The Sour Lemon Score

Progress looked interested. “George? Something up?”

“Come on outside.”

“I’m in the middle of a game, pal.”

“You’ll be back.”

So Progressi shrugged and came out with him and they got into Parker’s car and Parker hit him in the throat. Then he sat there and waited till Progressi could talk again, when he said, “I’m looking for George.”

Progressi had a heavy face with a beard-blue jaw, but his skin was now white and unhealthy looking. Both hands were still up protectively around his throat, and when he spoke his voice was hoarse, “Whadaya hit me for?”

“So you’ll tell me where I find George.”

“You want his address? He’s in the phone book, for Christ’s sake. He’s down in Washington in the phone book.”

“You’re gonna try my patience,” Parker said, and backhanded him.

“Jesus!”

“All I want to know is how I find George.”

“I dunno! I dunno!”

Parker hit him again.

“What’s the matter with you? I don’t know. He isn’t home? I don’t know where he is, I swear to Christ I don’t.”

Parker sat back. “Anybody else been asking about him?”

“About George? No. My nose is bleeding. You got any Kleenex? My nose is bleeding.”

“No. Where am I going to find George?”

“Maybe his girl knows.” Progressi was snuffling, putting his head back. His fingers and wrists were bloody from his nose.

Parker said, “What girl?”

“Down in Washington. Barri Dane, her name is. With an i. She’d know where he is. Christ, what’s he done to you?”

“Maybe he’ll tell you someday,” Parker said. “You can go back to your game now.”

Progressi didn’t believe it. He blinked at Parker, blinked at the door handle. “I can go?”

“Put some ice on the back of your neck,” Parker told him. “It stops the bleeding.”

Progressi opened the car door. “You want to try this stuff on George,” he said. His voice was shaky. “You can’t push everybody around like this, not everybody.”

Parker waited for him to get out of the car.

Progressi licked blood from his upper lip. He was blinking and blinking, trying to figure some way to get his assurance back. “I’ll see you again sometime,” he said, saying it less tough than he wanted.

Parker waited.

Progress! got out of the car and stood there with the door open a second. “You’re a real son of a bitch,” he said. “You’re a goddam bastard, you know that?”

Parker started the engine and drove away from there, and the acceleration shut the passenger door. He drove straight down the coast to Washington and here was his first sign of Matt Rosenstein, and Barri Dane wasn’t going to be answering anybody’s questions for quite a while.

He shifted in the chair, looking across the room at her. If she’d wake up. But she wasn’t going to, she’d been doped to the ears. It would be tomorrow sometime before she opened her eyes at all, and she’d still be groggy then.

And he didn’t even know for sure she had anything to tell. It looked as though Rosenstein had worked on her a long time, maybe for as long as she’d stay conscious for it, so it could be she didn’t know anything at all and Rosenstein had just been tough to convince.

Why hadn’t Rosenstein brought along that drug of his? Maybe he preferred to ask his questions this way, if it was a woman.

But the hell with Rosenstein. The question was, What was Parker going to do now? There was nothing left except the cop in New York, Dumek, the one Joyce Langer had told him about. A patrolman named Dumek. He might be tough to find, and even if he was found he was a real long shot to know anything. Dumek might be one hundred percent crooked, he might be on the take every way there was, but he was still an unlikely guy for Uhl to go to with his hands full of caper money. But what the hell else was there?

He got to his feet, suddenly impatient. He wanted to go somewhere and there wasn’t anywhere to go. All this driving today, up and down, back and forth, hour after hour, and he hadn’t gotten anywhere at all. And he wanted to do more of it. His mind was full of the urge to get into the car and drive, just drive. Just to be doing something.

He remembered having seen a phone in the living room. He left the bedroom and went back through the flat, this time switching on lights as he went, and in the living room he dialed New York information for the number he wanted, then dialed it. Not out of any expectation, but just to be doing something.

“Rilington Hotel.”

“Hello, this is Thomas Lynch. You have any messages for me?”

“One moment, sir.”

He waited, sitting on the edge of the chair, free hand dangling between his knees. He was tired, but he knew he couldn’t sleep. His shoulders ached; the back of his neck ached.

“Sir?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you registered with us?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Well, we do have a message here, Mr. Lynch, but I have no record of your having made a reservation.”

“I sent a wire. You’ve got a message for me?”

“I have no record of the wire, sir. But if you could give me the information now, I’d be happy to see to the arrangements.”

There was a message there. He wasn’t using that hotel for a drop with anybody but Joyce Langer. Sometimes the unexpected happens.

But he had the desk clerk’s game to play first. He said, “I wanted a single for four days from Tuesday. What’s the message?”

“That would be this coming Tuesday, sir?”

“Naturally. Now if you don’t mind, it’s late and I’m tired. What’s the message?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. A Miss Langer called for you, not more than an hour ago. I didn’t take the message myself. Let me sec— She said she has what you were looking for, and if you will come by between eight and eleven in the morning the superintendent will have the key for you. She will not herself be at home.”

