoon, he checked into a motel closer to the city, paying cash for one night. At eleven, he drove into Memphis and parked where he’d last seen the Blazer.

It went by him at twenty after twelve, and kept the straight line for another eight blocks before turning left. When it was out of sight, he started after it, expecting it to be gone and ready to come back to the next post tomorrow night, but when he turned that corner the Blazer was parked at the curb, two and a half blocks away.

He drove slowly by. There was only the driver in the car, and he watched Parker, blank-faced. The Blazer had stopped at a storefront church, its windows blocked with white paper on which was printed outsize biblical quotations. A bright light was over the door, and benches on the sidewalk in front of the windows, and half a dozen hard men on the benches, watching everything; at the moment, watching Parker. He kept going and drove back to the motel.

He set the alarm for five, got up then, moved out of that room, found an all-night diner for breakfast, then drove back to park in the block before the storefront church, which was now dark, the benches in front of it empty.

There was a service at seven-thirty, the congregation mostly old women who had trouble walking, then nothing happened until a little after eleven, when a dark blue Ford Econoline van stopped at the church. A big man got out on the passenger side, looking in every direction at once, and walked into the church.

A minute later he was back out, to open the sliding door of the van. A second man came out after him, carrying two pretty full black trash bags. They were heaved into the van, the second man went back into the church, and the first one slid the door shut. He got in on the passenger side, and the van drove off.

For the next three days, Parker leapfrogged the van, the way he’d done with the Blazer. Every night he checked into a different motel, paying cash for one night. Then, the fourth day, he watched the van drive into the basement garage under a downtown office building. It was a commercial garage, open to the public, so he drove in after it, collecting his ticket at the barrier, seeing the van stopped near the elevators. When he drove by, the passenger was on a cell phone. So these people didn’t carry the cash up; someone up there would come down and get it. Probably in something more upscale than trash bags.

There were no parking places free on the first level. He spiraled down to the second, found a spot, left the Taurus, and went over to take the elevator up to the lobby. He stood there by the sidewall, as though waiting for someone, and watched the display lights on the elevator bank. Three elevators were going up. None went to the first parking level for the next five minutes, so the exchange had already been made while he was parking the Taurus. He took the elevator down to the first level himself, and the van was gone. He walked on down to the Taurus.

The next day, he was there early, standing on the sidewalk in front of the building when the van drove in. He walked into the lobby, waited there, and in a minute saw an elevator descend to the first parking level. It held there for a minute while Parker crossed to the elevators and pushed UP.

The elevator arrived, and Parker boarded. Already in there were two white men in suits and a large black wheeled suitcase. The 9 button was lit; Parker pushed 11.

As they rode up, he watched the numbers light above the door. When 7 came on, he took out the Sentinel and shot the nearer man in the arm, then pushed him into the other. “It isn’t your money,” he said, holding the gun high for them to see, and they stared at him, shocked, too startled to know what to do, both of them still in the process of realizing that one of them had been shot.

Parker waited for the door to slide open at 9. If they had a third guy up here, in the hall, he’d have no choice but to kill them, but he’d prefer not to. Death draws more police heat than wounding.

The ninth-floor hall was empty. Parker pushed DOOR CLOSE, and the unwounded man said, “Do you know who owns this money?”

“Me,” Parker said.

The man said, “They’ll stuff your nuts in your mouth, and they’ll make you watch your children die.”

“I can hardly wait,” Parker said, and the door opened at 11. “Bring that,” he said, gesturing with the Sentinel at the wheeled suitcase.

They came out into the hall, the wounded one holding his arm and watching Parker with a wary look, the other one pulling the suitcase and watching for his chance to make a move.

The hall was empty. A sign said the stairs were to the left. Parker said, “You know I don’t want to kill you, or you’d be dead already, but you know I will if I have to. You both have pieces under your coats, and you’ll leave them there. Let’s walk to the stairs.”

They walked to the stairs. A sign on the door there said “No Reentry.” In checking the building this morning, Parker had noticed that security arrangement. In case of fire, people could get to the staircase on every floor of the building, but only the door at the lobby level would open from the staircase side.

He’d also looked at the company names on the building directory in the lobby, and Vestro Financial Services on 9 was one of the three outfits that had seemed likely. “You’ll get back to Vestro in a little while,” he told them, “with a story to tell. Leave the case in the doorway.”

They did, propping the door partly open, and the three of them stood close on the concrete landing. The stairwell was bright yellow and had an echoing quality.

Parker took a pair of shoelaces from his pocket, still in their paper band, and gave them to the unwounded one, saying, “Use one to tie your pal’s thumbs together. Behind him.”

The wounded one said, “Man, don’t do that. I can’t move this thing.”

“He’ll help you,” Parker said.

The other one hefted the shoelaces on his palm. “You can still walk away from this,” he said.

“I’m in a hurry,” Parker told him. “Do I have to do this the very fast way?”

The guy shrugged and said, “Sorry about this, Artie.”

“Oh, shit,” Artie said, and hissed through his teeth when the other one moved his arm.

Parker watched, and the unwounded one tied the knot well enough. Then he turned to Parker and said, “I suppose you want this one back.” He extended the shoelace, but it dropped through his fingers.

He’d been expecting Parker to be distracted by that, as his hand darted in under his jacket, but Parker was not; he stepped forward and shot him in the gut, just above the belt buckle.

