The Rare Coin Score

“All right.”

He went to the front and looked over the edge again, waiting for them to come back out. If they did come up here he’d have to run for it. Down the stairs if they drove up, or drive down if they came up on foot. There was a blue Porsche parked up there, he’d take that.

If he was taking the car, he’d be able to bring Claire along, but if he had to clear out on foot she’d slow him too much. She’d have to be put out of the way. He didn’t think about that, didn’t want to think about it, but if the time came he’d do it.

Cops were moving around down there like black models in an electric game. The temptation came to start plinking, to hit every moving shape, to make the street silent and empty again, but he knew the temptation for what it was, an emotional, irrational reaction to being in a tight spot. He kept watching It lasted nearly five minutes, and then the dark nose of the police car came turning out into sight again, moving slowly. Parker watched the dark bump of the flasher on the car roof, watched the car turn to the right and drive slowly away.

He waited a minute more, but that was apparently the end of it. The main body of the search had moved farther down the street by now, and the last few cops going by on foot did nothing more than glance into the garage entrance on the way by.

Parker went back over to Claire and said, “All right, it’s clear. Let’s finish up.”

She was better now, almost all the way back to her usual self. She came along with him, and they hurried through the rest of the job of transferring the coin cases.

After a minute, she said, “I had an idea, about French.”

“Like what?”

“We drive the truck down,” she said, “and we both get out of it and leave the motor running. We make it look as though we don’t realize it, but French can get to the truck. So he’ll jump into it and drive away, thinking he’s got all the loot. Then the police can chase him, and we can get away.”

Parker grinned. “That’s cute,” he said. “But it’s no go.”

“Why not?”

“In the first place, French won’t drive the truck away. He’ll stick with us until we’re completely out of this town. In the second place, Billy’s dead now, so we—”

“Please,” she said, and her face had gone chalky again. “Don’t say anything about any of that.”

He shrugged. “The point is, we need a new fence, somebody to take this stuff off our hands. We could find one without French but it would take time, and we’re better off the sooner we get out from under.”

“But isn’t that dangerous? To keep French around like that. What if he tries to double-cross us?”

“He will. Don’t worry about it.”

She shook her head. “Whatever you say,” she said, and went back to work.

A minute later, as they were finishing up, she said, “I know what you were going to do.”

He looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“If the police came upstairs,” she said. “I know what you were going to do. But you wouldn’t have to. I’d never tell them anything.”

He thought about it a few seconds, and then he nodded. “I’ll remember that,” he said.

Four

FRENCH WAS sitting in the office with the attendant. When Parker came in, French looked up and said, “He was very good.”

“Fine. Put him out. Sit in for him while I bring it down.”

French got to his feet. “Can we move now?”

“We can’t wait anymore. It’s almost four o’clock. All the cops moved on anyway.”

“Good.”

Parker started out of the office, then looked back to say, “Don’t put him out permanently. Just for now.”

“I know. Parker, I’m not a killer. Your boy Lebatard forced my hand back there.”

“All right.”

Parker went back upstairs. The D.C. license plates that had originally been on the truck were now on the Microbus, with its own local plates stashed away inside. The D.C. plates had been brought along on the truck to be slipped back onto it when it was abandoned.

Claire was already in the passenger seat. Parker got behind the wheel and drove slowly down the ramp. The Microbus moved ponderously because of the weight in back, and Parker had to keep the brakes on hard to prevent it from shooting on down the curving ramp.

French came out of the office as they reached the bottom. He opened the door beside Claire, but Parker told him, “Get in back.”

“Right.” He shut the door again, opened the side door instead, and climbed in with all the coin cases. “Good idea to make the switch,” he said. “That truck was bad news.”

Parker drove on out to the street and turned left, back toward the hotel. He took a right turn before getting there, went around Monument Circle, took Indiana northwest, and after half a dozen blocks turned off onto a dark side street and parked at the curb.

