The Man with the Getaway Face

1

Parker got back into the Ford, and drove away from the farmhouse. He turned the car toward New Brunswick, north-westward. First things first.

Stubbs was gone. Parker had to find him again before he got himself killed and gave the cook back in Nebraska a reason to blow the whistle, but first things came first. Riding in the Ford with Parker was thirty thousand dollars in green paper, and until he’d found a safe place for that boodle he couldn’t afford to do anything else.

He had to follow the plan, with or without Stubbs.

But as he drove along he was nagged by a feeling of incompletion. There was a spiel worked out in his head that he’d been planning to give to Stubbs: “You come with me on this one side trip. It’ll take a couple of days. Then we take a plane to Nebraska and square things with the cook, and after that I’ll give you some help finding the man you want.”

The last part was the only lie, but it was a necessary lie because it would give Stubbs a reason for going along with no fuss. The whole spiel was good and simple and direct, and it would have gone down with no trouble at all.

Except that Stubbs was gone, and the spiel would never be delivered. He didn’t like sloppiness, loose ends that unraveled, complications of things that ought to be simple. Stubbs was a complication in what should have been a simple job, and now he was complicating the complication. So Parker did what he always tried to do — keep it simple, keep close to the plan, don’t let yourself get knocked off balance.

First things first. The boodle had to be unloaded, that came first. The cook in Nebraska would wait two more weeks before blowing the whistle, and it might take Stubbs a while to find the other two men he was looking for. So first things first.

At New Brunswick, he picked up route 1, and that took him southward again. The afternoon sun lowered to his right. At Trenton he switched to 206, and got on the Jersey Turnpike at Mansfield Square. He hadn’t seen a single roadblock, and that made sense. The robbery was more than three hours old when he’d left the farmhouse, and the law would have to figure that the thieves were either out of the area by then or holed up somewhere in it. Parker had used the principle of the delayed getaway before, but never quite this way — getting out of the area fast and then going back into the area and coming out again.

He took the most direct route south, sometimes on 1 and sometimes on quicker roads. He bypassed Washington the same way as when he’d come north with the truck, and when he passed through Richmond it was ten o’clock at night. He stopped in a motel on the other side of town, and brought both his suitcases into the room, the one with his clothes and the one with the money.

He picked a stack of twenties, all used bills, stuffed fifty of them back into the suitcase with the rest of the money and the other fifty into his wallet. The wallet was so thick then it didn’t want to fold. Then he went to the motel office and got a cardboard box and some string and wrapping paper.

Eleven thousand went into the box, which he then wrapped up and addressed: Charles Willis, c/o Pacifica Beach Hotel, Sausalito, California, Please Hold. Unless the Pacifica Beach had changed hands in the three years since he’d last been there, they would know enough to stick the carton into the hotel safe and forget about it till Parker showed up again.

There was stationery and envelopes in the drawer of the writing desk in the room, and Parker addressed five envelopes to Joe Sheer in Omaha and put ten twenties in each envelope, wrapped in sheets of blank stationery. Joe wasn’t a drop and it wasn’t any kind of a debt, just a friendly gesture.

There was still sixteen thousand in the suitcase. In the old days, before Lynn and the syndicate trouble had loused things up, he’d had small bank accounts here and there across the country. After a job he’d send off a lot of hundred dollar money orders from different towns, and spread a few thousand of the take that way. Then when he needed money all he had to do was withdraw a little from here and a little from there, and avoid the kind of unexplained large bank transaction that might call attention to itself. But Lynn had closed out all those accounts when she’d thought she’d killed him and had run off with Mal. So now he had to start all over again.

After he was finished distributing the money, he locked up the suitcase and went to bed. He fell asleep right away, but within half an hour he was awake again, and he wasn’t sure why. He lay on his side, trying to go back to sleep, and finally he rolled over onto his back and smoked a cigarette and stared at the ceiling, wondering why he couldn’t sleep.

And when he thought about it, it was simple. Another change from the years when he’d had Lynn. During the planning of a job, the build-up and the waiting, he’d never been any good with a woman, not even Lynn. But as soon as the job was done and turned out right he was always as randy as a stallion with the stud fee paid. After the jobs, before this, there’d always been Lynn, and before Lynn there had always been someone. This time there wasn’t anyone at all.

He finished his cigarette, and then he gave up and got out of bed. He dressed in the dark, took all but a hundred dollars from his wallet, and stuffed the other nine hundred under the mattress. Then he went out to the Ford and drove back north to Richmond.

He didn’t know Richmond very well, only having been through the town once or twice before, but finding a woman was never hard in any town big enough. You just go where the neon is mostly red.

2

In the morning he left her and went back to the motel. He picked up his gear and headed south again. He stopped in Petersburg and opened a checking account in the Petersburg & Central Trust Co., with an initial deposit of four hundred dollars. A bank in Raleigh got three hundred sixty and a bank in Sanford four seventy. After that it was too late in the day, the banks were all closed.

He crossed into South Carolina that night and stopped at a motel just south of Columbia. He locked the money in the trunk of the car, so he could bring the whore from Columbia back to the motel. He sent her to the motel lunch counter alone for breakfast in the morning while he got some more cash from the car. Then he drove her back to town and stopped off to deposit four hundred twenty dollars in a Columbia bank.