“Good,” Parker said. His watch said nearly one o’clock. It was four hours back to New York; that meant five. Four hours sleep, he could be up to her place by nine-thirty. He said, “That means a change in the reservation. I want it to start tonight.”

“Tonight, sir?”

“I’ll be there in four hours.”

“That would be five in the morning, sir.”

“I know that.”

“We’d have to charge you the full rate for tonight, sir. I hope you understand that.”

“I understand that,” Parker said.

“Very well, sir. We’ll be looking forward to serving you.”

Parker hung up and went back to the bedroom. The woman hadn’t moved. Her breathing was still slow and faint. He switched off the lamp beside the bed and then left the apartment, turning out lights as he went. He paid no attention to his reflection as he crossed the long studio to the jimmied door. He went out, closed the door behind him as far as it would go, went back to his car, and started to drive again.

Two

Parker poked George Uhl in the stomach with the barrel of the pistol. “Wake up,” he said.

Uhl groaned and thrashed a little in the rumpled bed, not wanting to be awake. Then his eyes did open, unfocused, as though his sleeping brain was just starting to listen to the voice that had spoken to him, listen to it and identify it.

Uhl jolted up to a sitting position, wide-eyed. He’d been sleeping naked. He stared at Parker, and for a long minute neither of them said anything. Then Uhl said, “No.”

Parker had backed away a few steps, and now he motioned with the gun, saying, “Get up out of there. Get dressed.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Up,” Parker said.

Uhl looked around as though just now noticing where he was. “That bitch,” he said and showed a sudden flare-up of anger. “That little bitch, she turned me up.”

“Don’t let it worry you, George,” Parker said. “Just get out of bed. Don’t make me lose my patience.”

Uhl glanced at him as though Parker were suddenly the secondary problem, as though he didn’t want to be distracted from thinking about Joyce Langer. He said, “You don’t have any patience to lose. You never had any patience.” He threw the covers back and got out of bed.

Parker leaned against the wall and kept the gun pointed generally in Uhl’s direction while Uhl dressed. Uhl was wrong about his not having any patience. He’d been impatient up till now, impatient since Uhl had turned the robbery sour Monday morning, just this time of the morning five days ago, but now that he had Uhl in front of him again he wasn’t impatient at all. He was very relaxed, very calm, ready to take his time and do the rest of this right.

He’d gotten here fifteen minutes ago, at nine forty. The super had given him the key and he’d come up, let himself in quietly, found Uhl asleep in the bedroom, and proceeded to search the place. If Uhl was carrying the money with him, it was all over and Uhl would never wake up again.

But the apartment was clean. He hadn’t been able to give it the kind of thorough frisk he’d given Paul Brock’s place, but it didn’t need it. That wad of money Uhl had taken off with was large and bulky, no matter what sort of container it was put in. If it had been anywhere in the apartment Parker would have found it in the ten minutes he’d spent looking. But it wasn’t here, and that meant George Uhl got to greet one more morning.

They didn’t say anything while Uhl dressed, but obviously he’d been thinking things over because once he was dressed he looked at Parker and said, “You want the dough or I’d be dead now.”

“That’s right.”

“That means we can work out a deal.”

“Maybe,” Parker said.

Uhl shrugged. “Why not? If I’m dead you’ll never get the money. If I don’t give you the money I’m dead. So why can’t we work out a deal? Should be the simplest thing in the world. You had breakfast?”

Uhl was being calm too, showing casual, unruffled, untroubled surface, and that had to mean he was waiting to see where his edge was coming from. Parker told him, “Don’t think about breakfast, think about the money you took. Where is it?”

Uhl shook his head. “Uh-uh. It isn’t going to work that way, Parker. I tell you now where to find it, and what happens? You go bang and you walk out of here and go get the cash, and I’m not breathing anymore. I said a deal, Parker, and I meant a deal. I meant I’m going to buy my life from you, and the whole question is how much it’s going to cost me.” Uhl smiled with one side of his mouth. “I’m going to go on living, Parker,” he said, “and that means I’m going to be needing breakfast. Don’t shoot me while I go through this doorway here.”

Uhl started through the doorway and Parker stepped over quickly in front of him and slapped him across the face with the barrel of the gun. Uhl flipped over backwards onto the floor and Parker kicked him and then stood back and watched him again. He felt very patient, very measured. He had all the time in the world.

Uhl came up slowly. His cheek was bleeding, and his face finally looked frightened. His voice was a little shaky now too, but what he said was, “Parker, that way don’t do it. You won’t kick it out of me, you really won’t, because I’ll keep remembering that as soon as I tell you where the money is you’ll stop kicking and start shooting. You won’t get it that way, Parker, I swear you won’t.”

“You may be right,” Parker said. He switched the gun to his left hand. “Get up,” he said.

