The Split

He considered Rudd awhile, and then decided to leave him there and do nothing further to him. What was the point, anyway? No one else would be coming along, not for a while. And there was no need to kill this man Rudd; he wasn’t a threat. None of them were threats, only the leader, the one who’d been living with Ellen. He would follow to the ends of the earth. Yes, but kill him, and the others would all slink off like whipped dogs.

He made two trips down to the car, carrying the suitcases. The second time, he carefully locked the room door behind him. Goodbye, room. He wouldn’t be coming back to that place.

He drove the Ford out 12N, as Rudd had told him, and eventually saw Vimorama on the right. Seeing it, he felt his first moment of doubt; it really did look deserted. But then, going by, staring at the place, he caught a glimpse of a car parked way in the back, behind all the cabins. So Rudd hadn’t been lying.

He couldn’t have been lying, not by then.

He let the Ford glide on by Vimorama and stopped about a quarter mile farther down the road, where there was parking space along the verge. He walked back, feeling the guns in his pockets. The gun he’d been using up till now had only five bullets left in it, as he’d learned when he finally figured out how to get the clip out of the butt. Rudd had been carrying a gun too, a different kind, what they called a revolver. It held eight bullets and was fully loaded. With two guns now, bolstered by the feeling of strength and power, he strode rapidly back down the road toward Vimorama.

Ahead, he saw an old Pontiac take the turn, drive in past the Vimorama sign. He quickened his pace.

There was a gas station on the left, and then a bit of woods before Vimorama began. He walked past the gas station and then plunged into the woods.

The trees were tall old pines, widely separated. A rust-brown mat of dead pine needles covered the ground. It was dark in under the trees, and all sounds were muffled. He took the automatic out of his right-hand topcoat pocket and walked along peering and searching, frightened in spite of himself.

The Vimorama cabins were off to his right. He turned that way and came out from under the trees, and ahead of him were the cabins and people. A short man directly in front of him, maybe ten yards away, was facing the other way. Beyond him, possibly twenty yards farther on, walking along the gravel driveway, were two tall men, and the one on the far side was the leader, the one he wanted.

They were all shouting at each other, and he suddenly saw he was coming into the middle of a situation he didn’t fully understand. The short man had a gun in his hand, and all at once he started shooting at the leader and the other one. The leader ducked away and the other one fell to the ground.

Was the short man on his side? He came running forward, shouting, ‘Get him! Get that tall one!’

The short man spun around, open-mouthed, and fired again.

At him!

He yelled and dove away, rolling the way he’d learned in college, bringing up at last behind a cabin, lying there awhile quivering with fear and rage.

He was enraged at everybody, but mostly at himself. It had happened again, as it always happened, as he knew it always would happen. A gun was fired at him, and he reacted with blind instinctive panic. He lost precious seconds, lost advantages, lost control of situations, only because of this stupid panic, and it hit him every single time.

Out of sight, the shooting was still going on. He crept around the other way, trying to see without being seen, hoping there would be some way to come up on everybody’s flank. The shooting was sporadic, it almost sounded half-hearted in comparison with movie soundtracks, and it seemed to be moving here and there all around the cabins.

He came around the corner of the cabin and there ahead of him, looming in a cabin doorway like a Scandinavian god, was a huge naked blond man wearing nothing but a gun.

Everyone, had guns.

He fired first this time, three shots from the automatic, and the naked man bounced backward into the doorframe and then jacknifed forward and sprawled out on the gravel.

Shooting. Shooting.

It sounded like it was all at him.

He turned and ran.

He ran through the woods and across the gas station blacktop as the attendant there gaped open-mouthed at him, and ran full tilt along the road until he came to the Ford again. He pulled open the door on the passenger side because chat was the side he came to first, and something hit the inside of the door and made a shock wave run up his arm, and a second later he heard the sound of the shot behind him.

He didn’t even look back to see who was shooting at him. The woods were to his right. Leaving the car door open, he turned away and went crashing and blundering in among the trees.

Detective Dougherty could smell it in the air. Tension. Something was about to pop.

His original list of nine names had been expanded by now, and the men still working on the Canaday case reported chat almost everyone they talked to had already been questioned by someone claiming to be from a polltaking company. The descriptions of the pollster varied too widely to be just the normal bad memory of the civilian witness; there had to be more than one man doing the questioning.

The man who called himself Joe had friends with him, then. The others involved in the robbery at the stadium? But why would they stick their necks out for him?

Unless what Joe was looking for was more than his own share of the loot. Unless the Canaday killer had the whole bundle.

Dougherty could think of no other explanation. The man who had murdered Ellen Canaday had also walked off with the entire proceeds from last Saturday’s robbery. Five to eight men had been involved in that robbery, according to the best estimates they could work up, and undoubtedly all of them were still in the city, looking for the murderer of Ellen Canaday.

It was as involuted and twisted as a Chinese puzzle. The police were looking for the Canaday killer. A group of professional bandits was also looking for the Canaday killer. And the police, to round it off, were looking for the professional bandits.

If the Canaday killer were looking for either the police or the bandits, then everything would be tied in the ultimate knot.

Well, they all had to start bumping into each other pretty soon. Too many people were milling around in the same restricted area; sooner or later they had to start making contact.

It began shortly after noon, and then it came twice in rapid succession. Two men were picked up when they came to apartments of people on the list Dougherty had given Joe. It had been Dougherty’s idea to put men on duty inside the apartments instead of merely on watch outside. How would they know what they were watching for if the fake polltakers were people other than Joe?

Well, it paid off. Two of the pollsters were nabbed within ten minutes of each other.