Augusta got three fifty, and for the rest of the day the towns were too small to take a chance. He crossed into Florida at nine-thirty and got just south of Callahan before picking his motel for the night. Jacksonville was twenty miles away, so that’s where he went for a whore. She was the same as the Richmond whore and the Columbia whore, disinterested till he hurt her a little. He didn’t get his kicks from hurting whores, it was just the only way he knew to get them interested.

Thursday morning he put four hundred forty dollars into a bank in Jacksonville, and Thursday afternoon he deposited three hundred eighty more in a bank in Daytona Beach.

The stopping at banks and the late starts because of the whores were slowing him down, so he didn’t make Miami Thursday night the way he’d planned. Around midnight he stopped at Fort Pierce, a hundred and thirty miles north of the city. He slept alone that night, having rid himself of most of the urgency. He could now wait for something decent in Miami, something that wouldn’t have to be slapped before she’d get interested.

A Fort Pierce bank got three hundred ten the next morning, and around noon he stopped at West Palm Beach, off the Sunshine State Parkway, long enough to leave three hundred and seventy more. Then he got back onto the Parkway, with thirteen thousand five hundred still in the suitcase.

He hit Miami in mid-afternoon, got back onto route 1, went south past Coral Gables, and stopped at the Via Paradise Hotel, a huge lumbering white sand castle that looked like a pueblo rebuilt by Frank Lloyd Wright. The doorman who helped him out of the car and the bellboy who ran to get the two suitcases both looked dubious, because he was rumpled and mean-looking from the trip. But both had been working there long enough to know you couldn’t tell a guest by the way he looked when he showed up.

Parker gave the doorman a half and asked him to take care of his car. Then he went inside, following the bellboy. This was a resort hotel, which meant too many bellboys, so they had to work the guests’ luggage in a sort of relay race. Parker was ready with another half dollar when the bellboy abandoned his suitcases at the desk.

Tourists tip quarters and spenders tip dollar bills and people who live in resort hotels as a way of life tip half dollars. Now both the doorman and the bellboy knew that the rumpled clothing and the unprepossessing Ford could be discounted.

The desk clerk caught the tone in the bellboy’s “Thank you, sir,” and came over smiling. “You have a reservation?”

“Yes, I have.” Parker’s voice was softer now, his expression more civil. He wasn’t working now. “The name is Willis. I wasn’t expected till Monday, but there was a change in plans. I hope it isn’t inconvenient?”

“Not at all, not at all.” The desk clerk went away, and came back with an outsize card. “Is that Charles Willis?”

“That’s right.”

“No trouble at all, Mr. Willis.”

A couple of months from now, when it got colder up north, it would be a lot of trouble, but not now.

“Is Edelman around?” Parker asked.

“Yes, sir, I believe he is. His office is—”

“I know where it is.”

“Yes, sir.”

The desk clerk got him signed in and told him his room number, and bellboy number two appeared. Parker gave him a half dollar and the suitcase with the clothes in it. “Take this up to my room, will you? I’ll hold onto the other one.”

“Yes, sir.”

The bellboy went away, carrying the suitcase, and Parker went around the corner and down the hall to the door marked, “Samuel Edelman, Manager” on the frosted glass. He went inside and the secretary stopped typing and looked at him.

“Charles Willis to see Mr. Edelman.”

“One moment, please.” The girl went inside to the inner office, and Parker waited, holding his suitcase. After a minute she came out. “Mr. Edelman will see you.”

“Thank you.” Parker went inside, and she closed the door after him.

Edelman was standing up behind his desk, a stocky thin-haired man who gave the impression of being tightly girdled. He looked the same as ever, but Parker didn’t, because of the new face, and that’s why Edelman looked anxious and indignant. “I thought you were a different Charles Willis. One I used to know.”

“I am.” Parker put the suitcase down and smiled, waving a hand in front of his face. “Plastic surgery. I know, my wife told you I was dead.”

“She was quite certain of it,” Edelman said. He sounded oddly prim, as though he suspected some sort of blasphemy.

“Lynn, you mean. She had to act that way.” Parker sat down in the brown leather chair in front of the desk. “I ran into a little trouble and had to change things around a little. ‘Charles Willis’ is a common name, and I still have a lot of friends I don’t want to lose track of, like you, so I kept it. But I had to be out of sight, so I had to get a new face.”

Edelman remained standing, but doubt furrowed his brow. “She took the two packages, you know.”

Parker nodded. He knew she’d cleaned out all the caches. “Of course she did,” he said. “But now everything’s all right again. I’ve got the new face, and everything is straightened out.”

Edelman’s eyes narrowed, showing he was thinking. “Is Mrs. Willis with you?”

“Unfortunately, no. We had a tense time there for a while, and she didn’t like having to play-act, tell everybody I was dead and so forth. It got on her nerves, and we quarreled a lot, and—” He shrugged. “—we parted.”

“There’s some similarity,” Edelman said, studying Parker’s face, “but I don’t like it. First Mrs. Willis tells me her husband is dead, and then you come in and say you’re Mr. Willis and your wife has left you. I don’t like it.”

“You must have my signature around on something,” Parker reached out and took the gold pen out of the ornate pen holder. There was a memo pad on the desk, and he wrote the name “Charles Willis” on it five times. “Go ahead and check it.”

