Slayground

“What could we do, for Christ’s sake? They put us on that goddam roadblock, we couldn’t get — “

“Yd of got off! You think Yd of stood around that roadblock for seven hours? That’s what’s wrong with the goddam cops, not a one of you’s got the brains of a pissant! You couldn’t figure out — “

“Now, wait a minute, Lozini, you can’t — “

“Don’t you tell me what I can do and what I can’t do, you son of a bitch, you’re nothing but one of my two-dollar Boy Scouts, and if you were found with your head busted open in some vacant lot tomorrow morning nobody’d even look twice. So you just watch what the hell you say to me, boy.”

The cop stood swaying, and Parker watched him, wondering which way he’d go. Cops tend to have pride where their brains ought to be, and right now it was going to be a battle between this cop’s pride and his brains, with the pride telling him he was a cop in a uniform and he shouldn’t let any hood like Lozini chew him out in front of a bunch of other hoods no matter what the situation or the relationship between them, and with the brains telling him Lozini was just as mad as he looked about the death of his protege Gal and wouldn’t think twice about taking it out on a cop, particularly one that he half-blamed for Gal’s death in the first place.

This time, brains won out. When the cop finally spoke; it was much quieter, so quiet Parker could barely make out the words. “All right,” he said. “You’re upset, I know that. I’m just as sorry about Cal as you are, I respected him as a man, I liked to think he was maybe a friend of mine. Maybe a smarter man than me would have got himself off duty last night, I don’t know. I doubt it, I don’t think anybody got himself off duty last night, but maybe it could have been done. But it wasn’t my decision that we come in here anyway, after the seven hours, it was Cal’s. And yours. I’m sorry about what happened to Cal, but I’m not taking any of the blame for it.”

“Oh, you’re not. You son of a bitch, you’ll tell me what you will take and what you won’t take.”

“Any man here will,” the cop said, “if you push him hard enough. Dunstan and me, we’ve got to spend some time on patrol, because if we stay in here all day, sooner or later the captain’s gonna miss us and start people looking for us, and maybe they’ll even look here, and I don’t think you’d like that. So that’s why we have to leave for a while. We’ll be back within an hour.”

Lozini didn’t answer anything for a minute. When the cop had turned reasonable it had pulled some of the sting of Lozini’s bad temper, too. He was trying to stay hot and angry, but it wasn’t working too well. Finally, down there, he shrugged and said, “I don’t give a damn. Do what you want. But before you go, I got a cop-type problem here for you.”

The cop looked around, obviously puzzled. “Sure,” he said. “What is it?”

“We got us what they call in the mystery books a locked room,” Lozini said. “What my wife reads every night in bed, mysteries about locked rooms. A nice detective problem.” He made a broad gesture, including the whole theater in its sweep.

“Here’s a theater building,” he said. “We got all the exits watched, every exit has been watched since before the last time we knew for sure the guy was in the building. We’ve searched the place from top to bottom, we’ve looked in every room, I even sent a guy up on the roof. We can’t find him. He isn’t here. So how did he get out? And if he didn’t get out, if he’s still in here, where is he?”

The cop looked at his partner, and back at Lozini. “How do I know? I don’t know anything about locked-room mysteries. Maybe there’s someplace you didn’t look.”

“We looked everywhere.”

“Then he got out in the confusion.”

“My boys say they weren’t confused, they say they never stopped watchin the doors.”

“Then he wasn’t in here at all, maybe.”

“He was in here because he dropped all these pipes and things on our heads. And besides that, we know he was in here because George out there in that Island in the Sky thing saw him come in.”

The other cop took a hesitant half-step forward and said, “Maybe he’s one of us.”

They all looked at him. Lozini said, “Hah?”

“That’s one of the ways they solve it in the mystery stories,” the cop said. His voice sounded nervous, as though he was sorry now he’d started talking. “The way it works,” he went on, “the guy everybody’s looking for doesn’t really exist, he’s actually one of the searchers. Like the guy would be somebody that works for you, and he got in on this robbery, and he spent last night in the park here, and today he made a lot of confusion in the theater here and then just joined everybody else and went around helping to look for himself.”

There was silence. Everybody looked at the cop — Dunstan, the other cop had called him — and Parker saw the cop squirm under all the attention. He acted as though he was going to say something more, but he never did.

Finally Lozini spoke. “That’s either a stroke of genius,” he said quietly, “or the goddamnedest piece of shit I ever heard in my life.” He took a step closer to the apron of the stage. “I know every man I called this morning,” he said, “and I don’t see anybody here I didn’t call. You guys that were on the doors before. Did anybody at all go out? One of us, or anybody.”

There was a ragged response, all no.

“And the guys I sent to take your places,” Lozini said, “I sent, and I know who they are. You guys go ask them did anybody at all go out since they took over.”

There was a rustle and shuffle of motion, dying out, and then Lozini looked over at the young cop and said, “That’s the kind of thing my wife would like, she’d go for that. I think you’re wrong, but I think you got brains, that’s a very interesting solution. You got a lotta brains for a cop.”

The cop sort of bobbed his head and shuffled, but didn’t say anything.

They waited a couple of minutes until all the messengers had come back, all with the same answer. Nobody had gone out.

Lozini nodded. “Right,” he said. “That’s what I figured.” He looked at the young cop again. “Any more ideas?”

“No, sir. No.” The answer was more croaked than spoken.

“Don’t be afraid, kid,” Lozini said. “That was a very smart idea, very nice. It could of been right. You sure you don’t have any more?”

The cop shook his head.

“Too bad,” Lozini said. He looked at the other one. “What about you? Any ideas?”

“Just leave men on guard at all the doors here,” the older cop said, “and start looking around the rest of the park again. That way, if he’s still in he can’t get out, but if he’s out maybe you’ll find him again.”

“That kind of thing I can figure out for myself,” Lozini told him. “It’s this other stuff I wanted you guys for, like what your partner come up with.” He turned away from the cop, back to the front of the stage again. “All right,” he said. “We’ll go back to what we were doin before. We’re gonna turn on every light in the park, and then we’re gonna start at one end and sweep right down to the other end, and somewhere in this pile of shit we’re gonna find that son of a bitch, and before we put him out of his misery we’ll ask him how he worked this stunt, gettin out of here.” He turned back to the cops. “You two get back as soon as you can.”

The older cop said, “We will. Within the hour.”

Two

PARKER MOVED. The stiffness had set in again, his joints creaked at every motion of his arms or his legs.

The inside of the theater was empty now, had been empty for about five minutes. But it was still brightly lighted down there, and he knew the exits were all being watched from the outside.

He made himself move. The first thing to do was get himself down out of here, and in order to get anywhere at all he was going to have to crawl along the pipes on hands and knees, a little bit at a time, making the creaky muscles work, with the ceiling inches above his back.

He was heading for where he’d seen the sunlight angle through when the trap door had been opened, and after a little searching around he found it. He pushed up, and it wasn’t locked, and he lifted the trap door a little and raised his head until he could see out onto the roof, see the snow there, the new footprints in it, the blue sky beyond. The air smelled cold and clean.

At first everything looked safe, but then Parker looked to the left, and hanging in the air was the lookout in the Island in the Sky pot, the one who’d first hollered to everybody that Parker was going into the theater. He was maybe five feet higher than the theater roof and about ten feet away from the edge. He could look right over here and see everything, it would be as easy as looking into a living room from a dining room.

He was being conscientious about his job, too, moving around in an endless circle inside the waist-high pot, a metal basket-like thing similar to the baskets people ride in when they travel by balloon. His concentration was on the ground, looking all around at the paths and building entrances down there, but he’d be able to see somebody walking around on the theater roof. He’d hardly be able to miss it.

Parker kept the trap door just barely open, just enough to be able to watch the lookout. There was a knee-high wall around the edge of the roof, and it was maybe seven or eight feet from the trap door. Parker waited, moving his shoulders and his legs, trying to get more limber while he watched the lookout’s movements, and when he felt he was ready, and the lookout was facing the other way on his circuit, Parker came quickly up out of the opening and ran awkwardly the three steps to the edge of the roof and dropped flat again behind the wall. Now he was out of the lookout’s sight, and he could study the roof and find the other entrance to it that the first guy had used.

It was easy enough to see. It was a small construction on the roof, about the size of two phone booths back to back, with a black metal door on this side. It was near the front of the building, but well out in the visible middle area. The lookout moved around in his circuit too fast for Parker to be able to get to that door, open it, and get down out of sight before the guy had come around and seen him.

