The Mourner

1

When the guy with asthma finally came in from the fire escape, Parker rabbit-punched him and took his gun away. The asthmatic hit the carpet, but there’d been another one out there, and he landed on Parker’s back like a duffel bag with arms. Parker fell turning, so that the duffel bag would be on the bottom, but it didn’t quite work out that way. They landed sideways, jokingly, and the gun skittered away into the darkness.

There was no light in the room at all. The window was a paler rectangle sliced out of blackness. Parker and the duffel bag wrestled around on the floor a few minutes, neither getting an advantage because the duffel bag wouldn’t give up his first hold but just clung to Parker’s back. Then the asthmatic got his wind and balance back and joined in, trying to kick Parker’s head loose. Parker knew the room even in the dark, since he’d lived there the last week, so he rolled over to where he knew there wasn’t any furniture. The asthmatic, coming after him, fell over a chair.

Parker rolled to where the wall should be, bumped into it, and climbed up it till he was on his feet, the duffel bag still clinging to his back. The duffel bag’s legs were around Parker’s hips, and his left arm was around Parker’s chest. His right hand kept hitting the side of Parker’s head.

Parker moved out to the middle of the room, and then ran backward at the wall. The second time he did it, the duffel bag fell off. Across the room, the asthmatic was still bouncing back and forth amid the furniture. Parker went over that way, got the asthmatic silhouetted against the pale rectangle of the window, and clipped him. The asthmatic went down, hitting furniture on the way.

Parker waited a few seconds, holding his breath, but he couldn’t hear anybody moving, so he went over and shut and locked the window, pulled the Venetian blinds, and switched on the table lamp beside the bed.

The room was a mess. One bed had been turned at a forty-five-degree angle to the wall, and the mattress was half-pulled off the other one. The dresser was shoved out of position so it was blocking the closet door, and the wastebasket lay on its side in the middle of the floor with a big dent in it. All four chairs were knocked over. One of them had both wooden arms broken.

Parker walked through the mess to see what he’d landed.

Fifteen minutes ago it had started, with Parker lying clothed on the bed in the darkness, thinking about one thing and another, and waiting for Handy to come back. That was after eleven o’clock, so Handy was late already. The lights were off because Parker liked it that way, and the window was open because November nights in Washington, D. C., are cool but pleasant. Then through the window had come the faint clatter of somebody mounting the fire escape, four flights below at street level. Parker had got off the bed and listened at the window. The somebody came up the fire escape about as quiet as the Second World War but trying to be quieter, and stopped at Parker’s floor. Somebody with asthma. It was all so amateurish, Parker couldn’t take it seriously, which is why the second one surprised him. He’d waited, and the guy with asthma had waited outside — probably to make sure there wasn’t anybody home in Parker’s room — and then finally he came in and it all had started.

The nice thing about a hotel. Nobody questions any noise that lasts less than ten minutes.

They were both out, the duffel bag on his face and the asthmatic on his back. Parker looked them over one at a time, and then frisked them.

The asthmatic was short, scrubby, wrinkled as a prune, and fifty or more, with the withered look of a wino. He was wearing baggy gray pants, a flannel shirt that had once been plaid but had now faded down to a gray like the pants, and a dark-blue double-breasted suit coat with all but one button missing and the shoulder padding sagging down into the arms. He had white wool socks on and brown oxfords with holes in the soles.

Parker went through his pockets. In the right-hand coat pocket he found a boy-scout knife with all the attachments — a screwdriver, nail file, corkscrew, everything but a useful blade — and in the left-hand pocket a hotel key. The board attached to the key was marked: HOTEL REGAL 27. In the shirt pocket was a crumpled pack of Camels and in the left-hand pants pocket forty-seven cents in change. From the hip pocket he took a bedraggled old child’s wallet of imitation alligator skin, with a two-color picture of a cowboy on a bucking bronco on one side and a horseshoe on the other. Inside the wallet was a hundred dollars in new tens and four dollars in old singles, plus half a dozen movie-theater ticket stubs, a long, narrow photo of a burlesque dancer named Fury Feline, clipped from a newspaper, and a Social Security card and membership card in Local 802, International Alliance of Chefs and Kitchen Helpers. The Social Security card and the union card were made to James F. Wilcoxen.

That was all. Parker left Wilcoxen and went over to the duffel bag, who had started to move. He had long, straight, limp hair, dry blond in color, and Parker grabbed a handful of it and slapped his head against the floor. He stopped moving. Parker rolled him over.

This one was just as short, and maybe even thinner, but about twenty years younger, with the face of a ferret. He was dressed all in black. Black shoes and socks, black pegged trousers, black wool-knit sweater. He had long, thin fingers and narrow feet.

Parker searched him. Under the black sweater was a blue cotton shirt, and in the pocket was a pair of sunglasses. The right-hand pants pocket contained fifty-six cents in change and a key to room 29 in Hotel Regal; the left, a roll of bills — one hundred dollars in new tens. Left hip pocket, a Beretta Jaguar .22, with the three-and-a-half-inch barrel. Right hip pocket, a wallet containing seven dollars, plus a bunch of dog-eared clippings about the various arrests of Donald Scorbi on suspicion of this and that, mostly assault or drunk and disorderly, with one narcotics possession. The wallet also disgorged a laminated reduced photostat of a Navy discharge — general discharge, for medical reasons — with the same name on it, Donald Scorbi.

Parker kept the two stacks of new tens and the Beretta, but put everything else back in Scorbi’s and Wilcoxen’s pockets. Then he used their shoelaces to tie their hands behind them, and their belts to secure their ankles together. Scorbi started to come out of it again and he had to be put back to sleep, but Wilcoxen was still out, wheezing through his open mouth.

Parker looked them over, and decided to keep Wilcoxen. He used a washcloth and face towel to gag Scorbi, then dragged him into the bathroom and dumped him in the tub. He closed the door and searched around the room for the other gun, the one he’d taken from Wilcoxen early in the scuffle.

It was under the dresser, a Smith & Wesson Terrier, five-shot .32. Parker took it and the Beretta and stowed them away in his suitcase. His watch said eleven-thirty-five, which made Handy over half an hour late, so something had gone wrong.