“Sure I’m right,” Uhl said. A relieved smile flashed across his face. Starting awkwardly to his feet he said, “Just let me make myself some break— “

He was halfway up, bent forward. Parker swung from the floor and hit him across the jaw with his dosed fist. Uhl jerked around in a half circle, his arms flopping out in front of him, and fell face down across the foot of the bed, his feet hanging back pigeon-toed on the floor.

Parker checked him and he was out. He dragged him all the way up onto the bed and rolled him over onto his back, then took from his jacket pocket the small bottle of serum he’d found at Brock’s place and a hard-pack cigarette box, and shook out the hypodermic needle, now in its two parts. He screwed the parts together and put the hypo on the table beside the bottle.

He’d brought this along just in case, though he would have preferred not to use it. He wasn’t one hundred per cent sure it was the same stuff that had been used on him, and he had no idea what the right dose was or what an overdose might do. But there’d been a good chance Uhl would react the way he had, and in that case there was the serum to fall back on.

He rolled Uhl’s sleeve up, exposing his arm all the way to the shoulder. Judging from the small puncture mark in his own arm after the serum had been used on him, it was injected directly into the vein in the inner part of the elbow. Parker turned Uhl’s limp arm on the sheet, saw the faint blue line beneath the skin, touched it with one finger. A slight ridge, almost too slight to feel. But if he could see it he could hit it.

He’d never worked with a hypodermic needle before, but he’d seen it done in the movies and on television, and a few times he’d watched doctors getting ready to give him a shot. He didn’t have the usual interest in sterile precautions, so that simplified matters. He picked up the bottle and needle and studied them. If he had it figured right, he should depress the plunger all the way in the syringe, poke the needle through the cork in the top of the bottle, then gradually pull the plunger out again, filling the syringe with the fluid from the bottle. Then pull the needle out of the cork, stick it in Uhl’s arms, and depress the plunger again. No. Squirt a little first, to be sure he wasn’t injecting air in the vein, because that would kill Uhl before he could talk.

There was about two-thirds left in the bottle. Assuming he’d been the first one it had been used on, he should now take about half the remainder. He did, having no difficulty, and injected it ; slowly into Uhl’s arm. The plunger resisted him, not wanting to shove the fluid into Uhl’s vein quickly, and he just kept a slow and steady pressure on it and quit while there was still a trace of fluid in the syringe. Then he took the hypo apart again, put the parts back in the cigarette box, and tucked the box and bottle back into his pocket.

Uhl hadn’t moved. Parker leaned over him and said, “George.”

Nothing.

“George, wake up.”

No reaction.

Parker slapped his face and called his name again. He tugged at Uhl’s hair, slapped him harder. Still nothing.

So he’d have to wait. That was all right, he had time. He went over to a chair and sat down.

Three

When the front door banged open, Parker got out of the chair fast and stepped behind the bedroom door. His pistol was in his hand, his back against the wall, his head turned so he could look through the crack between door and jamb and see whoever it was before they got all the way into the room.

But he heard her before he saw her. “George!” she cried, running through the apartment. “George, wake up!”

Joyce Langer.

There had always been the chance she’d change her mind, and she was the type to do it too late. Parker waited where he was.

She came running into the room and skidded to one knee beside the bed. “George!” she started to shake his shoulder. “George, you’ve got to wake up! There’s a man after you! There’s a man named Lynch after you!”

Parker shut the bedroom door. “He knows me under a different name,” he said.

She spun so fast she almost lost her balance and fell over, grabbing Uhl’s upper arm at the last second to help her keep her balance. “You!”

“You should have phoned,” Parker told her. “You wouldn’t be in trouble now.”

“I couldn’t tell him on the phone,” she said. “What I did, I couldn’t tell him what I did.”

“Second guessers always make trouble for themselves,” Parker said. “Get up from there.”

She said, “Don’t do anything to — I shouldn’t have. Don’t do anything to him because of what I did. Please.” She turned and shook his arm again. “George, wake up!” Then she stared at him, struck finally by his lack of response, by the way he was just lying there. “George? George?”

He could hear panic and hysteria building in her voice. He said, “He’s alive. Don’t worry about him, he’s alive.”

“What did you do to him? What in the name of God did you do to him?”

He walked closer to her. “You shouldn’t have come back here.”

She stared up at him. “What are you going to do? What am I involved in? What’s going on?”

Uhl groaned, startling them both. Immediately she was all over him, tugging at his shoulders, shouting into his face: “George, George, wake up, please wake up!”

He mumbled something. His face was frowning, but other than that he still wasn’t moving.

Parker took the girl by the arm. “Up out of there,” he said. “You came at a bad time.”

She didn’t want to go. He had to tug harder. He knew she’d start screaming soon, and he couldn’t have that. In any case, he couldn’t have her in this room listening when he started asking his questions. He said, loud and commanding, “Joyce!”

