The Green Eagle Score

3

Rosemont Road curved gracefully back and forth among brick ranches and frame split levels, each on its own grassy lot, with its wide driveway, attached garage, TV antenna and sloped roof. It was almost three-thirty in the morning now, and every house they passed was completely dark, except that every now and then a night light showed faintly through a window.

Number sixteen was on the right, a split level with the garage in the lower part of the two-storey section. It was as dark as the rest of the neighborhood, a white frame house built up on a rise of land above the road, with a steep rock garden at the front of the lawn, a broad driveway that angled upward sharply, and a look of innocence and sleep.

Webb drove on until the curve of the road hid them from the Godden house, and then he parked. All three got out and walked back along the sidewalk, cutting across the lawn of the house next door in order to come at the Godden house from the back, on the garage side.

There was a door at the back of the house, leading into the garage. They approached it slowly, the darkness as deep as velvet all around them, the house a vaguely seen pale shape looming up in front of them. They were silent, moving on grass. They reached the rear wall and slid along it to the door.

Parker tried the knob. It clicked faintly, but the door was locked.

A voice said, “Roger?”

Parker flattened against the house.

The voice was above him, somebody in a second-storey window. It said, “I don’t want to hurt you, Roger.” It Was a male voice, but womanish and trembling with fear. Parker waited.

The voice said, “I have a gun. You’d better get away from here.”

Moving slowly, Parker turned his head. He could see that Webb was no longer there behind him, which was good. Devers, a few feet away, was pressed close to the wall just as Parker was.

The voice said, “You’ve got all the money, what more do you want?”

Whispers don’t have much individuality. Making his shrill, Parker whispered, “Ralph is still alive!”

“What do you want me to do about it?” The voice was getting shrill itself, the tension in it twanged like a plucked zither string.

“Help him,” Parker whispered.

“Help him! Why shoot him? What’s the matter with you?”

“I need your help,” Parker whispered. “Let me in.”

“So you can kill me, too?”

“Why would I kill you?”

“Why did you shoot Ralph? Roger, I’m sorry, I can’t trust you. Maybe tomorrow. What are we going to do about Ralph? I thought he was dead. I though I’d have to go back later and take him out and leave his body somewhere. But if he’s alive, I—” With sudden suspicion, the voice said, “Is he alive? How do you know?”

“I went back.”

“How did you know where to find me? Roger? Is that Roger down there?”

“Yes.” If Devers was right, that Godden’s partners were probably patients of his, a little hysteria might be in order now. Parker suddenly rattled the doorknob loudly, whispering, “Let me in! I threw the gun away, I don’t want to kill anybody any more! Let me in! I need your help!”

“That isn’t Roger!”

Where the hell was Webb? “Help me!” Parker whispered, flapping his arms against the door, moving around like someone too agitated to stand still. Or like someone trying to be a bad target.

There was a sudden light from above, and Parker was in the middle of it. A flashlight. Parker dove for the darkness and above him a rifle sounded, loud and flat.

Parker landed on his shoulder, rolled, got to his feet in darkness, with the flashlight aimed out past where he was. He ran in close again, against the wall, and suddenly the flashlight dropped from the window and landed on the grass. It lay there, still lit, shining with great precision and clarity on a cone of green grass.

Parker saw the outline of Devers on the other side of the light, moving toward it. He whispered, “Keep away!” and Devers faded back again.

Nothing happened for almost a minute, and then Webb’s voice came from up above, softly, saying, “Clear.”

“There’s got to be other people in the house,” Parker said, speaking just as softly. “Cover them.”

“Right. I came in the garage window on the side of the house. People never lock that one.”

Parker and Devers went around to the side where there was a smallish window, now standing open. They climbed through, landing in a mass of garden hose, edged around some kind of long broad car, and went through a doorway and up a half-flight of stairs to a kitchen.

There was light now, filtering from another part of the house. Moving toward it, they left the kitchen through an arched doorway, turned right down a short hall, and went up another half-flight of stairs. There was another short hall up here, with light spilling from a doorway on the right.

It was a bedroom, done in colonial, with a canopy bed. Webb was standing by the foot of the bed, revolver in his hand. Sitting on the floor was a balding man of about forty-five, dressed in pajamas. There was a gash on the side of his head, bleeding slightly. He’d touched it at one point, and now there was blood on his fingertips. He looked frightened, and calculating.

When Parker and Devers came into the room, Webb said, ”Nobody else here. Empty kid’s room across the way.”

Parker said to the man on the floor, “Where’s your family?”

“I’m remarried. My children live with my ex-wife.”

“Where’s your new wife?”

“Visiting her brother. I didn’t want her around during—” He gestured vaguely.