Parker straightened the room and Wilcoxen still hadn’t come out of it. Parker dragged him over to the wall, propped him up in a sitting position, and pinched him awake. Wilcoxen came out of it complaining, groaning and thrashing his head around and keeping his eyes tight shut. There was a sour smell of wine on his breath. His face was all wrinkled gray leather except for two bright red circles on his cheeks, like a clown’s makeup.

Parker said, “Open your eyes, Jimmy.”

Wilcoxen stopped complaining and opened his eyes. They were a wet, washed-out blue, like an overexposed color photo. He took a while getting them to focus on Parker’s face, and then the red blotches on his cheeks got suddenly redder, or the rest of the face paler.

Parker said, “Good,” then straightened up and went away across the room to the nearest chair. He brought it over and sat down and kicked Wilcoxen conversationally in the ribs. “We’ll talk.”

Wilcoxen’s lips were wet. He shook his head and blinked a lot.

Parker said, “I got a partner. You had a partner. Scorbi.”

Wilcoxen looked around and didn’t see Scorbi.

“Your partner wouldn’t tell me about my partner. I threw him back out the window.”

Wilcoxen’s eyes got bigger. He stared at Parker and waited, but Parker didn’t have anything else to say. The silence got thicker, and Wilcoxen squirmed a lot. His feet jiggled, and he licked his lips and kept blinking. Parker sat looking at him, waiting, but Wilcoxen’s eyes kept darting all over the place.

Finally, he asked, “What you want from me?”

Parker shook his head and kicked him again. “Wrong answer.”

“I don’t know no partner. Honest to Christ.”

“What do you know?”

“I got a hundred bucks. Donny and me both. Go to the Wynant Hotel, first fire escape in the alley, fifth floor. If there’s nobody home, take everything there. Suitcases and like that.”

“And if there’s somebody home?”

“Don’t do nothing. Come back and report.”

“Back where?”

Wilcoxen’s blinking was getting worse. His eyes were closed more than they were open. “Listen,” he said. “It’s just a job, you know? A hundred bucks. Nobody hurt, just pick up some suitcases. Anybody woulda took it.”

Parker shook his head. He didn’t care about that. “Back where?” he asked.

“Howison Tavern. On E Street, down by Fourth Precinct.”

“Who do you see?”

Wilcoxen frowned, and the blinking settled down a little. “I don’t know,” he said. “He just told us go in there and sit down. If we got the stuff, somebody would come by, pick it up. If not, somebody would come by, get the report.”

“What time you supposed to be there?”

“By one o’clock.”

“Which E Street?”

“Huh? Oh, Southeast.”

“Who gave you the job?”

“The job? Listen, I got pins and needles in my hands.”

Parker looked at his watch. Quarter to twelve. He had an hour and fifteen minutes. “I’m in a hurry, Jimmy,” he said.

“How come you know my name?”

Parker kicked him in the ribs again, not hard, just as a reminder.

“I’m giving you the straight story. I ain’t going to lie for a hundred bucks. You didn’t have to throw Donny out no window.”

“Who gave you the job?”

“Oh, uh — a guy named Angel. He’s a heavy, he hangs out around North Capitol Street, up behind the station. Donny and me, we was in a movie on D Street, and when we come out Angel grabs onto us and gives us the offer.”

“Is Angel going to be at the Howison Tavern?”

“He says no. He says somebody will come by, don’t worry, he’ll recognize us. We should sit in a booth and drink beer. Schlitz.”

“Where do I find this Angel?”

“I don’t know. Honest to Christ. Hangin’ around someplace, up around behind the station. In around there, you know.”

It was no good. Parker thought it over, chewing his lip. The meeting couldn’t be faked, so there was no way to start a trail from there. And it would take more than an hour and a quarter to find somebody named Angel hanging around the Union Station area somewhere. If Handy was still alive, he’d be alive till one o’clock. Then, when Scorbi and Wilcoxen didn’t show up, whoever had Handy would know there was trouble. The easiest thing would be dump Handy.

So it had to be done from the other direction, through the girl.

Parker nodded to himself. “All right, Jimmy,” he said. “You can go. Roll over so I can untie you.”

“You mean it? Honest to Christ?”

“Hurry, Jimmy.”

Wilcoxen scramble away from the wall and flopped over on his stomach.

“You’re all right, honest to Christ you are. You know it wasn’t nothing personal. There wasn’t even supposed to be nobody here, just suitcases and like that. We ain’t torpedoes or nothing.”

“I know,” Parker said. He untied Wilcoxen’s hands and stepped back. “Undo your ankles yourself.”

Wilcoxen had trouble making his hands work. While he was loosening the belt from around his ankles and putting his shoelaces back in his shoes, Parker got the Terrier out of the suitcase, and held it casually where Wilcoxen could see it. He left the Beretta where it was; he didn’t like .22’s much.

When Wilcoxen got to his feet, Parker said, “Scorbi’s in the bathroom. Go untie him.”

Wilcoxen suddenly smiled, beaming from ear to ear. “I knew you didn’t throw Donny out no window,” he said. He hurried over and opened the bathroom door. “Donny! He’s lettin’ us go, Donny!”

After a while Scorbi came out, walking lame like Wilcoxen. He looked sullen, not joining in Wilcoxen’s happiness. Parker said, “Out the way you came in.”

“What about our dough?” Scorbi asked.

“Hurry,” Parker said.

“Come on, Donny,” said Wilcoxen. He tugged at Scorbi’s sleeve. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Our rods and our dough.”

Parker said, “Go on, Jimmy. Either he follows you or he don’t.”

Wilcoxen hurried over and climbed out the window onto the fire escape. Scorbi hung back a second, but then he shrugged and went out the window. The two of them started down the fire escape, making even more noise than they had coming up.

Parker stowed the Terrier away inside his coat and picked up the phone. When the operator came on, he made his voice high-pitched and nervous. “There’s somebody on the fire escape! Get the police! Hurry! They’re going down the fire escape!”

He hung up while the operator was still asking questions, switched off the light, and left the room. He took the elevator down and crossed the lobby and went outside. A prowl car was parked down to the left, with the red light flashing. Hotels get fast service.