The man grunted, folding in on himself, the revolver coming in slow motion out from inside the jacket. Parker plucked it from his hand and pushed his chest; as the man toppled backward down the stairs, he turned to Artie and said, “That makes it easier.”

“I didn’t do anything! I’m no trouble!”

Parker put his new revolver on top of the suitcase, reached under Artie’s jacket, and found its twin. He tucked both guns under his belt, beneath his shirt, and put the Sentinel back into its holster.

Artie watched him, fearful but not pleading. Parker turned away from him, wheeled the suitcase back out to the hall, and the No Reentry door snicked shut behind him.

8

When he rented the post office box in Pasadena, an industrial suburb southeast of Houston near NASA’s manned space center at Clear Lake, Parker used the name Charles O. St. Ignatius. He paid for the first six months and pocketed the small flat key. Then he drove into Houston, where he bought the black suit and the clerical collar he wore when he went to the banks.

“We’ve started a fund drive at our church,” he told the first banker. “We are in desperate need of a new roof.”

The banker didn’t yet know if he was about to be hit up for the fund drive, so his expression was agreeable but noncommittal. “That’s too bad, Father,” he said.

“The Lord has seen fit to give us three near-misses the last several years,” Parker told him. “Two hurricanes and a tornado, all just passed us by.”

“Lucky.”

“God’s will. But the effect has been to loosen the roof and make it unstable.”

“Too bad.”

“Our fund drive is doing very well,” Parker told him, and the banker smiled, knowing he was off the hook. “Well enough,” Parker went on, “so we’ll need to open a bank account, just temporarily, until we raise enough money for the repairs.”

“Of course.”

Parker pulled out the two white legal envelopes stuffed with cash. “I believe this is four thousand two hundred dollars,” he said. “Is cash all right? That’s the way the donations come to us.”

“Of course,” the banker said. “Cash is fine.” And under five thousand dollars meant that none of it would be reported to the Feds.

Parker handed over the envelopes, and the banker briskly counted the bills: “Four thousand two hundred fifty dollars,” he said.

“Thank you,” Parker said.

There was a form to be filled out: “In what name do you want the account?”

“Church of St. Ignatius. No, wait,” Parker said, “that’s too long. Signing the checks...”

The banker smiled in sympathy. “Just St. Ignatius?”

“All right,” Parker said. “No, make it C. O. Ignatius, that’s the same as ‘Church of.’”

“And the address?”

“We’ve opened a post office box for donations, so let’s use that.”

“Fine.”

A little more paperwork, and Parker was given a temporary checkbook and deposit slips. “My deposits will be in cash, of course,” he said.

“We recommend you don’t mail cash.”

“No, I’ll bring it in.”

“Fine,” the banker said, and they shook hands, and Parker went on to the next bank.

That day, he opened accounts in nine Houston banks, never going to more than one branch of the same firm. When he was finished, thirty-eight thousand dollars was now in the banking system, no longer cash, with nearly eighty thousand still in the side panels of the Taurus.

After the last bank, he drove on down to Galveston and spent the night in a motel with no view of the Gulf. In the morning, he rented a post office box under the name Charles Willis, for which he carried enough ID for any normal business scrutiny, then went to a bank not related to any of the ones he’d used in Houston. As Charles Willis, and using checks from two different St. Ignatius accounts, he opened a checking account with fifteen hundred dollars and a money market account with four thousand, giving the post office box in Galveston as his address. Then he took the free ferry over to Bolivar Peninsula and headed east.

9

The six theaters at the Parish-Plex out St. Charles Avenue had a total seating capacity of nine hundred fifty, ranging from the largest, two hundred sixty-five, where the latest Hollywood blockbusters showed, to the smallest, seventy-five, where art films from Europe alternated with kung fu movies from Hong Kong. When Parker put down his eight dollars for the final screening of Drums and Trumpets on Sunday night, it was the fourth time he’d paid his way into this building this week; it would be the last.

Three runs per movie Friday night, five on Saturday, and five on Sunday. First thing Monday morning, the weekend’s take would be delivered to the bank, but right now it was still in the safe in the manager’s office. The entire multiplex had run at just under eighty percent capacity this weekend, which meant that, once Parker’s eight dollars and the rest of the final intake were added, there would be just under seventy-eight thousand dollars in the safe, which was opened only when the cashier brought her money tray up from the box office.

The first time he’d come here, Parker had watched how the system worked for moving the money. When the box office closed, the cashier brought that low flat open tray full of cash upstairs to the manager’s office. The manager then closed and locked the door, and about five minutes later she unlocked and opened it again; that would be the time the safe in there stood open. Tomorrow, the cashier would bring starter cash for change back down to the box office in that metal tray.

His second visit, coming to an early show, Parker had waited until the manager left on one of her rounds, then tried the four keys he’d brought with him against the lock in the office door and found the one that worked. The third time, he’d watched the ticket-taker at the door, the only other employee in here except for the concession-stand girl. He was a college kid in a maroon and gray uniform; what did he do when the money was in motion?

Nothing, or nothing that mattered. Once the box office closed, the kid crossed the lobby, went through an Employees Only door and down a flight of stairs to change out of his uniform. So the cashier and the manager were all he had to think about.