But the news was as bad as it was good. Both men had tried immediately, and disastrously, to escape, and both had been shot down. One of them had apparently had some idea of shooting it out, but had died with a gun in his hand that he hadn’t had a chance to use. The other had had an accomplice in a white Chevy II with red upholstery, and had almost succeeded in getting into the car and away. One of the arresting officers fired at his legs, but did so just as the suspect was ducking, and the bullet struck him in the back instead. He was still alive when he reached the hospital, but in a coma and not expected to regain consciousness. The accomplice and the white Chevy II were being searched for.

Also, the ambulance the gang had used in the robbery had finally been found. And, downtown, a truck with a Renault hidden inside it had drawn the attention of a patrolman after it had remained parked in one spot for nearly a week; it seemed certain the truck and Renault had had something to do with the robbery. None of the three vehicles bore a single useful fingerprint.

The new composite drawing of Joe, done by the police artist with Dougherty’s directions, had been identified by a cashier at the stadium as one of the men engaged in the robbery, if they needed any confirmation of that.

Then, at four-thirty, the phone on Dougherty’s desk rang, and when he picked it up it was Engel, the detective who’d taken over on the Canaday case.

Engel said, ‘I think I’ve got something for both of us, Bill. Checking out a report on an old boyfriend of the Canaday woman’s, fresh back in town from Mexico, and the boyfriend’s gone, but he left behind a guy who just might be part of the robbery gang.’

‘Where is this? Is it Joe?’

‘No, it doesn’t look like the drawing. From the looks of things, this guy was doing the poll routine and the boyfriend tumbled and then beat the crap out of him to find out where the rest of the gang was hiding.’

‘The boyfriend’s the killer?’

‘It looks that way.’

‘And he’s after the gang?’

‘Yeah, I know. They’re supposed to be after him.’

Dougherty said, ‘This one’s a lulu.’

‘Yeah. Anyway, this guy, he’s got identification says his name is Peter Rudd, he got beat up pretty bad before he decided to talk, and now all he wants to do is just keep talking. He keeps telling us where the gang is, over and over.’

‘He does? Where?’

‘Some place called Vimorama, out on —’

‘I know where it is. I’ll meet you there.’

‘Check.’

Dougherty put in a quick call for two cars and a riot squad and ran downstairs as fast as he could go. He got to the street before the cars did and stood there fidgeting back and forth from foot to foot, quivering with impatience.

It occurred to him he’d forgotten to ask the name of the boyfriend, the one who’d killed Ellen Canaday. But it didn’t matter. Who cared what that guy’s name was?

The two cars came up out of the basement garage and paused for Dougherty to slip in beside the driver of the first car. ‘Vimorama,’ he said. ‘Out 12N.’

‘Siren?’

‘No. Yes, till we get to the city line. Then cut it off.’

City line. He wasn’t even sure he had jurisdiction out at Vimorama.

Well, the hell with that.

The two cars screamed through the city and took the last couple of miles in silence, tearing along with the red lights flashing but no sirens sounding.

When they got there they saw it hadn’t made any difference how much noise they made. There was no one around anymore to be disturbed by them.

There’d been a fight out here, but it was over now. A tall long-armed guy lay sprawled out on the driveway that went in among the cabins. He’d been shot three limes, twice in the chest and once in the head, all from fifteen or twenty yards in front of him.

Over to the right a ways, there was a scene for Debussy to write a ballet around. A huge cheated blond giant as nude as the day he was born was lying dead on the grass, his head cradled in the lap of a cute little blonde girl wearing nothing but a pink half-slip. She wasn’t crying or anything, just sitting there on the ground with her feet tucked in under her and the dead man’s head in her lap, stroking his cheek with long, thin lingers.

Dougherty tried to ask her some questions, but she wasn’t having any. She just sat there and didn’t look at anybody or respond to anything. He told one of the uniformed men, ‘Call an ambulance. Tell them we’ve got a mental case. Catatonic.’

Engel and more uniformed policemen showed up then in two more cars, and Vimorama was beginning to get crowded. Engel came over and said, ‘What’s all this?’

‘I don’t know. I just got here myself.’

‘Is your boy Joe here?’

‘Doesn’t look like it. So far just these two dead ones and the girl.’

‘You ought to get her a brassiere or a coat or something.’

Dougherty glanced that way, and then shook his head. ‘She’s in shock or something,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want to bother her. Either of these your boy what’s-his-name?’

Engel shook his head. ‘New. Mine’s younger than this. Big like that one, but black hair.’

Dougherty said, ‘What is his name, by the -‘

Somebody shouted, ‘We found the car!’

Engel shouted back, ‘The Ford?’

‘Yeah! Down this way!

‘Gray Ford with Texas plates,’ Engel told him. ‘The boyfriend’s.’

‘So he’s still around.’

The two of them went walking down the highway to where the gray Ford was standing with the passenger side door hanging open. When they got there Dougherty pointed at the door and said, ‘Look like a bullet hole?’

‘Looks like.’

Dougherty glanced over at the woods. ‘Went in there, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Chasing each other. I don’t suppose I’ll ever find either of them.’

Engel said, ‘Look at the back seat there. That’s a hell of a lot of suitcases for one man.’

Dougherty looked at the suitcases and smiled.

PART FOUR

One

When Negli started shooting, Parker dove for cover. None of it made any sense to him, but this was no time to stand around and wait for explanations.

Negli was shooting at anything that moved. Beyond Negli was someone Parker didn’t know, and Negli shot at him too and the guy ran behind a cabin.

The guy who killed Ellie? The stupid bastard they’d spent all this time looking for?

It had to he him. At long last, it had to be him.

Parker shouted, ‘Negli! That’s the guy we want!’

Negli fired at his voice, and the ricochet whined on past. Negli shouted, ‘You’re the one I want, Parker!’

‘What the hell for? What’s the matter with you?’

‘Arnie’s dead, you bastard!’