Parker stood on the sidewalk, and a couple of minutes later two cops came out of the alley alongside the hotel, pushing Scorbi and Wilcoxen in front of them. So that was that. Because the Scorbis and Wilcoxens never talk to the law, it couldn’t get back to Parker. So, no matter how good a story they thought up, they’d miss that one-o’clock meeting, and whoever had Handy wouldn’t be warned. It was better even than keeping them tied up in the bathroom.

Parker turned and walked the other way. A block later he hailed a cab.

2

It was just over the Maryland line, in Silver Spring, a squat, faded apartment building called Sligo Towers. Built of dark brick aged even darker, the bricks widely separated by the plaster, it looked like an old Thirties standing set left over on the Universal back lot. Thirties-like imitations of Gay Nineties gaslights, containing twenty-five-watt bulbs, flanked the arched entrance to the courtyard.

The courtyard was just concrete, but pink coloring had been added before it set. It was bounded on three sides by the building, rising eight stories and sprouting air conditioners here and there like acne. On the fourth side was a double arch with a concrete pillar, separating courtyard from sidewalk. Beyond, dark cars slept at the curb, hoods mutely reflecting the street light from down the block. A car purred by, without pausing.

Parker turned the far corner and came striding toward the Sligo Towers. He wore a gray suit and a figured shirt, the suit coat open despite the night chill. He looked like a businessman, in a tough business. He could have been a liquor salesman in a dry state, or the automobile-company vice-president who takes away the dealerships, or maybe the business manager of one of the unions with the big buildings downtown around the Capitol. He could have been a hard, lean businessman coming home from a late night at the office.

He turned at the double arch and went into the courtyard, his shoes with the rubber soles and heels making no sound on the pink concrete. There were walls on three sides of him, all around the courtyard, with a door in each wall. Each was marked with a letter so rococo it looked like a drawing of an ivy-covered window.

He didn’t know which door. Slowing down would spoil the effect, stopping would tip any watcher that he was a stranger here. He kept on toward “B”, the door straight ahead. Three brick-lined pink concrete steps led up, and then the door was metal, painted to look like wood. It was a double door, and inside there was a metal bar like those found on the doors of schools and theaters. A half flight of metal stairs painted red led up to a hallway running at right angles. There was no interior door, which was a surprise. With no trouble at all, he was already in the building.

Facing the stairs, on the wall, was a double row of brass mailboxes, with name plates. Parker read the names, but didn’t find the one he wanted. He looked to right and left, and in both directions the hallway ended short at apartment doors, so the three sections of the building weren’t connected at this level. They would be, in the basement. He went back down the half flight to a longer hallway, this one walled with rough plaster and dimly lit. He turned left.

At the end, the hallway made a right angle to the left. Parker followed it, came to another flight of stairs, and went up. He was now in section A, and the name he wanted was under the fifth mailbox from the left on the bottom row. Miss Clara Stoper. Apartment 26.

There were four apartments to a floor, so 26 would be on the seventh floor. The elevator was to the right of the mailboxes. Parker got out at the seventh floor. Apartment 26 was to the left. Parker moved down that way and listened at the door, but could hear nothing. There was a thin crack between the bottom of the door and the floor, but no light showed through.

Parker rang the bell. There was no peephole in the door, so he waited where he was, in front of the door. Nothing happened for a while, so he rang the bell again. Then he saw light under the door, and a bolt clicked.

He frowned, trying to remember the name Handy was using with her. Pete Castle, that was it.

The door opened a few inches, held by a chain from opening any farther. A chain like that can’t keep anyone out; it only serves as an irritation. Beyond was a sleepy-eyed girl’s face. She was sleepy-eyed and holding a robe closed at her throat, but her hairdo was in perfect shape without a net.

“Who is it? What do you want?” she said, the voice a good imitation of sleepy blurriness.

But the hairdo had given it away. Parker didn’t have to ask questions after all. His right foot went out and wedged in the doorway, so the door couldn’t be closed. His right hand reached through and grabbed a handful of hair on the top of her head. He slammed her forehead against the edge of the door. Her hands started to come up toward his wrist, and her mouth was opening wide to shout, so he did it again. The third time, she became a dead weight and collapsed straight downward, leaving several strands of hair in his fist.

It took two high, flat kicks with his heel to pop the chain loose from the doorpost. The door swung open, and beyond the lighted foyer and the dark living room was a bright doorway. The silhouette of a fat man appeared in it and Parker dove for the rug, stabbing into his pocket for the Terrier. The fat man fired over his head. Parker rolled into a wall and came up with the Terrier in his hand. The bright doorway was empty. Parker moved quickly, slamming the hall door and flicking off the foyer light.

The fat man had the same idea. There wasn’t any bright doorway any more. The whole apartment was dark.

The fat man knew this place, and Parker didn’t. The fat man could sit and wait, and Parker couldn’t take the time. The fat man could stay where he was and listen, shoot at the first sound, or just wait for Parker to go away.

In the dark, Parker found the unconscious girl. He dragged her into the living room and knelt beside her on one knee. In a conversational voice he said, “Fat man. Listen to me, fat man. You fired one shot. The light sleepers around here are awake now; they think it was a truck making a backfire. You turn on a light, fat man, and you come out here where I can see you, or I make more noises. I can scream like a woman, and then very slow I can empty this pistol into your girl. Too many backfires, fat man. Somebody will call the police. Before I’m finished, somebody will call the police. Then I wipe the gun clean and put it down on the floor and beat it. No fingerprints of mine here, fat man. Nothing to connect me. But your fingerprints are everywhere. And somebody’ll connect you up with this woman.”

Silence.

“Now, fat man. The next thing I do is scream like a woman.”

“Wait.”

It was a soft voice, and from the left somewhere. Not in the room.

“Hurry.”

“I will not turn on the lights,” said the voice. It had a faint accent, something Middle European. “But it is possible we can talk.”

“Not in the dark.”

“You must be reasonable. We will effect a compromise.”

“Name it.”

“You want something here, quite obviously, else you wouldn’t have come. Yet I don’t know you. I cannot imagine what it is you want. Your reactions and movements are hardly those of a burglar or a rapist. Either you have come to murder me, at the behest of the opposition, or you are here seeking information of some sort. If murder is your purpose, it would hardly be sensible for me to show myself. If what you want is information, we can discuss it just as profitably in the dark.”

