Run Lethal

But there was nothing a man could do other than his best. Grofield made his way back to the centre cabin, up onto the twanging springs of the bed, and finally half-erect in the rectangular hole behind it, looking like a three-dimensional painting of despair.

He got the bed up, with great difficulty, and then he crouched in darkness, leaning against the walls at his back and right side, his fingers clutching the springs. He must not let the bed fall open. He must not lose consciousness so much that he should lose his balance and let the bed and himself crash down and out into plain sight.

He knew Baron would go back within the hour to throw the two bodies overboard, and he knew immediately afterwards Baron would begin the search. He could only hope Baron would not find him here and would believe Grofield had gone overboard.

But time passed, and there was no sound of Baron searching. Being in and out of awareness so much, it was hard for Grofield to tell how much time had passed, and so he kept believing it had been less than an hour, it must have been less than an hour or Baron would have begun his search by now.

He believed this as five hours went by, ten hours. The bleeding had stopped, the blood had caked and dried over the wound. For a while he shook with chills, a terrible cold he feared was the cold of death, and then for another while he ran with sweat and his face was fiery hot with fever. And still, in his lucid moments, he believed that less than an hour had transpired since he had closed himself away in this vertical coffin.

After fifteen hours he gave up. His stiff fingers loosened on the bed springs, his tense body relaxed, and he crashed forward, the bed opening and landing hard on its retractable legs, Grofield bouncing on the springs and then lying there sprawled out with his face against the springs.

Midday sunlight poured through the windows, shining on him. He was exposed, vulnerable, open to his enemy, but he was no longer aware of it. He had passed out again.

8

AT noon on Sunday Baron came to land, not because he had gone as far as he wanted but because the boat ran out of fuel. He had been fleeing south for nearly fourteen hours, and the scrubby rocky beach off to his right was Mexico, about two hundred miles south of the border, about twenty miles south of the village of Pesca.

He beached the boat, then went below in search of food. He hadn’t eaten since last night, hadn’t slept since the night before.

He noticed nothing wrong in the main cabin. Fatigue was part of the explanation, plus relief at having escaped once again, plus impatience to be off and moving.

There was little to eat on board. A box of Ritz crackers, some liquor and soft drinks, some cheese spread and a few cans of soup. Baron made himself a quick meal, tomato soup and crackers and cheese and some bourbon straight from the bottle, and then he went back on deck for a look around.

The area was deserted, as far as the eye could see. The land sloped upward gradually from the sea, then levelled out towards the distant horizon, and everywhere Baron could see it was the same; tan dry grassless earth, littered with small rocks and pocked with hardy clumps of desert greenery. The shallow water all around the boat was scattered with boulders.

This was some of the wildest country Baron had ever seen. Gazing at it from the deck of the boat, he was filled with misgivings. If only the fuel had lasted a hundred miles longer, enough to get him to Tampico, to civilization.

All right, that wasn’t important. He was free of the island, that was enough. Now there was nothing for it but to cross this semidesert until he found a road, a town, any sign of human habitation. From there on everything would be all right, everything would be fine.

He gathered up the suitcases, full of his worldly possessions, and went over the side. He waded to shore, holding the suitcases high because he didn’t know if they were waterproof or not, and when he reached dry land he set the suitcases down and sat awhile on a boulder to collect his breath and his thoughts.

He felt naked, without Steuber at his side. Steuber had been with him for a quarter of a century; it seemed impossible that Steuber now was dead. As though he and Steuber had somehow become Siamese twins, and it wasn’t possible for the one to be alive without the other one still living.

But that was nonsense. Self-interest, that was paramount. Steuber had merely been an adjunct, a crutch, an assistance in the problem of self-preservation. The problem still remained, without Steuber, and he could still face and solve it, without Steuber.

He got to his feet, picked up the suitcases, and started walking.

He walked west, due west, towards the sun. The suitcases, which had at first seemed so light, quickly became heavy, forcing him to make frequent stops for rest. He had brought the bourbon bottle along and used it sparingly to rinse out his mouth when it became too dry, but he soon saw he wouldn’t be able to survive too long without water.

There had to be a road, somewhere. He didn’t know Mexico very well, but he was under the impression there were plenty of north-south roads, coming down from the border towards Mexico City. He was surprised there wasn’t one skirting the shore, a scenic route for tourists who liked to look at the ocean.

Walking was not too easy. From time to time he stumbled on the stones the ground was littered everywhere with stones and then the suitcases banged painfully against his shins. The sun was very hot, the air was humid and heavy. Baron soon took off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves, but within fifteen minutes his clothing was drenched with sweat.

Still, he wasn’t worried. This wasn’t the Sahara desert, it was Mexico, and Mexico was a civilized country. There would be a road, sooner or later, and he would walk until he reached it.

His shoes constricted his feet; within them his feet were burning. His arms ached from the weight of the suitcases. He blinked perspiration constantly out of his eyes, and when he licked his lips he tasted salt. More and more frequently he found it necessary to stop and rest.

He evolved a procedure, a method. He moved by the numbers, trudging forward two hundred paces and then stopping, setting the suitcases down, sitting on one of the cases or on the ground while he counted ten inhales and ten exhales, and then getting up and moving forward again another two hundred paces. In his imagination he could hear Steuber just behind him, counting aloud as he had always counted for the exercises. It was almost as though, if he were to turn suddenly, he would see Steuber there, stolid and patient, his watch held in the palm of his left hand.

The exercises had not been wasted. If he were not in perfect physical condition now, a man of his age, walking across this barren land this way, it might kill him. At the best it would take an impossible amount of time, maybe even result in his having to spend a night in the open air, lying on the rock-strewn ground.

The sun inched down the sky ahead of him, slowly becoming a nuisance, burning into his eyes, making him squint, making it difficult for him to see, so he tripped more often. He was most of the time out of breath, but he kept doggedly to the same pace, two hundred steps and a ten-breath rest, two hundred steps and a ten-breath rest.

He trudged slowly across the afternoon, the suitcases hanging from his arms like blocky weights hung there for a punishment. Dust puffed up around his feet at every step, and when his shoe brushed the stones they clicked together like pool balls. The landscape was unchanging, unpopulated.

In late afternoon the oppressive humid heat began to ease just a little, and the sun shrank from a white hell in the middle of the sky to a more comfortable yellow-red ball falling slowly towards the horizon. Still, even yellow-red it was too bright to look at directly, and Baron still had to shuffle forward squinting, his face covered with dust, his clothing heavy with the dust intermixed with perspiration. From time to time he had sipped at the bourbon bottle to cut the layers of dust in his mouth, but he hadn’t thought to bring any of the crackers or the other food from the boat, so now he felt a little lightheaded. But that was good, it made it easier to keep moving.