“You could have practiced the signature.”

Parker shrugged. “Ask me something. Let me make like that Princess Anastasia for a while. Ask me something only Willis would know.”

Edelman closed his eyes. “The voice sounds right.” He opened his eyes again. “You understand, it’s a surprise. I’m not sure what to believe.”

“People get into trouble,” Parker shrugged. “I was in trouble for a while, that’s all. If someone had come around looking for me, you could have told them you’d heard from my wife that I was dead. If someone comes around now and wants to know am I the same Charles Willis who used to come here, you can say no — that Charles Willis is dead, this is another one.”

Edelman at last sat down behind the desk. “All right. What problem did you help me solve seven years ago?”

“Cantore, the bookie that wanted to open an office in the hotel. He had somebody working in the kitchen, lousing up the food with Tabasco sauce, and you asked me to talk to Cantore. I did, and the problem went away.”

Edelman nodded. “You could have heard that from Willis.”

It was time to show impatience. Parker said, “Damn it, man, I am Willis. I know you can’t stand your middle name, which is Moisha. I know you like to be called Sam and hate to be called Ed or Eddy. I know you drink nothing but wine, but you’ll drink any kind of wine that can be poured. I know you’ve got a boat called the Paradise and I was on it when you caught a marlin one time, and I was on it when you let marlins get away half a dozen times. All right now?”

Edelman slowly smiled. “Like Mark Twain, the reports of your death are greatly exaggerated. But at least Twain came back with his own face.”

Parker shrugged. It was time for a light remark, but he had trouble thinking of light remarks. “You satisfied now?”

“Yes, I suppose I am.”

“Fine.”

Now that the matter was settled, Edelman could be the hotel manager again. “You’ll be staying with us for a while?”

“A couple of months at least. But I’m going to have to be away for a few days. I’m just settling in for now.” He kicked the suitcase. “I want to leave this in your safe.”

“Of course. Wait, I’ll give you the receipt for it.”

They talked a while longer, so Edelman could get used to the fact that Parker was still alive, and then Parker went up to his room. He had a view of the beach, with the bright umbrellas and the bright beach mattresses and the people in their bright bathing suits. He unpacked the suitcase and loafed around the room a while, unbending, and then went downstairs to the hotel men’s shop.

He bought a bathing suit, and some clothing, and had them sent up to his room. Then he went around to the garage and got the Ford. He drove out south on route 1 to Home-stead, and then took 27 in toward the Everglades. At a deserted spot he turned right onto a dirt road and followed that deep into the swampy area, and then stopped the car.

He searched it carefully, under the seats, on the floor, for anything that might lead to him, then did the same in the trunk. When he was satisfied it was clean, he took the license plates off. Jersey plates could lead to trouble. He carried them away into the swamp and buried them.

He left the key in the ignition. Now someone else could have the Ford, and if the law ever got interested in it Parker would be too far back in the chain of events to be traced.

And Charles Willis didn’t own a car.

He walked back to 27 and hitched a ride to Homestead. From there he took a cab back to the hotel.

3

The car rental agency was as good as its advertising. Parker got off the plane in Lincoln at three-thirty on Saturday morning and the Chevrolet was there waiting for him. He signed the papers, showed the driver’s license he’d bought in New Jersey, and drove off.

He was in a hurry, but it was too late at night. He was in a hurry because it was now nearly a week since Stubbs had escaped from the farmhouse, but it was too late at night because he was tired and he wasn’t sure what sort of reception he’d get at the sanitarium. Stubbs had said something about the cook having her common-law husband with her. So Parker drove the rented Chevy into town where he got a hotel room and slept till ten o’clock. He had a hurried breakfast and then drove out to the sanitarium.

It had only been three weeks since the death of Dr. Adler, but already the place looked as though it had been abandoned for years. Parker drove up past the neglected lawns to the front door and stopped the Chevy where the sign marked “Visitor’s Parking.”

This was going to be a delicate situation, and the best thing would be to come in openly, as though there was nothing to hide.

He got out of the car and walked up to the front door, which opened just before he got to it. A broad-shouldered heavy-browed man in corduroy pants and a flannel shirt stood in the doorway glowering at him. “What you want?”

“I want to talk to—” He couldn’t remember the cook’s name. “—I want to talk to the cook.”

“You mean May?”

“That’s it.”

“Hold it a second.” But he didn’t go anywhere, just stood in the doorway staring distrustfully at Parker. “What you want to talk to her about?”

“About Stubbs,” Parker said, “and why I didn’t kill him.”

He frowned massively at that, and took a step back from the doorway, but held onto the door. “Who are you supposed to be?”

Parker said, “Let me talk to May.”

From deeper inside the building, a woman’s voice called, “Who is it, Lennie?”

Lennie turned to shout, “Hold on a goddamn minute!” Then he looked at Parker again. “What’s the name?”

“Let me talk to May. She’ll recognize me.”

But then May was at the door, staring out at him. “That’s one of them!” she shouted. “That’s Anson, the last one!”

“He said something about Stubbs.”

“Don’t let him get away!” May shouted.

“Yuh.” Lennie came out across the threshold, his arms reaching out, and Parker hit him under the ribs. He made a dull sound and bent forward, and Parker said over his shoulder. “Tell him to back up.”