French said, “What now?”

“We find a place to hole up.” Parker turned to Claire. “You’re local. Who do you know that we can move in on?”

Claire frowned. “You mean, somebody to trust? I wouldn’t know any—”

“Not to trust. Somebody who won’t be missed if they don’t show up anywhere for a couple days.”

“You don’t mean to kill,” she said, and a touch of panic showed again behind her eyes.

“No, I don’t mean to kill. Killing is something we do only if we don’t have any choice.”

From in back, French said to Claire, “It was Lebatard forced my play back at the hotel. I didn’t—”

“Don’t!” She clutched at Parker’s forearm, saying, “Parker, please, don’t let him talk about it.”

Parker said, “Shut up, French. Let her think.” To Claire he said, “It would be best if it was a neighborhood where we could park this bus at the curb without it looking out of place.”

She was obviously glad at the chance to think about something besides Billy. Nodding, she said, “Someone who won’t be missed. That would be someone who doesn’t work, who— I know! I know just the one.”

“Good. Let’s go there.”

“She’s a divorcee, she—”

“I don’t care what she is. Let’s get off the street.”

Five

THE DOOR was finally opened after Parker had been pounding on it for nearly five minutes. “Do you know what time it is?” the bleached blonde in the pink negligee started to say, and then she saw the gun in Parker’s hand and she tried, too late, to slam the door again.

Parker pushed in. French behind him. Parker said, “You only get one scream.”

She said, “You think I’m crazy?” Her eyes were frightened, her faint double chin was trembling, but she had control of herself.

French said, “It’s twenty-five minutes after four. Time for you to go back to bed.”

“I didn’t know rapists came in pairs,” she said.

“Wrong,” Parker told her. “We’re just going to stay here a while. You be good and we’ll be good.”

Bewilderment began to take the place of fear. She said, “What is this? What are you two?”

“Men in a hurry,” French said. “Turn around and walk back to your bedroom. Slowly.”

She said, “Is this somebody’s idea of a gag? Did Tommy send you birds around?”

Parker stepped over and took her by the arm, not gently. She had to get a touch of roughness to make her understand this was serious. Holding the arm tight, he pushed her around and shoved her down the hall, saying, “Don’t make it tougher on yourself.”

“My arm!” She held the arm with her other hand and looked back over her shoulder at him, and he could see by her eyes that she now understood this wasn’t anybody’s idea of a joke. She walked obediently forward, saying no more, and Parker and French followed her.

Claire had described the apartment layout to them. There were four rooms, all opening to the left off this long white narrow corridor. The living room was first, and then the kitchen, third the bath, and finally the bedroom. A light fixture with a frosted glass globe in the midpoint of the corridor was the only source of illumination at the moment, but when they entered the bedroom Parker felt along the wall beside the door, found a switch, and turned on the overhead light.

The blonde, whose name according to Claire was Mavis Gross, wore a chin patch when in bed; it was lying discarded now on the pillow, where she’d tossed it when she’d gotten up to answer the door. She headed straight for it, tucking it out of sight under the pillow with a quick movement of her hands, and then turned and said, “All right, what now?”

“You lie down. On your face.”

“Listen,” she said. “You two aren’t sadists or anything, are you? I mean, you’re not going to cut me up or anything.”

“You won’t get hurt,” Parker told her. “The law’s on our tail, we’ve got to lie low for a while. You do like you’re told, everything will be okay.” He didn’t like taking the time to make this kind of long-winded explanation, but he knew it was better in the long run. She’d be more docile, less trouble, less likely to get panicky, and that meant they could get done with her sooner.

The explanation helped right away. She lay down on the bed, face down as she’d been ordered, and waited while French went through the bureau drawers for something to tie and gag her with. He finally used stockings to tie her wrists and ankles, and went to the bathroom for adhesive tape to close her mouth.