By sunset he had walked a full twenty-one miles due west from the sea and had not yet come to a road. As the sun edged down out of sight far away in front of him, as the swift evening closed towards night, Baron began at last to feel real apprehension. Where had he landed, on what mistaken, lost, useless, forgotten shore had he cast himself?

It took a conscious effort of will to keep from running.

When he saw the man, he at first didn’t recognize him for what he was, but mistook the seated figure in the failing light for only one more of the occasional boulders he passed. It was ahead of him, and as he came closer it seemed to him the boulder was odd somehow, wrong somehow. And then he recognized it for a man, squatting on a low rock, his rounded back towards Baron.

Baron came forward, stumbling on the stones, forgetting his count. His suitcases banged the sides of his legs, hitting the raw places where they’d been hitting all afternoon, but he hardly noticed.

In a way, he was astonished. In a way, he hadn’t actually expected ever to see another human being again.

He was so excited he made the mistake first of speaking English: ‘Hello! Where am I, where the hell’s a road?’

The other man was just as startled as Baron. He leaped to his feet, half-stumbled as he backed away. He was an old man in grey and white clothing, clean but very ragged. He had the deeply lined face of an Indian, and his eyes showed the whites in his surprise and fear.

Baron realized the mistake with the English and leaped to another tongue. ‘Wo ist die autobahn? Haben sie’

No, no, that was wrong, too, that was German. In his confusion and haste, backing away from English, he had switched automatically to his native tongue.

Spanish, that was what he wanted, Spanish, but for just a second there was none of it in his head. He floundered, then the Spanish word for road came to him camino and the rest of the language followed.

So now he said, in Spanish, ‘I beg your pardon, I did not mean to startle you. I have been walking, looking for the road.’

‘Road? You want the road?’ The old man spoke a dialect full of clicks and gutturals, so Baron could barely understand him.

Baron nodded. ‘Yes. I want to continue my journey.’

The old man waved his hand. ‘This is the road,’ he said.

Baron looked. There was almost no light left, but now he could make out the ruts, the hump in the middle, the swath across this land cleared of stones and pebbles. This was the road, he was standing on the road, the old man had been sitting beside the road.

He said, ‘Where does this road go?’

The old man pointed south. ‘Aldama,’ he said. He pointed north. ‘Soto la Marina.’ .

Neither name meant anything to Baron. He said, ‘Which way leads to a bigger road, with automobiles and trucks?’

The old man pointed north again, towards Soto la Marina. ‘At the village,’ he said, ‘you must take the road west. To Casas. To Petaqueno. To Ciudad Victoria, which is a great city.’

Ciudad Victoria. That was the first name Baron knew. He said. ‘How far is that, Ciudad Victoria?’

‘From the village, perhaps more than one hundred kilometres.’

One hundred kilometres. Sixty miles, a little more. Baron said, ‘No cars before there?’

‘Sometimes at Casas. Or Petaqueno, very often.’

‘And how far to your village, to Soto la Marina?’

The old man shrugged. ‘Five kilometres.’

Three miles. ‘Is there somewhere I could sleep there tonight?’ Because another three miles was the most Baron could walk without sleep and food and water.

The old man said, ‘In my house, near the village. I am going home now, come with me.’

‘Good.’

They started walking along the dimly seen track, and the old man said, ‘The suitcases are heavy?’

‘No. Not too heavy.’

‘They have valuable things inside them?’

Baron turned to look at him. Was this old fool thinking of robbing him? But he was too old, too frail, there couldn’t be anything to fear from him. Baron said, ‘Just some clothing and things like that. Nothing valuable.’

‘Perhaps an electric razor,’ said the old man.

‘No.’

The old man was a moron. He did plan to rob Baron tonight, while Baron slept, but he was too stupid to keep his mouth shut and so he’d given the game away.

The only thing to do was take care of the old man as soon as they got to his house, hut, hovel, whatever he lived in. Knock him out, tie him up, so Baron would be able to sleep unworriedly all night.

They walked the rest of the way in silence, each full of his own thoughts, and the last of the evening’s light faded away, leaving a world so dark Baron had only the sound of the old man’s sandals to keep him from straying off the road. He couldn’t see a thing and couldn’t understand how the old man could see. Although it probably wasn’t seeing after all but simply knowing the road for all of his life.

Ahead of them, the smallest of lights flickered, an anaemic yellow. The old man said, ‘My house.’

As they got closer, Baron saw that the light was a candle inside a small dirt hut. The window through which the light gleamed was simply a square hole in the thick dirt wall, with neither frame nor glass.

‘A poor place,’ the old man said, apologizing.

‘No matter,’ Baron said, and it was true. What did it matter where he slept tonight? Tomorrow night he would sleep in the Mexico City Hilton.

The door was made of various grey pieces of wood haphazardly nailed together, the final result hung from cloth hinges embedded in the wall on the left side. The old man pushed this door open cautiously, as though it had fallen apart more than once before, and motioned to Baron to precede him. ‘My house,’ he said again.

Baron went in.

The old man came after him, crowding him in the doorway, saying, ‘I wish you to meet my son.’

The man rising from the wooden table in the middle of the room was not old, not frail, not small. He was huge, and he was smiling beneath his moustache.

Behind Baron, the old man was saying, ‘This gentleman has many valuable things in his suitcase

‘

Baron turned for the doorway, but it was too late.

9

EARLY morning sunlight tugged at Grofield’s eyelids, urging him awake. Reluctantly, mistrustfully, he allowed his eyes to open, he allowed his mind to begin to question where he was.

The boat. He remembered.

What time was it? What day was it? Not yet midnight when he’d left the island, and he could vaguely remember sunlight as he’d lain on the open unmattressed bed, and he could remember even more vaguely crawling from that bed in darkness onto the far more comfortable carpeting of the floor, and now there was sunlight again, and he was still lying on the floor, and he couldn’t begin to work out how much time had passed or what day it was supposed to be.

Or where Baron was. Where was Baron?

He moved, tentatively, and was pleased to find that nearly everything worked fine. Everything but the left arm. That didn’t want to work at all. It felt like the Tin Woodman’s left arm, in need of oiling.

He wondered about himself, how sick or healthy he was, how weak or strong. He kept testing, trying this and venturing that, and the first thing he knew he was on his feet. He felt shaky, a little dizzy, and hungrier than he could ever remember being, but he was on his feet.

He could even walk, if he was careful. Being careful, he moved around the open bed and over to the kitchen area of the cabin, and there he found some food and drink. He ate three cans of soup, cold and undiluted, spooning the stuff straight out of the can, mixing it with crackers and spoonfuls of cheese spread and long swallows of whisky. He sat in the chair by the formica counter and ate everything in reach, and when he was done he felt as though he might survive.