Negli fired again, but Parker was already gone from there. Keeping one of the cabins between himself and Negli, he moved backward, around the coiner of another cabin, and then off to the right. Negli fired again, off at where he used to be, and Parker kept moving to the right.

What did he mean, Arnie was dead? If he was dead, how come? And if he was dead, why was Parker to blame?

Parker moved to the right, around another cabin. There was silence everywhere now. Negli had slopped shooting and started thinking. The question was, which way was he moving? Parker stopped where he was and waited.

Time barely moved. Each second bulged out like a soap bubble coming out of a kid’s bubble pipe, getting bigger and bigger, then suddenly popping and it was time for the next second to start.

For the last couple of days, ever since Ellie was killed and the goods taken, time had been playing tricks like that. Moving fast sometimes, and then inching along other times so an hour took a week or more to be done with.

Last night and today had all been slow, the whole distance. He and Shelly sitting around waiting for Feccio or Clinger or Rudd to phone in with something for them to do. Then every once in a while getting some simpleton to check on, and every time knowing the second he saw the simpleton’s face that this wasn’t the guy, this couldn’t be the guy in a million years. But each time he went on through the complete spiel anyway, while Shelly sat there and looked bored in an easygoing, uncomplaining sort of way. He went through the complete spiel because it was at least something to do while waiting for the right guy to be found.

And gradually he was beginning to wonder if they were going to find him. The guy didn’t necessarily have to stay stupid all his life. After missing Parker that second time, up on the roof at Ellie’s place, the guy might have smartened up all of a sudden and cleared out of town.

But if he had, they’d still have to find out about it. With Kifka calling people, calling people, building up this list of all the guys Ellie had known, sooner or later their boy’s name had to show on that list. And if they went looking for him and couldn’t find him home, and everybody else on the list washed out, then at least they’d know the name of the guy they were looking for, and with amateurs you never needed much more than name and general description. Because amateurs work to a pattern, they repeat themselves, they’re too comfortable doing the things they’ve already done before. Amateurs don’t like to break new ground, try new patterns.

Given their boy’s name and general description, given a few chats with people who knew him, and it wouldn’t take long to find out where he’d most likely go with two suitcases full of one hundred thirty-four thousand dollars, or what he’d most likely do once he got there.

He might have to be followed a ways, but he’d eventually be found and the money gotten back.

The only problem was, it was all taking so damn much time. Ellie, for all her laziness and sloppiness, had known a hell of a lot of guys. It took time to get all their names and addresses, time to go looking them up and ask them questions, time to clear them one by one.

That was the kind of time that crept by hamstrung. Like now; waiting in silence for Little Rob Negli to make a mistake, a little guy who’s a professional and not in the habit of making mistakes.

And waiting for the amateur to make his mistake, a wait that shouldn’t take as long.

There was another shot, from up closet to the road, and then two more in rapid succession.

That wouldn’t be Negli. That would be the amateur.

The hell with Negli for now. The amateur was the important thing, he couldn’t be permitted to get away again. Three times and out; this was the end of the amateur’s string.

Parker moved as quickly and as silently as he could around the edge of the cabin and along the grass that flanked the gravel driveway. He kept watching for Negli, looking down every vista between cabins, past the bushes growing against some of the cabins, down toward the pine woods that flanked Vimorama on three sides. He didn’t see Negli, not a sign of him, but all at once, ahead of him, he saw the amateur go pelting by, running out of Vimorama entirely, heading for the trees, trying to get away again.

Parker took off after him, jumping across the gravel driveway in two steps, angling through between the cabins to try to head the other one off. Behind him, Negli shouted something he didn’t try to understand. A cabin window to his right shattered in time with the sound of a shot from back there. Parker half turned, still running, and snapped a shot in Negli’s direction, not to hit him but just to slow him down, distract him. The important thing now was not Negli, it was the goddam amateur.

The amateur went through the woods without looking back, and across the front of a gas station. Parker went after him, running flat out, determined this time not to lose him. And knowing Negli would never be able to keep up to this pace, so he wouldn’t have to worry about his back for a while.

Parker was fast, but the amateur was faster, and the gray Ford parked down the road there had to be his. He reached it and flung open the near door, and Parker stopped long enough to put a bullet into the door. He’d been trying for the amateur’s leg, but his aim was off because of the running and the lack of time.

But the miss was almost as good as a hit. It deflected the amateur from the car anyway, and sent him off into the woods instead.

Parker got to the car a minute later and looked in and saw the suitcases on the back seat. The same ones. So he’d found the cash at last.

But he couldn’t do anything about it yet. There was still the amateur in front of him and Little Bob Negli behind him. Looking down to his left, Parker saw Negli running along on his bantam legs like some sort of silly lunatic from a silent movie comedy, his fancy clothing all rumpled up and torn, the tiny Beretta glinting in his hand, his face dark with thunderclouds.

Which first? If he took the time for Negli, the amateur might be able to circle back and get the car and the loot and take off again. But if he went on after the amateur, why wouldn’t Negli do the same thing, just hop into the car and take off after the whole bundle?

No, not Negli. One look at him, running along there like somebody’s idea of a joke about vengeance, was enough to tell Parker he didn’t have to worry about Negli taking off with the cash. It wasn’t cash Negli wanted anymore, it was Parker’s scalp. Why he wanted it Parker didn’t know, but he could take time to find out later on.

The amateur first.

The whole thing, looking into the back seat of the Ford and looking back at Negli and making up his mind which idiot to go after first, the whole thing had taken only a couple of seconds. The amateur could still be heard crashing and blundering through the woods, headed straight away from the road and the car, so scared he wasn’t even remembering the cash.

Parker went in after him.