When they were done, they switched off the bedroom light again and went out of the room, shutting the door behind them. French went on into the kitchen and Parker went down the hall to the door and out into the stairwell, where he called down, “Okay.”

This had been the arrangement. There was probably no way that Claire could avoid being implicated in the robbery, but she might be able to make some sort of case for herself as a hostage on the basis of where she’d been seen so far. She could claim she’d been waiting in the hotel lobby for a man who stood her up, and that when she left she saw the robbers carrying coin cases, that they grabbed her and held her up in the ballroom, that they had apparently intended to release her after they were finished, and that she’d been taken away as a prisoner afterwards. If this story were to work, Mavis Gross couldn’t be allowed to see Claire working in league with Parker and French, so Claire had waited downstairs while the blonde was being put out of the way.

It seemed to Parker that Claire had had a secondary reason for wanting to wait downstairs, that she was still very shaky at the thought of potential violence, but he didn’t worry about it. Her control had snapped once, but now she knew it could snap and so she was holding to it tighter than before. She’d be all right.

She came up the stairs slowly, not out of reluctance but out of exhaustion, and when she came close Parker could see her eyes were haggard. “We’ll get a couple of hours sleep,” he told her.

“How is—how is Mavis?”

“Fine. Tied and gagged, lying in bed. Not hurt, not scared.”

“She’s probably both,” Claire said, “but I know what you meant.”

They went into the apartment, and while Parker shut the door Claire went on into the living room, turned a three-way lamp on low, and stretched out on the sofa. “I don’t know how I can think about sleeping,” she said, her voice already getting fuzzy.

Parker saw she was going under, so he went on into the kitchen, where French had made himself a thick sandwich and opened a can of beer. He looked up from the sandwich and said, his mouth full, “I can never eat before a job. I get a nervous stomach, you know? But afterwards I could eat for a week.”

Parker sat down across the kitchen table from him. He said, “We’re going to have to work it out.”

“I know.” French put the sandwich down, swallowed beer, and said, “Let me say my say first.”

“I know everything you want to say. You were up tight for cash, you figured you were bucking an amateur operation, everything would have gone smooth except Lebatard tried to draw down on you.”

“Then I got rattled,” French said. “I should have thrown in with you and Lempke right away, as soon as Lebatard turned it sour. But I wasn’t thinking, so when Lempke came through the wall I slugged him. That was stupid.”

“The law has Lempke now. And the other two, Carlow and Mainzer.”

“I don’t know either of them.”

“They work around.”

French said, “It’s too bad about Lempke.” But then he shrugged and said, “He won’t be the first one died behind the walls.”

“The point is,” Parker said, “you queered an operation of mine, so I shoudn’t let you walk around. But you can set it straight again, bringing your own fence in, so the question is how valuable is that. Enough to keep you breathing, but how much besides.”

“Well, there’s three of us,” French said. “So we split it even.”

Parker shook his head. “No, there’s six of us. Lempke and Mainzer and Carlow are still in, they’ve all got contacts that can take their shares. And they’ll need it for lawyers and this and that.”

“So I get a sixth?”

“You get a sixth.” Parker reached out, picked up the beer can, took a swig. “Who’s the fence?”

French grinned. “You kidding? He’s the only one keeping me alive. I give you the name I’m down the chute.”

Parker shrugged. “I can afford to give you a sixth.”

“That ought to be enough to stake me. What the hell, I’m in for a sixth. So what do we do now?”

“We wait till eight o’clock, and then you go rent a delivery van.”

“Why me?”

Parker looked at him. “Because that’s your job,” he said.

French said, “I don’t like leaving you here with the goods.”

“That stuff won’t be getting out of this town for a while. Use your head.”

French drank some beer, looked at his sandwich, and said, “I wish I’d stayed with it back in the beginning. It turned out sweet after all, didn’t it?”

“Up to a point,” Parker said.