She automatically turned her head to look up at him and he clipped her with a short, hard right hand. She bounced back against the edge of the bed and would have fallen to the floor if he hadn’t held on to her.

She was out. He picked her up and carried her into the living room and dumped her on the sofa, then went back to the bedroom and went through dresser drawers and found stockings and belts and a clean handkerchief. He took these back to the living room and bound and gagged her. She would keep now, for a while. But she still complicated things; her presence here still made the situation too difficult.

But he could work all that out later. He went back to the bedroom and Uhl had faded back down into sleep again, the frown lines gone from his face. Parker took the chair he’d been sitting in and pulled it over beside the bed and sat down. He already had a pencil and a piece of paper on the bedside table.

He said, “George.”

A faint frown.

“George, listen to me. Wake up and listen to me.”

The frown deepened; it became petulant, like a child not wanting to wake up from a nap. Uhl’s head moved slowly back and forth, once to the left and once to the right, as though he wanted to shake his head in a no gesture but couldn’t because it was too much effort.

“Wake up, George. Listen to me. Can you hear me? George? Can you hear .me, George?”

He wasn’t getting all the way through. He reached over and slapped Uhl’s face, not hard, and Uhl said, “Unn-nn,” the frown deepening even more into an exaggerated grimace, the eyes squeezing shut as though a bright light had been aimed at them.

“George? Can you hear me?”

“Ohh,” said Uhl, still grimacing, the sound petulant.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yes.” As though to say leave me alone.

“This is Parker. Do you know who I am?”

“Yes.” Said more calmly now, as though he was getting more resigned to answering questions.

“Who am I?”

“You’re Parker.”

“And who are you?”

“George. George Uhl.”

“You took some money away from me.”

No answer.

Parker looked at him, wondering if he’d faded out again, but then remembered his own session with this drug. It was necessary to phrase the sentences as direct questions, obviously requiring an answer. Statements weren’t answered, only questions were answered.

All right. He said, “Do you remember taking some money away from me?”

“Yes.” Very prompt, and without any emotional reaction at all. Uhl’s eyes were still closed but in a more relaxed way now, no longer squeezed shut. He seemed calm now, his answers calm, almost mechanical.

Parker said, “Where is that money? The money you took from me.”

“I don’t know.”

That couldn’t be the right answer. Was the drug not working? Had he given too little? He looked at Uhl’s face, but he couldn’t believe Uhl was acting. The drug was affecting him, it had to be. Then how could he come up with an answer like that?

Was it true? Had the damn fool managed to lose the money sometime in the last five days?

Parker said, “What did you do with the money?”

“Left it with Ed.”

That was better. There was an explanation in here somewhere. All he had to do was work out the right questions to ask. He picked up the pencil and wrote Ed on the paper, then said, “Ed who?”

“Saugherty.”

“Spell it. Will you spell that name?”

Uhl spelled it, slowly and steadily, like a talking computer, and Parker wrote it down.

Parker said, “You left the money with Ed Saugherty. What did Ed Saugherty do with the money?”

“Hid it.”

“He hid it from you?”

Uhl frowned. The question was too complicated for him somehow.

Parker found another way to phrase it. “Did he hide the money for you?”

Uhl’s expression cleared. He was contented again. He said. “Yes.”

“Do you know where he hid it?”

“No.”

“When did he hide it?”

“Friday.”

That would be yesterday. Parker said, “Were you staying with Ed Saugherty before you came here?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you leave there?”

“Matt Rosenstein was after me.”

“How do you know?”

“He beat up Barri.”

“Did you see Barri?”

“Yes.”

“Did you call the doctor for her?” “Yes.”

Parker grimaced. He and Uhl had been doing a long-distance dance up and down the eastern seaboard for three days. He’d gotten to Pearson before Uhl, but Uhl had caught up. And then Uhl had gotten to Barri Dane before Parker, but Parker didn’t catch up. But that was all right, because Parker had gotten to Joyce Langer before Uhl, and that meant everything was caught up.

But if only the timing had been a little different somewhere along the line.

Parker said, “Did Barri Dane tell Matt Rosenstein anything?”

“Phone number.”

“What phone number?”

“Ed’s phone number.”

“Could Rosenstein get to Ed through that phone number?”

“Yes.”

Which meant Rosenstein was now a full day ahead of him. Had he gotten the money away from this Ed Saugherty?

Parker said, “Where do you know Ed Saugherty from?”

“High school.”

Parker frowned. It was another strange answer. He said, “What does Ed Saugherty do?”

“Works for a computer company.”

“You mean he’s legit?”

“Yes.”

Another problem. It had been smart of Uhl to do that, pick somebody on the outside to hole up with, somebody that didn’t have any connections to his bent life, but now that everything was blown open it made for complications. With Rosenstein and Parker both descending on him, this Ed Saugherty would probably be calling copper or anyway confusing the issue.

Parker said, “Where does Ed Saugherty live?”