The woods, at first, were like that around Vimorama: well-spaced pine trees with a thick mat of needles covering the ground, darkness and muffled silence, shadows flitting past the black trunks. But the farther they moved from the road, the thicker the going became. Some birch and maple trees began to show up between the pines, clogging the paths more. Dead leaves were mounded around the tree trunks, and the entwined branches of the birches and maples were bare and jagged looking.

As the pines thinned and the birches and maples increased, more and more bushes began to grow between the trunks. Vines and creepers, rose like bushes covered with thorns, thick rubbery bushes with intertwined branches, clumped hedge like bushes autumn-stripped of their leaves; they all slowed Parker down, slowed him down.

But they slowed the amateur more. He had to hack and claw his way through the stuff up ahead there, and where he had passed the going was easier for whoever would come through next.

Parker was next, close behind the amateur, moving after him with grim and steady speed. This wasn’t going to be like the first time, outside Kifka’s place, when night and surprise and a good head start had made it possible for the bastard to get away. Nor like the second time, when the presence of the law there had forced Parker to help him get away.

This time it was clear and simple. This time it was straightforward, the way Parker liked it.

The amateur was running, leaving a broad trail. Parker was following him, and gaining on him. When he caught up with him, he’d kill him.

The land was sloping gradually downward, and now the trees were thinning out and the bushes getting larger and thicker and even harder to light through. There was still some greenery on some of the underbrush that was green all year round, and here and there bushes sported hard inedible bright red berries, but the color of the forest was mostly black, accented by the white trunks of the birches. Between the trunks swelled the under brush, sharp and gamy.

Now and again Parker came to clumps of bushes the amateur hadn’t been able to go through at all; he could see the marks where the amateur had fought his way part-way in and had then been forced to back out again and go around.

That slowed the amateur too, and helped Parker gain on him.

From time to time Parker caught glimpses of him through the trees and brush; a bobbing head, a straining back. But they were just moving glimpses, and he made no attempt to hit him from this range, given such a bad target. He’d catch up with him sooner or later. The amateur might be faster on open level ground, but not in here.

Parker was so sure that he even stopped at one point and listened for Negli. The little man would be coming along too, he was positive. Being smaller, following this trail after two men bigger than himself had already forced it open, Negli should be able to make fine time in here.

But there was no sound.

Parker frowned and listened. Off the other way, he could hear the amateur still blundering away through the underbrush like a frightened range cow, but back toward the highway there was silence.

The silence was split open by a gunshot. Something thudded into the tree beside Parker’s head.

That was the second time Negli’s gun had fired off to the right; sooner or later Negli would notice it himself and start compensating.

But he was back there, anyway. Moving more slowly and silently than he had to because he was afraid of being ambushed.

Parker turned and went on after the amateur before Negli had a chance to try for another shot.

He’d lost ground in those few seconds he’d been stopped, but it didn’t matter. The end was inevitable anyway.

His topcoat was an annoyance, snagging branches, slowing him down. He stopped again and transferred the pistols to his trouser pockets and stripped off the topcoat. He threw it over a bush and went on.

Abruptly, trees and underbrush stopped. Along a straight line running from left to right there was a sudden border to the forest as clear and neat as though someone had cut the earth with a scissors and in fixing things again had seamed two mismatched parts together at this spot like getting a jigsaw puzzle wrong.

On one side of the seam was the forest, black and red and green, verticaled with birch and maple, jagged-armed at the top, cluttered with underbrush at the bottom. On the other side of the seam was blasted dirt, dry tan in color, so light as to almost be cream. Moisture had eroded and drained from the soil, a few late autumn frosts had done their work, and the ground now was baked and cracked like the surface of the moon. Zigzag lines ran here and there across the powdery dirt. Nothing grew.

Looking up, Parker saw the explanation. In from of him, maybe sixty yards away, a broad yellow brick building rose up in the middle of the dead plain like a squared-off dinosaur. Marching rows of windows reflected the afternoon sun, giving off a cold yellow light. On the right side of the building the temporary steel framework of a construction company’s external elevator rose up like the crane next to a missile bound for the moon.

Bulldozers had worked this dry miracle with the land. The constructors of that building over there had called in the bulldozers to strip down every inch of the properly they owned before anybody started to work putting up the foundation. Later, when the building was done, landscape architects would come in with fresh earth and seed and hothouse plants and turn this moonscape back into something vaguely like the forest it had been, but with less clutter and liveliness.

The building wasn’t finished, that was obvious, though there didn’t seem to be any workmen on or near it. Parker assumed they were all out on strike.

Whether the building, when it was finished, would be an apartment house or an office building Parker couldn’t tell and didn’t care. Whatever it was going to be, it implied a road or highway or street of some kind over on its far side. If the amateur could make it over to there, over to paved street and a populated neighborhood, he just might get away after all.

But he wasn’t going to make it.

He was halfway to the building, running splayfooted, arms making ragged pinwheels at his sides. He was obviously winded, running on terror now instead of strength or energy. Little puffs of dust rose up around his feet at every pounding step. He half staggered, nearly fell forward, but kept his balance and his momentum and ran on.

Parker half turned so his right side was to the building and the runner. He stretched his right arm out, shoulder high, large hand bunched around the Colt .38 automatic, arm and hand and automatic all pointing at the straining back of the runner.

He fired.

Dust puffed ahead of the runner and to his right.

The runner didn’t dodge, didn’t swerve. He kept running straight ahead, flat out, running along the straight taut string of terror.

Parker compensated, aiming now just a bit to the left, just a bit lower. His first finger squeezed and the automatic bucked just a trifle, and the runner thudded face forward into the ground. Dust billowed up around him and slowly settled down again. There was no wind; the dust settled on the body.

Now for Negli.

A bullet cut Parker’s right earlobe.

Two

There was silence.

Parker crouched next to a thick maple, peering through the underbrush, waiting for Negli to make a move. Behind him, five or six feet away, was the edge of the forest; beyond, the tan earth lay dull and flat, and farther away the yellow building gleamed in the pale sunlight.