Tonight, he stood looking at a poster for a coming attraction, mounted on the wall down the corridor from the manager’s office. He read the names and looked at the colored drawing of an exploding train going over a cliff, as the cashier went by behind him, carrying the metal tray. Farther down the hall, the manager stood in the open doorway. She and the cashier had been doing this routine for years. Neither of them was wary, neither of them looked at the customer reading the poster. The cashier went into the office, the manager shut the door, and Parker heard the sound of the lock as it clicked shut.

He waited just over a minute, then slipped on the surgical gloves and moved quickly down the hall. The key was in his right hand, the Sentinel in his left. He opened the door with one quick movement, stepped into the office, and shut the door.

The manager was on one knee in front of the open black metal box of the safe in the corner behind her desk. The cashier had put the money tray on the manager’s desk and was just starting to hand the cash to her. They both had stacks of bills in their hands. They looked over at Parker, and neither of them was yet alarmed, just startled that somebody had come through that door.

The manager’s name was on a brass plate on her desk. Stepping forward, showing the Sentinel, Parker said, “Gladys, keep that money in your hands. Turn toward me. Turn toward me!” He didn’t want her thinking about hurriedly slamming shut the safe.

Gladys merely gaped, thinking about nothing at all yet, but the cashier, a short stocky round-faced woman, stared at the gun in open-mouthed shock, then sagged against the desk, the stacks of bills falling from her fingers. Her face paled, sweat beaded on her forehead, and her eyes glazed.

Parker said, “Gladys! Don’t let her fall!”

Gladys finally got her wits about her. Scrambling to her feet, tossing onto the desk the money she’d been holding, she leaned toward the cashier, stretching out an arm while she snapped at Parker in a quick harsh voice, “Put that gun away! Don’t you know what you’re doing?”

A short green vinyl sofa stood against the sidewall. Parker said, “Come on, Gladys, help her to the sofa.”

Gladys had to come around the desk to reach the cashier, but she still glared at Parker. “She’s from Guatemala,” she said, as though that explained everything. “She saw...”

The cashier was moaning now, sliding down the desk, the strength giving out in her legs. Parker said, “Get her to the sofa, Gladys, and she won’t have to look at the gun.”

“Maria,” Gladys murmured, helping the other woman, moving her with difficulty away from the desk and over toward the sofa. “Come on, Maria, he won’t do anything, it’s all right.”

That’s right, Parker wouldn’t be doing anything, at least with the Sentinel, not this time. He wanted to not use it unless he absolutely had to, because that, too, could become a pattern, a series of robberies that always began with the wounding of one of the victims.

The two women sat on the sofa, Maria collapsed into herself like a car-crash dummy, Gladys hovering next to her, murmuring, then turning to glare again at Parker and say, “Are you robbing us? Is that actually what this is? Are you actually robbing us?”

“Yes,” Parker said, and moved around the desk toward the safe.

“For money?” Gladys demanded. “The trauma you’re giving this poor woman; for money?”

“Keep her calm,” Parker said, “and nobody’s going to get hurt.”

He had brought with him a collapsible black vinyl bag with a zipper, inside his shirt at the back. Now he took it out, put the Sentinel handy on the desk, and stuffed cash into the bag. When it was full, he zipped it shut and put the rest of the money in his pockets.

There was one line in here for both phone and fax. He unplugged the line at the wall and at the phone, rolled it up, and pocketed it, then carried the vinyl bag and the Sentinel over to the two women on the sofa. “Gladys,” he said.

She looked up at him. She was calmer now, and Maria was getting over her faint. Gladys was ready to stop being angry and start being worried. “You wouldn’t dare shoot that,” she said. “Not with all the people around.”

“Gladys,” Parker said, “there’s gunshots going off in the movies all around us. I could empty this into you, and nobody’d even look away from the screen.”

Gladys blinked, then stared at the gun. She could be seen braving herself to stare at it. Maria moaned again and closed her eyes, but wasn’t unconscious.

Parker said, “I’ll wait out in the hall for a few minutes. If you come out too soon, I’ll shoot you. You know I will, don’t you?”

She looked from the Sentinel to his face. “Yes,” she whispered.

“You decide when to come out, Gladys,” he told her. “But take your time. Think what a trauma it would be for Maria, to see you lying in a lot of blood.”

Gladys swallowed. “I’ll take my time,” she said.

10

From a pay phone in Houston, Parker called a guy he knew named Mackey and got his girlfriend Brenda. “Ed around?”

“Somewhere,” she said. “I don’t think he’s looking for work.”

“I don’t have any. What I want is a name.”

“Yours or somebody else’s?”

“Both,” Parker said. “Maybe he could call me at — wait a minute — two o’clock your time.”

“You’re in a different time?”

“Yes,” he said, and gave her the number of another pay phone, backward.

“I’ll tell him,” she promised. “How’ve you been keeping yourself?”

“Busy,” he said, and hung up, and went away in his dog collar to make today’s cash deposits into his nine bank accounts, and then shift more of that money into the accounts in Galveston.

At three, changed out of the religious clothes, he went to that second pay phone, mounted on a stick to one side of a gas station, by the air hose. He stopped the Taurus in front of the air hose, got out, stepped toward the phone, and it rang.

Ed Mackey sounded chipper, like always. “Brenda says you’re looking for a name.”