“Philadelphia.”

Another drive. Ninety miles this time. If it weren’t such a time-consuming pain in the ass it would be comic.

Parker asked for the address and wrote down Uhl’s answer. He then had Uhl describe the house, give physical descriptions of Saugherty and the other members of his family, and give a general description of the neighborhood.

A solid, middle-class family in a solid, middle-class development. All very straight, all very innocent, all having no idea how to handle the kind of situation they were in now. With Saugherty’s wife already giving her husband static about Uhl, according to Uhl. What would she be doing with Rosenstein and Parker descending on the household?

In fact, with Rosenstein a day ahead of him, there was no telling what sort of situation existed down there now. The thing could have blown wide open to the cops. Rosenstein could have been in and gotten the money and gone away already. A lot could have happened. Parker could pick Uhl’s brain clean and he’d still be going down there to a blind situation. He could be walking to a house full of law, or a house full of Rosenstein, or even a house where Ed Saugherty had grabbed himself a gun and gone on the alert. Anything could have happened; anything could happen next.

Parker next asked, “Who else knows about the money besides you and me arid Rosenstein and Ed Saugherty?”

“Nobody.”

“Not Barri Dane?”

“No.”

“Not Joyce Langer?”

“No.”

“You’ve been with Ed Saugherty, and Barri Dane, and Joyce Langer. You went to Lew Pearson’s, when you shot him. Where else have you been?”

“Nowhere.”

“Haven’t you seen anybody else?”

“No.”

All right. At least he now was sure of how many were in the game. The odds were still against him, but at least he knew how many were playing. He folded the piece of paper and put it away in his pocket. Then he got to his feet and left the bedroom.

The phone was in the living room, beside the sofa. Joyce Langer was still unconscious. Parker sat down near her feet and dialed the Philadelphia number he’d gotten from Uhl.

It was answered on the second ring by a noncommital voice that asked, “Hello?”

“Ed Saugherty?”

“Speaking,” said the voice. It was vaguely reminiscent.

“I’m calling for George,” Parker said. “You know who I mean?”

“Of course,” said the voice. “Where is George?”

“He thinks it would be safer for you if you didn’t know,” Parker said. “But he wants the money. You know, the suitcase?”

“The suitcase? Oh. Yes, the suitcase.” But the voice seemed doubtful. And it was reminding Parker of something or somebody.

“He wants you to bring it up to New York,” Parker said.

“Sure,” said the voice. “Where is it?”

It wasn’t Saugherty. Saugherty knew where the money was; Saugherty was the only one on earth who knew where the money was. This wasn’t Saguherty.

Then Parker recognized the voice at last, and without saying anything more he hung up and headed for the bedroom.

The voice had been Paul Brock’s.

Four

Uhl was lying there like the body at a wake, his face expressionless. Parker stood beside the bed and said, “Can you open your eyes?”

In a faraway voice Uhl said, “I don’t know.”

“Try.”

Uhl’s eyelids raised. His eyes looked up toward the ceiling, but they didn’t seem to be focused on anything.

“Try sitting up,” Parker said.

Uhl seemed very uncoordinated. He moved clumsily, his arms and legs beating ineffectively as he tried to get up off his back. Parker finally had to help him, but once he was sitting up he could stay there on his own, though he tilted a bit to one side. His arms hung down and his eyes were still looking straight ahead, still unfocused.

Parker got him on his feet. He was very weak, though willing to do whatever he was told to do. With Parker helping to support him, they walked out of the bedroom and through the apartment.

The problem was, he couldn’t leave Uhl here because he didn’t know how long it would take for the drug to wear off enough to let Uhl start making phone calls to Philadelphia, and he didn’t want anybody down there any more alerted than they already were. And he didn’t want Uhl on his back again coming down to Philadelphia in his wake.

On the other hand, he couldn’t take the simple way out and kill Uhl here unless he was willing to kill Joyce Langer too, and so long as things weren’t impossible otherwise, he wasn’t willing to kill Joyce Langer. Her worst sin was stupidity combined with fluctuating emotionalism, and he didn’t feel like-doing anything about her except leaving her alone. And calling the building superintendent several hours from now, when this was all squared away, telling him to come up to this apartment to let her loose. If he didn’t do that, considering how popular Joyce Langer seemed to be, she’d probably starve to death up here before anybody noticed she was missing.

The end result was that he had to rake Uhl with him and finish the job somewhere on the road. Which was a little complicated, a little troublesome, but not impossible.

She had regained consciousness now. Parker saw her eyes open, saw her watching them walk through the living room. Uhl’s head lolled, he shambled; he was obviously doped up. Over the gag around her mouth, her eyes were wide as she looked at Uhl.

They left the apartment and rode down in the elevator, Uhl leaning against the wall on the way down. They got out of the elevator on the first floor, and an old woman with a full shopping cart gave Uhl an odd look as she got aboard the elevator to go up.