It was cold in here now. He’d left his topcoat, and he was no longer moving, and he could feel the chill air seeping through his clothes.

Five minutes had gone by since Negli’s bullet had drawn blood on Parker’s ear. Parker had taken cover, had moved slowly and carefully away from where Negli could expect to find him, and now he was sitting here and waiting for Negli to make’ the first move.

It had to be Negli who would move first. He was a pro, the same as Parker, but right now he was running on emotion, and a man full of emotion can’t sit and wait as well as a man in control of himself. So Negli would eventually have to move, and when the time came, Parker would take whatever advantage of it he could.

But he wasn’t sure: yet whether he just wanted to kill Negli or not. If Arnie Feccio really was dead, then there were developments Parker didn’t know anything about. For his own good, he had to find out about them, find out how the situation now stood, and Negli was the only one handy to tell him.

The whole operation had soured completely, he knew that much. The job itself, at the stadium, had been sweet, one of the sweetest pieces of work he’d ever been a part of. For three days after the job, everything was still sweet. And then, because of that simple minded amateur, lying out there now on the dead ground, everything went to hell.

Shelly was dead. If Negli had the story straight, then Feccio was dead, too. Negli was going to be dead himself pretty soon. Three out of the seven, dead or soon to be.

Leaves rattled.

Parker was instantly alert. It had come from the left, and deeper into the woods away from the open ground. Negli had been more to the right earlier, when he’d taken that near-miss shot at Parker. So they’d spent the last five minutes circling each other, both of them moving to the right, shifting position in relation to the forest but not in relation to one another.

If he were to move out to the edge, out by the moonscape, and head down to his left, he might still flank Negli, still wind up on Negli’s back. With that advantage, he could pick and choose, he could maybe get close enough just to disarm the little man and hold him down while he asked some questions.

It was worth a try.

He moved to his left, as slow and careful and silent as a wolf.

‘Parker!’

He slopped. The call had come from the same spot; Negli hadn’t moved since then. Parker said nothing. He waited.

‘Parker, you did everything wrong.’

He waited.

‘You hear me? You stupid lummox, do you hear me?’

He waited.

Negli’s voice was getting shrill, his words were bumping into one another. He shouted, ‘Do you want to hear about it, you brainless bastard?’

This time, as Negli shouted Parker moved. Negli’s own roaring voice covered any small sounds Parker might make. He followed the line he’d already worked out, moving out to the edge of the forest and then down the line to get behind Negli. He moved when Negli spoke, and stopped when Negli was silent.

Negli shouted, ‘You lost the money, that was the first thing. You walk out of the apartment and leave the money in there with nobody to watch it and somebody comes and takes it away, you simple moron, takes it away!’

Parker stopped. He was at the edge now; he’d travelled about seven feet so far, during Negli’s speeches.

It was almost comic. Negli shouting about stupidity and killing himself with every shout.

‘And you went to the cop!’ Negli shouted, and Parker moved forward again. ‘You got that goddam list from that goddam cop, and what the hell did you think he’d do? You hear me, Parker? What did you think that cop would do?’

They both slopped.

‘He put law on the inside, Parker! There weren’t any cops watching for you on the outside, there were plain-clothesmen inside the goddam apartment!’

Parker frowned and crouched down to wait awhile. That was a cross-up. It didn’t make sense that way. Detective Dougherty had to figure he was part of the mob that made the haul at the stadium. He had to figure Parker would lead him to the rest of the mob. It only made sense for Dougherty to put men on watch outside the homes of those nine men on his list with orders not to grab Parker when he showed up but to follow him when he left.

That was the whole basis of it right there, that was why it seemed safe to let the others go around and ask their questions.

Why? Where had he figured wrong? Had Dougherty been too smart for him or too dumb for him?

Negli shouted again: ‘They put the grab on Arnie, you know that? I saw them bring him out. I tried to help him cop it, they gunned him down. You hear me, you rotten bastard ?’

Parker heard him. He’d gone down the line now, Negli’s voice was coming from farther back. He’d managed to cross Negli’s flank and get behind him. He turned, and on Negli’s next speech he started in through the underbrush again.

‘Parker! Arnie’s dead! Don’t you know what I’m talking about, you mindless piece of hate? Annie’s dead?

Closer, Parker stopped, his left hand resting lightly on the smooth white trunk of a birch tree. The automatic was in his right. The little Colt revolver was still in his trouser pocket, hadn’t been used at all yet.

‘And that other one! He killed Kifka, did you know that? Not just your girl, that slut of yours, you animal, not just her. He killed Kifka, too, just now, just today.’

Kifka? Then who was left?

Shelly dead, Feccio dead, Negli dying. Kifka dead. If the law was on watch inside those apartments, then they now must have Clinger and Rudd.

Nobody was left.

Only Parker was left. Parker, and a corpse that was shouting because it didn’t know yet it was a corpse.

‘Kifka’s your fault, too, Parker, you hear that? You killed Arnie just as much as if you pulled the trigger yourself. You killed Arnie, and you killed Kifka, and I’m going to kill you!’

They stopped. Negli was no more than ten feel away now, ahead and to the right. Crouching, waiting, Parker peered through the underbrush for some sign, some glimpse of Negli. He’d been wearing a luminous tan camel’s hair coat over his natty suit; that tan should show nicely against the black and green of the woods. But not yet, not quite close enough yet.

The wait this time was a longer one, and when at last Negli spoke out again there was a difference in the tone of his voice. He seemed suddenly less full of rage, less sure of himself:

‘Parker? Parker? Where the hell are you, Parker?’

A foot closer. Two feet closer.

‘Did you run away, you bastard? You coward? You moron?’

Closer.