He was feeling good enough now to begin to think, to try to figure out what had happened. The boat was grounded, in close to shore. He was obviously the only one aboard her, so it figured Baron had gone ashore and taken off with the suitcases full of loot. What he couldn’t figure was why Baron had never bothered to look for him, why he’d left this loose string untied behind him.

In any case, the situation was bad. He’d been unconscious at least one day and night, making it probably Monday and maybe even Tuesday. The island had been demolished according to plan, but the plan had been demolished too. Parker and Salsa and Ross were all dead, Baron had the money and the diamonds, and Grofield was stuck God knew where with a bullet in his back.

He shook his head, thinking about how bad the situation was, and then he went slowly and carefully up on deck. The body of Ross was gone, too, he saw, and looked the other way, towards shore.

Bad. Desert type of place, nothing in sight.

Still, Baron must have known what he was doing, must have had some reason to stop here. Maybe just out of sight there was a city. Monterey. Or Corpus Christi. Or Eldorado.

A stray idea occurred to him. Was there any chance he might catch up with Baron, get the handle back? He didn’t know how much of a lead Baron had on him, maybe a full day’s worth, but was there nevertheless a chance it could be done?

The background music began, floating around his head. Arabic, partly, with threads of international intrigue. Foreign Legion, decidedly. A very Gary Cooper sort of role.

He felt his pockets and found a crumpled pack of cigarettes and some matches. It was good the cigarette he lit was rumpled and bent, it added a dash of Humphrey Bogart to the blend. The cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he leaned on the rail at the bow and gazed towards shore.

What the hell, he’d have to go that way in any case. He couldn’t stay here. If he were to get the medical attention he needed, he had to find civilization, and that inevitably meant following in Baron’s footsteps. If, in so doing, he caught up with Baron, so much the better.

He’d have to prepare. He had no idea how far a town or city might be, or how much trouble he’d have reaching it. What might be a simple walk for Baron, hale and healthy, could be rough for Grofield the way he was right now.

He went back down into the cabin, in search of food. He’d left a few crackers, and these he stuffed in his shirt pocket. An empty Jack Daniels bottle would serve to carry water, and a half-full Jack Daniels bottle would serve to carry Jack Daniels. A wedge of American cheese went into his trouser pocket.

In a closet in the fore cabin he found a yachting cap. A hat would be good protection from the sun; he put it on and went up on deck, carrying the two bottles with him.

On deck, he changed his mind about one detail and decided it was foolish to carry two bottles, it would just weigh him down. He took three or four swigs from the bottle with the whisky in it, then tossed it overboard. Water would be more useful this time.

He clambered with difficulty over the side, waded through the shallow water, having trouble keeping his balance with all the rocks and stones underfoot, and made his first rest stop when he reached dry land.

The morning sun was still low on the horizon, making the sea gleam like a shield. To walk away from the sea. Grofield should head due west, and this meant keeping his back to the sun. Simple.

A halo of music. It was a martial air now, with a muted touch of wistfulness in it, a minor key. There’ll always be an England, a France, some damn place. Grofield moved out in time to the music, walking on his shadow stretched out in front of him, a thin elongated El Greco silhouette of himself.

He was somewhat unsteady, both because of the wound and because of the whisky. Still, he kept due west and he made fairly good time. The shadow of himself he walked on slowly shrank as the sun rose higher in the sky behind him, and when the shadow was no taller than the original he became aware of the heat.

It was building slowly but steadily. The early morning had been pleasant, if not cool, but now heat was massing on the floor of the world, stacked like woolly invisible blankets through which he had to walk. The sun beat on the back of his neck, and he knew for sure he already had a bad burn there. His left shoulder ached, but not badly.

He tried to make the water last, but he kept being thirsty, very thirsty. He hummed silently as he walked, and dreamed of other things, different times and places, the faces of people he knew and once had known.

He found he was walking towardsthe sun.

‘No,’ he said aloud. He turned around, very carefully. The shadow was a dwarf now, bunched up before his feet on the rock-bedraggled ground. He walked again.

‘This was very stupid,’ he whispered, and realized he was thirsty again, and held up the bottle to see it was empty. He grimaced at it, disappointed with the behaviour of the damn thing, and let it fall. It shattered on a rock.

He fell, not too badly, and got up again. He walked on, and fell again, and this time he didn’t get up. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered into the ground, apologizing to himself. ‘I shouldn’t have left the boat.’

He had been asleep, or unconscious, he couldn’t tell which, and then suddenly he was awake again. He rolled over on his back, unmindful of the stones, regardless of the sun’s light, and stared into the sky, and he thought he saw Parker coming down out of the sky on a cloud.

‘Sacrilege, Parker,’ he said aloud, and smiled, and closed his eyes.

FOUR

1

PARKER said, ‘There’s something there.’ He pointed down at the ground.

‘I see it,’ said the pilot.

England said, ‘If that’s our man, and he’s alive, we have no legal right to take him off Mexican soil.’

Parker had no time for England’s worries. He was staring towards the ground, trying to see suitcases. The helicopter lowered, and he could see it was a man down there, but no suitcases. Then the man rolled over on his back, staring up at the helicopter with its bulging transparent front bubble, the three men in it staring down at him, and Parker saw it wasn’t Baron. It was Grofield, and that was impossible.

Parker had last seen Grofield on the dock by the boathouses back at the island, just before he’d been shot. The bullet had hit him high on the right leg, spinning him around and throwing him to the ground, knocking him cold, but that was the second bullet. The first bullet had hit Grofield; Parker had seen him jerk forward.

When he’d come out of it, back there on the flaming island, the boat and the suitcases were gone, and a raging petulant England was standing over him, shaking him, shouting that Baron had got away. Parker had had no time nor inclination to look for Grofield’s body. There had been so many there, he’d just assumed one of them had to belong to Grofield.

The important thing was the money, and it figured the money was with Baron. According to England, Baron was on the boat, headed south.

Parker couldn’t stand then, though he kept trying. ‘Where?’ he said. ‘Are you on him?’

‘No. In all this wreckage you people caused, we lost him. We know he was heading south, it makes sense he’d try to get to Mexico, Cuba’s too far for him to reach, he must know that.’

‘Get on him,’ Parker said. ‘Find him.’ He was still trying to stand, still falling back. ‘And fix this leg,’ he said. ‘Fix it. Fix it. I can’t stand on it, fix it.’

They took him out to a Navy ship on a launch, where a guy in white cut off his trouser leg and somebody else in white, who said he was a doctor, probed around and took out the bullet. ‘You ought to stay off this,’ he said.

‘I can’t,’ Parker told him. England was still hanging around, yapping in his ear, wanting to know where he’d been the last week, why he’d ditched his tail, why Grofield and Salsa had suddenly turned on the men assigned to watch them at the island. Instead of getting on Baron, England stood around talking about ancient history.