Parker dropped Joyce Langer’s key in the superintendent’s mailbox, then led Uhl outside to where his car stood illegally close to a fire hydrant. There was a ticket on the windshield.

Uhl was still as docile as a lobotomized monk. Parker walked him around the car and settled him the passenger seat, then went around to the driver’s side, plucked the ticket from the windshield and dropped it in the gutter, got in behind the wheel, and drove away from there.

Uhl quickly sagged against the door on his side. His eyes remained open, but he gave no indication of consciousness.

Parker went down the West Side Highway and through the Lincoln Tunnel and down the Jersey Turnpike from exit sixteen to exit fifteen, where he got off and took a lot of slum like city streets until he wound up on a bumpy blacktop road past nothing but weeds. He was driving into a part of the Jersey swamp, where over the years a lot of things no longer wanted in New York have wound up. George Uhl wouldn’t be the first man among them.

Parker stopped in a deserted area. The swamp was II m .mil green. Far away he could see bridges, factories, junkyard, oil refineries; but around here nothing but the flat green.

He got Uhl out of the car and walked him out across a soggy field through waist-high weeds. After a while he stopped and said, “Lie down,” but when he let go of Uhl’s arm Uhl just went limp and fell down, lying in a crumped heap in the weeds.

Parker took out his pistol and aimed it at Uhl’s head, but he didn’t fire.

It was stupid. There was no sense in it, and things without sense in them irritated him. Uhl was too docile, too easy. Somehow he was too much like a trusting child. Today or tomorrow he would wake up with a blinding headache and he would be again the guy who had twice tried to kill Parker, who had turned a very sweet job sour, who had killed his partners and stolen money that belonged to Parker, who had caused him trouble and discomfort of all kinds for five days in a row. That’s who he’d been yesterday and that’s who he’d be tomorrow, and Parker wouldn’t think twice about exing that George Uhl out of the human race. But that wasn’t who George Uhl was today. Today he was a docile child, and with angry irritation Parker realized that today he wasn’t going to kill George Uhl.

But neither was he going to leave Uhl capable of getting back into the action. Nothing could make him quite that stupid. He put his pistol away again and bent over Uhl and broke three bones, all fairly important. Uhl groaned once and frowned, but that was all.

Parker walked back to the car and set off for Philadelphia.

Five

Twenty past one on a sunny spring Saturday afternoon in Philadelphia. Parker drove past Ed Saugherty’s house, noticing the blue Datsun with New York plates parked out front, noticing the drapes wide open in the picture window. He went by without slowing, knowing they’d be watching, not wanting anybody on the inside to pay any particular attention to his car. They shouldn’t be able to recognize him from over there; the house was set well back from the street.

The houses were widely spaced, but there was activity around more than half of them. Children rode bicycles, men mowed lawns or washed automobiles — all the weekend business of the straight world. Parker continued along the curving street until the Saugherty house was just out of sight in the rearview mirror but the blue Datsun could still be seen partway around the curve, and then he pulled to the curb and parked.

This was the worst possible place and the worst possible time for private business. If he parked here more than ten minutes the people in the neighboring houses would start to wonder about him, and within half an hour some busybody wife would send her husband out to smile at him in artificial friendliness and ask could he help, was Parker lost, was there anything in particular he wanted around here. But if he went away and waited till tonight to come back, Rosenstein and Brock might already be gone. It depended on how long it took them to squeeze the money out of Ed Saugherty. They didn’t have it yet, which was lucky, but how long would Ed Saugherty hold out against a Matt Rosenstein and a Paul Brock?

But if he could neither go away and come back tonight nor stay here and keep them under surveillance, for many of the same reasons he couldn’t break into the house right now. They would be on the alert in there, and green lawn spread out bright and empty on all four sides of the house. The houses were well separated here, and between Saugherty and his neighbors there were no hedges, no privacy fences, nothing but lawn. Parker wouldn’t make it to the house alive, and a gun battle in the middle of a Saturday afternoon in this neighborhood wouldn’t be the brightest idea in the world anyway.

Two boys on bicycles rode by, looking at him curiously.

He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t bull his way in.

Which left only one thing to do. He put the car in gear and drove three curving blocks before he found a telephone booth on a corner. He stopped the car, stepped into the booth, and dialed Saugherty’s house.

Brock answered, and Parker said, “Hello, Brock, this is Parker. Put Rosenstein on.”

All he got was a gasp.

“Come on, Brock, we’re all in a hurry. Put your angel on, let’s go.”

Brock didn’t say anything, but Parker heard the receiver thud down on a piece of furniture. He thought he could vaguely hear conversation going on far from the phone. He waited, and the next voice he heard was the same one that had questioned him that time at Brock’s place:

“Parker?”

“Rosenstein?”

“Yeah. You the one called before?”

“Yes.”

“Had us a little confused here. What’s on your mind?”