Six

UNDER ONE of the railroad bridges over the White River, north of Riley Park, Parker and French worked at transferring the coin cases again, this time from the Microbus to the Dodge delivery van that French had rented. It was nine o’clock on a Sunday morning and nobody was around.

When the cases were all transferred, Parker pulled the D.C. plates off the Microbus and stashed them in the back of the van. Then he and French drove back to Mavis Gross’s place, where they’d left Claire still sleeping. Parker stopped in front of the building and French opened his door, but before getting out he said, “I wait one hour.’ Then I start making trouble.”

“I’ll be back,” Parker told him. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I do worry,” French said. He slid out of the van and shut the door.

Parker drove off, seeing in his rearview mirror French standing there on the sidewalk, looking after him.

Parker drove downtown and went to another parking garage. The attendant here was a moustached Negro asleep in the back seat of a green Lincoln parked beside the office. The Lincoln radio was on, playing a Vivaldi concerto. Parker touched the horn and the attendant immediately woke up and sprang from the car, alert and ready. Parker told him he wanted to leave the van here for a day or two, took the pasteboard the attendant got for him from the office, went back to the street, and walked a couple blocks before he found a booth where he could phone for a cab. He took the cab to within two blocks of the Mavis Gross apartment, walked the rest of the way, and found that French was the one asleep on the sofa and Claire was the one eating a sandwich in the kitchen. She was also drinking coffee, and when Parker came in she went to work making a cup for him.

She said, “What about Mavis? We’re going to have to feed her.”

“French can do that when he wakes up. Let her get to know his face.”

“What about me, Parker?”

“What about you?”

“Do I go back and tell my tragic story? If I’m going to, it better be soon.”

Parker said, “What’s the other choice?”

“To go with you.”

Parker put both hands flat on the Formica tabletop, and looked at his hands as he spoke. “Sometime in the next few days,” he said, “I’m going to kill French. You want to be around for it?”

“No. I don’t want to hear about it. Never again, Parker. I never want to hear about any of it.”

He looked up at her. “What then?”

“I want to be with you,” she said. “I know sometimes you’ll have to go away and do these things, but those times you can’t talk about. Not tell me anything, not before, not after.”

“That’s how I’d be. Whether you wanted it or not.”

“The question is, do you want me?”

He looked at her. “I don’t know for how long,” he said.

“For a while.”

He nodded. “For a while.”

She smiled and said, “Then I don’t go back, do I?”

“Yes you do.”

“I do? Why?”

“We shouldn’t both of us be wanted. If you’re with me, you can help me, do things I can’t do. But not if there’s circulars on you, too.”

Puzzled, she said, “Then what do I do?”

“You go back. You tell your story, and you hang around two months. Two months from today you go to Utica, New York, Central Hotel. There’ll be a reservation waiting for you under the name Claire Carroll. Take the room, and I’ll meet you there.”

“Parker, is this a complicated way to get rid of me?”

“No. You either take my word for it or you don’t.”

She said, “You don’t have to be complicated, you know. If you don’t want me around, you just say so.”

“I know that.”

“Then—” She stopped, and stared past Parker, and her mouth stayed open.

Parker turned his head, slowly, and saw French in the doorway with a gun in his hand. “You’ll never find the truck,” he said.

French said, “I’m not out for the whole thing. I can’t hang around and play and cat and mouse with you, Parker. When I came in here, before your woman woke up, I called the fence. It’s Ray Jensen, in Cincinnati. I told him enough of the situation, and he’ll hold my sixth for me. He’ll be here tonight and you can dicker with him yourself. I’m clearing out.”

Parker watched French’s eyes, waiting to see how his chance was going to come, but then Claire said in a tight voice, “Don’t do anything, Parker. Please. Don’t do anything.”

Parker shrugged. “I’ll see you around, French,” he said.

French said, “We could call it square. You’re coming out in good shape.”

“If you say so. “But let Claire cut out first, she’s going back and square herself.”