While the fat man was talking, Parker was crawling toward the sound of his voice, moving cautiously across the carpet on hands and knees. When the voice stopped, Parker stopped. He turned his head away, so he wouldn’t sound any closer. “I’m here for information. Where’s Pete Castle?”

“Ah!” The fat man seemed pleased to have the mystery cleared up. “He did have associates.”

“Where is he?”

“Reposing in a safe place, I assure you. And relatively unharmed. I would suggest, by the way, that you come no closer. You are now nearly to the doorway, and I pride myself on my shooting. If you clear that doorway, and then are foolish enough to speak, it will take me no more than one backfire to dispose of you.”

“Why warn me?”

“Curiosity, just curiosity. The same motive that impelled me to have your friend taken away to where he could be questioned at leisure. Our operation is of a complexity and a delicacy. Your friend’s presence became, quite naturally, of concern to us. We had to know whether his goal coincided with our own. Now I discover that there are two of you, perhaps more. You might tell me just what it is you want with Kapor. If our purposes are the same, it is possible we could come to an agreement.”

“All I want is Pete Castle. You’ll tell me where to find him, or I’ll start making that noise—”

A body suddenly fell on him, grappling with him, and the girl’s voice shrilled in his ear, “I’ve got him, Mr. Menlo! I’ve got him, I’ve got him!”

Parker struggled with her, hampered by the darkness, and over her shouting he heard the pounding of running feet. He flung her off at the last in time to catch a glimpse of the hall door opening, and the back of the fat man. Parker headed that way, but the girl got him around the ankles, dropping him again. He kicked free, made it to the hallway, and heard the clatter of taps on metal stairs. The fat man was already halfway down.

Parker ran back into the apartment, switching on lights as he went. The girl was slowly and groggily getting to her feet. Her robe was disarranged, and beneath it she was fully dressed except for shoes. Parker ran past her to the first window he found, in the kitchen, but it faced the rear of the building. So did the bedroom window. No window faced the courtyard.

Parker came back to the living room. The girl was on her feet but weaving, moving at a snail’s pace toward the door. Parker came after her, grabbed her by a shoulder, flung her back into the living room. The chain attachment on the front door was broken but the bolt still worked. Parker shot it, and went back to the living room.

The girl was no more than half-conscious. She’d been battered once too often in the last five minutes. She was standing in the middle of the room, frowning and squinting as though not sure what was going on. Parker took hold of her arm and steered her into the kitchen. She moved with no complaint, repeating under her breath, “Mr. Menlo? Mr. Menlo?”

Parker sat her on a kitchen chair and slapped her face to get her attention. “Where have they got Pete Castle?”

She frowned up at him, and then rationality came back to her and her face hardened. “You can just go to hell.”

Parker shook his head in irritation. He hated this kind of thing, hurting people to make them talk. It was messy and time-consuming and there ought to be a better way. But there wasn’t.

He found twine in a kitchen drawer, and tied her to the chair, and gagged her. She fought it, but not successfully. He left her right hand free and put paper and pencil on the table.

“Write the address when you’re ready,” he said. Then he reached for the kitchen matches.

3

There was a delivery truck out front, a small, dark panel truck with the name KELSON FURNITURE on the sides. It was way after one o’clock, but two men in white coveralls were carrying a rolled-up rug out of the dark bungalow.

This was in Cheverly, off Landover Road. Parker crouched in the back seat of the cab, watching them through the windshield. They were half a block ahead, and on the other side of the street. Just the two men in white coveralls and the rolled-up rug. No fat man.

Parker said, “Douse your lights.”

It was a lady cab driver, a small, middle-aged black woman with a wild red hat. She glared over her shoulder at him. “What was that?”

Parker found a twenty and shoved it at her, wishing he had the Pontiac. But Handy had taken that with him. Parker said, “I want you to put out your lights. Then follow that delivery truck over there when it takes off.”

She now looked baffled, but just as suspicious. “Is this some kind of gag, mister?”

“No gag.”

“We’re not supposed to do nothing like that.”

“Just take the twenty.”

“How I know you ain’t a cop? Or a inspector or something?”

“Do I look like a cop?”

“Some cops, yeah.”

“All right,” Parker said. “We’ll do it the hard way.” He dropped the twenty in her lap and showed her the Terrier.

The gun she could understand. She doused the lights. “If you got robbery or rapery on your mind, big man,” she said, “you just forget it.”

“All you do is follow that delivery truck. Get ready now.”

“Sure. They got a body in that rug.” She thought she was being scornful.

“That’s right,” Parker answered.

“Huh?”

The delivery truck started away from the curb. Parker said, “Give them a block. Keep the lights off till I say so. You can see by the street lights.”

“If I get stopped by a cop—”

“Don’t worry about it.”

The cab, with its headlights off, trailed the taillights of the delivery truck out to Landover Road, where the truck turned back toward the city. As soon as it had made the turn and was out of sight, Parker said, “Put your lights on now.”

The truck barreled along ahead of them, and didn’t seem aware it was being followed. There was no circling of blocks, or speeding up and slowing down, to check for a possible tail. The truck just ran on over to Bladensburg road and down into the city. In the Trinidad section it made a right turn. Parker said, “Keep back a block and a half unless they turn.”

Ahead, the truck turned in at a driveway. This was a commercial section, shut down tight. Parker said, “Turn at the corner here. Don’t go past where they turned in. Now go half a block and stop.”

He had another twenty ready when the cab stopped. He tossed it to her. “This one’s to forget to call the cops.”

She shrugged and shook her head. “I sure hope you got your money’s worth,” she said. She sounded doubtful.

Parker hurried back around the corner, and down the block toward where the truck had turned in. There was no reason to hurry, except he wanted to know what the hell was going on.

One thing he knew now — Handy was still alive. If Handy were dead, they’d either have left him there or driven the body further away from town. But he was alive, because they still wanted to know what he was up to, and they’d just moved him so they could question him some more. The fat man had hurried away, then set up this new place to bring Handy and called his friends to get Handy out of there. If Parker had taken three minutes longer getting the answers out of the girl, he’d have missed the move completely.

Whether Handy was alive or dead wasn’t the important part. The important part was who these people were and what they wanted. If they were after the mourner too, it would complicate things.