‘Why don’t you fight like a man?’

There was a sudden scattering of leaves, and Negli was standing up in full sight, staring and staring the wrong way, his natty back to Parker and only five feet away.

‘Why don’t you fight like a man!’

Parker shot him in the back of the head.

Three

There was law all over the car.

Parker stood there, just within the cover of the pine trees, looking out at the gray Ford. He saw Dougherty there, and another plain clothesman, and three or four cops in uniform.

After he’d finished with Negli he’d worked his way back here along the path he and the other two had beaten out. He’d gathered up his topcoat from where he’d thrown it and put it back on, and when he worked his way up out of the thick underbrush and the birch and maple trees and in under the cool, dim spaciousness of the pine trees he took time out to brush himself off, rub away the dirt marks and the grass stains, get himself looking a little more sensible and civilized. He buried the two pistols under some loose dirt and pine needles because he wouldn’t be needing them any more and went on through the pines and almost stepped out into the open before he saw the law all over the car.

He’d taken too long. If it had just been the amateur everything would have been all right, but with the extra time it had taken to deal with Negli he’d stretched beyond the limit.

Five minutes sooner and he’d have been free and clear, with wheels and the whole boodle.

But there was no chance for it now. As he stood in among the trees and watched, Dougherty and the other plainclothesman reached into the Ford and took out one of the suitcases and set it down on the ground next to the car. They looked at one another, and then both crouched down in front of the suitcase and loosened the snaps. The other plainclothesman lifted the lid.

The money was stacked in there like heads of lettuce.

Both cops stood up again and put their hands on their hips and looked down at the open suitcase. Then Dougherty turned his head and looked at the woods in the general direction of Parker. He said something to the other cop, but Parker was too far away to hear the words. The other cop looked at the woods too and shook his head. Dougherty shrugged.

Parker waited a minute longer even though there wasn’t any point to it. He watched the cops take out a second suitcase, not one of the right ones, and open it up to find it full of laundry. Then they reached in again and this time brought out the right suitcase, and then they had both suitcases and all the money, and it was all over.

Never had such a sweet operation turned so completely sour.

Of the seven in on the job, all but one were dead or in the hands of the law. The take was in the hands of the law. There was nothing left.

Parker turned away and started back through the forest again.

The only thing to do now was get clear. The job was so completely sour, it was a kind of victory just to get himself out and clear.

The best way was the way the amateur had tried. Through the forest and out past that building under construction and along whatever street or road there was on the other side of it. Not back into town at all after that, but the other way, farther out of the city.

He had a little money on him, not much. Enough to carry him away from here.

He paused for a second where he’d buried the guns. But he’d be better off without them. From here on, what he had to do was keep out of sight. Gun battles with the law were for idiots.

He moved on, following the same trail as last time. But this time there was no one ahead of him and no one coming along behind him.

Back in the other direction, the sun crept down behind the pine trees. Darkness was slowly edging in from all sides, but there was still enough light to see the trail.

Four

The amateur was gone.

Parker stopped at the edge of the woods, peering, at first refusing to believe it, telling himself he was being tricked by perspective, by the long forest shadows that stretched now like witch fingers out across the dead plain toward the building, by the bad light of late afternoon.

But it was no trick. Where the amateur had fallen, where the dust had billowed up and then settled on him again, there was now no one. No one and nothing.

The second bullet hadn’t done the job, then. It had seemed like a good hit, but it had only wounded him. And he’d lain out there, either lying doggo or unconscious, and after a while he’d crawled or walked away.

Which way? Back into the relative safety of the woods? Or forward, on toward that building bulking out there?

Forward. There was no subtlety in the amateur, nothing in him but direct action. He would keep going forward no matter what.

But there were still questions. It all depended how badly he was hit. From the way he’d flopped out there, from how long he’d stayed lying there, the hit had to be fairly good, anyway. It was no flesh wound, no grazing of his shoulder or leg. But just how bad was it? Bad enough to have him dead now, up closer to the building? Or not quite that bad, but bad enough to force him to hole up in the building itself and not try to go any farther? Or was it so slight after all that he’d just walked away and was now lost forever?

Standing there at the edge of the woods, Parker regretted not having dug the guns up again. But there’d been no way to guess back there that he’d be needing a gun again so soon.

He faded back into the woods, hunted around, and found the body of Negli lying sprawled all over a thick and thorny bush. The little Beretta was on the ground near his hand.

Parker picked it up and broke the clip out of the butt. It was a six-shot .25-caliber automatic, and Negli had already used up five of the cartridges in this clip.

Parker slid the clip back in place, put the Beretta in his pocket, and dragged Negli clear of the thornbush. He went through Negli’s clothing, but the little man hadn’t been carrying an extra clip.

The damn fool!

Parker got to his feet and looked out again across the plain at the building over there. It was over twenty storeys high already, and from the confusion of cranes and pulleys atop the building — looking like unruly hair on the head of a Mongoloid idiot — it was apparently going to be even taller before they were done. The last rays of sunlight glinted like icicles from the windows on the first seven or eight floors; above that the windowpanes hadn’t been put in place yet.

The amateur might be in there. He might be anywhere inside that pile of brick and glass, or he might be gone from this area entirely.

Parker wanted him. He wanted that bastard the way Negli had wanted Parker. Not because there was any sense in it anymore, but only because the amateur, alive, was a loose end.

It was the amateur who had soured the sweet job, bringing in his own extraneous problems, killing for no sensible reason, taking money that should have been safe, running around wild and causing trouble with everybody, attracting the attention of the law.

There was no profit in killing him, but Parker was going to kill him anyway. He was going to kill him because he couldn’t possibly just walk away and leave the bastard alive.

But that didn’t mean he had to get like Negli, stupid and careless.