Parker looked up over the top of the low wall, and the guy was just going around and around on his circuit. He’d seen Parker once, and now, like a tourist hitting a jackpot on the Las Vegas nickel slots, he was going to stay there until he either found Parker again or ran out of nickels.

What an easy shot he’d be. If Parker were to move about halfway along this wall, to the closest point to the lookout, they’d be maybe twelve feet apart. Four yards. The simplest easiest shot in the world, for a man with a gun.

Except that a gunshot now would make this rooftop damn crowded. But what the hell, if he was going to wish for a gun he might as well wish for a silencer, too. Even a potato, that makes a good silencer.

There was maybe a way. It was chancy, but everything was going to be chancy until he got himself out of here. And if it didn’t work he’d just have to move very fast and hope for the best. Because one way or another he had to get down, and that staircase over there was his only way. He’d flown up to the grid, but he wasn’t likely to fly back down again. The rear wall of the theater was brick, and if he was in better physical shape he could probably climb down it, but right now he wouldn’t trust his fingers and toes.

But he was going to have to trust his arm. His arm and his eye. Not for strength, though, for accuracy.

It was the only possibility, so it had to be tried, and that was the end of it. Parker began to move, crawling along next to the wall, getting to the point where he’d be closest to that guy in midair over there. Snow was melting beneath him, the wetness seeping through the two pairs of summer pants he was wearing, seeping through his gloves. He moved faster, wanting to get this part done and over with before the cold and the wet made him even less reliable to himself than he already was.

He got to the right point, and looked over the top of the wall to be sure, and there he was, right over there, out and up from here. It was like lying on the floor in a fairly small room and looking at somebody on a upper bunk on the opposite wall. He seemed almost close enough to touch. Just about twelve feet.

Parker took off his right glove. He flexed his arm, but the movement he’d done since first starting into motion again had worked most of the new stiffness out of his shoulders and the arm now felt pretty good. His fingertips were cold, and he breathed on them, flexed his fingers, breathed on them some more. Finally he reached down and behind him and took out one of his two knives from his hip pocket. He held the point between thumb and forefinger, and looked over the wall again.

This time he was counting, doing a slow count, and from the time the guy over there had reached the point on the circuit where he was angled too much away to readily notice anything over here till he’d had his back turned completely and was back around again to where this spot was once more within his range of vision was about a count often. Maybe ten seconds, probably a little longer because his count had been very slow. So he had ten seconds to stand up, set himself, aim, and let fly.

Watching the guy over there, running the count again, double-checking himself, he began to think of other possibilities. He was safe where he’d been, or so it seemed. They hadn’t been able to find him. What if he just stayed there, just sat it out until they finally gave up and went away?

That was a nice thought, and he was tempted. It was an easy way to handle it. But it wouldn’t work. In the first place, that old man Lozini wasn’t going to give up very soon. He’d be capable of staying in this park for days, for a week or more, and how long could Parker cling to that grid of pipes up there, without food or sleep? If he fell asleep he would probably also fall out of the grid. And in the second place, if Lozini became convinced he was nowhere else in the park, he’d have the theater searched again, he might bring in more lights, it might occur to him to look under the roof. It might even occur to him to set the place on fire, burn it down and see what came out. Parker would put nothing past Lozini, an old man bent on revenge.

So he couldn’t wait it out, he had to keep in motion. Already he was in much worse shape physically than he’d been when he came in here. The longer he stayed, the worse shape he’d be in, and sooner or later he’d no longer be able to handle the situation properly, he’d start making stupid mistakes, bumbling physically, thinking sloppily, and then they could just walk over and step on him and be done with it.

He watched the guy over there, moving around and around, and he knew which circuit he was going to move on, and braced himself, and when the instant came he got his knees under himself, and came up, one hand on the top of the wall. He stood, in profile to his target, left arm up in front for balance, knife held back behind his right ear. He knew the spot in the air he was going to throw the knife at, he knew how long it would take that guy’s head to reach that spot, he knew how much ahead of time he should throw.

He had a couple of seconds to spare. He stood cocked on the theater roof, waiting, all his attention concentrated on that moving head over there, four yards away. The second came, he threw, and at the end of the motion, dropped flat again behind the wall.

There was no shout, no yell, no scream, no sound at all. Nothing happened.

Parker raised his head, he looked across the way.

Nobody there.

He came up on his knees again, and there was still no one in sight. It was as though the pot was empty over there.

He’d hit him, and the guy had dropped inside. Had he hit him full on, just under the ear, just behind the jaw, the spot he was aiming for, or had it been a glancing blow, was the guy just knocked out for a while? Maybe only for a few seconds.

Parker looked away to his right, and far away across the park was the other airborne sentinel, watching the ground. Too far away to have noticed anything happening over here. Too far away to use the other knife on, but also too far away to be a menace right now.

He pulled his right glove back on, got to his feet, brushed the snow off his jacket and trousers. Then he trotted across the roof and pulled the black metal door open and went down the stairs.

Three

LOOKING DOWN at the stage from the rear of the balcony, Parker saw the body still lying there under the canvas and pipes. The other one, the wounded one, had been carried away early on in the search. If nothing else, Parker was keeping them all occupied.

Behind the balcony was a small projectionist’s booth, containing two large old movie projectors looking like robots built by ants. There was also a closet full of cleaning supplies, and a pair of rest rooms, and in a carton in a corner a pile of True Detective magazines.

The staircase down from the balcony was wide and carpeted. Downstairs there was an office, and in a small colorful carton on top of a filing cabinet in the office a dozen candy bars: chocolate with peanuts. Parker ate two of the candy bars and stuffed the rest into his jacket pockets.

There was a window in the office opening out onto the front of the theater, but the Venetian blinds were closed. Parker stood against the wall beside the window, moved the blinds slightly, and looked out through a narrow slit at an angle over toward the entrance. He watched, and after a minute a guy walked into sight, ambling along in a slow and bored manner. He stopped, he looked around, he turned and walked slowly back the way he’d come.

The guard. One guy, apparently, all alone. But there’d be other guards at the side exits, and one holler from this one would bring the others running.

Parker searched the office, hoping to find a gun, but there wasn’t one. There was nothing helpful at all. He left the office and walked down the center aisle of the theater and went up onstage and searched the corpse there, but he didn’t have a gun either. If he’d had one, somebody had taken it with him. The corpse had no weapons at all.

Now what? There were three exits from the theater, the main one up at the head of the aisle, in front of which he’d seen the bored guard walking, plus one on either side wall, down near the stage. Both of these were metal double doors, with push bars to .open them, and on the other side of each set there would be at least one guy on guard duty, armed and ready to make a noise. There were no other ways out of the building except a couple of windows flanking the main entrance, right in view of the guy on duty there.

Well, no. There was another way out. Maybe.

Besides the canvas and pipes and corpse, the stage was also littered with ropes, all the long thick brown ropes that had held up the backdrops before Parker had turned them into weapons. He now took one of these ropes, with a length of about sixty feet, and untied it from the pipe to which it was still attached. He coiled it, and the result was loosely the shape and weight of an automobile tire. He hooked it over his left shoulder and went down from the stage and walked up the aisle to the rear of the theater, and then back up the stairs all the way to the roof. He walked across the roof to the back wall and looked over the edge. There was no exit on this side, and there was no guard down there. There was no one down there at all.

Looking out from here, he could see straight ahead of him the outer wall of the park. In fact, from up here he could see over the wall, see another parking lot beyond it, empty and snow-covered. Outside, free and clear. He could see it, but he couldn’t get to it.

To the right from here he could see the spot where the Island in the Sky pot ride started, and beyond it New York Island, with the Coney Island amusement-ride section. Nobody in sight over there, no buildings of any size for him to be hiding in.

To his left was a strangely green area of low hills and twisting stream. Snow lay all over that area, too, but in the middle of the snow, palm trees and tropical bushes stood out, bright green, as though to prove the snow a fake. But it was the trees and bushes that were fakes, because that was an outdoor ride, the Voodoo Island jungle ride. In the summer the customers would board excursion boats holding about twenty people at a time, getting on board at a primitive-looking dock down near the side wall of the theater, and would then be taken on a trip along the winding stream that bent this way and that, cutting back on itself time after time, so that what was really a very small area was made to do a lot of work. During the trip animated mannequins along the shore would be doing jungle-type things like being chased by alligators or throwing spears at the passing boat. There was no one in sight over there now, either.