But May was ignoring him. She was turned away from the door, screaming, “Hey, Blue! Hey, Blue!”

Lennie was getting his wind back. In a minute, he’d try again, and maybe by then he’d have Blue to help him. Parker didn’t like the way it was starting out, but the thing to do now was to simplify the situation as much as possible, and the first way to simplify it would be to remove Lennie. So Parker chopped him in the Adam’s apple and clipped him on the temple, and then kneed his face as he was going down. And then Blue came through the door.

Blue was a yapping terrier of a man, short and wiry and ferocious, with a sandy moustache to match his sandy hair. He came in holding his arms like a man who’d taken a correspondence course in judo, so Parker stuck out his right hand for Blue to play games with. And while Blue was grabbing the arm and getting set for an over-the-shoulder toss Parker hit him with a left to the kidney and a left to the ear and a knee to the groin. Blue folded, letting go of Parker’s arm, and Parker used the right on his jaw.

Blue and Lennie were both out now and Parker looked around to see May racing down the hall deeper into the building. Knowing she was headed for a gun, Parker took off after her. He caught her just as she was going into Dr. Adler’s office. He grabbed her shoulder, spun her around, and slapped her openhanded across the face. The slap shocked her, but it was the spin that threw her off balance. She sat down on the floor, heavily, and Parker stood over her and showed her his fists. “Do you listen, or do I beat your head in?”

“Blue!” she wailed.

“They’re out of it. Both of them.”

But May wouldn’t give up. She came off the floor trying to kick him in the groin, and he grabbed her ankle and dumped her again. Then he knelt on her chest and slapped her till she stopped waving her arms around. “Now,” he said. “You ready to listen now?”

“Get off me.”

She sounded calm, so he got off her. She sat up, slowly, as if checking for broken bones. “When Blue wakes up,” she said, “he’ll murder you.”

“If he tries, I’ll put him to sleep again.”

She looked up at him then, and finally it seemed to dawn on her that he could do exactly what he said. She rubbed her chest where he’d knelt on her. “What do you want here, anyway?”

“Tell Blue and Lennie to leave us alone while we talk.”

She thought it over, and then nodded.

He helped her to her feet, and she walked back down the hall toward the front door. Parker stood by the doctor’s office, watching her. When she got to the entranceway, Blue and Lennie were both getting up, unsteadily. She talked to them, and they glared at him past her shoulder. After a while, they both nodded reluctantly, and then all three came back down the hall.

“You talk to all of us,” May said.

Parker shrugged. He turned his back and walked into the doctor’s office. He hitched one buttock onto the corner of the desk and looked at them, all three of them standing just inside the doorway. “You want to sit down?”

“Get to it,” May said. She was the spokesman for the trio, and the brains.

“All right. Stubbs braced me about three weeks ago, with an elephant gun.”

Lennie interrupted. “Where’d he get one of those?”

“The automatic,” Parker said patiently. “I took it away from him and heard his story. I had proof I was in New Jersey the Saturday the doctor was killed. Stubbs heard me out, and he was satisfied. But then he wanted to go after the other two. He said there was three he was looking for.”

The woman nodded. The other two just watched.

“I didn’t let him go. Stubbs is willing, but he’s stupid. He braced me and a friend of mine, and we took the gun away from him with no trouble. If he went up against the guy who killed your doctor, he’s dead.”

“That’s up to Stubbs,” said May.

Parker shook his head. “It’s up to me. Stubbs told me you were set to blow the whistle on three people if he didn’t get back in time. So the killer gets Stubbs, and then you people get me.”

“Don’t you worry about Stubbs,” May said. “He’s good with his fists, and he’s good with a gun.”

“But he’s bad with his mind. That’s the part that bothers me.”

“It’s probably all over now anyway,” she said. “He’s had three weeks.”

Parker shook his head. “I put him on ice for two weeks. I was going to bring him back here, let him clear me with you. But he got away Monday, just before I was done with the job I was in.”

“Wait a second,” said May. “Back up there a second. Are you telling me you kidnapped Stubbs?”

“I put him on ice. There was a job I was on, and I couldn’t spare the time away from it, so I was keeping him till the job was over. But he got away a day early.”

“Why, you son of a bitch,” May said. “You stand there as cool as you damn please and tell me the way you treated Stubbs?”

Parker shrugged, irritated. That part was over, there was no need to harp on it. “I’ve got a new face to protect. I didn’t kill your doctor, and I’ve got no stake in finding the guy who did. There was no reason to let you and Stubbs louse up a job I was working on.”

Lennie said, softly, “Blue and I could take him, May, if we was to come at him together.”

“No,” May said. “He hasn’t got to what he wants yet.”

She was brighter than Stubbs anyway. Parker said to her, “I want to know who he’s going after now. Number two and number three. I want to catch up with him before he gets himself killed, and bring him back here so I’m in the clear.”

“Are you out of your mind?” She put her hands on her hips and leaned toward him, her face outraged. “Are you stark staring crazy? You say you proved to Stubbs you didn’t kill Dr. Adler, let’s see you prove it to me.”

“I can’t, without Stubbs.”

“Why not? How’d you prove it to him?”