“I’ve got Uhl,” Parker said.

“That’s good,” Rosenstein said. “Have fun with him.”

“I used that serum of yours on him.”

There was a little pause, and Rosenstein said, “You did?”

“So now I know the situation,” Parker said. “I know I need Saugherty.”

Rosenstein laughed. “Ain’t that the truth. Sorry, baby, he isn’t for sale.”

“But you need Uhl,” Parker told him.

Another little silence, and Rosenstein said, “How do you figure that?”

“You don’t have the money, and you won’t get it without Uhl. Just like I won’t get it without Saugherty. You’ve got Saugherty. I’ve got Uhl.”

“Are you talking deal?”

“Better we each get half than nobody gets anything.”

“Maybe. Maybe I don’t need Uhl at all.”

“If you didn’t,” Parker said, improvising, “You’d have the money by now and be gone from there.”

“If I had that damn serum— “

“You need Uhl.”

“Hold on a minute.”

Parker held on. He didn’t know what Saugherty had done with the money, or why it was taking Rosenstein and Brock so long to get it out of him, but unless Saugherty fell apart in the next thirty seconds this idea ought to work.

Rosenstein came back. “Just for the sake of argument, what’s on your mind?”

“Fifty-fifty split.”

“I know that. How do you want to work it?”

“We’ll meet and talk things over,” Parker said, and knowing Rosenstein would object, he said, “We’ll figure out some place we can meet, and— “

“You mean I leave here? That’s damn likely, isn’t it? Don’t be stupid, Parker.”

“All right then. You tell me.”

“Just tell me what Uhl told you. We’ll get the dough and leave you half. You’re in the neighborhood, right?”

“I’m a few blocks away.”

“In a phone booth on the corner? Yeah, I know that one. So just give me the story.”

“And you’ll leave me half,” Parker said.

There was a little silence, and then Rosenstein chuckled. “It was worth a try,” he said.

“We can’t stall around forever,” Parker said. “Neither of us is going to get more than half, so let’s face it.”

Rosenstein sighed. “All right. But I’m not leaving here.”

“Then I don’t know,” Parker said. He wanted the suggestion to come from Rosenstein so he wouldn’t be suspicious of it.

It finally did. “Why don’t you come here?” Rosenstein said. “We can work out a way you can come in without exposing yourself. I don’t suppose you’ll take my word for a safe conduct or anything.”

“I won’t.”

“All right. Set it up any way you want.”

Parker nodded, having gotten where he wanted to go. He said, “Is there a car in the garage?”

“What? Yeah.”

“Remove it. Park it down by the curb and leave the garage door open. But neither you nor Brock is to be in the garage. I’ll drive straight in. What room does the garage connect to?”

“The kitchen.”

“Is there a table in there?”

“Yeah.”

“You two be sitting at it with your hands where I can see them. You can leave the door to the garage open or shut, it’s up to you. I’ll come in empty-handed. You can have one gun on the table so you’ll know I won’t come in shooting.”

“All right. What about Uhl?”

“He’s in the trunk of my car. Don’t worry, he’s out of the play.”

“Good. Anything else?”

“Not here.”

“All right. We’ll empty the garage for you.”

“I’m on my way,” Parker said.

Six

The garage was at the left end of the house, its door like an open mouth. Parker drove into it with no hands on the wheel, looking for the doorway that had to be somewhere in the right-side wall, the one leading into the kitchen. His left hand was on the door handle beside him, and his right hand had a revolver in it.

There was a slight blacktop slope up from the road, and then the flat garage floor. Parker went up, fast, into the garage too fast, stood on the brake at the last second, saw that interior doorway empty in the middle of the wall to his right, shoved the car door open with his shoulder, and went out of the car backwards, dropping toward the floor as the first bullet came from that doorway over there into the car through the windshield and out this side, six inches over Parker’s head.

The car bumped into the rear wall. It was still in drive; the motor kept turning over, it kept pushing against the wall, but not hard enough to do any damage.

Parker hit the floor between the car and the exterior wall, folded his arms in close against his body, and rolled under the car. He kept himself rolling across the cement floor, the car rumbling over his head.

The garage door was sliding down. It must be run electrically, with a switch somewhere in the house.

Parker rolled out from under the right side of the car. Brock, startled, was standing in the doorway on the landing there with the open kitchen doorway on his right and the cellar stairs behind him. Parker had been in the garage less than ten seconds. He fired, lying on his back, and Brock jerked and toppled backwards down the cellar stairs.

Parker lunged for the wall as a shot was fired from the kitchen. It came through the angle of the two doorways and slapped into the side of the car.

The garage door was down. There’d been three shots, only one with the door open. With any luck the neighbors were all too busy and too far away to have noticed anything, but there couldn’t be a lot of noise from here on.

Exhaust was beginning to stink up the garage already. The car engine was still growling, pushing against the rear wall of the garage.