Parker came to the driveway. It was blacktop and narrow, hemmed in on both sides by brick walls. The one on the right was a garage and on the left was a dry cleaner’s. From the front, both looked dark and empty.

Parker moved cautiously down the driveway and found the truck at the end, against another wall. The truck doors were open, and the rug was gone.

Both side walls contained metal doors back here. Parker tried the one leading to the garage first, and it was unlocked. He stepped through into darkness, and listened. A dim murmur of voices came from his right and above. He moved that way, skirting first a workbench and then some machinery, and ahead of him saw a dim light. The ceiling was high, and a row of offices was built out from the rear wall, with a wooden staircase going up. The light was spilling down from one of the offices.

Parker moved forward, and then saw a cigarette glow for a second ahead of him. There was somebody sitting at the foot of the stairs.

Parker moved in slowly, staying back under the stairs, which had been built hastily, without risers. Parker held the Terrier by the barrel, reached through between two of the stairs, and put the guard out with the gun butt. He slumped, and slid off the stairs to the floor.

Parker came around and checked him, and he was out. The voices were still murmuring upstairs, without a break. He went up the stairs, the butt of the Terrier in his hand now, and followed the sound of the voices.

There was a walkway outside the offices, with the office wall on one side and a wooden railing on the other. The wall was paneling halfway up, and glass the rest of the way. The light was coming through the glass down toward the other end of the walkway. Parker moved that way, and edged close enough to look in through the glass.

It was just a small office, with pale-green filing cabinets and pale-green partitions. There was a desk, and three chairs, and the usual office furniture, with a big calendar on the back wall showing a trout leaping in a mountain stream.

They had Handy sitting on the floor, his back against the wall under the calendar. He was tied with a lot of white clothesline, but not gagged. There was blood on his face, and his clothes were messed up. The two men in the white coveralls were with him, talking to him. Handy’s eyes were shut, but from his posture he was probably awake. Or mostly awake.

Parker couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. And he was surprised that the fat man wasn’t there with them. But the way the fat man could run, he maybe never got too close to the action. He just stayed back by a telephone somewhere where he could be the general.

Parker turned back and retraced his steps. There was only one door leading into the offices, but each had connecting doors. Parker stepped into one from the walkway and moved along through three other dark offices, opening and closing doors as he went without a sound. Then he was at the partition, standing in front of the inner door to the lighted office, and he could hear now.

“... but now we’ve got plenty of time. We’ve got all night, you know that? That partner of yours is plenty good, catching on so quick, but how’s he gonna find you here? Even if he gets anything out of Clara, so what? Off he goes to the house in Cheverly, right? And there’s the dead end.”

The other one said, “Or maybe you got another partner. How many of you in this thing, Pete? Just the two of you? Or maybe three, four? What do you say, Pete?”

There was silence, and then a thud, and the first voice said, “Take it easy, boy. You want to put him out again?”

“All he has to do is be civil, that’s all. Just answer a polite question, that’s all.”

“I tell you what, we’ll go over it for him again. Maybe he’s just a slow study.”

“Let me take my pliers to his fingers. He’ll be a real quick study.”

“No, Mr. Menlo said don’t mess him up too bad till we find out what the score is.”

“You got to mess him up. Look at him.”

“I figure he’ll listen to reason. Isn’t that right, Pete? You know we can’t do nothing drastic to you, but Pete boy, we got all night. Like, I could just take your hair like this, and just real gentle rap your head on the wall, see? Boom. And then again. Boom. See? The first time ain’t so bad. The second time’s a little worse. Now the third time. Boom. See? What do you think, Pete? Maybe forty times? We got all night, Pete.”

“So boom him and get it over.”

“Now wait a minute, let me talk to him. We got interrupted before; let me talk to him. Pete, listen to me. We don’t want so much. We ain’t greedy, Pete. But just listen. We’re getting this operation set up, getting everything ready, and all of a sudden you come into the middle of it. You make a play for Clara, so pretty soon Clara’s got it figured what you’re after is to get into Kapor’s house. You’re working on something and we’re working on something. Now, all we want to know, Pete — is it the same something? What do you want in Kapor’s house, Pete? And how many of you are in it? That’s all we want to know. What the hell, Pete, we were here first. I mean, fair’s fair, right? Boom, Pete. Boom. Isn’t fair fair, Pete? Boom, Pete.”

There was no sense listening to any more. They wouldn’t be saying more about themselves. There was Clara, and fat man, Menlo, and these two, plus the one downstairs and maybe the one named Angel. Maybe some others too. They were all after something that Kapor had, just as Parker was, and if they, like Parker, were after the mourner, they wouldn’t be volunteering that information to Handy. So Parker opened the door and went into the light, gun first. “Freeze.”

Nobody ever does. The two of them spun around, shock-eyed, and Handy opened tired eyes and grinned.

“Untie him,” Parker said.

The conversational one did it, while the one with the impatient pliers stood there and glowered. Then Parker had the one with the impatient pliers use the same ropes to tie up the conversational one. Parker only wanted to take one with him, and he had decided to take Pliers because in his experience the people who were the most anxious to use torture were also the ones most anxious to talk instead of being tortured themselves. Parker had been forced to ask questions the hard way twice already tonight. It hadn’t been bad with Wilcoxen, but with the woman, Clara, it had been very bad, because she was stubborn and Parker was in a hurry.

Handy couldn’t walk; his legs were numb from being tied so tight for so long. Parker had Pliers carry Handy, and the three of them left the office and went downstairs and out to the truck. Parker got the ignition key, and then arranged the three of them. There was no partition between the seats and the load area, so Handy lay in back with the Browning .380 automatic Parker had taken away from the conversational one upstairs. From there he could keep an eye on Pliers, in front. Parker drove.

He backed the truck down the driveway to the street, but for a second he didn’t know where to go. They hadn’t set up any place private yet, because the job wasn’t that close to being ready, and the hotel room wouldn’t be any good for questioning Pliers. Then Parker remembered the bungalow where they’d been holding Handy. Why not? If any place in the District was guaranteed empty right now, it was that bungalow.

They drove in silence. Parker had his questions, but he wanted the proper atmosphere in which to ask them. And among them, he was wondering if Harrow had been dumb enough to send two teams after the same ball. Could the fat man and his friends be working for Harrow too? That would be stupid, and dangerous, for everybody.