Parker shook his head. It was talking too long, and not getting anywhere. “I was in a diner that Saturday,” he said. “I had Stubbs check with a waitress who knew me there.”

“So I’ll call her now. Long distance.”

“She’s dead.”

May nodded, as though he’d just proved a point for her. “That’s real convenient, isn’t it?”

“I want to know where Stubbs is,” Parker said. “The reason I gave you is the truth. What other reason would make sense?”

“Maybe you want to catch up with him and kill him because he knows you really did kill Dr. Adler.”

“Then why would he be still going after the other two?”

May’s face closed, she’d made up her mind. “I wouldn’t know about that.”

Parker tried one last time. “If I wanted to kill him, why didn’t I do it when I had my hands on him?”

“Maybe you never did,” said Blue. His voice was yappish, like a terrier’s.

“You’re as stupid as Stubbs. How would I know about you people here if I hadn’t talked to Stubbs?”

“The hell with you, mister,” May said. “We don’t tell you anything. When Stubbs comes back, he can tell us about you himself.”

“And if he doesn’t come back?”

“We let the outfit know about your new face.”

There was no sense talking any more. Parker looked at Lennie and Blue, trying to decide which was the common-law husband, and picked Blue, the one with the moustache. He took the Sauer out from under his jacket and shot Blue in the left elbow. It was a quick loud clap of sound in the room, and Blue screamed and sat down on the floor. His face drained white, and his right hand came over, shaking, to touch his shattered elbow.

Parker looked at May. “The next one I give him is in the knee. That’s even tougher to fix. He’ll never walk right again as long as he lives.”

May and Lennie were both staring at the gun, their faces as white as Blue’s. May’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Parker felt the heft of the gun in his hand. “The simplest way,” he said thoughtfully, talking more to himself than to them, “would be to kill the three of you. Then Stubbs gets himself killed, and from then on everything is roses.”

“Wait,” May said, her voice an octave higher than before.

“It would be simplest.”

“Number two is named Wells,” said May, talking so fast the words tripped all over each other. “His real name is Wallerbaugh, but he’s calling himself Wells. And number three is named Courtney.”

Parker lowered the gun. There wasn’t enough reason to kill these three. It was dangerous to kill when there wasn’t enough reason, because after a while killing became the solution to everything, and when you got to thinking that way you were only one step from the chair. Parker had killed without enough reason twice, both times because he was impatient, and one time the killing could be matched to an FBI card with his prints on it. He wasn’t going to make any more mistakes like that.

“All right,” he said. “You give me the details. And then you wait out the month, just like you planned. If neither Stubbs nor I come back by then you can do whatever you want. That’s only a week from now.”

“All right,” May said. “All right. All right.”

4

Parker took the Carey bus from La Guardia to the East Side Terminal building on 37th Street in Manhattan. A rented Chevrolet was waiting for him there but he let it wait a little longer, while he went up to Grand Central. It was five o’clock Sunday afternoon, and the station was doing a thriving business. Parker worked his way through it to the phone booths and the telephone books.

Buying a house had meant suburb to Parker from the beginning. The East Side Airlines Terminal had the phone books for the boroughs of New York — except for Staten Island — but the man Parker was looking for would be in Nassau County or Westchester County, or maybe even in Fairfield County up in Connecticut.

There was a “Wells, Chas. F.,” in Nassau County. Parker knew from May that Stubbs had planned to go through the phone book for all the possibilities and then go visit each one. He also knew that Stubbs would start with the city itself.

But sooner or later it would have to occur to Stubbs that Wells lived outside the city, and Stubbs was six days ahead of him. There wasn’t time to do it the way Stubbs was doing. Parker looked at the phone number for this Nassau County Wells, got some change out of his pocket and went into one of the booths.

He talked with an operator first, and fed some more money into the slots. Then the ringing sounded in his ear. He was just about to give up, after ten rings, when the phone was answered by a male voice. Parker said, “I want to talk to Charles F. Wells.”

“Speaking.”

“This is Wallerbaugh.”

If he was the wrong Wells, he’d be baffled. If he was the right Wells, the name coming at him this way might throw him off base.

It did. There was a pause, and then the voice, wary and carefully. “What was that name, please?”

“Dr. Adler,” Parker said. Just to be absolutely sure.

The wait was longer this time, and the voice this time was low and vicious. “Who are you? What do you want?”

Parker hung up. He left the booth and went back across the crowded terminal floor and took a cab back to the Airlines Terminal. It was the right Wells, and he was still alive. That could mean Stubbs hadn’t found him yet, even though he’d had six days. Or it could mean Stubbs had found him and Wells had proved his innocence. It could also mean that Stubbs had found him and was now dead.

The address wasn’t much to go on. Reardon Road, Huntington, Long Island. There was a map in the glove compartment of the rented Chevrolet, and Parker found Huntington and figured out his best route. The Queens Midtown Tunnel, because it was handy to the Terminal, and then the Long Island Expressway. Glen Cove Road up to North Hempstead Turnpike, which was also 25A, and that road into Huntington. When he got there, he could ask directions to Reardon Road.

He put the map back in the glove compartment.