“There was somebody you knew, in Texas or somewhere, could give me a name.”

“I know who you mean,” Mackey said. “I think he specializes in Spanish names, though, you know? People that wanna bring their money north.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Parker said.

“Okay. He’s in Corpus Christi, he’s in the phone book there, he calls himself Julius Norte.” He pronounced the last name as two syllables: Nor-tay.

“Julius Norte,” Parker echoed.

Mackey laughed. “I think maybe his first customer was himself.”

“Could you give him a call? Tell him Edward Lynch is coming by.”

“Sure. When?”

“Tomorrow sometime,” Parker said, and the next day, when he’d finished his bank transactions, he drove south the two hundred miles to Corpus Christi, the southernmost Texan port on the Gulf, nearest to Mexico and South America.

Corpus Christi International Airport is just west of town, down Corn Products Road from Interstate 37, and near there he found tonight’s motel. A Southern Bell phone book for the area was in the bottom drawer of the bedside table, and Julius Norte was listed. Parker dialed the number and got an answering machine: “You’ve reached Poco Repro, nobody in the office right now. Please leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you.” Then it repeated the same thing in Spanish.

“Edward Lynch,” Parker said, and reeled off the phone and room numbers here. Then he went back to the phone book and a local map for restaurants, but hadn’t made his decision yet when the phone rang. So Julius Norte was home after all, and screening his calls.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Lynch?”

“Yes.”

“A friend of yours said you might call.”

“Ed Mackey.”

“That’s the fellow. Where are you?”

“Near the airport.”

“You want to come down now?”

“Yes.”

“Know where Padre Island Drive is?”

“I can find it.”

“Okay,” he said, and gave quick precise instructions, and Parker followed them and found himself in a neighborhood that could have been anywhere in the south or west of the United States, from Mobile to Los Angeles: small one-story pastel stucco houses without garages or porches, a little shabby, on small weedy plots of land, with not a tree or a tall bush within miles.

The address Parker wanted was on a corner, with a carport added on the side away from the intersection, and the first surprise was the car in the carport: a gleaming black Infiniti with the vanity plate 1NORTE1. This car cost more than all the other vehicles up and down the block, all combined together.

Parker left the Taurus at the curb and walked up the cracked concrete walk to the small stoop at the front door. Beside the door was a bell button, and above the button on a small hook hung a sign that read “Ring And Walk In.”

So now Parker knew a number of things. This was not where Norte lived. He wasn’t worried about who might walk through his door. And he was richer than this neighborhood.

He rang the bell, as instructed, and pushed open the door, and stepped directly into what had once been the living room but was now an office, with two desks. The desk to the left rear, facing this way with its side against the wall under the carport window, was a simple gray metal rectangle, and seated at it, just putting down a fotonovela to give Parker the double-O, was a guy who looked like a headliner in TV wrestling: long greasy wavy black hair, a neck wider than his forehead, and a black T-shirt form-fitting over a body pumped up with weights. His nose was mashed in, mouth heavy, eyes small and dark under forward-thrusting eyebrows. The look he gave Parker was flat but expectant, like a guard dog’s.

The other desk, nearer the door and off to the right, was a much bigger affair, more elaborate, a warm mahogany that took the light just so. A green felt blotting pad, brass desk lamp and gleaming desk set, family photos in leather frames; it had everything.

And the guy seated at the desk had everything, too. He wore a white guayabera shirt that showed off his tan, and his head was topped by a good rug, tannish brown, medium long, nicely waved. Below, his bland nice face had the smooth noncommittal look of much plastic surgery, and when he rose to smile at his visitor it was as though he were holding the smile for somebody else. “Mr. Lynch,’ he said.

“Mr. Norte,” Parker said, and shut the door behind himself.

Norte came around the desk to offer a strong workingman’s hand that had not had plastic surgery and so was more truthful about where he came from. Parker shook it, and Norte gestured with it at the brown leather armchair facing the desk. “Sit down, Mr. Lynch,” he offered. ‘Tell me about it. Our friend Ed is well?”

“He didn’t say,” Parker said.

Norte gave him a quick smile as they both sat, on opposite sides of the desk. The guard dog had gone back to his fotonovela. “Down to business, eh?”

“Might as well,” Parker said, but took a second to look around. Gray industrial carpeting, a few beige filing cabinets, a closed interior door opposite the entrance. A paper company calendar and a few diplomas on the wall. “You call this place Poco Repro,” he said. “What’s that?”

“Printing,” Norte explained. “Mostly yearbooks, annual reports, banquet programs. More Hispanic than Anglo. But that’s not what you want.”

“No,” Parker agreed. “What I want is ID.”

“How good?”

“Real. Good enough to buy a car, take out a loan. I don’t need it forever.”

Norte nodded. A fat gold pen lay on the green blotter in front of him. He rolled it in his fingers and said, “You must know, real is the most expensive.”

“Yes, I know.”

“It doesn’t matter how long you want it for, you can’t sell it back, or even give it back. Once you’ve got it, it’s yours.”

Parker shrugged. “Fine.”

“Do you care about the backstory?”

“Just so there’s no paper out on the name.”

“No, of course.” Norte considered, looking past Parker at the front window. “The Social Security won’t be real,” he said. “I can’t get a legitimate number that works in their system.”