When Parker told him to shut up and find Baron, England said, ‘We can’t look now, it’s the middle of the night, everywhere but on that damn island. It’s still burning, do you know that?’

‘When?’ Parker asked him.

‘When? Right now. Look at the red on the porthole, that’s fire,man.’

‘When do you look for Baron?’

‘When it gets light. In the morning.’

Parker said, ‘Nobody goes to him but me. They don’t go to him without me, that’s got to be part of it.’

The doctor said, ‘Quit moving around. Do you want me to patch you up or don’t you?’

England said, ‘Why? Why should we take you along. Your part is finished, Parker, don’t you know that?’

Parker told him, ‘He isn’t anywhere you can put a legal collar on him, not yet. That’s where you want him, isn’t it? Where you can put a legal collar on him. You still need me, to take him from where he is and put him where you can grab him.’

England didn’t like it. He chewed it like a cow chewing its cud, and finally he nodded and said, ‘We’ll see,’ and Parker knew that was that. He told the doctor, ‘I’ll sleep till morning if you’ll get off me.’

The doctor was irritated. He left without saying anything.

In the morning, other people did the searching. ‘We could do nothing by ourselves,’ England said. ‘We have a hundred men doing the searching.’

Carey was back with England now, the two of them sitting with Parker on the deck of the Navy ship. Carey said, ‘All they’ll do is find Baron, let us know where he is. Then we’ll go get him.’

Parker still had trouble standing, and almost as much trouble sitting. He was stretched out on his side on a cot set up on deck. He felt like a fool, and he felt impatient. He said, ‘Your hundred men better be good.’

But they didn’t find anything, not all day long, and after dark they had to quit again. Parker was up by now, limping up and down the metal corridors, raging. ‘You need a hundred men to zip your fly, you people. You and Karns’ crowd, you’re all alike. No one of you can do a damn thing, so you figure a whole crowd of you can do everything.’

Carey had gone away, and only England was around to listen to it. ‘We’ll find him,’ he kept saying. ‘He must have gone to shore by now, and tomorrow that’s where the search will concentrate. Every possible inch of Gulf coastline he could have reached.’

‘They’ll lose their planes by morning,’ Parker said.

But in the morning they found the boat, run aground on a barren stretch of Mexican coastline about two hundred miles down from the border. ‘They saw the boat,’ England told Parker, ‘but they didn’t see Baron.’

‘The question is, did Baron see them?’

‘They said the boat looked abandoned,’ England said. ‘It looked to them as though he’d run out of gas.’

‘Do we go look?’

‘Surely.’ England nodded his head, showing he was sure. ‘They’re getting a chopper ready for us now.’

A chopper turned out to be a helicopter, a rickety-looking thing like a cross between a Sten gun and a beanie, with a plexiglass bubble in front where the pilot and passengers sat. Only three of them were going, Parker and England and the pilot. England didn’t say anything to the pilot about who Parker was, and the pilot didn’t ask.

The ship they’d been on had been moving south all night and lay now off the Mexican coast, about forty miles from where the boat had been sighted. Parker and England got there in the helicopter in less than half an hour. The pilot landed near the beach, and waited at his controls while Parker and England went over to the boat.

Parker could walk on the leg now, but stiffly; he was bruised on that side from hip to knee. A bullet from a Colt .45 punches more than it cuts, and the one that had hit Parker had left him with a leg that operated all right but that ached as though it had been worked over with a baseball bat.

Walking towards the boat, limping, he wished he was armed. England had a service revolver on him, but it was tucked away in its hip holster now under England’s suitcoat. The boat looked empty, but that didn’t mean anything.

The leg gave him trouble, wading the last part out to the boat. England had to help him aboard, and then they searched the boat and found it deserted but odd. The hideaway bed in the main cabin was standing open, without its mattress, which Parker found shoved under a bed in the fore cabin. He and England pulled it out of there gingerly, both of them half expecting to find a body rolled in it, but there was nothing. Just the mattress, no reason, no explanation.

There were bloodstains on the carpet in the main cabin, so maybe Baron had been hit, though Parker had no idea who might have shot him. There was also evidence that a couple of meals had been eaten down here, and the yachting cap Parker had put on that first day he’d seen the island, when he’d gone out in this boat with Yancy, that cap was now missing.

So were the suitcases. Man in a yachting cap, carrying two suitcases, probably wounded. ‘He’d head inland,’ Parker said, thinking of the suitcases. ‘Let’s go in after him.’

‘We have no jurisdiction,’ England said.

‘That’s why you brought me along, remember?’

England said, ‘You think you can get him to the States from here? We might be better off asking the Mexican police to pick him up for us. They’ll usually co-operate in a case like this.’

Parker shook his head. ‘I hear Baron’s got connections with Cuba. Mexico still recognizes Cuba, right? Baron contacts the Cuban embassy, Cuba says he’s ours we want him, Mexico lets him go.’

England said, ‘I never liked this operation, not from the beginning. If things had gone the way you wanted, you’d have doublecrossed us, you’d have taken the money, left Baron, and disappeared.’

‘You wanted us to help,’ Parker told him. ‘But you didn’t ask right.’

‘Is that what it was?’ England looked at him. ‘I don’t understand you. Why should I trust you now?’

‘Because you don’t lose anything. Without me you don’t get Baron at all. With me you get Baron maybe.’

‘I’ve got you now,’ England said. ‘If I let you go, then I don’t have Baron and I don’t have you either.’

‘You don’t want me. Remember? You’re a specialist.’

England said, ‘So are you. I’m beginning to find out in what.’

Parker could visualize the suitcases moving away across the horizon, while he and this fool stood here talking crap. England didn’t know about the suitcases, because Parker had let him understand the loot had burned up in the fire back on the island. England had believed it because it satisfied his need for poetic justice. But now there was no justification for Parker being in such a hurry, and if he kept on pushing, England might begin to wonder.

Still, England himself should be in a hurry. Parker said to him, ‘Make up your mind. Do you want Baron or not?’

England shrugged. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll see it out. I was told to co-operate, I’ll co-operate. But if we ever get our hands on Baron through you I’ll have a heart attack.’

They went back to the helicopter and told the pilot what they wanted; their quarry would be heading west, or towards the nearest town, or. both. ‘We don’t know how long ago he left. England said, ‘so we aren’t looking just for him. We’re also looking for signs that he’s passed a certain way, so we’ll be sure which way he’s headed.’

For the next hour and a half they made tic-tac-toe in the sky, north and then south and then west, north and then south and then west, until ahead of them they saw the black man-shape spread out on the ground and Parker pointed forward, saying, ‘There’s something there.’

‘I see it,’ said the pilot.

The helicopter lowered, and Parker saw no suitcases, and then he made out that the figure on the ground was Grofield, which was impossible.