French grinned. “Don’t be stupid. She’s the only thing keeping you from making a play at me. The two of you just stay here a few minutes. Don’t make me nervous. Good-bye, Parker.”

“So long, French.”

They stayed in the kitchen, Parker sitting at the table and Claire standing near the sink, until they heard the front door slam. Then Claire said, “I’m sorry. But I just wouldn’t have been able to take it.”

Parker got to his feet. “Wait ten minutes before you leave. I’ll see you in Utica.”

“Parker—”

He shook his head, and went for the door.

Seven

PARKER HELD the door barely open, and listened. French wouldn’t have had time to get all the way down the stairs yet, but there was no sound, no movement. So he was being cagey and smart.

Where would he be? He wouldn’t take a chance on hitting some other apartment; there might be people home, and then he’d have too much to think about all at once. He might go downstairs one flight and wait in the hall there to see what Parker was going to do, but the best bet was that he’d go up instead, wait one floor up, so that if Parker came out after him French would have a clear shot at Parker’s back in the hallway. So the thing to do was wait him out.

And there were two further complications. First, there was Claire, whose one taste of violence had made her allergic. Parker could see where that might complicate things a lot in the days to come, but it had its advantages too, in that Claire would be a rare find in a woman, one who would never pry into his affairs. So there was no point aggravating her if it wasn’t necessary.

The second complication was the fence. It was set up for him to come here tonight, according to French, and Parker didn’t want any ruckus in this building, or even in this immediate neighborhood. So he’d have to wait for French to leave, and then follow him.

He half-expected Claire to come down the corridor after him, asking him not to go after French, but she stayed in the kitchen, That was good; it meant she might have her hang-ups but she wouldn’t bug him about them more than absolutely necessary.

French was cautious, more cautious than Parker hud anticipated. When fifteen minutes had gone by with nothing happening, Parker finally left the door, hurried down the corridor to the kitchen, and said under his breath, “Time for you to clear out. Don’t look around, don’t hesitate, just keep moving.”

“All right,” she said. She looked composed, but pale. “I’ll see you in two months,” she said.

“Right.”

They went back to the door together, and Parker stood behind it as she went out. He held it so she couldn’t close it all the way, and he listened as she went down the stairs and out the door. And then at last he heard the small scuffling sound from upstairs that meant French was going to make his move.

The thing was, French had almost faked Parker out. Parker had been prepared to believe that French was worried enough to pull out, and now he had to remind himself that French was both a pro and hungry. He wanted the whole pie, French did.

Parker pushed the door soundlessly shut, hurried into the living room, and crouched behind an armchair in there, out of sight from the door.

This was another long wait, and he never did hear French come in. French was m the living-room doorway all of a sudden, gun in hand, eyes moving every way at once. He didn’t see Parker, and he didn’t think Parker was waiting for him, so he moved on down the corridor without making sure.

Parker moved fast and silent across the living room, stepped out into the corridor, and said to French’s back, “Right there is good.”

French stopped moving. Still facing the other way, he said, “I lied about the fence. I gave you the wrong name.”

“Maybe. Drop it.”

French’s gun bounced on the carpet. Parker stepped forward and put him out with his gunbarrel.

It took one fast guarded phone call to Cincinnati, using French’s name, to find out that French had been telling the truth the first time; Ray Jensen was the fence, and was on his way.

It was going to be complicated keeping French alive a while longer, but there was nowhere to stash a corpse here without getting Mavis Gross excited, and Parker wanted her to go on being calm. He was going to have to let her up once or twice between now and when Jensen showed up, and it would be better if she wasn’t hysterical.

He went down the hall to the bedroom, opened the door, and found Mavis awake and all in a tangle on the bed. She’d done some thrashing around in a useless attempt to untie herself, and her negligee was now high over heavy thighs.

Parker said, “What’s the point of all that? I’m going to untie you now and you shouldn’t do anything stupid.”