“That should be okay,” Parker said.

“I’m thinking of some friends of mine,” Norte said, “naturalized citizens. Is that okay?”

“I gotta have a name that looks like me.”

“Oh, yes, sure, I know that. You could be Irish, no?”

“I could be.”

“Many Irish went to South America,” Norte told him, “in the nineteenth century, did well, the names survive. In Bolivia, other countries, you’ve got your José Harrigan, your Juan O’Reilly.”

“I can’t use Juan,‘” Parker said.

“There are names that cross over,” Norte said. “Oscar. Gabriel. Leon. Victor.”

“Fine.”

“And when would you like this?” Norte asked, but laughed before Parker could say anything and said, “Never mind, that was not a smart question. You want it as soon as you can get it, no?”

“Yes.”

“Texas resident?”

“That would be best,” Parker said.

“And easiest for me. So you want a driver’s license and a birth certificate. Do you need a passport?”

“No.”

“Now you surprise me,” Norte admitted. “Most people, that’s the first thing they want.”

“My troubles are domestic,” Parker told him.

Norte laughed. “All right, Mr. Lynch,” he said, “you can stop being Mr. Lynch, I think, in three days’ time. Is that all right?”

“That’s fine,” Parker said.

Norte said, “But then again, you haven’t been Mr. Lynch all that long, have you? Never mind, that wasn’t a question. You didn’t bring a photo, did you?”

“No.”

“We can do that here,” Norte assured him. “The other thing is money.”

“I know.”

“Driver’s license, birth certificate, both with legitimate sources. Ten thousand. Cash, of course.”

“I like cash,” Parker said.

“There’s so little of it around these days,” Norte said. “That would be in advance. Sorry, but it’s best that way.”

Parker said, “Will you be here in half an hour?”

“If you intend to be,” Norte told him.

Parker got to his feet. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Norte,” he said.

“And you, Mr. Lynch.”

11

When Parker went back to Norte’s office half an hour later, he’d made two stops, the first at a drugstore where he’d bought reading glasses of the lowest possible magnification, 1.25, and a dark brown eyebrow pencil. The glasses were squarish and black-framed, and the eyebrow pencil would work to emphasize his new mustache. And the second stop he’d made, in the far corner of a supermarket parking lot, had been to open a door panel and remove from inside it ten thousand in cash.

Again he rang the bell and walked in, and again the guard dog looked up from his fotonovela to watch Parker cross the room. Norte was on the phone, but he said something quiet in Spanish, hung up, and got smiling to his feet. “Right on time,” he said.

He wanted to shake hands again, so Parker shook his hand, then took out the money and placed it on the desk. Norte smiled at it. “You don’t mind if I count.”

“Go ahead.”

Norte did, then said, “Bobby will take your picture.”

“Bobby?”

Norte indicated the guard dog. “Roberto,” he said. “Not a name you could use.”

“No.”

Norte spoke to Bobby in Spanish, and the guard dog put down his fotonovela and stood. Norte said to Parker, “You go with Bobby.”

Parker went with Bobby, through the door at the back of the room into what still was a kitchen, though not many meals would be made here. Bedrooms and a bathroom were off the kitchen to the right and rear.

A camera was set up on a tall tripod at head height, facing a blank wall. Bobby, moving toward the camera, made a shooing gesture for Parker to stand by the wall. When Parker went over there, he saw a pair of white footprints painted on the floor and stood on them.

Bobby was efficient, if silent. He moved his head to show Parker how to pose, then quickly took three shots. Still saying nothing, he led Parker back to the other room.

The money was gone from the desk, and Norte was standing beside it, smiling farewell. “Phone me Friday afternoon,” he said. “It should be ready by then.”

“Good,” Parker said, and left, and drove back to the motel. Later, after dinner, he put on black clothing, took his b&e tools out from under the trunk bed in the Taurus, and drove south again, one hundred fifty miles almost to the border, turning east at Harlingen toward South Padre Island, where the rich boaters keep their country villas and retirement homes.

Bay View, Laguna Vista, Port Isabel; this is where the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway begins, where the rich sea-loving Texans are based, alternating between agreeable “cottages” and even more agreeable yachts, moored just at the end of the lawn. In the evenings, they visit one another, play bridge, drink, gossip, plan excursions across the Gulf to the islands of the Caribbean. Half the houses are full of light, warmth, good cheer; the other half are empty.

A little after nine in the evening, Parker left the Taurus in the parking lot of a chain drugstore that wouldn’t close till midnight. He left the parking lot over a chain-link fence at the back, and kept to the rear of houses, moving as far as possible from the lit-up noisy ones, crossing only side streets and only at their darkest points. This area was patrolled almost as heavily as Palm Beach, but he was keeping himself dark and silent.

All of the houses along the Waterway are equipped with alarm systems; enter through any door or window, and if the alarm is not switched off at the control pad within forty-five seconds it will signal both the town police and the security service. But where is the control pad to be found? In every house, it is just inside, next to the door nearest to where the car is parked. It was never hard to figure out which door that was.

In the next hour and a half, Parker went into nine houses, and the method was always the same. Interior pockets in the back of his coat carried his tools, which included a telephone handset with alligator clips, a special one used by telephone company repairmen to check lines. With this, he could attach to the house’s phone line outdoors, where it came in from the pole, and call that line. He could always hear it ring, inside the house. If the answering machine picked up, or there was no answer after ten rings, and no dog barked, it was his. He’d go to the door nearest where the car would normally be parked and use his small pry bar to pop it.