Webb nodded and said, “Didn’t want to have to tell her where he was going at two o’clock in the morning.”

Parker said, “You’re Godden?”

The man nodded wearily. “Of course.”

“Ellen Fusco told you the caper.”

“Yes. And I tried to steal the money away from you.” He looked up, squinting. “I almost made it, too,” he said. “Except Roger went crazy.”

“Roger who?”

“Roger St Cloud. A local boy.”

“Like Ralph?”

“Is he really still alive?”

“He was when we were there. Maybe he isn’t now. Were they both patients of yours?”

“Yes. I didn’t have anything to do with killing your friends.”

Parker said, “It was all Roger.”

“He swore one of them reached for a gun. The tall thin one. He was guarding them while Ralph and I put the money cases in the car.” Godden shook his head, frowning. “I don’t know how he could have been reaching for a gun,” he said. “We’d already searched them all, we had their guns.”

Parker said, “What happened at the office?”

“We’d been arguing. I said he didn’t have to shoot all three of them, even if one did reach for a gun. We got to the office, and split up the money. We had suitcases there, we’d already each brought a suitcase and left it in the office. Everything was fine, and then Roger started up again, about how he’d been given the dangerous job, how I’d known those were dangerous men and they’d try something and he’d have to kill them. Blaming me, you see. And then deciding what I meant to do was turn him over to the police for murder, and then Ralph and I would split his share between us. It was all very obvious, justifying what he meant to do by blaming us in advance.”

Devers said, “Cut out the shoptalk, Doc. What happened?”

“Yes,” Godden said, and nodded wearily. “Ralph said something. I don’t know, something innocuous, Ralph was never anything but innocuous. Something about how Roger didn’t really mean all that. And Roger didn’t say a word. He just went over to the sofa and picked up the rifle and shot Ralph. Ralph came staggering back by the desk, still on his feet, and Roger shot him again. That’s how I got away. Without the money.”

Godden seemed done. Parker prodded him, saying, “What next!”

“I got the car and drove home. I didn’t think Roger would be able to find out where I lived, at least not tonight. I didn’t know if anyone had heard the shots, so I came home and put the car away and got ready for bed. In case the police showed up, you know, to say there was somebody dead in my office. So I wouldn’t know anything about it. But I couldn’t sleep, I kept prowling around in the dark in here, and then I heard you people at the back door. I thought it was Roger.”

Parker said, “You soured a very sweet operation tonight, Doctor.”

Godden peered up at him again. “You’re Parker, aren’t you?” he said. “Ellen described you very well.”

“Time for you to describe your boy Roger,” Parker said. “I want to know what he looks like, where he lives, and what he’s going to do next.”

“How should I know what he’s going to do next?”

“You’re his analyst. Analyze him.”

Godden managed a nervous smile. “It’s not that simple,” he said.

Parker turned to Webb. “You two look the place over. In case this bird got the boodle after all.”

”I really didn’t.”

As Webb and Devers left the room, Parker sat down on the edge of the bed. “Roger St Cloud,” he said. “Tell me about him.”

Godden licked his lips, touched again the still-oozing wound in his forehead. He sighed. “Roger’s twenty-two, about six feet tall, very thin. Acne on his face, very bad. His father’s a banker in town.”

“Address?”

“Uhhhh, 123 Haines Avenue.”

“Will he go there?”

“I don’t know. He’s very erratic, very unreliable. You see how badly I misjudged him tonight. I thought I could control him, but I couldn’t. He’d never had power before, you see. And there he was, standing there with the rifle in his hand and three men in front of him, completely in his power. He had to use it, he had to try it out.”

Parker said, “I want to know if he’ll go home. What was he going to do with his share, you ever talk about that with him?”

“He had different plans at different times. He was going to go to New York, or Hollywood, or Europe, he didn’t know where.”

“But he was going to leave town.”

“It wasn’t real to him,” Godden said. “He didn’t know what he was going to do.”

“Does he have a car?”

“A motorcycle.”

“Did he have it at the office tonight?”

“No. I picked him up in my car, near his house.”

Parker sat back and tried to figure it. There were three suitcases full of cash. This Roger wasn’t going to load all that on a motorcycle. The way the timing worked, he couldn’t have gotten out of the office more than about fifteen minutes before Parker and the others arrived. And he was on foot then.

With three suitcases?

Parker said, “Does his father have a car?”

When Godden didn’t answer right away, Parker looked at him and saw an odd expression on his face, startled, absorbed, as though he was seeing something in the middle distance that he didn’t at all like.

Parker said, “What is it?”

His voice hushed, Godden said, “I think I know what Roger’s going to do.”