Here and there on the theater roof were projections, ventilator pipes and so on, half a dozen near the back of the building. Parker tied one end of the rope to one of these, pulled on it to be sure it was secure, and then slowly lowered the other end over the side. The rope was a good twenty feet longer than the building was high, so when he was done, there was a lot of the rope lying on the ground down there.

The candy bars he’d eaten had helped. Just getting rid of the gnawing feeling in his stomach was an improvement, but besides that, he felt stronger now, closer to his normal self. It might have been more psychological than real, but it didn’t matter. The result was the same.

Still, he was cautious when he went over the side, taking it slow and easy, working his way gradually down the back wall. He felt the strain in his arms from the beginning, but it never got to be too much to handle, and he reached the bottom without any real problem.

At the bottom, he looked both ways. The gate was his ultimate destination, and the artificially green jungle area was closer to the gate than the Island in the Sky ride and Coney Island in the opposite direction. He went to the corner of the building, looked around, and saw one guy on guard duty outside the doors. The guy was leaning against the wall there, smoking, looking at his cigarette between puffs as though trying to understand the principle of its operation. Parker waited, feeling colder again now that he was outside once more, and finally, after three or four minutes, the guy finished his cigarette, threw it into the snow, and began to walk around in the same bored way as the guy in front.

The minute the guard turned his back Parker was off. It was four or five running steps to the first of the fake shrubbery. Parker got to it, and ducked down, looking back through the plastic leaves. The guy was still mooching around over there, walking a little bit, kicking aimlessly at the snow, strolling around with his hands behind his back.

The problem now was that most of the protective shrubbery . was the other side of the stream, which was here about eight feet wide, wide enough to keep the customers in the excursion boats from seeing the mannequins too closely.

Not that the mannequins were around now. Pieces of gray canvas covered the spots where they would be attached in the summertime, but for now the dolls themselves were stored in a low concrete block structure over behind the roller coaster in Alcatraz. Parker had seen them in there yesterday afternoon. The pieces of gray canvas marking the spots where they belonged looked like bases out of baseball season, half-buried in snow.

Parker moved cautiously from plastic bush to plastic bush, skirting the edge of the stream, hurrying across the bare spots where he might be seen, getting quickly to that part of the jungle where most of the greenery was between him and the rest of the park, with the moat and the outer park fence on his other side. Now he could move with less fear of being seen, the moat and fence on his right and the hilly green jungle rising up like surrealism out of the snow on his left.

The jungle ended before the corner of the park fence. Now he had to turn leftward, with a fairly long open stretch after the end of the jungle to the corner of the next building, the Marooned! black-light ride where he’d hidden the satchel of money.

What was he going to do about the money? Last night, when it had seemed all he had to do was pick off his pursuers one at a time, he’d planned on leaving the money there till he’d cleared his escape route, then going and getting the satchel and taking it away with him, but now that was impossible. He’d be lucky if he just got himself out of here, without worrying about anything else. The bag of money would slow him down, drag him down, when he was already working at less than his normal efficiency.

So there was nothing to do but leave it there, and hope he could get back sometime in the future, and that the money wouldn’t be found by anybody in the meantime.

He was about to make his turn at the end of the jungle when a commotion started up way behind him. He ducked down behind a plastic palm tree and looked back, but no one had seen him. The commotion was too far away, shouting and vague movement of people running around. Parker edged out-away from the jungle, till he could see better, and the fuss was up around the Island in the Sky take-off point. They must have turned on the power there again, to bring their two lookouts down from the pots, probably to send up replacements, and they’d found the one Parker had taken care of. Another little locked-room mystery for them to think about. What would the cop Dunstan come up with this time? Suicide, maybe.

Now that there was so much distraction back there, it would be a good time for Parker to make his move. He went around the corner of the jungle area and began to trot toward the main gates, down at the midpoint on this side of the park. He ran past Marooned! and then past the night watchman’s office, and slowed as he approached the gates. They’d have men on duty there, he didn’t know how many or where they’d be. He moved up carefully, the fence on his right and a snack bar on his left, the gates just ahead.

They were shut, probably locked. There was no one standing near them, not in sight anyway.

Naturally not. They wouldn’t want passers-by to see people standing around in here, it might cause somebody to call the cops. So they’d be undercover somewhere handy, where they could keep an eye on the gate.

“Hey! There he is, there he is!”

Parker spun around, the two guys were boiling out of the doorway of the night watchman’s shack, tugging into their coat pockets for their guns. He turned the other way, and the shouting had brought a couple more out of the Island Earth amusement-ride section the other side of the gates. One of them over there fired his gun while running and the bullet went nowhere in particular.

He couldn’t get to the gates. They were all too close, he’d be a fat target climbing up and over.

He looked both ways, and ran to the left, away from the gates, around the snack bar. Between here and the fun house a stream ran across, with an island in the middle of it containing picnic tables, small wooden bridges leading onto the island from both sides. Parker ran that way, meaning to go through the fun house again, but as he was crossing the little island two guys came running around the left side of the fun house, so he crossed the .bridge and veered off to the right, across the main roadway with the fountain down there to his left and the gates back the other way and the Voyage Through the Galaxy black-light ride straight ahead.

That was where Parker headed, with six of them now running after him, a couple of them firing, a couple more shouting, bringing the rest of them on the run.

Four

VOYAGE THROUGH the Galaxy. Only now it was just a barn. There were work lights on all over the place, leaving no shadows, the moons and planets and stars no longer seeming to hang in interstellar space. The building, a hollow shell, was a tall square, with the flimsy-looking track for the rockets the customers rode on twisting around up and down inside the building like a miniature indoor roller coaster.

This was the room Parker had strung with wires, and once inside he slowed down and moved more cautiously, remembering where he’d put the wires and avoiding them. Even with the lights on, the thin black wires couldn’t be seen at all unless you got very close and knew exactly where to look.

There was a red exit sign glowing across the way, over a pair of black metal doors with the usual push bar, and they were what Parker headed toward, moving with swift caution through the wires. And he was almost to those doors when the entrance behind him slammed open and they burst in.

There was one in front of the rest, and he came in running hard. Parker, his hands on the push bar, looked back and saw the guy run two paces at top speed before the first wire got him in the neck. His shoulders seemed to jerk back, his head ducked down as though to bounce his chin off his chest, and his legs continued to run for another half-step. Then they jerked up into the air, he seemed to lie horizontally in midair for just a second like something in a magician’s act, and then he crashed down backward onto the floor, clutching at his throat. He lay there, thrashing, squawking, grabbing at his throat, and the others began to pile in behind him.

Parker saw no more. He shoved open the doors and ran back out into the sunlight.

The Pleasure Island carousel was dead ahead. He ran around that to the right, hearing somebody start to shout again behind him. He ran hard, past the Hawaiian restaurant and the submarine ride, feeling his muscles loosening up more and more with the exercise, and the wax museum was just ahead and to his left.

He was going to have to go to ground again, he couldn’t just keep running until he wore himself out and they caught up with him, and for the moment there was no one in sight behind him. He veered to the left and ran into the wax museum and stopped just inside the door, keeping the door open barely enough so he could look out. He was breathing hard, but was warmer now from the running.

He watched, and saw a bunch of them run into view, over there by the underwater ride. It was unlikely he could ever lure one or two of them into one of those submarines, but if the unlikely happened he was ready. The hatches could be locked from the outside simply by turning a handle, and the length of pipe he’d put handy there would break the underwater portholes and fill the ship with water. It would be a nice way to get ride of a couple of them, but it was unlikely he could set it up.

For right now, all he wanted to do was keep out of their sight and catch his breath. So he stood there and watched through the crack in the door as they milled around the submarine ride for a minute and then moved off toward the fake mountain where the bobsled ride was.

Then something that looked like the kind of cart golfers ride in, with a yellow body and a pine-and-yellow-striped canvas canopy, came driving up from the direction of the Hawaiian restaurant, with one of the hoods at the wheel and old man Lozini sitting beside him. Lozini had the cops’ loud-hailer in his lap, and as they rode past the wax museum he put it to his mouth and his voice bellowed, “Come back here! Don’t run around like a bunch of damn fools! You lost him again!”