Inside, on the wall, its red light lit, would be the alarm control pad. He never needed the full forty-five seconds to short-circuit and disarm it. Then he’d move through the house, looking only for cash. He had to leave behind hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of jewelry, bonds, paintings, cameras, watches, and all the other toys of the leisured rich, but it didn’t matter: there was always cash. There was often a wall safe, which he would find by lifting pictures along the way and get into with hammer and chisel, and the wall safes always produced bundles of cash, often still in the paper band from the bank.

Nine houses, a little over a hundred twenty thousand dollars. Finished, he skirted the areas he’d already been through, made his way back to the drugstore fifteen minutes before it would close, and drove back north to Corpus Christi.

Tomorrow, he’d have more money for the banks in Houston.

12

On Friday, from a different motel in Corpus Christi, Parker phoned Norte, got the Poco Repro machine, left a message, and Norte phoned right back: “We’re ready, Mr. Lynch,” he said.

“I’ll come right down,” Parker told him, and drove down to Norte’s place, but when he turned the corner a black Chevy Blazer was parked in front of the house, with white exhaust visible at the tailpipe. Parker decided not to stop, but drove on by, and saw the driver alone in the Blazer, a chunky man in a white dress shirt, with the pie face and thick black hair of the Mayan Indian. He sat facing front, hands on the steering wheel, waiting, patient.

Another customer was with Norte. Parker drove on down to the next corner and went around it. He didn’t want Norte’s other customers to meet him, and they probably didn’t want him to meet them.

He spent ten minutes driving around the neighborhood before going back to Norte’s house again, to see the Blazer still there. But this time its engine was off and the driver was gone.

Parker slowed, peering at the house. The “Ring Bell And Walk In” sign, which had been there ten minutes ago, was gone now from its hook above the bell button.

Something wrong. Parker drove three-quarters of the way around the block, parked, and walked on to the house.

Blazer still there, sign still gone. No one visible in the windows. He walked up to the house and around it to the left to the carport. The Infiniti was there, as before. There was just enough room between the car and the house to slide down there and look through the high window over Bobby’s desk.

Norte was at his own elegant desk, on the phone. Bobby stood in the middle of the room, an automatic loose in his hand. Three men lay facedown on the floor, wrists and ankles and mouths swathed in duct tape. One of them was the Mayan driver.

The thing to do was go away somewhere and phone. Parker moved back from the window, sidled past the Infiniti, and when he got to the front corner of the house Bobby was there, the automatic pointed at Parker’s chest. With his other hand he gestured: Come with me.

Parker shrugged. He walked past Bobby and around to the front door and in, Bobby trailing after him.

Norte was off the phone now, standing behind his desk, looking aggravated. “Bad timing, Mr. Lynch,” he said.

“Hand me the papers and I’ll go,” Parker told him.

Two of the men, not the driver, had twisted around to stare up at Parker, not as though he might help but as though he might be more trouble. Norte, with a sad smile and a harried look, shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You see the situation here, no?”

“Dissatisfied customers,” Parker suggested.

But Norte shook that away. “No, I don’t have dissatisfied customers. What I got, I got a customer doesn’t want anybody alive that knows who he is now and what he looks like now. That fuckhead sent these fuckheads to kill Bobby and me.”

“He sent the wrong fuckheads,” Parker said.

“So now I gotta take them down,” Norte said with a disgusted gesture at the men on the floor, “and I gotta take their boss down, because I don’t need this shit.”

“It’s not my fight,” Parker said. “Just give me the papers and I’ll go.”

“I wish I could,” Norte said, and he sounded as though he meant it. “But you’re a witness here, no?”

“I don’t witness things,” Parker told him.

Norte didn’t like it. He chewed the inside of his cheek, and then he said, “I tell you what. When I get this shit straightened out here, I’ll call Ed Mackey, tell him the situation, see what he thinks I should do.”

Parker watched him.

Norte tried a smile while still chewing his cheek. He said, “That’ll work, no? Ed Mackey knows you.”

“He knows me.”

“In the meantime,” Norte said, “just lie down on the floor here.”

“Sure,” Parker said, and as he bent forward he reached inside his shirt. He pivoted the holster down, lifted his left arm, and fired through his shirt.

The bullet hit Bobby somewhere, it didn’t matter where. It wouldn’t stop him, only confuse him for a second; long enough, maybe, for Parker to drop to his knees, turning, pulling the Sentinel out, hearing the big boom of the automatic bounce in this enclosed room, knowing the bullet had gone over his head. He thrust his arm out as Bobby adjusted his aim, and shot the guard dog in the face.

That still didn’t finish him, but it made him drop the automatic as he whipped both hands up to his ruined face. He tottered there as Parker dropped the Sentinel, grabbed the automatic, and lunged to his feet.

Norte was pulling a blunt revolver out of a desk drawer, ducking down low behind his desk, calling, “Drop that!”

“Fuck you,” Parker said, and pulled Bobby in front of himself to take Norte’s first three shots. Now he held the dead Bobby up in front of himself and moved forward toward the desk as Norte, still hidden behind it, called, “All right! I’m done!”