She lay there unmoving while he worked at the tight knots of the stockings around her wrists, and when he had her wrists freed she immediately pulled the tape away from her mouth and said, “What’s the matter with you people? You never heard of the calls of nature?”

“That’s why I’m letting you up now,” he said. “That, and breakfast.”

She rolled over and sat up, not bothering about the rumpled negligee. “Thanks a lot.”

“Untie your ankles.”

“My fingers are all numb.”

He had to do it for her himself, and then he said, “My partner’s lying out in the hall, but don’t worry. He isn’t dead. But he wanted to kill you because you saw our faces, and I don’t want to get mixed up in any murder rap.”

She looked pale, and then she managed a crooked grin and said, “I’m on your side, pal. Will you help me up?”

He took her hand and heaved her up off the bed. She moved clumsily, because of the poor circulation in her arms and legs, and when she got to the hall she said, “You really laid him out, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t have any choice. Of course, if you lock the bathroom door and start hollering out the window I’ll have to think he was right.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “I’m not about to cause anybody any trouble.”

“Good.”

While she was in the bathroom he used more of her stockings to tie French. He didn’t bother with a gag, but when he was done with the stockings dragged French into the bedroom and left him on the floor there.

He went back to the corridor and waited, and after a while Mavis came out of the bathroom. First he saw that she’d put lipstick on, then he saw the way she was looking at him. He said, “Go on in and get some breakfast.”

“I was thinking,” she said. “You sort of saved my life, didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” he said.

“I’ll have to find some way to express my gratitude,” she said. She smiled suggestively. “I wonder if I’ll be able to think of anything?”

Parker looked at her, trying to decide whether she really had hot pants or was out to distract him in hopes she could get the drop on him. But the expression on her face wasn’t faked, and even if it was he could handle anything along those lines. And it was going to be a long day, waiting for Ray Jensen to show up.

Parker smiled back. “I’ll help you think,” he said.

Eight

JENSEN ARRIVED at ten-thirty, and he was surprised to see Parker. “You in on this?” he said. “French didn’t tell me.”

“French isn’t in charge anymore,” Parker told him. “Come on in.” He and Jensen had met a couple of times before, but didn’t really know one another all that well.

Jensen came in warily, saying, “I’m not sure there’s anything to discuss, if French isn’t around.”

“You seen the local papers?”

“I just came in from the airport.”

“Come into the living room.”

Both Mavis and French were stowed away in the bedroom now, Mavis tied and gagged on the bed and French tied on the floor, and the living room was neat and empty. A faint musky odor still hung in the air around the sofa, where Mavis had expressed her appreciation, and where later on she had expressed her astonishment that Parker should still mistrust her and want to tie her up again.

Parker had gone out early this evening and picked up the local paper, which had put out a Sunday extra in honor of the coin convention heist, and this he now showed to Jensen, who sat down and began to read.

Parker had already read it. He knew that Mainzer and Carlow were in custody, and that Lempke had died of head injuries on his way to the hospital. He knew that the guard he’d shot wasn’t dead, but was still on the critical list. He knew the truck had been found in the parking garage and the cops were now looking for the Microbus stolen from the garage. And he knew the value of the coins stolen from the convention had been estimated at three quarters of a million dollars.

It wasn’t from the paper, but from a six-o’clock news broadcast on the radio, that he knew Claire’s song and dance had apparently gone over. She was the heroine of the drama, and was said to be helping a police artist sketch the faces of the two missing men. Both the paper and the radio gave it as official opinion that William Lebatard, local coin dealer shot by another member of the gang, had been the brains behind the theft.

Jensen read all there was to read on the job, and then looked up and said, “They always overestimate, you know.”

“I’ll take two hundred gee.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

Parker shrugged. “We made a big haul.”

“You got yourself spread all over the paper,” Jensen said. “This may be too hot for me to touch.”

“Then I’ll call somebody else.”