The cart came to a stop just beyond the wax museum, in the middle among the submarine ride, the bobsled ride, the wax museum and the Alcatraz Island mess-hall restaurant. Lozini called through the loud-hailer, “Get over here! Everybody get over here!”

They came. Parker counted this time, and counting Lozini, there were fourteen of them. Plus the cops, who weren’t present now.

Lozini didn’t bother with the loud-hailer once they were all gathered around him, but Parker could still hear him plainly. He started by demanding, “Who saw him last?”

There was a little shuffling around, a little discussion, and finally one of them decided he was the one. Lozini asked him where he’d last seen Parker, and he pointed over toward the submarine ride, saying, “Over there, comin around behind the restaurant.”

“Headed which way?”

“Just up here somewhere.”

“What was everybody doin over by that hill over there?”

“It’s a fake,” somebody said. “That’s all fake snow on there, it’s a bobsled ride or something. The mountain’s hollow inside, we figured he went in there.”

“Did he?”

“We don’t know, you called us back before we could look it over.”

“Because you were all runnin to the same place. He doesn’t have to be inside that fake mountain. What’s that over there?”

“The Alcatraz restaurant.”

“He could of got to there, too. Or over to that wax museum. He could of circled around this Hawaii restaurant here and got on inside there. I want two men to check out the mountain, two that restaurant there, two this restaurant over here, and two that wax museum. I want four men down at that fountain in the middle there. From down there you can see down every path all the way to the fence. Sooner or later he’s gonna move again, and he’ll have to cross one of those paths. If you see him, fire one shot, at him or in the air or any place you damn please. And holler. And take off after him. I don’t want to lose that son of a bitch again, he’s cost me too many men. All right, get moving.”

They got moving, and Lozini and his driver headed away again, back toward the fountain. Parker saw two men coming this way, and he moved away from the door and deeper into the building.

Lozini’s people hadn’t got around to switching the electricity on in this building yet, so once he was out of the direct line of the front door Parker switched on the flashlight, and then he could move along pretty fast.

The route through the wax museum twisted like a conga line among the life-size wax displays, all of them behind a velvet rope and all of them involving murderers of one kind or another. There were scenes of execution by electric chair, gas chamber, beheading with both ax and guillotine, hanging and firing squad. There were murders in the act of commission, murderers in the moment of being captured, and a couple of trial scenes. Everything was realistic except the glassy expression of all the eyes and the color of the blood, which was too shiny and red, looking more like fingernail polish than anything out of human veins.

Parker knew what he wanted. In order to have an even shot at getting out of this park, he had to have a gun. Otherwise, he’d just run around in here like a rat in a maze, and though he might win all the battles, sooner or later he’d lose the war. But with a gun, there was a chance.

And now he had a chance at a gun. Two men were coming in here, and they both would have guns. What he wanted was to get behind them, was to hide in such a way that they’d go on by him and expose their backs. And he thought he knew how to do it.

But first he had a weapon to pick up. He hurried by the place where he planned to wait for them, and went on to a display that showed three knife-wielding men cutting down a fourth man over a table on which a deck of cards and a lot of chips were scattered. Two of the knives were wax, but the third was one Parker had left here yesterday afternoon, one of the knives from the box he’d found in the gift shop. He took it out of the wax hand now and slipped it into his hip pocket, where the one he’d used had been, and as he was turning away from the display the lights came on.

He had to hurry. He switched off his flashlight and put it away in his jacket pocket as he trotted back along the winding route to a courtroom scene, one of the more elaborate displays, complete with jury. He picked up one of the jurors, the body surprisingly light, and carried it over to where the defendant and his attorneys were sitting at a table, staring with horror at a sheet-covered body a policeman had just wheeled out in front of the judge’s bench. There were a couple of extra chairs at the table, and he put the juror in one of them, adjusting one arm to rest the elbow and forearm on the table and keep him from falling over.

He could hear them coming, moving slowly through the building, checking out the possible hiding places. He went back to the jurors’ box, climbed over the side, took the missing juror’s place, third from the left in the back row. He folded his arms and made himself as comfortable as he could, because he wouldn’t be able to move while they were in sight.

He could hear them talking to one another as they came on. One of them was saying, “You see who that’s supposed to be? That don’t look like him at all. He didn’t have a skinny face like that.”

“How would you know? I tell you the truth, I don’t like this place.”

“My father knew him, they were buddies from the old days. They went to school together or something, I think my mother’s still got pictures of the two of them. I’ll show you sometime. He didn’t look like that at all.”

“Come on, Ed. For Christ’s sake, let’s get this over with. I told you, I don’t like it in here.”

“What’s to don’t like? They’re all just statues. Look.”

Something crashed.

“I don’t think you oughta start busting things up, Ed. I understand Mr. Lozini owns a piece of this place.”

“Yeah, and screw him, too. I thought that was maybe the guy we’re looking for, okay? He’s in here making believe he’s a statue, like in a Bob Hope movie.”

“I hope to Christ he isn’t. Will you come on?”

“Do you suppose they put tits on these dummies?”

“Ed, what if he is in here?”

“By now? There’s a back door, isn’t there?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“So if I was him, and I heard us come in the front way, I’d be long gone out the back way. Right?”

“I don’t know, Ed. There’s weird things about that guy. Like what he pulled at the theater.”

“He went down a rope from the roof.”

“How’d he get up there? Where was he when we looked for him?”

“How do I know? Hold it, let me see where this door leads.” A brief silence, and then,” Whadaya know, it’s a fake. Look, the handle was wax. The door’s wood, the handle’s wax.”

“You gonna tell Mr. Lozini you thought that handle was the guy, too?”

“Look, Tommy, never mind this Mr. Lozini crap. We’re in here bustin our nuts because this boy Caliato got bumped. And what’s in it for us?”

“A hundred each.”

“Big deal. You got a guy already killed four guys in here and sent two more to the hospital, and we’re goin up against him for a hundred bucks each. We got a lot of brains, buddy, that’s what we got.”

They came into sight, walking along very slowly, not looking at one another as they talked but looking around at the displays on both sides instead. Ed was tall, lanky, with a bony long-nosed face and bushy brown hair. Tommy was shorter, stockier, with a black mustache, wearing a cloth cap. Tommy was saying, “You want to tell Mr. Lozini no? You want to tell him thanks, you’d rather not come to work?”

“I’m not crazy that way, either. Hey, whadaya think they got under the sheet?”

“Just don’t bust anything, will ya?”

Ed stepped over the velvet rope, walked up onto the display. He glanced casually at the jury, then walked up and lifted the sheet covering the body in front of the bench. “It’s a fake,” he said. “Look, it’s just wires to make the shape.” He flung the sheet down again, and looked back at the jury. “Whadaya think, Tommy, is our guy one of them? Sittin right there, big as life?”

Parker didn’t move. Like the rest of the jury, he was looking at the sheet. He wanted to blink, but he didn’t dare. His eyes started to burn, and then Ed glanced at Tommy, and Parker squeezed his eyes shut for a second, lubricating the eyes, and opened them again before Ed looked back.

Ed was saying, “You think he’s all set to throw another knife? We turn our backs and pow! You think so, Tommy?” He was grinning, enjoying himself.

Tommy wasn’t enjoying any of it. “Will you quit being so goddam childish? I told you I don’t like this place, I wanna get out of here.”

Ed looked at him in amused surprise. “Does it really get to you?”

“Do you mind? I had a very superstitious upbringing, do you mind? I wanna get the hell out of here.”

“Sure, Tommy,” Ed said, with elaborate concern. “We’ll move right along. Those thirteen jurors there are all just a bunch of wax dummies anyway.” He walked back down and stepped over the rope again.

Tommy was about to move on, when he suddenly said, “Thirteen? Thirteen jurors?”

Wide-eyed and innocent, Ed said, “Sure. That’s what I counted, thirteen, Don’t all juries have thirteen?”

“He is there, Ed!” Tommy shouted, suddenly crouching and aiming his gun in Parker’s general direction. “Juries only have twelve! Shoot their heads off, Ed, he’s got to be one of them!”

Parker was about to make a dive over the back of the jury box, but Ed started to laugh. “Oh, you’re a beauty,” he cried, laughing and shaking his head. “Tommy, you’re a goddam wonder!”

Tommy glared at him in belated suspicion, then frowned angrily at the jurors. “Twelve,” he said. “There’s only twelve there.”

“Come on, buddy,” Ed said. “Let’s get out of here before the boogie man gets us.”

