Richard Stark - The Jugger

Younger nodded. “I remember.”

“All right. What he said to me when I met him on the street, I saw he’d been in a fight and he said to me, ‘Jimmy Chambers roughed me up.’ I said to him, I didn’t know he was in town,’ and he said, I guess he came here for the funeral.’ That’s all. You got it?”

Younger repeated the dialogue, and said, “What’s the point? Who the hell is this Chambers?”

“You’ll get the answer tomorrow from Washington.”

“Then what happens?”

“Then you decide Chambers killed Tiftus, and you thank Regan for helping, and you send him home.”

“Just on your say-so?”

“No. There’ll be more evidence, don’t worry about it.”

“What evidence?”

“Wait for it. You want to be able to act surprised when you get it. The important thing is, you send that request out tonight, as quick as you can get downtown, and you tell Regan about it first thing tomorrow morning. You got that? The first thing you see Regan tomorrow morning, you tell him about Chambers. It’s important you do it right away.”

“All right, all right. Is that all?”

“Yeah. Then, with Regan out of the way, we can look for the money and the killer ourselves.”

“Yeah,” said Younger, “what about the money? I’m getting closer to the killer all the time, I found the shovel and everything, but what about you? You’re just sitting here.”

“I’ve gone through this place,” Parker told him. “Tomorrow afternoon, after Regan’s out of the case, I think we better go down to Omaha, take a look at Joe’s apartment there.”

“I’ve already been through that apartment, Willis. If the money was there, I would have found it.”

Parker shook his head. “I want to look at the place myself. You want me to go alone?”

“Not on your life,” Younger told him.

Parker shrugged. “Then we’ll go together. We’ll go in your car, that’ll be best. Pick me up here around three o’clock.”

“You think Regan will be out of the case by then?”

“Why not? You put a rush on the request to Washington, you get an answer tomorrow morning, Regan is out by noon.”

“If he’s out,” Younger said, “I’ll come by. If he isn’t I won’t. That’s the best I can say.”

“That’s good enough. Get downtown now and send that request off. You can tell Regan you sent it off this afternoon.”

“Sure, I already got that.”

Parker let him out, waited five minutes, and then went out the back door and down behind the houses again. He was going to need a gun tomorrow, and now was the time to get it.

Downtown was silent and deserted. Electric clocks were aglow deep within the stores along the main street, a few red neon signs here and there were left on all night, and the railroad station and hotel made a little island of light in the middle of it all, but there was no traffic on the street, there were no pedestrians on the sidewalks.

Parker found a sporting goods store on a side street, half a block from the main drag. A rear window was butter under his hands, and he prowled through the fourth-rate stock, mostly rifles and scopes, and finally picked out a pistol for himself, a snub-nose Iver Johnson Trailsman .22. He grabbed a box of ammunition and went back out the window again, adjusting things behind himself to cut down the chances of the theft being noticed right away.

He went back to Joe’s house, sat at the kitchen table, and took the gun apart. After he cleaned the oil off it he put it back together again and loaded it. He slept with it under his pillow.

It was Regan at the door. Parker said, “Come in.”

Regan looked curious and displeased. He nodded, stepped into the house, and said, “I wanted to talk to you.”

“Sure.” Parker shut the door. “Official business?”

Regan made a disgusted mouth. “Unofficial,” he said. “I’m not connected with the Tiftus killing anymore.”

“I didn’t know that. Come in and sit down.”

Regan moved on into the living room, but he didn’t sit down. He was wearing a cheap topcoat, and his hands were in the pockets. With his grey crewcut and eyeglasses and hard mouth and the topcoat he didn’t look like a college teacher anymore, he looked like what he was; a hard, smart cop, smelling something wrong and not wanting to let go.

Parker stayed on his feet, too. He said, “You found out who killed Tiftus?”

Regan said, “You’d know more about that than I would.” He glanced around the room. “I wish I’d met Joseph Shardin,” he said. “He’s the key to this whole thing.”

Parker said, “Why would I know about it?”

“You were the one solved it,” Regan told him. He was being sarcastic, but quietly, not pushing it. “You gave us the clue we needed.”

“You mean about Jimmy Chambers?”

“That’s who.”

“He did it, then, huh?”

“It looks that way. Abner’s convinced.”

“But you’re not.”

Regan shook his head. “No, Willis, I’m not. It doesn’t make any difference; I’m not in charge.”

“You want to ask me something,” Parker told him, “go right ahead. I mean to co-operate.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want you down on Charles Willis.”

Regan frowned studying him. “I even think that’s the truth,” he said. “And I don’t get it. Why’d you wait so long to tell about Chambers?”

“At first, I figured he couldn’t of done it. Then, nobody else turned up that might of, so it had to be him. I figured to begin with if I told about him, you and Younger would grab him and not look anywhere else, because he’s served time. But if he really did do the job, I won’t want to cover for him. Did you get him yet?”

Regan shook his head. “He doesn’t seem to be around town anymore.”

“Well, that figures, if he did it.”

“Everything figures,” Regan said. “A little late, but it all figures. All the different stories that didn’t connect so good before, all of a sudden they all go together like magnets. There’s some link-up between you and Abner and the Samuels woman, and I can’t find it.”

“I didn’t know either of those two before this all happened,” Parker said.

“I believe that, too,” Regan told him. “That’s why I can’t figure it out.” He walked around the living room, looking at the furniture. “Shardin’s the key,” he said, more to himself than Parker. “He dies, and three old friends come to the funeral, a businessman from Miami and two ex-cons. One of the ex-cons kills the other, and the businessman is all of a sudden buddy-buddy with the local captain of police. And with the girlfriend of the murdered man, let’s not forget that. First she identifies him as the guy who killed her man, and then she changes her story, and then she changes it again to this Chambers right around the same time the businessman comes up with Chambers. That’s a funny thing, isn’t it, Willis? I never heard a word about this man Chambers until this morning, and then I hear it from everywhere.”

“I told Younger yesterday. What about the woman, what did she say?”

Regan gave a sour smile. “That’s right, you weren’t there, you wouldn’t know. This morning she remembered, Tiftus told her the name of the man who beat him up, and it was Chambers.”

“That’s what he told me, too.”

Regan looked at Parker, and then some more at the room. “I’d like to know how Shardin died,” he said.

“I heard it was a heart attack.”

“I heard the same thing. All right, Willis, I just wanted to know why you took so long to tell us about Chambers, and you had an answer right on tap.”

“It’s the truth.”

“I’m sure of it.” Regan shrugged, and turned towards the door. “It’s not my worry anymore,” he said. “Chambers’ll be found sooner or later, and maybe some more will come out at the trial. I can’t wait.”