The pilot landed twenty yards away, and Parker hurried across the rocky ground, limping, wanting to get there before England, to keep Grofield from saying anything he shouldn’t.

Grofield had his eyes closed, and very faintly he was smiling. He looked as though he’d been wandering out here for a week, with dirt caked on his face, with his lips dry and cracked, his clothing filthy. Parker knelt beside him and said, low and fast, ‘England’s with me. Keep mum on the money.’

Grofield opened his eyes as England came running up. Grofield said, ‘Come off it, Parker, you’re a mirage.’

Parker said, ‘Where’s Baron?’

‘Ahead of me. I don’t know.’ Grofield’s voice was husky and he was out of breath, but the words came as though he were fully conscious and in good shape. ‘I hid on the boat,’ he said. ‘Passed out. I don’t know how far he is ahead of me.’

Parker said, ‘How’s he travelling? Light or heavy?’

‘Heavy.’

England said, ‘We’d better get this man back to the ship.’

Grofield said, ‘No. I’m happy in Mexico.’

Parker straightened up, said to England, ‘You got no jurisdiction here, remember?’

‘This man’s hurt,’ England said. ‘He needs medical attention.’

On the ground, Grofield said, ‘Mexico has doctors.’

Parker looked westward, across the flat land towards the horizon, and then he looked down at Grofield. He had too many things to do at once. It was no good leaving Grofield for the law, but it was also no good standing around here while Baron got farther and farther away.

He said to England, ‘We got a radio in that helicopter?’

‘Of course.’

‘We got a map of this area in there?’

‘I think so.’

‘Let’s go look at it. You wait here, Grofield.’

Grofield smiled some more, lying there on the ground. He looked very sick. ‘I won’t move,’ he promised.

Parker and England went back to the helicopter and looked at a map. According to the pilot they were at a spot about twenty miles south of a coast town called Pesca. About fifteen miles west of them was a dirt road heading north and south, and that road, taken through a number of villages, would lead finally to Ciudad Victoria, about eighty miles away, the nearest city of any size.

Parker said to England, ‘You get on that radio of yours, you arrange for a jeep to come here from Ciudad Victoria. Then you and the helicopter leave. Grofield and I, in the jeep, we’ll get Baron for you. Tell them we want to keep the jeep a while, maybe a few days, maybe a week. We’ll turn it in when we go back across the border.’

‘I don’t know if I can work that,’ England said. ‘You don’t seem to realize how complicated that would be, getting’

‘Then why don’t you try it, see what happens?’

England said, ‘I stay with you.’

Parker looked at him. ‘You got no jurisdiction here.’

‘I won’t be here officially. I’ll just be with you, observing.’

Parker shook his head. ‘No.’

‘It’s the only way I could get a car, if it’s checked out to me. They’d never allow me to give a car to you.’

‘Jeep.’

‘Jeep, yes. And I ride with you.’

Parker thought a few seconds. This was wasting time, and he could see he wasn’t getting anywhere. All right, he’d unload England when he had to. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘You come with us.’

‘I’ll get on the radio right away,’ England said.

2

GROFIELD said, ‘Mother, in my last moments I was thinking of you.’

Parker looked over at him, and Grofield was sitting up. They’d put him in the shade under the helicopter while waiting for the jeep, and now he was sitting up, holding to a strut with his right hand, smiling out at the world.

Parker went over to him and said, very low, so England wouldn’t hear it, ‘Lie down, you moron. When that jeep gets here, I want you able to walk to it.’

Grofield said, ‘Why?’

‘Are you awake or asleep? Or maybe you think going to a hospital would be a good idea. If you’re well enough to walk to the jeep we can justify you staying at a hotel. If we have to carry you, England will ship you to a hospital and there’s nothing we can do about it, and from the hospital it’s one step to the Mexican law, and they turn you over to our law, and I’ll see you in fifteen, twenty years.’

Grofield blinked. ‘Oh,’ he said. He lay down again, carefully. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not thinking. I’ll be all right now.’

‘Good.’

Around on the other side of the helicopter, England said, ‘Here it comes. Here comes the jeep.’

Parker walked around and looked westward and saw the dust cloud. Beneath it something small and black was bouncing.

‘At last,’ said England. He rubbed his hands together, like a man with lots to do. ‘Now we can get going.’

England was a lot more chipper now, since he’d made the radio call and unloaded the responsibility. He no longer argued with Parker or stood around prophesying doublecrosses.

It took a long while for the jeep to come the last stretch; for a while it looked as though it were just bouncing up and down out there, not coming forward at all. But it finally showed up, braking heavily, and the Mexican driver jumped out with a toothy grin as the dust cloud caught up with the car, surrounded it, and dissipated. The driver walked out of the cloud, still grinning, slapping now at his trousers to get the dust off. He was stocky, moustached, swarthy, in civilian clothes: short-sleeved white shirt and dark grey slacks. He made a comic flourish and said, ‘Seńores, your auto.’

England was snapping his fingers, snapping his fingers. All of a sudden he was in a hurry. ‘Where’s Grofield?’ he said.

‘Right here, never fear, right here.’ Grofield came around the helicopter, walking, smiling his nonchalance, his left hand tucked into his trouser pocket. ‘Just the day for a ride,’ he said.

‘Si,’ said the driver. ‘You know.’ He and Grofield seemed pleased by each other.

England got in front with the driver, and Parker and Grofield sat in back. Grofield had a little trouble getting in and Parker had to give him a boost, but once he was seated his smile flashed again and he said, ‘Ready as ever.’

Parker slid into the seat beside him, and the jeep started around in a U-turn, heading back the way it had come. Behind them, the pilot was getting into his helicopter to take it back to its ship.

‘Once around the park, driver,’ Grofield said. ‘I believe I’ll take a nap.’ His smile got glassy and he passed out, his head falling over on Parker’s shoulder.

Parker said, for England’s benefit, ‘That’s a good idea. Sleep the whole trip, why don’t you?’

The first part of the trip, cross-country, was rough, and it was just as well Grofield had passed out at the beginning of it. The road, when they finally reached it and turned north on it, was good only by comparison.

They entered a village called Soto la Marina, a dirt street flanked by dirt houses. The main crop of this country seemed to be stones, so there were stone walls here and there.

After Soto la Marina they turned left on a road just like the first one. They were heading west again now, passing through a town called Casas that looked exactly the same as Soto la Marina except the road had begun to improve a little.

Just beyond Casas there were two men beside the road, an old one and a young one. The young one, big as a bull, was standing with his hands on his hips, watching the jeep go by. The old one, tired-looking, was sitting on an upended suitcase. The other suitcase was beside the young one’s legs.

Parker didn’t look back after the jeep went by.