But Harrow wasn’t all that smart...

4

That was two months ago.

For eighteen years, Parker had lived the way he wanted, to a pattern he liked. He was a heavy gun, in on one or two institutional robberies a year — a bank, or a payroll, or an armored car — just often enough to keep the finances fat, and the rest of the time he lived in resort hotels on either coast, with a cover that would satisfy even the income-tax beagles. Then, because of a snafu in one job, he’d got fouled up with the syndicate.[1] He’d thought he’d got that straightened out — he’d even picked up a new face from a plastic surgeon[2] — and then, two months before in Miami, a syndicate heavy had tried for him, in his own hotel room, late at night. There’d been a girl in the bed with him named Bett Harrow, and when the syndicate heavy died, Bett had taken off with the gun that had helped kill him. The gun could be traced to Parker’s cover name, Charles Willis, and that was bad. There was a lot of money and time and preparation tied up in that cover.

Bett had let him know he could have the gun back for a price, but he’d told her she had to wait while he got the syndicate off his back. He’d got in touch with Handy McKay, who’d worked with him on other jobs in the past, and this time the syndicate question was settled for good[3] Then Parker went back to Miami with Handy to find out what Bett Harrow wanted.

But it wasn’t Bett who wanted anything, it was her father. Parker set up the meeting, but left Handy out of it. It might be useful sometime if neither Bett nor her father knew anything about Handy.

The Harrows came to Parker’s hotel room at one-thirty in the afternoon. They knocked on the door and when Parker opened it there was Bett, tall and slender and blonde, with vicious good looks, and next to her an older man, short and stocky and gray-haired. He had no tan at all, and the suit he was wearing was too heavy for Miami Beach, so he’d obviously just arrived in town. He was looking uncomfortable and carrying a book under his arm.

Bett said, “Can we come in, Chuck?”

He motioned them in. Bett came in first, and her father followed, clutching the book protectively to his chest. It was a large, slender book with a red binding and a picture on the cover of some people in a balloon.

“Dad, this isn’t Chuck Willis, but he says he is.” Bett was enjoying herself. It was the kind of scene she liked, which was one of the reasons she was living on alimony.

Ralph Harrow was fifty-three, the principal stockholder of the Commauck Aircraft Company. He owned 27 percent of that company’s outstanding shares. And he was additionally a large stockholder in three airlines and one insurance company. He was also a member of the board of each of the five companies thus represented in his stock portfolio. He had been born to money, and had multiplied his inheritance. A staff of attorneys saw to it that nothing he did was technically illegal, and they earned their money.

He came into the room showing an unusual apprehension, and responded to his daughter’s introductions with a brief, wary nod. “This is my daughter’s idea, uh, Willis,” he said. “I assure you, coercion is not my normal, uh, my normal policy.”

“You haven’t coerced me yet,” Parker had answered. “First you got to tell me what you want.”

Harrow licked his lips and glanced at his daughter, but she was no help. “To begin with, I’d like you to read a brief article in this magazine.”

He said magazine, but it was obviously the book he meant. He held it up, and Parker saw above the picture a title: Horizon. And below the picture a date: September, 1958. So it was a magazine that looked like a book.

Harrow opened the magazine-book, muttering to himself, “Page sixty-two.” He found the page and extended the open book.

Parker shrugged, not taking the book. “Just tell me what you want.”

If it had been just the father he’d been dealing with, he’d squeeze the gun out of him now and throw him away. But the daughter was tougher stuff.

Harrow was looking pained, as though he had indigestion. “It would really be quicker if you’d read this first,” he said.

“Go on, Chuck,” Bett said. “It’s short.”

“Just two pages,” Harrow added.

Parker said, “You read it, didn’t you?”

“Well... yes.”

“So you can tell me about it.”

Parker turned away from the book and went over to sit at the writing desk, turning the chair around to face the room.

Bett was still smiling. She settled luxuriantly on the bed, catlike, and said, “You might as well do it his way, Dad. I don’t think Chuck’s a reader.”

“Well, but...” Harrow was confused and unhappy; this wasn’t the way he’d planned things.

Parker had had enough waiting around. “Either get to the point or get out,” he said.

Bett said softly, “And go to the police?”

“If you want. I don’t give a damn.”

Bett laughed, and looked challengingly at her father. Harrow sighed. “Very well. It would have been easier if you’d... but very well. This article concerns a group of eighty-two statuettes in a monument at Dijon, in France.” He turned the book around so Parker could see. “You see the title? ‘The Missing Mourners of Dijon', by Fernand Auberjonois.”

“You want me to steal a statue,” Parker said, and Bett laughed again.

“I want you to understand the background.” Harrow answered unhappily. “It is important that you understand the background.”

“Why?”

“Dear Dad’s a romantic,” said Bett, with honeyed venom in her smile.

Parker shrugged. He didn’t care what the Harrow family thought of each other.

“These statuettes, eighty-two of them, were made for the tomb of John the Fearless and Philip the Good, Dukes of Burgundy,” Harrow said. “John was murdered in 1419, but not before ordering the tomb to be built. Philip was his son, and survived till 1467, when he—”

“The statues,” Parker said.

“Yes. The statues. They are sixteen inches high, made of alabaster, and were placed in niches at the base of the two memorials. No two of them are precisely alike, and they all express an attitude of mourning. Every possible variation on mourning, both true and false. There are monks, priests, choirboys — Well. At any rate, they are priceless. And at the time of the French Revolution, many of them were stolen or lost. At the present time, seventy-four of the statuettes are still in Dijon; some were always there, others have been found and returned. Of the remaining eight, one is owned by a private collector in France, two by a private collector in this country, in Ohio, and two are in the Cleveland Museum. The other three mourners are still missing.”

He closed the book, but kept his finger in the place. “That’s what this article would have told you,” he said, “and just as quickly as I have told it to you.”

Parker waited, controlling his impatience. None of this was necessary. Harrow wanted a statue stolen, that was the point. If the job looked easy enough, and if the price was right, he might do it. Otherwise, no. All this talk was a waste of time.

But Harrow wasn’t finished yet. “Now, for you to understand what I want, and why I want it, you must understand something about me.”

“Why?”

Bett said, “Let him, Chuck. It’s the only way he knows how to talk.”