There was a faint call from the cellar: “Matt! Help me, Matt!”

“Damn you, Parker!”

That was Rosenstein’s voice from somewhere in the kitchen. Parker was pressed against the wall to the right of the doorway. There were two steps up to the doorway, and then the little landing inside and the kitchen doorway on the left.

There couldn’t be a stalemate now. He had to keep moving, keep Rosenstein from getting himself reorganized. There was a pegboard mounted on the wall to Parker’s right, the other way from the door, with tools hanging on it. He grabbed a hammer, stepped away from the wall so he could see on a diagonal through the two doorways into the kitchen, and threw the hammer at the far wall in there to give Rosenstein something else to think about for two seconds. He followed the hammer in, running low, diving across the threshold, firing blindly to his right as he went in. Not to hit anything, just to keep Rosenstein off balance, surround him with movement and noise.

A bullet ripped cloth above Parker’s shoulder blade, and then he was on the floor, on his side. Rosenstein was in the doorway at the far end of the right-hand wall. Parker had two hands on the gun for stability, his arms were outstretched and he fired as Rosenstein dove out of the doorway. Rosenstein roared and crashed somewhere out of sight.

Was he hit? Parker was on his feet and running. He went fast around the corner and almost tripped over Rosenstein lying on the living room floor. Rosenstein was trying to bring his gun hand up. Parker kicked his wrist and the gun went sailing across the room. Rosenstein grunted and fell back. His breathing sounded clogged but there was no blood visible.

Any more of them? Parker crouched over Rosenstein, looking around, but the house was full of silence.

Rosenstein was looking up at him. Talking as though his throat was closing up on him he said, “You broke my back.”

Parker straightened. There’d been only the two of them. He went farther into the living room and picked up Rosenstein’s pistol and put it in his hip pocket.

Rosenstein coughed and said, “You had luck. I could have taken you, but you had luck.”

Parker walked back to him.

Rosenstein’s eyes were red; they looked veiled. “I should have killed you when I had you,” he said, his voice very thick now.

Parker reversed his gun and bent down and chopped once across Rosenstein’s head.

Now to find Saugherty. He straightened, keeping the gun in his hand, and walked down the hall, opening doors. In one room was a woman, naked, tied and gagged and lying on a bed. She had bruises on her face and body, but she was conscious, and the one eye glaring at Parker looked wild. In another room three children in pajamas were tied and gagged and lying on beds. They moved like chipmunks when he opened the door. But in no room at all was there a man.

He went back to the living room. Rosenstein hadn’t moved. He went through the kitchen and switched on the cellar light and saw Brock lying on the floor down there. Brock’s head moved, and he called, “Matt?” His voice trembled.

Parker went down the stairs. He hunkered beside Brock and said, “Where’s Saugherty?”

Brock’s eyes had trouble finding him, and then he said, “You.

You ruined my apartment.”

“Where’s Saugherty?” Parker said.

“Why did you break everything? You didn’t have to break everything.”

Parker took Brock by the shoulder and moved him. Brock gasped, his eyes widened, his face went white, and he looked as though he’d pass out. “Don’t. I can’t move like that, it hurts!”

“Then pay attention,” Parker told him.

Brock blinked rapidly. He breathed in quick gulps and said, “Where’s Matt?”

“Upstairs. He says he’s got a broken back. The sooner I’m done here the sooner the both of you get a doctor. Where’s Saugherty?”

Brock closed his eyes. “Dead,” he said.

“Why?”

“He tried to fight Matt.” Brock was talking now in a monotone, his eyes shut. “Matt went after his wife; he tried to — Matt got mad and wouldn’t quit. I tried to get him to quit, but he just kept at the poor bastard. He wouldn’t quit.” He opened his eyes and said, “He’s back in the other part of the cellar. On a glider back there.”

“And the money?”

“The wife doesn’t know anything. We asked her after you called the first time. Matt leaned on her a little, but she doesn’t know anything. Just that Uhl called at dinnertime yesterday, and after he called Saugherty went out of the house with a suitcase and came back without it.”

“She doesn’t know where he went?”

“If she knew, she’d have told Matt. She really would.”

Parker believed it. Saugherty hadn’t told his wife where he’d hidden the money, and now Saugherty was dead, and that meant the money was gone for good. At least there was no way Parker would ever get his hands on it. If Saugherty had left the suitcase with a friend, which was more than likely what he’d done, the friend would probably sooner or later return it to Saugherty’s widow. Or maybe look inside it and keep it for himself. Whatever happened in the future, though, was going to be way too late, and there was nothing to be done in the present. The money was gone.

“Well, you two really did it,” Parker said and got to his feet again. “Good-bye, Brock,” he said and started up the stairs.

Brock called after him, “Parker!”

Parker looked down at him.

“You’re going to leave us to the law?”

“I’m doing better than that,” Parker told him. “I’m going to leave you to Saugherty’s wife.”

The end.

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