They kept going, and a white later they passed through a town called Petaqueno. The road was getting better and better, and was blacktop by now. A sagging orange bus, wide as a whale, was taking on passengers in the square, every passenger carrying a huge bundle wrapped in cloth.

Just beyond Petaqueno, Parker shifted Grofield’s body so his weight went the other way, leaving Parker’s left arm free. He poked around the floor and between the seats, because every jeep in the world has tools rattling around inside it, and he found a screwdriver and a wrench. He hefted the wrench, nodded, and said, ‘Stop for a second, will you?’

England turned around, frowning. ‘What for? We’ll be in Victoria in fifteen minutes.’

‘This is an emergency. You, stop.’

The driver smiled and shrugged and brought the jeep to a stop. ‘When you got to go,’ he said, and Parker hit England with the wrench. The driver made an O with his mouth and started to bring his arm up against the swinging wrench, but he was a little late.

Parker climbed out, lay Grofield across the back seats, pulled England and the driver out of the jeep onto the ground, got the .38 service revolver from England’s pocket and put it in his own hip pocket, got behind the wheel of the jeep, and made a fast U-turn. He headed back for Casas.

3

THEY were walking along the road, towards Parker, and they didn’t have the suitcases.

The dust cloud had told them, the trailing tan puff this jeep carried around behind itself on these roads like a comet’s tail. They’d seen it coming, and they’d remembered the jeep that had gone by the other way a quarter of an hour before, and just in case there was a connection between jeep and dust cloud, between dust cloud and the man who once had carried those suitcases, just in case there was a connection they’d hidden the suitcases.

Near, very near. They were strolling along the road, and they couldn’t have gone far from the road, so the suitcases were very near. Beyond them, the other side of them. They’d hidden the suitcases and started walking away from them, so that’s where they had to be.

They looked straight ahead as they walked. Neither of them looked at Parker or the jeep at all.

Parker went on by them, and farther on another hundred yards, and then he stopped. He turned the jeep around and saw them standing still down there, the old man looking back and the young one tugging at his arm, trying to make him walk again. But then the young one saw it was too late, and he let go the old man’s arm, and the two of them watched.

Parker got out of the jeep. To his right, off the side of the road, there was a swath of dry brown ground, littered with pebbles, the swath about ten feet wide, ending at a low stone wall. The stone wall was about knee height, but fluctuated, and was made of the orange-brown stones that were lying all over this country, the stones of all different sizes, no cement used but just the stones piled up one on top of another, the low wall meandering along beside the road, separating dry brown lifeless ground from dry brown lifeless ground.

Parker walked along the road towards the two men, and then he turned around and walked back towards the jeep. He passed the jeep and walked another twenty yards, and then turned around and did it all over again.

On the second circuit he saw it, peeking up over the top of the wall, curved, plastic, black, alien.

The handle.

He let his lips spread in a smile. He started towards the handle.

As soon as he took a step away from the road, towards the wall, the two men began throwing stones at him. The old one had no arm, and the stones he threw were short, but the young one had a good arm and a good eye.

They were a nuisance, an irritation. Parker took England’s revolver from his hip pocket and showed it to them. He didn’t want to kill them, that was just stupid. There was no need for it.

But they kept throwing stones even after he showed them the gun, and now the old man was shouting, too: ‘Hi! Hi! Hi!’

Parker put a bullet in the dirt ahead of the young one’s feet.

They both stopped. They looked at the ground where the puff had come up, and they looked at each other. Then they both dropped the stones out of their hands.

But they wouldn’t go away. They stood where they were, blankfaced, and they watched everything Parker did.

Parker walked the rest of the way over to the wall and bent slightly over it and put his hand around the protruding handle and lifted. The suitcase came up into view, satisfactorily full. He carried it back to the jeep and put it on the floor in front on the passenger’s side. Then he went back to the wall and walked along it, looking over the tip, until he found the other suitcase. He picked that one up and carried it back, too.

On a hunch, he opened both suitcases. They were full of money, just as they were supposed to be, but the little flannel sacks of diamonds were gone.

He looked up, and the two of them were talking together, low-voiced but angry. One of them wanted to do one thing, and the other one wanted to do the other. Then they saw him looking at them, and they saw the suitcases open on the hood of the jeep, and they came to an agreement. Elaborately casual, watching Parker every inch of the way, they left the road, moved to the wall, clambered over it. The young one had to help the old one over the wall. When they were both over, they started walking. They walked straight out across country, away from the road.

Parker let them go. They weren’t carrying the diamonds with them, or they’d still be in the suitcase, so they were probably buried somewhere near where Baron was buried. Parker spoke no Spanish, and it was unlikely either of those two spoke any English, so questioning them would be too complicated. There was enough in the suitcases anyway, and hanging around looking for the diamonds would take up too much time. For all those reasons, Parker let them go.

Way out there, they were walking faster and faster; now they were running. All in all, they were a comical pair.

Parker turned back to the jeep, and Grofield was sitting up, his face grey underneath the dirt. ‘Is that the geetus, love?’ he asked.

‘All but the diamonds.’ Parker shut the suitcases, put one on the floor in front and one on the floor in back. ‘We’ll let the diamonds go,’ he said.

Grofield said. ‘Where oh where has my Baron gone?’

Parker pointed at the two dots running north along the rubbly ground. ‘I figure those two took care of him. They had the goods.’

‘England will be sad,’ Grofield said. He smiled, and looked around a little, and then frowned, saying, ‘Where is he? England, where is he?’

‘We left him.’

‘You’re a wonder, Parker.’ Parker got behind the wheel. ‘Lay down,’ he said. ‘I can’t drive this thing slow.’

‘I know you’re doing the best you can, old man, but if you could fit a doctor in the schedule somewhere

‘

‘That’s next,’ Parker told him. ‘Lay down.’

‘No sooner said.’ Smiling, Grofield lay down again, across the seats. When he closed his eyes, he looked dead.

4

PARKER walked into American Express with one hundred dollars and walked out with one thousand two hundred fifty pesos. Same difference.

Downstairs on the ground floor at American Express there was a counter where people could have mail delivered, and a steady stream of vacationing Americans passed by there, looking for letters or money from home. There were young schoolteachers on vacation, in groups of three and four, middle-aged couples awkwardly overdressed in clothing too dark and heavy for the climate, groups of shaggy young expatriates looking exactly like their brothers and sisters in Greenwich Village or the Latin Quarter or North Beach.

Parker hung around outside for about ten minutes, until a shaggy loner went in looking hangdog and didn’t get any mail at the counter. He came out looking even sadder. His shoes were unshined, his trousers were unpressed, his flannel shirt was unwashed, his hair was uncut.

Parker said to him, ‘You. One minute.’

‘What? Me?’

‘You speak Spanish?’

‘Spanish? Sure. How come?’

‘You want to make a fast ten?’

‘Dollars?’