5

Parker walked into the bar and ordered a beer. Outside, evening was coming on, and this was the first bar he had come to in Huntington. All of the normal bar bric-a-brac was on display — the Pabst Blue Ribbon antique car; Miss Rheingold; the Budweiser hanging clock; the Miller’s High Life dancing lights; the light shaped like a 7; the Schlitz clock against a pattern of spangled blue. Half a dozen locals sat along the length of the bar, and three more were playing the bowling machine in the back. One of them was a lefty.

Parker drank half the beer. “I’m looking for Reardon Road.”

The bartender looked at him and said, “You, too?” Then he turned to somebody else sitting at the bar. “Here’s another guy looking for Reardon Road.”

“Is that right?”

“You mean my brother’s been here already?”

“Your brother?”

“Older than me. Short and stocky and looks maybe a little punchy.”

“Well I’ll be damned,” said the bartender.

The local the bartender had talked to came over to Parker. “He was in here maybe half an hour ago.”

“Less than that,” said the bartender.

Parker drained the rest of the beer. “I thought I was ahead of him. Which way did you say it was?”

“Reardon Road?” The customer looked at the bartender. “How did we tell his brother to go?”

Another customer came down the line. “I was the one told him. Look, Mac, you go straight on through town on this street, see? And then you keep on going straight till you see the golf course.”

“The Crescent,” said the first customer.

“Right. The Huntington Crescent. And you make a left just the other side of the golf course.”

“First left,” said the bartender.

“Right,” said the second customer again; he didn’t like to be interrupted. “And then you make the second right and the first left.”

The other customer and the bartender nodded. “That’s the way we told him.”

Parker repeated it back. “First left after the golf course, then second right and first left.”

They all told him that was right, and he thanked them. Then he went back out to the car and drove through town, staying within the speed limit all the way. This was no time to waste fifteen minutes arguing with a cop.

The golf course was farther from town than he’d expected, but maybe that was because he was in such a hurry. Stubbs was less than half an hour ahead of him. But because of the phone call, Wells was forewarned.

Distances are deceiving on narrow blacktop country roads. The second right was forever after the first left, and the next left was across the rim of the world in Asia someplace. Then at last he was on Reardon Road, and he had to crawl to be sure of reading the names on the mailboxes. He spotted Wells’ name at last, and pulled the Chevy off the road. He couldn’t see the black Lincoln parked anywhere, so Stubbs must have just blundered on in, driving the car.

Parker got out of the Chevy, locked it, and walked down the private road among the trees. He came around a turn and there was the Lincoln, parked, blocking the road. He took the Sauer out and moved up slowly, but the car was empty. He went beyond it, saw the house, and cut away to the right into the woods.

If Stubbs had any sense, he was working his way around through the woods to the back of the house. Or he’d done it already. There were lights on in the house and Parker caught occasional glimpses of them through the trees. He kept bearing right, until he knew he was beyond the house, and then he angled to the left around it.

All of a sudden there was blacktop in front of him, and he was looking at the three-car garage. He cursed under his breath and took a backward step, and then he heard the shot to his left. He rushed out to the blacktop and looked down to the left and saw Stubbs there, in the evening gloom, folding forward into himself. Beyond Stubbs was another man, distinguished-looking and white-haired, holding a gun. Wells looked past Stubbs and saw Parker, and his eyes widened as the gun came up, ready for another shot.

Don’t kill him yet, Parker told himself, and don’t ruin his right hand. He fired low, and the bullet shattered Wells’ ankle. Wells made a strange high-pitched “Aaahh,” and pitched forward onto the blacktop. The gun skittered away and stopped next to Stubbs’ ear.

Parker checked Stubbs first, and he was dead. Then he checked Wells, who was unconscious. He ripped the sleeve from Wells’ shirt and made a hasty tourniquet around Wells’ leg to keep all the blood from pumping out through the ankle. Then, holding the Sauer again, he trotted across the blacktop and into the house.

It was a fine old house; the original owners had probably been Tories.

Parker went from room to room, switching on the lights, leaving them on in his wake. The light gleamed on polished mahogany and brass, on rich flooring and rich woodwork, on muted oil paintings and shelves of books.

In the kitchen, the light was fluorescent, and shone on porcelain and stainless steel and formica. Parker went upstairs and prowled all the rooms, and then went down into the basement, where he found the servants’ quarters. But there was no one in the house.

Finally he went back outside, leaving the house ablaze with light. Outside it was fully night. Parker looked at the windows on the second story of the garage, but they were uncurtained except for a film of dust. He went across the blacktop to where the two men were lying, and found Wells crawling toward Stubbs and the gun.

Parker kicked him on the bad ankle, and he fainted again. Then Parker picked him up and carried him into the house and dropped him on the leather sofa in the living room. He’d never seen a leather sofa before; it must have cost around a thousand.

When Wells came to again, Parker was sitting in a chair near the sofa, the Sauer held easy in his lap. Wells blinked in the light, and whispered, “My leg. My leg.”

“I know you killed Stubbs. Did you kill Dr. Adler, too?”

“My leg,” Wells whispered.

Parker grimaced. He’d have to start with an easier question. “Where are the servants?”

Wells closed his eyes. “I need a doctor.”

“Answers first.”

“I gave them the evening off.”

Parker nodded. “So there’d be no witnesses when you killed Stubbs? You killed Dr. Adler, too?”