“Elizabeth, please.”

“Get on with it,” Parker said.

“Very well. Very well. I, Mr. Willis, am in a very small and special way a collector of medieval statuary. I say in a special way. My collection is small, but if I do say so myself it’s excellent. I have at present only eight pieces. This is because my criteria are very high indeed. Each piece must be unique, must be one of a kind, must have no counterpart anywhere in the world. Each must be valued so highly as to be for all practical purposes priceless. And each must have an unusual and fascinating history. My daughter is right, Mr. Willis — I am a romantic. I am fascinated by each piece in my collection, by its creation and by its history. You understand this collection is for my own satisfaction, and not on display.”

Bett laughed and said, “Because they were all stolen.”

“Not so!” Harrow looked indignantly at his daughter. “Every piece was paid for, and handsomely too.”

“But the fascinating history,” she said, mocking the words. “It always includes a theft or two, doesn’t it?”

“That is not at all my concern. I myself have—”

“Shut up,” said Parker.

They stopped their bickering at once, and looked at him startled. “You want me to steal one of these statues, right? From a museum?”

“Good heavens, no!” Harrow seemed honestly shocked. “In the first place, Willis, all the statuettes mentioned in this article are far too easily traceable. They’re unique, you see, each a separate and distinct figure. Here, look.” He came forward, opening the book again, shoving it under Parker’s nose. “Here are pictures of some of them. See? They’re all different.”

Five of the statuettes were pictured, and Parker looked at them, nodding. Five sad, robed, weeping mournful little people, in five different postures of grief.

“Besides,” added Harrow, “besides, none of these has the kind of history I mean, the sort of background I want for the pieces in my collection.”

Parker shoved the book away. “What then?”

“Let me tell you.” Harrow stood in front of him, suddenly beaming, a glint of excitement in his eyes. “You remember, three of the mourners are still missing? No one knows where they are. But I’ve located one of them!”

“And that’s the one you want me to get?”

“Yes. Yes. Now, the way it—”

“Sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

“Oh, of course. I’m sorry. Yes, of course.”

Harrow retreated, and sat poised on the edge of the chair by the door. Parkers tone had drained some of the excitement out of him, and he went on more normally. “The way I happened to discover this mourner was rather odd. My company, about three years ago, received a small order for cargo planes from Klastrava. Six planes, I believe. You know the country?”

“Never heard of it.”

“I’m not surprised. It’s one of the smallest of the Slavic nations, north of Czechoslovakia. For all I know it was a part of Poland at one time; most of those countries were. The point is, it’s a nation on the other side of the iron curtain, so of course we were somewhat startled to get this order from them. The satellite nations are encouraged to deal with the Soviet Union, you know.”

“No news reports,” Parker answered. “Just tell the story.”

“I’m trying to give you the background.”

Harrow was beginning to get petulant. Parker shrugged. Over on the bed, Bett was smiling dreamily at the ceiling.

“It’s turned out,” said Harrow, plunging on with his story, “that this was one of the de-Stalinization periods and Klastrava was taking advantage of the milder climate to do some of its purchasing in the more competitively priced Western market. Needless to say, we never sold them any more planes, but in the process of that sale I met a gentleman named Kapor, from the Klastravian embassy. What Kapor’s normal duties are I don’t know, but at the time he was handling the negotiations for the sale of the planes. I met him, as I say, and we discovered we had quite a bit in common—”

This set the daughter to laughing again, and Harrow glared at her. Then, before Parker could say anything to hurry him along, he went quickly back to his story. “At any rate, he was a house guest in my home two or three times, and once or twice when I was in Washington he invited me to stay with him. And it turned out that he too has a small collection of statuary, but of no particular value. However, his collection did include an alabaster figure of a weeping monk, approximately sixteen inches high.”

Harrow smiled broadly, and rubbed his hands together. “I suspected what it must be at once, and learned that Kapor had no idea that it was anything more than an interesting piece of early-fifteenth-century statuary. I also discovered where he’d bought it. I made discreet inquiries, and gradually pieced together this little monk’s history, working backward, or course, to its original home in Dijon.”

“I don’t need all that,” Parker interrupted. Harrow seemed ready to play the romantic all week.

“Let him go, Chuck,” Bett said. “He’s just bubbling over to tell you all about it.”

“The information cost me quite a bit,” Harrow added defensively. “At one point, I even had to hire a French private investigator to check on a piece of information for me.”

Parker shrugged.

“At any rate,” said Harrow, hurrying now in an attempt to keep Parker from interrupting, “this particular statue was one of those looted in 1795, when revolutionaries desecrated the tomb. Who stole it I have no idea, but it did turn up in Quebec as a result of the Rebellion of 1837. Economic reprisals against one Jacques Rommelle, a follower of Louis Joseph Papineau, forced him to sell most of his possessions and move to Nova Scotia. Among the household goods sold was this small alabaster statuette. Rommelle had a knack for aligning himself with the wrong people. He’d left France for Canada in 1795, primarily because he was one of the strongest supporters of Robespierre. It’s possible Rommelle personally stole the statue from Dijon, but unlikely, because he’d lived most of his life in Rennes, which is in Brittany, on the other side of France. I think it more likely that the original looter was killed during the Terror, and that Rommelle was the second owner.”

He paused, cleared his throat, rubbed his hands together briskly, and smiled. “There’s such a fascination in this,” he said. “At any rate, Rommelle sold the statue in 1838, to a dealer named Smythe. Smythe didn’t manage to resell it, and when he died in 1852, his business was inherited by a grandson who had emigrated to the United States and was at the time living in Atlanta. The grandson sold most of what he’d inherited but he did hold on to a few items he liked, among them the statue of the weeping monk, but it was stolen by a Captain Goodebloode, a Union cavalry officer in 1864, when General Sherman’s army captured the city. Captain Goodebloode brought the statue to Boston, where it remained in the family till 1932, when the Goodebloode finances were depleted by the depression, and the contents of the ancestral house were sold at auction. A Miss Cannel purchased the statue in Boston and brought it home to Wittburg, a small town in upstate New York, where, for some reason best known to herself, she was attempting to set up a museum. If she’d had the wit to hire a professional curator, of course, the game would have been up right then, but this was a one-woman museum, and Miss Cannel apparently had more money than sense. At any rate, the statue went into the museum and when Miss Cannel died in 1953, the entire contents of the museum were sold to various dealers. One of them, in 1955, sold the statuette to Lepas Kapor. Finis.”