Everything this kid said was a question. Parker nodded. ‘Dollars.’

The kid grinned. ‘Who do I kill?’

‘You come with me and you translate.’

‘Lead on.’

‘Come on, then,’ Parker said, and started down the street.

He was in Mexico City, on Avenue Niza. He led the way to the corner, which was the Paseo de la Reforma, the main east-west street in Mexico City, and turned right. Reforma is a broad avenue, with grassy walks on both sides and statues on pedestals along the grassy walks and huge statues at almost every major intersection.

Parker turned right on Reforma and walked down to the Avenue de Los Insurgentes, the main north-south street. At the intersection of Reforma and Insurgentes there was a regal statue of an Indian named Cuauhtemoc.

On Insurgentes, Parker flagged a pesero,a cab that would take him as far as he wanted to go on Insurgentes for one peso, or eight cents. Peserosworked both Insurgentes and Reforma, tearing back and forth in red or orange Chevies and Opels and Taunuses, carrying from one to five passengers.

There were already three passengers in the back of this cab, so Parker and the kid got in front with the driver, and they went shooting north.

Parker and the kid were the last passengers off, up at Avenue Paganini near the city limits. Parker had to break a ten peso note, and the cabby made change in a hurry; he wanted to turn around and race south again. As soon as Parker had his eight pesos and was out of the cab, the driver tore away.

‘This way,’ said Parker, and walked down Avenue Paganini, passing the jeep where he’d left it for good.

Mexico City was five hundred miles farther from the American border than Casas, but it made sense to come here and so Parker had come. England and the rest of his crowd would be looking hard for Parker now, but they’d be looking in all the wrong places. Up at the border and down around Ciudad Victoria, depending whether they thought he was trying to break away or find Baron. So the thing to do was stay away from Ciudad Victoria and stay away from the border.

And the other thing to do, until he could get out of Mexico completely, was go where Americans were the least noticeable, and that was Mexico City. So when he’d left Casas with the suitcases he’d retraced the original route back through Soto la Marina and south from there past where they’d picked up the road in the first place when they’d come inland from the sea, and from there on down to Aldama, where there was a government station selling Pemex gas, the only brand available in Mexico. They didn’t have any Gasolmex, the premium grade, so Parker had them fill the jeep and the spare five-gallon can with Supermexolina, the cheaper grade. With luck this would carry him all the way to Mexico City, and he wouldn’t have to make any more stops along the way, leave any more signs of his trail.

Below Aldama the road improved. He continued south to Manuel, then west to Ciudad Mante, a fair-sized town full of men and boys but short on visible women, where he picked up route 85, a main north-south route that took him straight into Mexico City. They slept on the road above Zimapan Monday night, and got into Mexico City a little before noon on Tuesday, and Parker was no sooner across the city line than he found a doctor for Grofield and he ditched the jeep.

He’d decided Grofield could wait for a doctor, rather than waste time on the road before they could get rid of the jeep. Grofield’s wound wasn’t bleeding, and he was unconscious most of the time, so he was no trouble to transport. Every now and then he’d wake up, do some of his comic routines, and then fade away again.

Now, with Grofield at the doctor’s, with pesos in his pocket, with a good Spanish-speaking guide who looked too naive to do anything but keep his mouth shut, Parker felt he had breathing room again. He walked down Avenue Paganini and when he got to the doctor’s house he said to the kid, ‘Don’t ask any questions. Don’t say anything at all. You’re a clam.’

The kid nodded. ‘I’m a clam,’ he said. He no longer looked hangdog; excitement and curiosity danced in his eyes.

Parker went into the doctor’s house, a white stucco building behind a white stucco wall with a black metal gate in it. The gate was open now, but at night it would be locked. Glass shards were embedded in the top of the wall. The gap between the haves and the have-nots was wider here than in the States, which made the haves a lot warier.

Inside, the doctor was coldly indignant. ‘This man,’ he said, ‘should have been to a doctor two days ago. He should be in a hospital. I don’t care how severe he thinks his marital problems are, his medical problems believe me are much worse.’ He was a short, slender, olive-skinned man with a thin moustache, large outraged eyes, and perfect accent-free English.

Parker had given him a song and dance about Grofield being a husband caught in bed with another man’s wife, being shot by husband number two, being terrified that his own wife would find out about it because she was the one in the family with money. It was a story of intrigue, romance, danger, and derring-do that he and Grofield had worked out beforehand, the kind of story Grofield could act with a lot of gusto and the doctor could take a Latin pleasure in.

But now the doctor was indignant, outraged. ‘Heseems to have no comprehension of the severity of his wound,’ he said, motioning angrily at the closed door behind which lay Grofield, ‘but you’re his friend, you should have forced him to come here before this.’

‘There wasn’t anything I could do, Doctor. He’s got a mind of his own.’

Then it went on like that for a while, the doctor talking out his sense of outrage, Parker being as patient with him as he could, the kid watching with bright-eyed lack of comprehension.

Finally the doctor was done. Parker had had to let him run out his string, so there wouldn’t be any trouble later on, but he was glad when it was finally done. ‘I’ll see he takes care of himself from now on,’ he said. ‘Can I take him with me now?’

‘He’s a very sick man.’

‘I know that.’

‘I’ve removed the bullet and bandaged the wound, and I’ve given him a sedative. He’s asleep.’

‘What does that mean?’

The doctor said, ‘It means he’s asleep. He should be allowed to rest.’

‘That’s all right with you, if he sleeps here a while?’

‘Of course.’

Parker looked at his watch. ‘What if I come back at six o’clock?’

‘Very well.’

‘Good. You want me to pay you now or then?’

‘Then. It doesn’t matter.’

‘I’ll take my bags now.’

‘All right. They’re in the corner there, where you left them.’

Parker had told him the suitcases were his, but had offered no explanation. People don’t explain themselves to one another when they’re on the up-and-up; let the doctor work up his own theory about the suitcases.

Now, Parker took them and motioned to the kid to come on, and they left the doctor’s house and went back out to the street. The kid said, ‘You want me to carry one of those?’

‘Sure. Why not?’

They walked back up to Insurgentes, each carrying a suitcase. They had to wait a while for a pesero,because not many of them came out this far.

While they were waiting, Parker said, ‘What I want now is a hotel. Not a Hilton, but not a dive. A small quiet hotel where they mind their own business. Away from the centre of town, if possible.’

‘Most of the big tourist hotels are around the Alameda,’ the kid said. ‘You want to be away from them?’

‘Right.’

‘Then there’s some others right off Insurgentes, down near Reforma. Back in around the jai alai frontón.Small, but they speak English, most of them.’

‘That’s what we want. You lead the way.’

A peserofinally came and they rode it back towards the middle of town, getting off at Avenue Gomes Farias, heading east towards the Plaza de la Republica. They tried two hotels but both were full, and finally found one behind the frontónon Edison.