“You rotten bastard, I oughta shoot your head off!”

“Aw, can’t you take a joke? Come on, buddy, don’t lose your sense of humor.”

“You’re a goddam pain in the ass, Ed, you’ve always been a goddam pain in the ass and you always will be a goddam pain in the ass.”

Ed lost his own sense of humor. “Just watch it what you say there, pal,” he said. “Don’t lose your cool.”

“Then don’t play around any more.”

“That’s all right by me. I won’t play around, and you won’t shoot off at the mouth.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said, sullen but not wanting to push it. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”

They moved on, finally getting out of sight, and after a little silence Ed started his chipper conversation going again. Tommy was sulking, and answered in monosyllables, but Ed carried the conversation for both of them.

Parker waited till the voices told him they were two or three turnings away, and then he climbed down out of the jury box and moved after them. The route was carpeted, he could move without sound.

Up ahead, Ed was still talking away, and Tommy was beginning to get over his mad. Parker hurried, and as he strode along he took his two knives from his hip pockets, holding them in his hands down by his sides.

When he saw them, Ed had stopped to investigate a medieval poisoning scene full of women with low-cut gowns. Tommy was standing on the carpet, looking nervously around, but no longer asking Ed to hurry.

Ed was the one to take care of first. Parker stood just around the bend, just out of sight, and listened till the conversation told him Ed was finished studying the female wax figures. He looked around the bend and saw Ed climbing over the velvet rope again, his back to Parker. Parker stepped out in view. They both had their backs turned. He set himself, his right hand holding one of the knives up behind his ear, and then threw.

This was a closer target than the other one, and more stationary. Parker finished the throwing movement and stepped quickly back out of sight again, switching the other knife to his right hand.

He heard it hit, and heard Ed grunt, and heard Ed fall. If he had Tommy figured right, he would just stand there now, unable to think for a few seconds, too paralyzed by fear to do anything sensible. A few seconds was all Parker would need.

He stepped out again, and Ed was facedown on the carpet, his left leg stuck up in the air behind him, left ankle hooked over the velvet rope he’d been stepping over when the knife hit him. And Tommy was staring down at him in disbelief, just the way Parker had thought.

But before he could get set again, Tommy moved. He didn’t look around, he didn’t fire any shots, he didn’t yell. All he did was run. He turned and ran like hell in the opposite direction.

Parker threw anyway, even though it was no good. The knife missed, and went on, and hit a masked executioner holding an ax, in the middle of his chest. He tottered, and fell over backward.

Then Tommy yelled. He veered away from the display where the executioner had fallen over, almost running into the rope on the other side, but veered again and rounded a turn and was out of sight.

Parker ran forward to Ed, and plucked from his hand a Colt Commander automatic in .38 caliber, a gun with a nine-cartridge clip., He ejected the clip from the handle and it was full. He shoved it back in, put the gun on the floor, and turned the body over. He searched it, but Ed had carried no extra clips on him. Going up against one man, he apparently hadn’t thought he’d need it.

Tommy was out of the building by now, and spreading the alarm. But that hardly mattered. It was a new ball game. Parker had a gun.

Five

THE TRICK now was to lead them one way and go another. Parker had an idea for a way to end it, to get himself out of this park and away from these people, and now that he had a gun it was possible, but before he could work it he’d have to hole up for half an hour or so. Something else that he was waiting for had to happen first, and then he could move.

He didn’t follow Tommy, but went back the other way. By climbing over the velvet rope and going through the displays, through the black curtain between displays, he could go directly to the front entrance, getting there just as Tommy was bursting out on the other side of the building. Parker heard him hollering back there, and looked out the half-open doorway, and saw two guys running around toward the rear of the wax museum. He was about to step out when two more appeared, from the Hawaiian restaurant across the way. The loud-hailer sounded, and they waved their arms — meaning the loud-hailer had been hailing them, and they’d heard and understood — and then they came running this way, toward the entrance Parker was hidden behind.

He had a gun now. Shoot them on the street? No, the idea was to stop leading an accurate trail. Parker waited, hidden by black draperies just to the side of the entrance.

He let the first one run into the building, then stepped out quickly as the second one barreled through the doorway, and stuck the gun barrel hard into his stomach, and pulled the trigger. It made a very small noise; only three people heard it. One of them was falling to the ground, one was Parker, and the third was trying to turn around and defend himself before Parker could get to him and do the same thing.

No noise, that was the most vital thing. Parker lunged forward, like a duelist with a sword in his hand instead of a pistol, trying to use the same silencing method as before. But this one, in a panicky scramble, managed to shove Parker’s gun hand to one side, and Parker had to continue the lunge, pushing off with the balls of his feet, driving his shoulder into the guy’s midsection, so that they both toppled over, the other guy backward, landing heavily on his back, Parker on top of him.

They were about equally matched for size and weight. The shock of landing on his back with Parker on top of him had made the other guy drop his own gun, but now he had the wrist of Parker’s gun hand in his grip and was holding it out away from the two of them, and trying to get his breath together to shout.

He couldn’t shout. Parker, trying for an advantage, trying to do something useful with his other hand, could do nothing for the moment except butt at the other guy’s mouth, feeling the teeth sharp and abrasive against his forehead, having to do something, anything, to keep the guy quiet. While his left fist was kidney-punching, the only thing it was in position to do effectively.

The guy twisted his head back and forth, trying to keep away from the butting, and then made his mistake. He let go of Parker’s wrist because he was tormented by the butting, he let go and tried to push Parker’s head away, and Parker brought the gun in quickly against the guy’s side, up near the armpit, and fired once.

The guy thrashed, like a fish on a schooner’s deck, and then stopped. Parker rolled off him and got to his feet and went over to look out the half-open doorway again, and now the space out front was deserted.

He stepped out, keeping close to the front of the building. Ahead of him was the snow-covered blacktop path marking the line between park sections, all crisscrossed now with footprints, and he knew that path was open and clear down to the right all the way to the central fountain, and that one of Lozini’s men would be down there by the fountain watching the path, waiting for Parker to try and cross it, heading from Alcatraz to Hawaii. And on the other side of the Alcatraz section there was another straight open path separating it from Treasure Island, and that path would also be watched.

He wanted to get back close to the gate again, but to move to where he could see the gate he would have to cross a minimum of three of those open spokes radiating out from the fountain — from Alcatraz to Hawaii to Pleasure Island to Island Earth. They knew he was in the Alcatraz section now, or they would know it very soon, once Tommy quit hollering out there on the other side of the building and started to make some sense, and with Parker limited to one-eighth of the park, it wouldn’t take them long to find him.

There was one possibility, down to the right, closer to the fountain. Parker went that way, moving fast, keeping low, keeping to the edge of the path. Ahead of him was another outdoor water ride like the fake jungle over in Voodoo Island, this one a miniature mock-up of San Francisco Bay, dominated by a larger-than-scale Alcatraz Island. It was a gunboat ride, in which the customers during the summer could watch escaping prisoner dolls swimming to freedom, see smugglers, and be “almost” crushed by collapsing Golden Gate Bridge, all the while riding in flat-bottomed boats that looked like no gunboats ever seen anywhere in the world.

The ticket booth and entrance were on this side, with the bulk of the Alcatraz mock-up between Parker and the fountain. He went out onto the wooden dock area and saw the boats tied up in a small service area to his left. He went over and released one of the boats.

There were two streams meandering through Fun Island, both connected to the moat enclosing the park, one traveling through the back half of the park and the other through the front half. The water in this gunboat-ride area also flowed into Treasure Island, where it supported the pirate ship, into New York Island, where it became the Coney Island area’s Atlantic Ocean, and back the other way into Hawaii, where it served the submarine ride. Between these ride areas it was fairly narrow but not too winding, and where it crossed from one area into another, there was a wooden footbridge along the main radial path.

There was increasing commotion back at the wax museum now. It would take them a while to work their way through that building and convince themselves he was none of the figures in there, but then they’d check out the rest of the Alcatraz area, working close and complete, so by then he’d better be somewhere else.

There was a kind of picket fence arrangement across the stream where it came into the gunboat-ride area. Parker tried lifting this, but for some reason it was padlocked and he couldn’t get it up, so what he finally did was drag one of the boats up onto the wooden dock. It was heavy, too heavy to lift but not too heavy to pull. He dragged it around the picket fence and then shoved it into the water again on the other side, climbing in after it.