Harrow looked back and forth from Parker to his daughter, beaming and happy. “A fascinating history,” he said, dwelling on the words, “a fascinating history. A bloody revolution, a somewhat less bloody rebellion, a civil war, an economic crash — all have touched this small statue and influenced its destiny. It has traveled from France to Canada to Atlanta to Boston and to a provincial upstate New York town. Now it is in Washington. It has been stolen at least twice, and possibly three times, and now it is to be stolen again. A fascinating, fascinating history.”

“Yeah,” said Parker. He lit a cigarette and threw the match toward an ashtray. “The point is, you want me to get it for you.”

“Exactly. I will give you, of course, full particulars—”

“What’s in it for me?”

“What? Oh.” Harrow looked puzzled for a second, but now he smiled radiantly. “Of course, you expect to be paid. You’ll get the gun, for one thing, and a certain sum of money.”

“What sum?”

Harrow sucked on his cheek, studying Parker’s face. Finally, he said, “Five thousand dollars. In cash.”

“No.”

Harrow raised his eyebrows. “No? Mr. Willis, I consider the gun to be the major item of payment. Any cash would be in the nature of a bonus.”

“Fifty thousand,” Parker said.

“Good God! You aren’t serious?”

Parker shrugged, and waited.

“Mr. Willis, I could buy the statuette for little more than that. I’ve told you, the present owner has no idea—”

“You can’t buy it at all,” Parker said, “or you would.”

“Well.” Harrow pursed his lips, glanced with an aggrieved look at his daughter, sucked on his cheek again, drummed his fingers on the book in his lap. “I’ll go to ten thousand, Mr. Willis. Absolutely my top offer. Believe me, the statuette is worth no more than that to me.”

“I’m not bargaining,” Parker replied. “Fifty thousand or get out.”

“And shall we go to the police, Mr. Willis? Shall we go to the police?”

Parker got to his feet, went over to the closet, and took out a suitcase. He opened it on the bed and turned to the dresser.

Harrow said, “Very well. Twenty-five. Half now, and the balance when you get the statuette.”

Parker opened the top dresser drawer and began transferring shirts to the suitcase.

Harrow watched him a minute longer, and Bett watched them both. The father was frowning, the daughter smiling.

“Thirty-five.”

Parker started on the second drawer.

“Damn it, man, we have the gun!”

Bett said, “Give up, Dad, he won’t change his mind.”

“Ridiculous,” Harrow said. “Absurd. We have him over a barrel.” He frowned in petulance at Parker. “All right. All right, stop that asinine packing, you’re not fooling anyone.”

Parker started on the third drawer.

“I said you could stop packing. Fifty thousand. Agreed.”

Parker paused. “In advance,” he said. “The fifty thousand now, the gun after I get the statue.”

“Half now.”

“I told you I don’t bargain.”

Harrow shook his head angrily. “All right. The money now, the gun afterward.”

Parker left the suitcase and went back to the chair by the writing table. “All right,” he said. “Come over here. Bring your chair. I want this Kapor’s address. You’ve been in his house, I want as detailed a ground plan as you can give me. I want to know what room the statue is kept in, and if he’s got more than one there I want a detailed description of the one I’m after. I want to know how many people are in the household, and what you know about the habits of each of them.”

It took a while. Harrow wasn’t an observant man, and his memory had to be prodded every step of the way. It took half an hour to get even an incomplete ground plan, with half the interior still terra incognita. As for the people living there, there was Lepas Kapor himself, and some servants. Harrow didn’t know how many, or if any of them lived in. Kapor was unmarried, but Harrow thought that occasionally a woman stayed in the house overnight.

When Parker finally had everything from Harrow he was likely to get, Harrow was put on the send for the fifty thousand. Bett wanted to stick around for bed games, but Parker wasn’t in the mood. He was never in the mood before a job, always in the mood right after.

After they’d gone, Parker went down to the bar and got Handy. Together they went over the ground plan and the sketchy information they had, and the next day, after Harrow had turned over the attaché case full of cash and Parker had checked it in the hotel safe, they took off for Washington.

Kapor lived in a sprawling colonial brick house with white trim off Garfield, four blocks from the Klastrava embassy. A five-foot hedge surrounded the property. The two-car garage was behind the house, like an afterthought. A gravel driveway led in from the street through a break in the hedge, made a left turn at the front door, and then continued on around to the garage.

Parker and Handy took turns three days and nights watching the house, and by then they’d filled in some of the holes in Harrow’s information.

There were five servants, but only one slept in. The chauffeur did not sleep in, nor did the gardener-handyman, the cook, or the maid. The butler-valet-bodyguard did sleep in. His room was on the second floor front, right corner. Kapor’s room was in the back somewhere.

The house was not in an isolated neighborhood. Also, because it held an important man attached to the embassy of a country generally considered unfriendly to the United States, it was given unusually complete police surveillance. Prowl cars passed at frequent and erratic intervals day and night. There was also the possibility that the FBI or some other government agency was watching the house. It didn’t look like an easy house to break into undisturbed.

Handy suggested the old tried-and-true maid ploy. Meet the maid, gain her confidence, and eventually get a chance to make an impression of the keys in her purse. With the keys, a bold frontal attack — walk straight up to the door at a relatively early hour of the night, unlock it, and go on in.

Because it was Handy’s idea, and because he had a more pleasant personality, he went after the maid. He was in his early forties, tall and strong-faced, like a lean Vermont sheriff. The maid, Clara Stoper, was about thirty and good-looking in a harsh sort of way. She spent her Monday and Thursday nights in a bar on Wisconsin Avenue, and it was there that Handy made the meet. That was a week ago, and tonight he’d been going to her apartment, where he was sure he would be able to get his hands on the keys. She’d already given him a ten-thirty deadline, so he’d told Parker he’d be back by eleven. But eleven o’clock had passed and he hadn’t shown up, and then the two amateur bums had come up the fire escape and gradually all hell had broken loose. So if Harrow had sent this second group after that goddamn statue, Harrow was in trouble.