‘The room isn’t for me,’ Parker explained. ‘I’m getting it for a friend of mine. This is his luggage.’

‘So you sign his name,’ said the clerk. He spoke English with a combination of Greenpoint and Mexican accents.

Parker wrote ‘Joseph Goldberg, New York City,’ and the clerk himself took them up in the elevator to the room, carrying the two suitcases. Parker gave him a five-peso note, stashed the suitcases in the closet, and said to the kid, ‘Now we do some buying.’

For the next hour and a half they went from store to store, while Parker bought clothing and other stuff. He got two suits, four white shirts, two belts, five ties, two pairs of shoes and six of socks, five sets of underwear, a raincoat, a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste, a hairbrush, a razor and a packet of blades, a can of shoe polish, two Mexican guidebooks and an English-Spanish dictionary, two cheap silver bracelets gift-wrapped, two quarts of tequila, a straw ladies’ handbag, an expensive leather suitcase, a small original oil painting in a wooden frame all about a foot square, a high-price carton of American cigarettes, a Zippo lighter, and a can of lighter fluid. The kid guided him from place to place, translated when necessary, and toted the goods.

Back at the hotel, with the boxes and bags of stuff all spread out on the bed, Parker took a ten-dollar bill from his wallet and said, ‘You been a big help. I’m done now.’

‘It was a pleasure,’ the kid said. ‘Trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing, it’s better than the puzzle in the Sunday Times’

Parker gave him the ten and said, ‘You here on a tourist visa or a passport?’

‘Tourist visa.’

‘You want to make some more dough?’

The kid grinned. ‘You know it.’

‘Fifty bucks,’ Parker said.

‘Fifty? What do I do this time?’

‘Lose your wallet.’

The kid blinked. ‘What?’

‘Lose your wallet, before you leave this room. Tomorrow you go to the American Embassy, you tell them somebody stole your wallet with all your papers in it. You do that tomorrow afternoon, not before then.’

‘Mister, I could get in a lot of trouble do’

‘For losing your wallet? Red tape, that’s all. It happens all the time.’

The kid took his wallet out and looked at it. ‘You don’t need the wallet, do you? Just the papers.’

‘I’ll make it sixty,’ Parker told him, ‘you can buy a new wallet.’

‘I’ve got pictures in’

‘Get new copies. If the wallet is lost it’s lost.’

‘Oh. Yeah, I guess so.’ The kid hefted the wallet. ‘I sure wish I knew what was going on.’

‘I’m a counterspy,’ Parker told him. ‘I got to get to Washington before the Russkis start World War Three.’

‘It’s something like that,’ the kid said. He took his new ten-dollar bill and a few pesos from the wallet and tossed it on the bed. ‘How do you like that?’ he said. ‘I lost my wallet.’

‘You report it not before tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Got it.’

Parker fed him sixty dollars, in tens, and the kid went away.

For the next few hours Parker was very busy. He took the suitcases out of the closet and opened them on the bed and started counting, and when he got to one hundred twenty-seven thousand, five hundred sixty, he was finished. That was sixty-three thousand, seven hundred eighty dollars apiece. Not the two hundred grand Karns had guaranteed him, but he wouldn’t bother about hitting Karns for the rest. The diamonds would have covered that much probably, and even so his half was more than the fifty thousand dollars his quarter would originally have been.

He put Grofield’s share back in one of the suitcases and stowed that one in the closet. Then he phoned the airport and booked passage on an eight-thirty flight that evening to Los Angeles, and after that he packed.

The packing took a long while. He had two suitcases, the old one and the one he’d just bought, and all his new purchases. The clothing he’d been wearing went in first, and he put on all fresh things, and after that he worked slowly.

He had a large mass of money, and what he had to do was break it into a lot of small masses of money and make those small masses disappear. There were bills rolled in the new socks, each sock around a little stack of money large enough to make one rolled sock look like two. He tucked bills in the toes of the spare shoes, and filled all pockets of the suits. The new shirts, with the wrapping taken off, looked as though they’d just come back from the cleaners, and into each he stuffed more bills. Each piece of underwear was rolled up with a chunk of money inside it like a pearl in an oyster. The ladies’ handbag was crammed with bills. The raincoat pockets were filled with bills and the clothing Parker was wearing was packed full of bills. It took work and it took time, but when he was done the cash was all packed away and out of sight. With the painting, the handbag, the bottles of tequila and all the other stuff, he looked exactly like a tourist, and obvious tourists get a quick runthrough at customs.

At six o’clock he went back to the doctor’s house, paid the tab, and picked up Grofield. Grofield was conscious and shaky, but grinning. He looked a mess in his clothes, but that couldn’t be helped.

They took a peseroback downtown, and walked the three blocks to the hotel. ‘That was a good man,’ Grofield said. ‘That doctor.’

‘He did a good job on you.’

‘I’m not ready to travel yet, though. Not yet.’

‘I know.’ Parker nodded. ‘That’s your hotel, ahead. You’re Joseph Goldberg there.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Nobody.’

Parker didn’t explain any more till they were up in the room, where Grofield immediately stretched out on the bed, saying, ‘I’m weak as a kitten, you know that?’

‘You’re checked in here alone,’ Parker told him. ‘I’m leaving tonight. Your share’s in the suitcase in the closet. They’ll be looking for us together, so the sooner we split the better.’

Grofield nodded. ‘Sure.’

‘Sooner or later they’ll find the jeep and know we came down here, so play it tight.’

‘I will.’

Parker looked around. ‘That’s all of it,’ he said. He picked up the suitcases, was carrying the raincoat tucked under his left arm. ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said.

Grofield said, ‘I appreciate this.’

‘Appreciate what?’

‘You didn’t leave me up there. You carried me along, got me my share.’

Parker didn’t understand what there was to appreciate about that. ‘We were working together,’ he said.

‘That’s right,’ Grofield said. ‘I’ll be seeing you.’

THE PARKER SERIES:

Point Blank (1962) aka The Hunter

The Mourner (1963)

The Outfit (1963)

The Steel Hit (1963) aka The Man with the Getaway Face

The Score (1964) aka Killtown

The Black Ice Score (1965)

The Jugger (1965)

The Handle (1966) aka Run Lethal

The Seventh (1966) aka The Split

The Green Eagle Score (1967)

The Rare Coin Score (1967)

The Sour Lemon Score (1969)

Deadly Edge (1971)

Slayground (1971)

Plunder Squad (1972)

Butcher’s Moon (1974)

Comeback (1997)

Backflash (1998)

Payback (1999)

Flashfire (2000)

Firebreak (2001)

Breakout (2002)

Nobody Runs Forever (2004)

Ask the Parrot (2006)