Richard Stark - The Jugger

Younger said, “I’ll have to take these along, Alfred. They’re evidence, in a case I’m working on. When I’m done, I’ll bring them back. Finders keepers. All right?”

The boy shrugged. “You can keep them,” he said. “We’ve got a shovel of our own anyway.”

Younger went upstairs and out the front door and headed for his Ford. Before he got there, Willis came out of Joe’s house and across the lawn and said, “Where’d you get that stuff?”

Younger was pleased with himself. “I had a theory,” he said. “I figured the guy got panicky and—”

“Where’d you get them?”

Irritated, wanting to tell Willis the whole theory, he said, “The guy threw them away out in the field behind the house.”

Willis looked at the Ricks house. “That’s where you found them?”

“The kid next door found them.”

“Oh.”

“What about you?”

Willis shook his head. “No luck so far.”

“I don’t think the money’s in the house. We’d of found it by now.”

“I’ll keep looking,” Willis said. He turned around and went back into the house.

Surly bastard. Younger would be glad to have the partnership done with. He put the shovel and bag in his car and drove away.

Parker went back in the house. He knew Younger would keep himself busy for a while, have fun looking the shovel over for fingerprints. He might even dust the burlap bag.

Inactivity was making Parker irritable, testy. All he did was sit here in Joe Sheer’s house and wait for that state cop, Regan, to come up with whoever killed Tiftus. And even then that might not ease the situation. The Willis cover might be loused up no matter what way things went here.

But maybe not. He knew more now than he’d known five minutes ago.

After Younger had driven away with the useless shovel and burlap bag, Parker went over to the side window in the living room and looked over at the house next door. Through the window there he could see another small living room like this one, but more crowded with furniture, and the furniture all older. He looked up, and saw bedroom windows on the second floor, overlooking this window and the window in Joe’s kitchen.

The kid was out on the porch again. Parker moved away from the window, across the room and out on the front porch. Only the width of a driveway separated this house from the one next door. Parker called to the kid. “Hey, come over here a minute.”

The kid looked at him. “Me?”

“Yeah, come here.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you.”

The kid looked around, but there wasn’t anyone else in sight. He said, “I got to stay here and listen for the phone.”

“This won’t take long.”

The kid didn’t want to do it, but he couldn’t come out with a flat refusal and he couldn’t think of an excuse. He uhhhhed a few times, and then he said, “All right. But then I gotta get back here and listen for the phone.”

“Sure.”

The kid came across the lawn and up on the porch. Parker held the door open for him. The kid wouldn’t quite meet his eye. He went into the house, and Parker went in after him, shut the door, and said, “Why’d you go to my room in the hotel?”

The kid turned around, wide-eyed and scared. “What? What do you mean?”

Parker shook his head. “Don’t waste time. You went there and Tiftus caught you, and you slugged him. Same as you slugged me when you were in the cellar.”

“I don’t — I don’t know what you’re—”

“What I can’t figure,” Parker told him, “is what you went to my room for. You figure I already had the money?”

“Mister, I swear to you—”

Parker hit him, open-handed. “Don’t tell lies,” he said. “You’re too young.”

The kid was going to cry in a second. He put a shaking hand up to where his cheek was turning red, and he said, “I don’t know why you—”

“You’re a watcher,” Parker told him. “I’ve seen you on the porch, I’ve seen you at the window in the living room. You stand and watch.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. What’s wrong with that?”

Parker said, “Younger was putting pressure on Joe, on the old guy that lived here. You watched. Sometimes, at night, you snuck over by a window here and listened.”

The kid was shaking his head. His mouth was open, his eyes were wide open.

Parker said, “You believed that crap about the half million dollars. You’re as dumb as Younger.”

“Cr-crap?”

“It doesn’t exist. Joe didn’t have any cash buried anywhere. All his dough was invested, just like he told Younger.”

“B-but he, he did all those—” The kid stopped abruptly, and put his other hand up to his face, too. Both hands covered the lower half of his face, and above them he stared at Parker.

Parker nodded. “He did all those robberies. And spent it. Spent it faster than you or Younger could dream.”

“I didn’t—”

“You did. You were down there digging. You heard me come in, and you waited, and you clubbed me when I opened the cellar door, and you ran back home and hid in a closet. You were so scared you forgot to drop the shovel, that’s why you had it to give to Younger. Afraid to hold on to it, so you told him you found it. Younger’s dumb, but he’ll catch on after a while.”

“I didn’t do it.” The kid shook his head back and forth, back and forth. “I didn’t do it. I listened, I heard what they were saying, but I didn’t do any of that, I swear it.”

Parker said, “There’s just one thing I want to know. Why you went to my room in the hotel. I can’t figure it.”

“No, I didn’t do any of that, I didn’t—”

Parker slapped him twice, forehand and backhand. The kid blubbered, and Parker said, “I want to know. I don’t like things I can’t figure.”

The kid wailed, “You’ll tell the police! You’ll turn me in to the police!”

“No. I don’t talk to the law.”

The kid blinked, and blinked, and stared at Parker. “Do you mean that? Do you mean it?”

“I worked with Joe, in the old days. I don’t talk to the law.”

The kid rubbed his eyes with a trembling hand, and licked his dry lips. “I didn’t mean to do any of it,” he said. “Hit you, or that other man, or any of it. I just wanted the money.”

“Why’d you go to my hotel room?”

“I wanted to know who you were. I forgot to look in your wallet when I knocked you out, and I was afraid to come back, because maybe you weren’t still unconscious. I figured I had to know who you were, because of you searching the house and all. I didn’t know, maybe you were with the FBI or something.”

“How’d you find my room?”

“I was following Captain Younger, and he was following you. Before that, before I hit you.”

“So you went in and Tiftus caught you there.”

“He came in the window. I hid, behind the dresser, but he saw me. He started to holler and run, and I was scared, and I hit him with the ashtray. I didn’t know that could kill him, honest. I just wanted to knock him out, I didn’t know it could kill him.”

All along Tiftus had thought Parker knew more about Joe’s goods than he did. The inside track, he’d said one time; Parker had known Joe well and so had the inside track. Tiftus must have thought there might be a letter from Joe or something like that, something to give Parker that inside track, and he’d gone looking for it.

The kid was shivering, like he’d just been doused with cold water. He said, “You won’t tell the police, will you? Will you?”

The kid was trouble. He knew everything, he’d heard everything that Joe had told Younger. And he’d be grabbed; sooner or later he’d be grabbed. He’d done one moronic thing after another, even to giving Younger the shovel and burlap bag. Sooner or later Younger or Regan, more likely Regan, would get to the kid, and the kid would do nothing but talk. He’d talk three days straight, and not repeat himself once.