The stream was about two feet below the general level of the land, so that one would have to be pretty close to it to see the boat in it. Parker crouched on the floor in the front of the boat, keeping his head below ground-level, and pushed off.

He’d chosen the same direction as the slow natural movement of the stream, so that when the impetus of his first push was gone, the boat still kept moving very slowly along. The stream curved very gradually to the right, so he had to keep pushing away from the left bank, and slowly they left the gunboat ride behind and approached the curved wooden footbridge marking the border between Alcatraz and Hawaii. That was the path being watched by one of Lozini’s men. Once on the other side of it, he would be out of the territory where they expected to find him.

The boat was just sliding under the bridge when he heard people coming, hurrying up from the area of the fountain. The boat was completely under the bridge now, and Parker reached up to one of the support beams and held himself where he was. Until they’d gone by, he couldn’t move any farther.

But they didn’t go by. Footsteps thudded on the bridge, and stopped, and a voice said, “Right here. The bridge is raised up a little, you can see better.”

“Yeah, and he can see me better, too.”

“Don’t be stupid. Before he could get close enough to do you anything, you could see him. Look around. How could he get near you?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“You got a better gig than the guys in the wax museum. You want to switch with one of them?”

“Okay, I’m happy here.”

“Good boy. See you later.”

Footsteps went off the bridge. A receding voice said, “Remember. You see him, you fire once.”

A voice right overhead said, “Right.”

Parker listened. The guy was standing up there. He was moving back and forth a little, Parker could see him vaguely through the cracks between the boards. He heard him light a cigarette, using a lighter, heard the snap of the lighter shutting again.

He couldn’t move. If he let the boat drift out from under the bridge, toward the Hawaiian submarine ride, the guy on the bridge would have to see him. If he killed the guy on the bridge, other people would see that. There was nothing to do but wait.

It was about ten minutes. From time to time he heard orders shouted back and forth, far away, but nobody came close to the bridge. The guy up there, restless, kept walking back and forth and chain-smoking. He’d work on a cigarette for only a minute or two, then flip it into the water. Then right away Parker would hear the lighter grind again, and snap shut, and then more pacing, and then another long butt snapped into the water. All on the same side, the Alcatraz side, which was good. It wouldn’t be good to have him comparing the look of the stream on both sides of the bridge, because on the Alcatraz side most of the skim ice on the surface had been broken up by the passage of the boat, while on the Hawaii side the ice was still intact. A thoughtful man, looking at the stream on both sides, might figure it out that there had to be a boat underneath the bridge. But the guy up there” stayed mostly on the Alcatraz side. Besides, he acted more bored and sullen than thoughtful.

Parker was just beginning to wonder if maybe he shouldn’t take some action after all — it might be possible to float out on the Hawaii side and shoot the lookout down, with no one else knowing exactly where the shot came from — when he heard the grinding of a small gasoline engine. It was the cart Lozini was riding around in, and it came roaring up and clattered onto the bridge and stopped. Parker heard Lozini shout over the engine sound, “What the hell are you doing over here?”

“March told me to stay here on account of — “

“March told you! What the hell does March know? I don’t want that son of a bitch goin through behind you when you’re lookin the other way. Get back down by the fountain and keep your eyes open.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Lozini.”

“How do we know he didn’t get through down this side already?”

“I been watching both ways, Mr. Lozini. I swear he didn’t get through.”

Lozini’s answer was softer, and Parker couldn’t make out the words, but he was apparently mollified. Then the cart roared away again, headed toward the wax museum, and Parker heard footsteps go off the bridge toward the fountain.

He waited another couple of minutes, to be sure everybody was far enough away, and then pushed off again. The boat drifted out into the Hawaii section, and now the stream ran straight at first and then curved to the left, and came to the submarine ride.

This one was easier to get through, the boat gliding past the submarines to another of those picket fences. But this time the fence wasn’t locked, and when Parker pulled on the rope hanging beside it, the fence lifted out of the way and he floated on through and lowered the fence again behind him.

Now the stream was barely wider than the boat, but it was a short distance to the moat running along just inside the fence. Parker turned the boat to the right when he reached the moat, but there was no movement to the water here and he had to pull the boat along, crouching on the bottom and reaching out to the right-hand bank and hauling it through the water.

He moved slowly, but finally he got to the other stream, the one crossing the front half of the park, and turned into it. The movement of the water was against him now, so he had to pull harder, dragging the boat along, its momentum ending quickly after each heave.

He was now in Pleasure island, and the stream opened into a large concrete-sided pool. Heavy mesh screens guarded both ends of the pool, but they were raised now. In the summer the pool was full of porpoises, but now it was empty.

It was easier going through the pool, the current against him was less strong there, but on the other side it got tough again. He pulled, and the stream angled to the left, and up ahead was another footbridge, this one showing the line between Pleasure Island and Island Earth.

Parker got past this bridge without any trouble, went on a few yards farther, and then in the shadow of the Voyage Through the Galaxy black-light-ride building he got out of the boat and pulled it up out of the water after him. He turned it over and left if facedown by the rear wall of the building, where it might not cause anybody to wonder how come it was there. If he’d just let it float away again it might have tipped Lozini and his people to what had happened.

There was a smaller footbridge here, not on a line of sight from the fountain. Parker took it, going over to the other main building in the Island Earth section, a round concrete structure with a huge dome. This was the Trip to the Moon, and when Parker went inside now he found it all lit up. He walked up the ramp that circled inside the building and went through one of the double doors into the theater.

He was now in a round room almost the same circumference as the building, with the inside of the domed roof for its ceiling. Theater seats ran all the way around, facing complicated projection machinery in the middle. The seats had half-reclining backs, because in the summer movies were shown on the domed ceiling, a trip to the moon, with the idea being that the people in the theater were all in a spaceship of the future heading up from earth to the moon.

Parker went across the theater to a door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. He went through there and into a small office with two curving walls, one the theater wall and the other the outer wall of the building. There was a long window in the outer wall. Parker went over to it, and down to his right were the gates. There was no one in sight, but he knew they were well guarded. But maybe that didn’t matter.

He leaned against the wall beside the window and watched the gates. Very soon now, the hunted was going to become the hunter.

Six

THE COPS walked in, and Parker moved.

They didn’t drive in, they left their car outside. He would have preferred it the other way, but it didn’t matter, things could still work out.

He hurried, out of the office and across the theater and down the long ramp to the outside. The cops had still been waiting at the gates for somebody to come unlock and let them in, so Parker had time, but he wanted to be sure. He left the Trip to the Moon building, went across the little bridge, went around to the rear of the Voyage Through the Galaxy black-light-ride building, and went inside.

This was where he’d strung the wires and he moved now with caution across the brightly lighted floor, the rails of the ride curving and winding above him like a mammoth modern sculpture, the suns and moons hanging from the ceiling and looking shabby and dirty and old in the bright light. Parker made his way to the front entrance, and looked out, and the cops were coming this way, walking up the main path from the gates toward the fountain.

He was counting on the cops not knowing all of Lozini’s men, and he was counting on their not ever having had a close look at him. He waited till they were almost opposite him now, and then he stepped outside, being careful to stay close to the front of the building, out of sight of the watcher up by the fountain. “Hey,” he called.

The cops glanced over at him.

Parker said, “Mr. Lozini wants to see you. In here.” And he stepped back again, pushing the door open and standing to one side of it for the cops to go in first.

They didn’t hesitate. There was no reason for them to be suspicious, Lozini had to be somewhere, probably inside a building, and why not this one. They came across, the heavier cop first, saying, “He’s still loose, huh? I hoped you’d have him by now.”

“They’ve got him trapped up in Alcatraz,” Parker said.

The other cop, Dunstan, said, “That’s what they told us at the gate.”

The two cops went on into the building and Parker went in after them, shutting the door and taking out the automatic. “I’m him,” he said.

They didn’t get it at first, they were looking around the room — the galaxy inside a barn — and the older cop said, “Where’s Lozini?” He turned to look at Parker, and then he saw the gun.

Parker saw his face change. “Don’t reach for anything,” he said.

The younger cop now saw what was happening, and his face went white. He froze, staring at the gun in Parker’s hand.

The other cop wasn’t going to be that easy. His hand was poised near the gun on his right hip, and he said, “You can’t shoot. You’d bring them all down here on your neck.”

“You reach,” Parker told him, “and I don’t have anything to lose.”