It would be full night soon, and that was bad. Night was the amateur’s ally, covering his blunders, obstructing Parker’s movements. If the thing was to be done, it should be done now.

He moved out across the dead plain, moving light and fast on the balls of his feet, watching the building, ready to jump in any direction. If the amateur was in there, and watching, and waiting for a good shot, that was all right. Parker would give him one shot to find out exactly where he was. He could count on the bastard to miss the first time.

But there was no shot. He came all the way across the plain and up to the building itself and there, was no sound, no movement.

This was the back of the building. Windows stretched away to left and right, reflecting with distortions the plain and the forest and the red circle of the sun beginning now to sink behind the western horizon. A few gray metal doors we’re snugly in place here and there along the rear wall, implying basements, furnaces, all the utilities needed for a bulging building like this one.

No sound, no movement.

But over to the right a window was smashed in. These were all permanent windows, fixed in place without any way to open them, meaning the building would be centrally the. Over to the right, one of these windows had been smashed in, and every last piece of glass knocked out of the aluminum frame.

So a man could crawl through without cutting himself.

A sound, a tiny scratch, made him look up.

Glinting like a phantom airship, slender, square, fast and murderous, a sheet of plate glass knifed down through the air at him, whistling. Highlights sparkled from the edges like reflections of ice.

Parker jumped away. With a sound like dry wood breaking, only much much louder, the sheet of glass destroyed itself into the ground, spraying shards and slivers in all directions. Silver triangles tinkled against the ground floor windows. Tiny pyramids of glass embedded themselves in Parker’s shin and cheek and the back of his right hand.

He looked up; the wall loomed up featureless and blank, the glass blood-red in the windows on the lower floors, reflecting the sun. The yellow bricks of the wall were tinged with rose color.

The amateur was up there, on a high storey, above the levels where the glass had already been fixed in place.

As Parker looked, a dusky shimmer extruded from high up the wall like the phantom of a slender tongue. It bent, it arched, it broke free of the wall and sliced downward; another heavy sheet of glass, three feet wide and four feet long and half an inch thick, slicing through the air like an invisible sword.

Parker dove through the hole in the building where the amateur had already smashed a window in. Behind him, the second glass torpedo sprayed itself into oblivion, musically.

He was in what would be a basement storage room, the interior walls made of concrete block and painted a dull blue gray. A metal door stood open onto a concrete block corridor.

Parker moved cautiously, the Beretta insignificant in his hand. The corridor led him to the left to gaping holes in the wall where some day the elevators would hang. Opposite, another metal door led him to a stairway, the rough plaster walls painted an unfortunate yellow. He took the stairs up to the first floor.

He was now in what would be a lobby or entrance hall of some kind, a broad, dim, white painted echoing cavern with a low-hung free form ceiling, shaped like a swimming-pool. Light fixtures sprouted all over this ceiling like the faceted eyes of flies.

From here on, every part of the building was incomplete. A metal staircase, without the walls that would enclose it, stood off to the left, leading upward. Parker went that way, sliding his feet noiselessly across a floor that seemed to he, but was not, marble.

Beside the staircase a white bag fell and exploded, puffing whiteness out everywhere. A bag of cement, dropped too early. Parker ran through it, a white mist like a smokescreen in wartime, and started up the stairs. The stairs went forward to a landing, backward to the second floor. Forward again to another landing, backward to the third floor. And so on, and so on. And between the stairway halves was an empty space running down the middle’ of the stairwell, down which, like down some’ madman’s oubliette, the amateur hurled whatever he could get his hands on. Long warped one by-twelve planks went bumping and thumping by, bouncing from metal railing to metal tailing. More cement bags dropped by like torsos to make soft white explosions on the lobby floor. Hammers and wrenches fell by, rattling and clanking.

Parker kept to the far edge of the stairs, and kept moving upward. The windows had been glassed in completely up to the eighth floor. More than two or three floors above that there probably wasn’t even any glass in readiness yet, lying around to be used as weapons. On floor nine, then, or floor ten or floor eleven he would find the amateur.

As he passed the sixth-floor level the rain of stupidity stopped from above. The amateur had been throwing out of fear, out of panic, and now either his panic had abated or he had run out of things to throw.

Why hadn’t he used his gun? Was he out of bullets, or had he lost the gun somewhere, or was he just too panic-struck to remember he had it?

The silence after the crash and clatter seemed to hum with emptiness. Parker moved more slowly, listening, listening through the silence, and wasn’t surprised after a minute to hear the hurried stealthy scuffing of feet on stairs. The amateur was climbing higher.

Parker was in no hurry. After the fifth floor, there were hardly any interior partitions up at all, and he could see there was no other way to go up or down but this stairwell. As long as he was below the amateur, and controlled the stairwell, there was no hurry.

Except the press of darkness. Half the sun had now disappeared below the horizon, and the top half glowered winter-red, tinging glass and plaster and metal with rose and saffron.

The sounds that came from above were like the sounds of mice in walls, but they were made by the amateur creeping up the metal stairs on hands and knees, wincing and grimacing, trying desperately and vainly to be silent. Parker could visualize him from the sounds and moved more openly himself now, not worrying so much about noise.

At the landing between the tenth and eleventh floors, set carefully and symmetrically in the middle of the floor, there was a little mound of money.

Parker stared at it. It was an offering, a sacrifice, like some South Sea Islander giving his virgin daughter to a volcano. The little mound of money left on the landing like an offertory on an altar.

Parker picked it up and counted it. There were forty twenty-dollar bills and eight ten-dollar bills: eight hundred eighty dollars.

He had some of the money!

Parker looked upward. The bastard hadn’t left all the money in the suitcases; he’d taken some of it with him, he had it on his person. And not just this much, just eight hundred eighty dollars. There’d be more of it.