“Put the gun on the desk,” Parker told him.

Norte stayed out of sight behind the desk. “We don’t have to kill each other,” he said.

“We’re not gonna kill each other.”

“I was worried, I was upset, I was too hasty. Ed Mackey said you were okay, I should’ve remembered that.”

“Put the gun on the desk.”

Still he remained out of sight. “People need me,” he said. “They won’t like it if you take me down. Ed Mackey won’t like it.”

Parker waited.

“I was wrong,” Norte said. “I was too hasty.”

Parker waited.

“There’s no reason to do anything anymore.”

Parker waited.

Norte’s hand appeared, with the revolver. He put it on the green blotter and pushed it a little forward.

Parker let Bobby fall, on top of the men on the floor. He went forward and walked around the side of the desk to where Norte crouched there, looking up. Norte, voice shaking a little, said, “You don’t need to do a thing. I got your documents, middle drawer. You’ll see, they’re beautiful.”

“Let’s see them.”

Norte hesitantly rose, then looked at his revolver still on the desk. “Aren’t you gonna take that?”

“You intend to reach for it?”

“No!”

“Let’s see this ID.”

Norte opened the middle drawer, took out a manila envelope, shook two official papers out onto the green blotter. He was careful to keep as far as possible from the revolver. He stepped back to the wall, holding the manila envelope, and gestured for Parker to look them over.

His name was Daniel Parmitt. He’d been born in Quito, Ecuador, of American parents, and the birth certificate was in Spanish. His Texas driver’s license showed he lived at an address in San Antonio. The photo on the driver’s license, with the glasses and the mustache, made him look less hard.

He pocketed both documents, looked around the room. What had he touched? The carpet, Bobby; nothing that would leave prints. “Come here,” he said.

Norte didn’t move. His hands fidgeted with the manila envelope the documents had been in as he said, “It’s a misunderstanding, it’s all over. Bobby and me, we were gonna take these shits away, not mess up the office, then all of a sudden we got you here — it was too much goin on, I got too hasty.”

“Come here,” Parker said.

It finally occurred to Norte that he was still alive and that he needn’t be. With small steps, he came forward to the desk and Parker took the manila envelope out of his hands. “Pick up the gun,” he said.

“No!”

Parker held the automatic leveled at Norte’s forehead. “You aren’t gonna point it at me,” he said. “You’re gonna finish those three.”

“Here? We didn’t want to—”

“Bobby’s messing your rug already. The other way is, I do you and I do them and I go.”

“But what—”

“Ed says you’re useful. I say you’re too jumpy to be reliable, but you do good work. If you make it possible, I’ll help you stay alive. Pick up the gun.”

“And, and kill them?”

“That’s what it’s for,” Parker said.

Norte stared down at the three men. The driver was still stoic, but the other two were now staring up at Norte, hoping something different was going to happen now.

No. Abruptly, as though to get it over before he had to think about it, Norte grabbed up the revolver, bent over them, and shot each one in the head. The carpet would have to be replaced for sure.

“Keep shooting,” Parker said.

Norte grimaced at him. “They’re dead. Believe me, they’re dead.”

“Keep shooting.”

Norte looked down at the bodies and fired at random into their backs. One, two, click; the revolver was empty.

Parker held out the manila envelope. “Put it in here.”

Norte frowned, studying Parker’s face. “You want a hold over me.”

“You make all this go away, what hold? All I need is, I was never here.”

Norte managed a twisted smile. “Oh, if only that could be true, no?”

“We can make it true. Put the gun in here.”

Norte shrugged and reached forward to slide the revolver into the envelope.

Parker said, “Stand back over there by the wall.”

Obediently, Norte moved back to where he’d stood before. He kept his arms at his sides, palms forward, to show he wasn’t going to try anything, but Parker already knew that.

Parker put the envelope, bulging and heavy with the revolver, on the green blotter. He went around the desk, found his Sentinel near Bobby’s feet, and put it back in its holster. Then he picked up the envelope. Automatic in his right hand, envelope in his left, he backed to the door, as Norte looked around at the mess he had to clean up. His face had gone through too much surgery to permit it to show his emotions, but they were there in his eyes.

With a little trouble, Parker turned the doorknob with the hand holding the envelope. He stepped outside, let the door snick shut, and put the automatic under his shirt, keeping his hand on it in there, like Napoleon. But, as he walked away, Norte did not come outside. He had enough to think about.

13

Daniel Parmitt’s address in San Antonio, according to his driver’s license, was an office building downtown; nobody lived there.

Parker stayed in three motels off Interstate 10 for three nights while setting himself up in town. A real estate agent showed him rental houses, and the second day he found what he needed in Alamo Heights, between McNay Art Museum and Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. It was a three-bedroom two-story fake-Gothic yellow clapboard house with a turret, set back from a winding, hilly street among modestly upscale houses. Parker knew it was right, but didn’t tell the real estate agent; they looked at another four places before he suggested they try again tomorrow.

It was then two-thirty in the afternoon, time enough to get to a bank and open a checking account for Daniel Parmitt, using the address of the house he hadn’t rented yet, starting the account with a thirty-eight-hundred-dollar check from Charles O. St. Ignatius in Houston and a forty-two-hundred-dollar wire transfer from Charles Willis’s money market account in Galveston, so the money would be available at once. From there he went to the post office and the Department of Motor Vehicles, putting in a change of address from the office building to the new house at both.