Nothing is more effective than the truth. The cop’s arm gradually lost its tension, the bunched muscles around his mouth began to ease, and his eyes shifted around as his mind went from attack to figuring. He said, “What does this gain you? You’re going to take everybody prisoner?”

“Just you two,” Parker told him. “Get out of your uniform.”

The cop frowned. “What?”

“I don’t want to have to get blood on it,” Parker told him. “Just get out of the uniform, don’t delay things, don’t argue with me, and you’ll be all right.”

“You son of a bitch, I’m not taking anything off, What the hell do you think this is?”

“Take off the hat,” Parker said, and to the other one he said “When he falls, turn him over quick on his back. Remember, I don’t want any blood on the uniform.” He held the automatic up at arm’s length, aimed at the older cop’s forehead.

The cop blinked. He said, “What are you doing?” and he sounded less sure of himself all of a sudden.

“If I shoot you in the head,” Parker told him, “there probably won’t be that much blood. You,” he said to the other one, “after you get him on his back, go over to the doorway. Anybody that comes, tell him your partner was shooting at a rat, it didn’t mean anything.”

The young cop said, “Joe, he means it, he really means it.”

The other one said, “What the hell good does it do you? What are you trying for?”

“I’m getting out of here,” Parker told him. “Start undressing now, or I do it for you when you’re down.”

The cop licked his lips, and threw a glance at his partner. That was where the problem was, he didn’t want to be humiliated in front of the younger man. But there was no soft quick way to handle it, and to run things with the cops’ roles reversed wouldn’t be any good.

The cop was going to do it, he wouldn’t get himself shot, so Parker didn’t do any more talking. He just stood there with the gun aimed, and after a few more seconds of looking around and trying to think of something to say, the cop finally gave an angry shrug and said, “All right. For right now, you’re running the show.” He unzipped his jacket. “I’ll see you again,” he said. “And then I’ll be running the show.”

Parker knew it was easier for the cop to strip in front of his partner if he could talk tough at the same time, so he didn’t answer him, he just stood there and waited. The cop kept making tough promises all the time, but he got the uniform off and draped over a wooden railing to the left, and when he was down to underwear and socks and shoes, Parker said, “Down on the floor. Facedown.”

The cop did it, grunting, and looked like somebody about to do his morning calisthenics.

Parker said to the other one, Dunstan, “There’s some wires tied across over there. Go get one and untie it and bring it over here.”

Dunstan was in a hurry to do anything Parker wanted, but while his nervousness made him eager to please, it also made him stupid, and he had to trip over a wire before he could find one. But then he untied the ends and brought the wire over, looking as though he were doing a pantomime, making believe to carry something.

Parker said, “Tie his wrists behind his back. And his ankles. And do a good job.”

“All right.”

It took too long, because Dunstan was fumbling so much, but when he finally said he was done Parker checked and it was a good job. The wire wasn’t cutting into the cop’s skin, but it was tight enough to hold.

He did the gag himself, taking off one of the summer shirts he was wearing and ripping it into lengths. One piece he stuffed into the cop’s mouth, the other one he tied around his mouth and head to keep him from spitting the first one out.

Next he had Dunstan stand in the frisk position, facing a wall, feet well back, leaning forward with arms outstretched and hands supporting his weight against the wall; not to search him, simply to put him out of the play. Dunstan now would first have to get his balance before he could do anything else, so in the unlikely event he was thinking of trying anything, Parker now had him safely defused.

It didn’t take long to switch clothing, shucking out of his jacket and all the summer clothing he’d picked up from the men’s shop in New York Island, then putting on the police uniform. The cop was a little shorter than he was, but also stockier, which helped to equalize things. The sleeves of the Ike jacket were noticeably short, but other than that, everything gave the appearance of a pretty good fit.

Once he had the uniform on, he said to Dunstan, “Okay, stand up again.” When Dunstan turned to face him he said, “This is what’s going to happen. We’re going outside together, the two of us. We’re going down to the gates, and wait for somebody to unlock them, and then we’re going out to your car, and we’re going to take a little ride. You behave yourself and nothing will happen to you, and after you drop me you’ll be able to come back here and take care of your friend. But I’m going to have a gun on you all the time, and if you try anything when we go outside you’re going to be the first casualty. I may be the second, but you’ll be the first. You follow that?”

“You won’t have any trouble from me,” Dunstan said. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with this from the beginning, it doesn’t matter to me one way or the other, whether you get caught or you get away or what. I won’t try to stop you or make any trouble — “

“All right,” Parker said, and Dunstan’s mouth snapped shut. He looked very helpful, eager, wanting to know what he should do. Parker told him, “What we’re going to do, because the guys on the gate would see I’m the wrong guy, I’m going to be wounded and you’re going to have to do the talking. And your job is to get the two of us out of this place.”

Dunstan was nodding all the way through Parker’s instructions, and when Parker was done he said, “I understand. Don’t worry, I know what to do.”

“All right, that’s good.” Parker nodded at the gun on Dunstan’s hip. “Now there’s that,” he said. “I want you to take it out very slow, using thumb and forefinger only, and holding it only by the butt. Go ahead.”

Dunstan did it, moving so slowly Parker almost told him to speed it up. But sweat was breaking out on Dunstan’s face now, the idea of drawing his gun with Parker armed and standing in front of him was shaking him up so much he was liable to faint, so Parker waited him out, and when Dunstan finally held the gun out to him Parker took it, flipped open the chamber, and shook the cartridges out. Then he gave the gun back to Dunstan and told him, “Put it back in your holster.” When Dunstan started trying to do it while holding the gun with thumb and forefinger, he said, “No, you can hold it the regular way now.” Dunstan made a nervous embarrassed laugh and put the gun away.

Parker now had two guns of his own, the automatic he’d taken from Ed and the Smith & Wesson Police Positive .38 revolver now in a holster at his belt. He had the holster flap open and tucked in behind the revolver butt so he could get at the gun in a hurry, and now he opened the zipper of his Ike jacket and tucked the automatic inside the waistband of his trousers. He closed the Ike jacket again and picked up the shirt he’d already ripped partway for the other cop’s gag. He separated the rest into two long strips and tied them both around his head, obscuring most of the right side of his face, including his right eye. When he put the cop’s hat on, he tilted it forward and to the left, covering more of his face.

Dunstan watched him nervously, and finally said, “What if somebody asks us what happened?”

“We thought we saw somebody in here, so we came in after him and I tripped over a wire and laid my head open. You’re taking me home, and after I get the wound cleaned and put a bandage on it we’ll both be back.”

Dunstan nodded, too quickly. He was like a beginning actor with stage fright on opening night. “All right,” he said. “I’ll do’ my best.”

“That’s good,” Parker said. He went over and put his arm around Dunstan’s shoulders, and Dunstan recoiled wide-eyed, as though afraid he was about to be strangled.

Parker held his shoulder, didn’t let him go. “I hurt myself,” he said. “Remember? I need you to help me to the car.”

“Oh,” Dunstan said. “Oh, yes, all right.” He reached his left hand up to grasp Parker’s left wrist and put his right arm around Parker’s waist.

Parker said, “Don’t let that hand get too close to the gun.”

“Oh, no! I didn’t even think of that!”

Parker was sure that was true. “Let’s go,” he said.

Seven

THE TWO cops came out of the Voyage Through the Galaxy building, the one leaning heavily for support on the other, his head covered in what looked like impromptu bandages. His head lolled forward as they moved out into the sunlight and turned toward the gates.

To Parker’s right as they moved slowly along was the fun house, where he’d counterattacked first last night. It had been a long time since last night. Next after the fun house was the little island with picnic tables, and off beyond that was Marooned!, the black-light ride where he’d hidden the satchel full of money.

He didn’t like leaving here without the money, he didn’t like it for a lot of different reasons. In the first place, it meant he’d expended all this effort, first on the armored-car job and then in here, for no profit. In the second place, they would have to know, Lozini and his people, that although their quarry had gotten away he hadn’t managed to take the cash with him, and they would now take this park apart looking for the seventy-three thousand. It didn’t seem to him the money was hidden very well for that kind of search.

But there wasn’t any choice. This whole operation was iffy enough as it was, trying to pass himself off as somebody else in front of people who knew the guy he was supposed to be. To try carrying a satchel out as well, when one of the things everybody in here was looking for was a satchel full of money, just wasn’t going to be possible.