“My leg. I need a doctor. I can’t stand the pain.”

“Answers first. You killed Dr. Adler?”

“Yes! Yes, you knew that already.”

“I wanted to hear it.” Parker got to his feet and walked out of the room.

Behind him, Wells cried, “For the love of God, I need a doctor!”

Parker remembered a study. He found it and searched through the desk drawers till he found pen and paper. On the way back he passed through the music room and took down an LP in its jacket to write on.

Wells was still on the sofa, his eyes closed. When Parker came in he opened them. “Did you call a doctor?”

“Not yet.”

“The pain, man.”

“That’s nothing.” Parker lifted Wells to a sitting position, the bad leg straight out in front of him, heel on the floor. Then he loosened the tourniquet. “Watch the ankle.”

Wells watched, and saw the blood suddenly spurt. It had practically stopped before, and started to coagulate, but when the tourniquet was released the clot broke down. Wells groaned, and reached for the tourniquet.

Parker slapped his hand away. “You’ve got something to write first.” He gave Wells the LP and the paper and pen. “Write how you killed Dr. Adler and Stubbs.”

“I’m too weak! I’m losing blood!”

“You could die,” Parker said, “if you waste time arguing.”

Wells’ hands were shaking, but he managed to write: “I leaned in the window from the porch, and shot Dr. Adler as he was sitting at his desk. I fired four times. I waited in the woods for—”

He paused and looked up. “What was the chauffeur’s name?”

“Stubbs. With two b’s.”

“—Stubbs and shot him when he came into the open in the front of my house.”

Parker read over his shoulder. “Sign it.”

“Charles F. Wells.”

“The other name, too.”

“C. Frederick Wallerbaugh.”

“Fine.”

Parker took the confession away so no blood would get on it, and then fired the Sauer once. The bullet caught Wells in the heart.

Parker put the Sauer away under his jacket and waved the confession in the air till the ink dried. Then he folded it up and put it in his pocket, and went out to the kitchen to find a knife.

6

It took him only three days to drive to Lincoln, because he was on turnpikes most of the way. They’d given him a Pontiac instead of a Chevrolet for the one-way rental from New York to Lincoln, and it was just old enough to be broken in, so he made good time. He took only one side trip, to pick up the typewriter case full of money from the motel outside Pittsburgh.

It was just eleven o’clock Thursday morning when he drove up to the sanitarium building. In the four days since he’d seen it, the further deterioration in the place was visible. It was falling apart fast, in the hands of May and her two men, and they’d probably abandon it before winter.

As Parker got out of the car, carrying the overnight bag, Lennie and Blue came out onto the porch and stood looking at him. Blue’s left arm was in a sling, and his color wasn’t good. They both seemed surprised to see him.

Parker came up onto the porch. “Where’s May?”

Lennie blinked. “We didn’t expect to see you no more.”

Blue said, “Where’s Stubbs?” His yapping voice was weaker than before, but still belligerent.

“May first,” Parker said.

“Here I am.”

Parker looked past the two men and saw May in the semidarkness just inside the doorway. She was glaring at him, and holding an old Colt Peacemaker in both hands, her right hand holding the grip and the trigger and her left hand holding the barrel.

“You’ll burn your hand off, you shoot that gun when you’re holding it that way. And break a wrist while you’re at it.”

“Don’t you worry none about me,” she said. “What are you doing back here?”

“I said I’d be back.”

“Where’s Stubbs?”

“He’s dead.”

“You killed him.”

“Wells killed him.” He walked toward her, between the two men, and the gun wavered in her hands. She seemed to be debating in her mind. When he was almost upon her, she lowered the gun, sullenly, and let it hang heavy and ineffectual from her right hand.

“Come on,” he said. He walked around her and led the way down the hall to the doctor’s office. He could hear them whispering behind him, Lennie or Blue whispering urgently to May, and May making sounds of anger.

In the office, he set the overnight bag down on the floor beside the desk, and turned around. The three of them were standing the same as the other time, just inside the door — May in front, Blue behind and to her right, Lennie behind and to her left. They looked like bowling pins.

“All right,” May said. “I suppose you still got that funny-looking gun. But this time I’ve got one too, and don’t let my skinniness fool you. You make one funny move and I’ll shoot you before you can blink an eye.”

“I’m sure of it. I’m going to get a piece of paper out of my pocket.”

“Move slow,” May warned him.

Parker reached into his inside jacket pocket, and came out with the folded confession. He walked across the room and handed it to May.

She didn’t know what to do with the Peacemaker. She couldn’t unfold the paper while she was still holding it. Finally, reluctantly, she handed it over to Blue. “Keep your eye on him.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” Blue said.

May read the confession and Blue and Lennie read it over her shoulder, Blue forgetting all about watching Parker. Parker could have walked over and taken the Peacemaker away from Blue, but there was no point in it. He leaned against the desk and waited.

May finished first, because the other two were lipreaders. She looked over at Parker. “How do I know this isn’t a phony?”

“Is that his real name there, down on the bottom? C. Frederick Wallerbaugh?”

“So what?”

“All you told me was ‘Wallerbaugh.’ Not the first and middle names, or how he signed himself.”