Next day, he said to the real estate agent, “Let’s look at that yellow house again.”

“I thought you’d like it,” she said, and this time he did.

Daniel Parmitt signed a two-year lease and left a check for two months’ rent plus one month deposit. Parker bought a sleeping bag, the only furnishing he’d need in the house, and settled down to wait.

What he mostly had to do now was move money through his bank accounts, gradually cleaning out all the St. Ignatius accounts in Houston, emptying the two accounts Charles Willis had in Galveston, and concentrating the money into Parmitt’s checking and money market accounts in San Antonio.

While doing that, he also went shopping. Daniel Parmitt was a rich Texan with a background in the oil business, a man who may have worked at some time in his life but happily doesn’t have to anymore, and Parker should dress the way Daniel Parmitt should look. He bought casual slacks and blazers, gaudily colored dress shirts with white collars, shoes with tassels or little gold figures attached to the vamp, yachting caps and white golf caps. He also bought obviously expensive luggage to put it all in.

During this time, he waited to see what the Department of Motor Vehicles would do. If Parmitt’s license was real, as Norte had promised, the change of address would go through without a hitch, and he’d be safe to show that license anywhere. If Norte had lied, or made a mistake, the request would bounce back to him.

But it didn’t. Two weeks into his stay at the turreted yellow house in San Antonio, Daniel Parmitt got his first piece of mail at his new address: his revised driver’s license.

His local Jaguar dealer was happy to talk about leases. There was a little frown of doubt when, on the credit application form, he put down that he’d been at his present address for one month, and gave his previous address as Quito, Ecuador, but then he said, “I was in the oil business down there,” and it was all right. Texans understand the oil business.

Six weeks and two days after Melander and Carlson and Ross had made their mistake in Evansville, Daniel Parmitt got behind the wheel of his yellow Jaguar convertible, top down, rear full of luggage, left his yellow home in San Antonio, and drove eastward on Interstate 10. Three days later he’d covered the thousand miles to Jacksonville, Florida, taking his time, not pushing it, and there he turned southward onto Interstate 95. A day and a half later he turned off at Miami.

14

Claire was not in her room. He found her out by the pool in a two-piece red bathing suit, on one of the white chaises there, ignoring the interest she aroused and reading a biography of Aphra Behn.

It had been a while since he had seen her at a different angle like this, coming upon her as though she were a stranger, and it reminded him of the first time they’d met, when he’d opened a hotel room door expecting some flunky driver and had seen this cool and beautiful woman instead. When he told her then he hadn’t expected a woman in the job because it was unprofessional she’d said, “It doesn’t sound like a very rewarding profession,” and already he’d been snagged. Closed off before then, indifferent to the world except as it had to be tamed and manipulated, he hadn’t known he could be snagged, but here she was. And here again. Still here.

In his dark blue yachting cap, sunglasses, mustache, pale green blazer, candy-striped dress shirt, white slacks, and tan shoes with tassels, he walked through the sun and the people and the coconut smells of sunblock to sit on the chaise next to her, sideways, to face her. Without looking away from her book, she said, “That’s taken.”

“By me,” he said.

She, too, was in sunglasses, dark green lenses and white plastic frames. She turned her head to give him her cool look through those lenses, then frowned, removed the sunglasses, looked him up and down in astonished distaste, and said, “Good God!”

He grinned. She was the only thing that made him grin. He said, “It works, I guess.”

She studied him, detail by detail, then gave him a small quirk of a smile as she said, “This person. Can he be any good in bed?”

“Let’s find out,” he said.

“Now I remember you,” she told him, smiling, and ran her finger along the purplish furrow on his left side, just above the waist, where a bullet once had passed him by, fired by a man named Auguste Menlo, now dead. “My human target.”

“I haven’t been shot for a long time,” he said, and stretched beside her on the bed.

“Not since you met me. I’m good luck for you.”

“That must be the reason I’m here,” he said, and reached for her again.

He’d been shot eight times, over the years, with puckered reminders still visible on his body, but the only one that showed when he was dressed was the little nick in the lobe of his right ear, as though he’d been docked for branding. A man named Little Bob Negli, who hadn’t yet figured out that his Beretta .25 automatic was shooting high and to the right, had made that nick, firing at him from behind. Negli, too, was dead, but Parker was alive, and in the cool dimness in Claire’s hotel room he felt that life quicken.

In the morning, she said, “The mustache is wrong.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s a policeman’s mustache, too bushy. What you want is a lounge lizard’s mustache, smaller, daintier. Think of David Niven or Errol Flynn.”

“You do it.”

“All right.”

They stood in the shower together, she very intent with her nail scissors, and he watched her eyes, how the light took them.

Later he put on his strange clothes, and she watched him, amused. “Is that what you’ll wear when you come back?”

“No.”

“Don’t get shot any more,” she said, and kissed him, which covered the fact he didn’t have an answer for her. But she hadn’t asked him any questions, and she still didn’t.

At two-thirty that afternoon, in bright sunlight, temperature 76, humidity not too bad, he drove in the yellow Jaguar over the Flagler Memorial Bridge onto Royal Poinciana Way, in Palm Beach.