Some other time. A few months from now, maybe, or maybe next summer, he could come back and see if his money was still there. And if it wasn’t, he knew who to collect from.

Lozini.

“Hey!”

It was a voice behind them, and it had to be for them. Parker felt Dunstan hesitate, but he said under his breath, “Keep moving,” and Dunstan moved forward again.

“O’Hara! Hey, O’Hara, where the hell are you going?”

Parker could hear the putt-putt now, the sound of the little cart Lozini had been riding around in all morning. The gates were maybe a dozen paces away, too far to walk before Lozini could catch up.

Parker said to Dunstan, “Remember the story.”

“I remember.” Dunstan’s whisper was shaky and scared.

“Make it work,” Parker told him.

Then Lozini’s cart came wheeling around from behind them, the tires squeaking on the snow as the driver brought it to a stop, and Lozini was leaning out of the cart and saying, “What the hell happened? O’Hara?”

Dunstan said, quickly and nervously and way too loud, “He fell down. Joe fell down, back in that building back there. He tripped over a wire.”

“That son of a bitch has this whole place booby-trapped. We found two more rides he set up to electrocute people, would you believe that? O’Hara, how’s your head?”

Dunstan seemed to be waiting for Parker to answer, but Parker was keeping his head down. He pressed Dunstan’s shoulder and Dunstan suddenly blurted, “Joe feels awful, Mr. Lozini. I wanna get him out of here, I wanna get him home and look at the wound and clean it up and all, and then we’ll come back.”

“That’s a goddam shame,” Lozini said. “Put him on the back here, I’ll take you over to the car.”

“No. thanks, Mr. Lozini,” Dunstan said, but Parker pulled him toward the cart, and he said, “Uh, maybe it’d be good for Joe.”

“You don’t want him to walk.”

There was a padded seat on the back of the car, facing rearward. Parker and Dunstan sat on it, Parker slumping heavily, and the driver started the cart up again.

Lozini said, “What were you two doing in there anyway?”

“We thought we saw somebody in there. But I guess we didn’t.”

“We’re supposed to have him bottled up back in Alcatraz,; but I don’t know. We’ve gone through that part pretty good and we haven’t turned him up yet.”

“He’s pretty shifty, I guess,” Dunstan said, laughing nervously.

“He’s a rotten bastard,” Lozini said, “and when I get my hands on him I’ll kill him myself.”

They stopped at the gates, and Lozini yelled for his people to hurry up and open them. Parker stayed slumped, listening, his hand near the gun on his hip, and after a minute the cart moved forward again and they drove out of the park.

Lozini was half-turned in the front seat, facing backward, and now he said, “How bad a cut you got, O’Hara?” and reached out to touch Parker’s head. His hand brushed the hat, it slipped backward, and Lozini shouted, “Hey!”

Parker came up with the revolver, pointed at Lozini’s throat. Low and quick he said, “Holler, and it’s your last noise.”

But Lozini wouldn’t sit still. He shouted, and jumped backward off the cart, landing rolling on the street. A second later the driver jumped off the other way, and the cart veered to the right, slowing to a stop.

Dunstan was yelling, “I didn’t do it!” but Parker paid him no attention. Dunstan wasn’t going to be a problem.

Parker jumped off the still-moving cart and fired at Lozini, but the old man was still rolling away across the snowy blacktop, his overcoat streaked now with white. The bullet missed, and there wasn’t time to try again.

Parker turned in a fast half-circle, and the cart driver was running like hell in the opposite direction. But a couple of guys, still puzzled, not sure yet what was happening, had started hesitantly out from the main gates of Fun Island.

Parker turned again and raced across the street toward the police car, reaching into his pocket for O’Hara’s keys. Behind him Lozini was shouting.

There were three other cars parked beside the toll building. Parker fired three times, and they all had flat tires.

Someone fired from across the street, and a windshield to Parker’s right developed a starred hole. He turned and emptied O’Hara’s gun, hitting no one but making them all take cover. Lozini had wound up behind the stalled cart, still shouting for Parker’s blood.

Parker got into the police car and started the engine. The sound agitated them across the street again, and the windshield was hit four times. Lozini was jumping up and down and screaming, “The tires! The tires!”

Parker threw the car into gear and aimed for Lozini, but the old man got around behind the cart again. The left corner of the police car’s rear bumper nicked the cart, sending it spinning, and then Parker was accelerating down Brower Road.

When he looked in the rear-view mirror he saw a couple of them back there, standing in the middle of the street like FBI agents at the pistol range, firing after him, but none of the bullets came into the car. Others were running for the cars, and that looked like Lozini up again, limping now, probably still screaming. Dunstan was standing around like a wallflower, not knowing what to do with his hands.

It took Parker ten minutes to get to where the second car was stashed. He left O’Hara’s gunbelt and holster and the empty gun in the police car. The hat had fallen off back in front of Fun Island, and he’d long since removed the bandages from his head.

He switched to the other car. It contained extra clothing for himself and Grofield and Laufman, but he could change later on. For the first hour, he just drove.

Eight

PARKER TURNED in at the driveway where the rural mailbox said Willis. It wasn’t his idea, using that name, but this wasn’t his house, it was all Claire’s. He’d given her the money, but she’d bought it, it was in a name of hers, and she was the one who lived here. He stayed here when he wasn’t working, but Claire lived here. There was a difference, and they could both feel it.

The name Willis on the mailbox bothered Parker a little, but it really shouldn’t. It was a common enough name, after five years a woman who used that name wasn’t going to lead the law to Parker, who was wanted under it, but it bothered him because it was an illogical thing to do and he tried not to do illogical things. He’d stopped being Charles Willis two years before he’d met Claire, but he’d told her about the name and that was why she was using it. In order to force herself some way into his life even before he knew her, to make their relationship with one another have roots that extended into the period of time when they didn’t know of one another’s existence. It was a small illogic, and it would have no ill effects, and in a way it pleased Parker that she should want to feel like that, but he couldn’t help, every time he came back from a job, looking at that name on the mailbox and being troubled for just a minute about its evidence that all was not rationality.

Claire had recently had overhead doors installed in the two-car attached garage, to replace the old-fashioned doors in pairs that had opened outward. Now Parker reached into the glove compartment of the Pontiac — his own car, waiting for him where he’d left it at the Newark Airport parking lot — and pressed the button on the little box in there, and one of the doors lifted, and he drove in.

Claire’s Buick wasn’t there, so she was shopping or someplace. Parker pressed the button that shut the garage door again, walked across the empty space that Claire’s car would occupy, and went through the connecting door into the house. He went into the kitchen and made himself a sandwich and a cup of instant coffee, and carried them through the bedroom and opened the glass door and went out onto the back porch. It was briskly cold here, but the sun was shining and he was warmly dressed and he wasn’t minding the cold any more. He sat down on a chair on the porch and looked out at the ice on the lake in the sunlight, and ate his sandwich and drank his coffee. There were no snowmobiles out there today, but over on the other side of the lake he could see the tiny black figures of children skating. Across the middle of the lake went two boys on bicycles, with a skidding, sliding dog trying to keep up with them.

Only about a fifth of the houses around the lake were occupied year-round, that was one of the reasons Claire had picked this house. The houses on both sides were among those used strictly as summer cottages. This was a good place for a man who didn’t want to be noticed, and who didn’t want his comings and goings paid attention to.

Parker sat out there about half an hour after he finished the coffee and sandwich, and then the glass door slid open behind him — the house was half old-fashioned rustic, half modernized country — and Claire came out, saying, “I saw your car.”

“Hello,” he said, and she bent over him to kiss his lips. He was usually very interested in sex in the time right after a job, but this one had used up his body for a while. Tomorrow, maybe. For now, while she kissed him, he simply leaned up and stroked her hair.

She straightened and looked at him, a quizzical smile on her face. “Something wrong?” She was tall and slender and good-looking, the way a fashion model is tall and slender and good-looking, but with more than the usual fashion model’s individuality in her face.

“I’m tired,” he said.

“Feel like telling me about it?”

“Sure.”

She pulled over a chair and sat down and he told her about it, and when he was done, she said, “All of that, and you didn’t even get the money. You must be disgusted.”

“I know where it is,” he said. He stretched, and the muscles were aching again. He’d have to go to bed soon, sleep for a while. “Some day I’ll go back and get it,” he said, and got up yawning, and the two of them went into the house.

The end.

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