Parker stuffed the sacrifice in his pocket and went more quickly up the stairs. It was now necessary to keep the amateur from falling or jumping, to keep him in a condition where his pockets could be searched.

And all with extreme care. There was only one bullet left in the Beretta, and that only .25 caliber and a very short-barrelled gun.

The amateur might jump, if he was terrified enough. Or fall, because of stupidity.

Noises again, six or seven flights up. Parker, at the fourteenth storey, stopped to listen. Scrapings, thump-ings, heavy sounds. But nothing coming down the stairwell, nothing immediate.

The noises went on and on as Parker kept climbing, and stopped as he was rounding the landing above the eighteenth story. He went two more flights and saw above him what the amateur had done.

A barricade. Strips of metal, bundles of wire, planks of wood, tools of all kinds, even a wheelbarrow, all piled and jumbled together at the head of the stairs to keep him down.

And was the barricade defended? Was this where the amateur would make his last stand?

No. Waiting on the landing below, just out of range if the amateur were armed and manning the barricade, Parker listened and once again heard the mouse noises farther up. The amateur was still running.

Parker went on up and brushed through the barricade with impatient arms. Tools and planks and bundles went crashing away, some clattering down the stairs, and up above the amateur cried out at the noise.

Above the twenty-first floor, there weren’t even external walls any more, only the flat white outlines of the poured concrete foundation. Floor and ceiling were rudimentary here: a thick flat slab of concrete swarming underneath with rods and cables and wires and other projections growing out like hair. Going forward from floor to landing, there was nothing beyond the left edge of each stair but emptiness and the setting sun and the dead plain far below. No banister, no railing, nothing. Going the other half, from landing to floor, there was nothing to the right of each stair but that other half of staircase hanging out over emptiness.

The amateur was only one flight away, creeping upward, trembling, making more and more noise. He was gasping for breath and groaning from a thousand terrors. Parker followed, keeping to the middle of each stair, looking only at the stairs and his own feet, moving Upward.

The twenty-third floor was the top. The flooring here was planks, covering only parts of the area and leaving other parts open. Wooden forms for the concrete foundation jutted up here and there like Renaissance smoke stacks. Olive drab tarpaulins were thrown over mounds of material.

Across the way, the framework of the construction elevator stood like a model of the Eiffel Tower. The elevator itself, a mesh cage, hung within it at the level of this floor. The amateur was making for it, hobbling, running crouched like a wounded bear. He wore a dirty cream-colored raincoat, the back all stained and darkened by blood. He was torso-hit, just above the waist on the left side of the back.

Exerting himself the way he was, hit like that with the bullet certainly still in him, he was done anyway. He was big and strong - Parker remembered how the sword had been thrust entirely through Ellie and into the wall behind - and if he’d had only a normal share of strength he’d be finished already. The end was coming soon. If it weren’t for the money, Parker could just go away and leave him up here to rot.

But there was the money. Parker walked across the echoing planks.

The amateur wrenched open the two gates and stumbled into the elevator. Turning, he saw Parker and cried out again as he had before. He pushed the gates shut and tried to work the lever to send the elevator down to the ground, but of course there wasn’t any power. The construction company people had sent the elevator to the top of the shaft before leaving so stray kids wouldn’t damage it and then had turned the power off and gone away.

The amateur had caged himself.

Parker walked across the planks toward him.

The amateur wrenched open the two gates.

The amateur shouted, ‘Don’t shoot at me! Please don’t shoot at me!’

There was an open space at the top of the double gate’ across the front of the elevator. The amateur with a sudden motion threw something over this, something that landed hard on the planks, and bounced: a stubby black pistol.

‘I lost the other one!’ he shouted. Parker was close to him now, but he kept shouting anyway, as though he thought there was some sort of wall between himself and Parker. ‘I’m not armed now!’ he shouted. ‘There’s my gun! There’s my gun!’

Parker walked up to the front of the cage. He had the Beretta in his right hand, but at the last second he changed his mind. He went back and picked up the gun the amateur had thrown away; it was a Smith & Wesson .32 revolver. Parker frowned at it. The last one like this he’d seen, Pete Rudd was carrying it. Was this Rudd’s pistol? Was that how the amateur knew to come to Vimorama?

But he wasn’t particularly interested in the answer, because it made no difference anymore. He turned back to the man in the cage.

‘Don’t shoot at me, please. She did deserve that; you knew her, you must have known she deserved it, and I never meant to cause you any trouble, it all just happened one thing after the other, all I wanted to do was give her what she —’

Parker used one bullet from Pete Rudd’s gun.

He pulled open the gates and went in and rolled the amateur over on his back and went through his pockets.

Left trouser pocket, sixty-three twenties. Right trouser pocket, thirty-nine twenties and twenty-five tens. Left hip pocket, fifty-two tens and ten fifties. Right hip pocket, forty-seven twenties and nine tens and eight fifties. Right shirt pocket, forty-two twenties and lour hundreds. Nothing in the left shirt pocket; that must have been where the eight hundred eighty bucks had come from.

Still more. Left jacket pocket, fifty twenties and nine fifties. Right jacket pocket, fifty-three twenties and seven fifties. Inside jacket pocket, ninety-five twenties and three hundreds.

The amateur had bulged with cash, bloated with cash, overflowed with cash.

Left raincoat pocket, ninety-three twenties and seventeen tens. Right raincoat pocket, eighty twenties and fifteen fifties.

All together, seven hundreds and forty-nine fifties and six hundred two twenties and one hundred eleven tens, including the money left on the stairs.

Sixteen thousand three hundred dollars.

Parker got to his feet and looked at the bills in stacks on the elevator floor. Sixteen thousand three hundred dollars. He laughed out loud.

It was his seventh.

The end.

––––––––––––

This document was converted by AportisDoc Converter(tm) from Aportis Technologies Corp.