Jensen held up a hand. “I mean,” he said, “at the price you quote me. Two hundred thousand dollars is—”

“I’m not haggling. The price is two.”

Jensen shook his head. “I can’t do it.”

“Sorry to waste you time,” Parker said, and got to his feet.

Jensen didn’t rise.,He said, “There’s the problem of getting it all out of town. Where Is it now?”

“Stowed in a rented truck in a parking garage downtown. It’s safe for a couple days. I’ve got the ticket, that’s what I give you for the two.”

Jensen frowned. “It would be expensive,” he said. “Not impossible, but expensive.”

Parker didn’t say anything. He waited and Jensen kept frowning. Finally Jensen said, “And there’s the problem of cash. I can’t put my hands on that kind of money overnight.”

“How much time do you need?”

Jensen pursed his lips, fidgeted his fingers, gazed into the middle distance. “Sixty days,” he said.

“Where do we meet?”

“There’s a place in Akron,” Jensen said.

They spent another ten minutes talking, and then Parker turned over the garage ticket and Jensen left. It was agreed that Parker would pick up the money in sixty days at Jensen’s drop in Akron, and it was up to Parker to disburse the money after thai He’d send one quarter to Carlow’s contact and one quarter to Mainzer’s, not because either of them would turn state’s evidence if he didn’t but merely because he’d expect them to do the same for him if the situation were reversed.

After Jensen was gone, Parker released Mavis again and they went back to practicing expressions of gratitude. Around two in the morning Parker told her he was going to leave now and she said, “What about your friend?”

“I’ll take him along. Will you give me half an hour before you call the law?”

She grinned and patted his cheek. “Do I have to call the law? Did anybody do me any damage? What do I want with a lot of cops?”

“I’ll look you up sometime,” Parker said, knowing he wouldn’t.

“Sure you will,” she said.

He went back to the bedroom and untied French’s ankles. French whispered, “Parker, you’ll just make yourself trouble. They find my body, that broad will blow the whistle. She won’t cover murder.”

“Stand up,” Parker said, but he had to help French get to his feet because his hands were still tied behind his back.

Mavis was in the bathroom. Parker let French down the corridor and out of the apartment. They went down the stairs and out to the street and French said, “You’ve got the whole thing. I heard Jensen’s voice, so you’ve got it all. What’s the point of this?”

“You soured a job of mine,” Parker said, and walked him down the street.

The streets were quiet and dark in this neighborhood, and empty at this time on a Sunday night. They walked a block and I half and then French spun around, butted Parker in the face with his head, knocked him off his feet, swung a wild kick that glanced off Parker’s rib cage, and went running crookedly away down the street, bent forward, trying to run with speed even though his hands were tied behind his back.

Parker rolled to his feet, got his gun out, and fired once. The sound was flat and sharp and solitary in the darkness. French toppled forward and slid to a stop face down.

Parker turned and walked the other way.

Nine

PARKER, SITTING in a blue Ford across the street, watched Claire go into the hotel, but for a long while he didn’t follow her. He’d been staking the hotel for the last three days and as far as he could see no special interest was being taken in it by any cops, but he wanted to be sure. If he could trust Claire he’d find out about it now, and if he couldn’t trust her he’d find that out too. As much as possible, he wanted to know which it was before he made his move.

She had arrived just after sunset, and he waited two hours more, until well after full dark. Then he got out of the Ford, entered the hotel through the bar, went from there to the lobby, and stood in a corner of the lobby until he was sure there was no one in it who was going to be trouble. Then he went over to the pay phones, stepped into one, and called the hotel. He watched through the glass as the clerk answered across the way, and when he asked for Claire Carroll there was no unusual reaction. As far as he could see, no signal was given to anybody.

Claire came on almost immediately, and Parker said, “What room?”

“Thirteen oh four,” she said.

He hung up, left the booth, and went straight to the elevators. The place was clean, he was sure of that now. He rode up to the thirteenth floor and knocked on her door.

The end.