“That’s right, May,” Lennie said. It was a surprise to hear him talk. Parker looked at him and tried to decide if Lennie was still wearing the same undershirt he’d had on last Saturday. The corduroy pants were the same.

“All right,” said May. She wanted to be difficult, and there was always a way. “How come he wrote this?”

“I’d shot him, and he wanted me to get him a doctor.”

“You forced him. So maybe it’s a pack of lies.”

“What for?” Like the last time, Parker was having trouble keeping hold of his temper. But he didn’t want to get too impatient, because then he’d kill these three morons, and that would be their brand of stupidity.

“So we’d think it wasn’t you killed Dr. Adler and Stubbs.”

“Why did I kill Dr. Adler and Stubbs?”

“So they wouldn’t tell nobody about your new face.”

“Then why didn’t I kill you three the last time I was here?”

“That’s right, May,” Lennie said. Parker looked at him, surprised again. Maybe Lennie was the one with a mind in his head.

“All he’s trying to do is fast-talk us again,” May said.

“But why would he kill the doctor and Stubbs, and then not try to kill us? Why should he try to fast-talk us?” Lennie asked.

May shook her head, truculently. “I just don’t trust this man.”

“I don’t think I should trust you either,” Parker said. “I trusted the doctor because he had a brain, and because a friend of mine vouched for him. But you three are morons.”

“Hold on there.” The Peacemaker had been dangling from the end of Blue’s arm, but now he managed to bring the barrel up and aim it at Parker.

“Now, wait, Blue,” Lennie said. “If this man’s trying to be fair to us, we ought to try to be fair to him.” His face was screwed up with concentration, the way Stubbs had done sometimes when he was thinking hard. “You got to admit he makes sense. All he’s been doing is trying to prove to us he didn’t kill the doctor, when it would have been easier for him to kill the three of us. If he’d killed the doctor that’s just exactly what he would have done. And besides, May, you said he wouldn’t come back and that would prove he was the killer. But he did come back after all.”

May thought that one over, not liking it because it cleared Parker and she didn’t like Parker. Finally she shrugged, reluctantly. “I suppose that’s right.”

But Parker wanted to be sure. “Wells killed your doctor. You got that straight now?”

“I suppose so,” May said. She was frowning hard now, and she looked at Lennie as though for help.

“We got to be fair with this man, May. He went to a lot of trouble to prove himself.”

May shook her head. “You better give me that gun back, Blue.”

Parker studied them, frowning, and then grimaced in disgust. “You already blew the whistle!”

May had the gun again, holding it in her two-handed grip, aiming it shakily at him. “Now, you stay right there.”

“You couldn’t wait,” Parker said. “You had to be damn fools.”

It was Lennie who answered, apologetically. “We figured you for a phony,” he said. “We got to talking it over, and May thought — we all thought you were just out to kill Stubbs, that you’d sold us a bill of goods. May said — we all figured you wouldn’t be coming back. So I went down into town, and talked with a guy I know. He works for the bookie’s wire service, and he made a couple phone calls, and then I talked to another man on the telephone—”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, named Lowry, something like that. And I gave him your description.”

“You acted so goddamn tough,” May cried.

“Not tough enough. I should have burned you, all three of you. I should have known I couldn’t trust you.”

Lennie, still apologizing, said, “It wouldn’t of been fair not to tell you. After all the trouble you went through. We did wrong, but it wouldn’t of been fair not to tell you.”

Parker considered. The thing was shot now. The syndicate didn’t have a picture of him, and a description always fit thousands of men, but they did know about the new face. They knew now not to look for Parker the way he used to be. He felt like taking the Peacemaker away from May and using it on the three of them, but it wouldn’t do any good.

So what now? He could go find himself another plastic surgeon, run the whole thing again, but the hell with it. You could never be sure, never be absolutely sure. Doing it this way, running away and trying to hide from the syndicate, that had been wrong from the beginning. He had his own life to live, his own pattern, his own plans and pace. What good was it to change all that? He might just as well let the syndicate kill him.

What he had to do was make sure the syndicate was convinced they should forget him. He had to make them hurt, he had to bring them down to where they’d be willing to throw in the towel. Then he could go on about his business without worrying about new names or new faces or new ways of life.

The three of them were watching him, warily. Finally Lennie said, “What do you figure to do now?”

“With you people? Forget you.”

“We’re sorry, Mr. Anson,” Lennie said. “Honest to God.”

There was no sense talking to them. They were idiots, but they’d done all the damage they could do. Parker started through them, out of the room, but Blue said, “You forgot your bag.”

Parker paused and looked back at the overnight bag. “Oh, yeah.” He went back to it. “Stubbs told me one time, if anybody tried to kill the doctor to protect their new face, Stubbs would take the new face away from them. Stubbs got killed, so I did it for him.”

He picked up the overnight bag and set it on the desk. There was a zipper around three sides, and Parker unzipped it all the way around. The flap fell open, and May and the two men looked at the new face Dr. Adler had given to Charles F. Wells.

They were still staring at the head when Parker walked through them and down the hall and out to the car. He paused beside the car to light a cigarette, then climbed in behind the wheel and drove back out to the road. He’d give the car back to the rental people. And after that—?

After that, Miami. The syndicate trouble had to be settled, but it could wait. Parker had to unwind for a while, for a few weeks anyway. Then we’ll see.