Richard Stark - The Jugger

When the knock came at the door, Parker was just turning to the obituary page. He put the paper down and looked around the room, and everything was clean and ordinary. He walked over and opened the door.

The little guy standing there was dressed like he was kidding around. Dark green trousers, black-and-white shoes, orange shirt with black string tie, tweed sport jacket with leather elbow patches. The fluffy corners of a lavender handkerchief peeped up from his jacket pocket. His left hand was negligently tucked into his trouser pocket, and his right hand was stuck inside his jacket like an imitation of Napoleon. He had the lined and leathery weasel face of an alky or a tout, and he was both. He was somewhere past forty, short of eighty.

He grinned, showing big bad teeth, and said, “Parker, you’re an ugly man. You’re uglier with the new face, and that’s a wonder.”

Parker recognized him. His name was Tiftus and he claimed to be a lock man. Parker had never worked with him because he was too unreliable.

Tiftus grinned some more and said, “Invite me in, why don’t you? We’ve got talk to do.”

It couldn’t be coincidence; this had to be something to do with Joe Sheer. But Parker, to make sure, said, “About what? What talk would we have?”

“Not in the hall, Parker. Where’s your manners?”

“Go to hell.”

Tiftus kept on grinning. He shook his head and withdrew his right hand from his jacket far enough for Parker to see the silver sparkle of a Hi-Standard .25-caliber automatic. “Be nice,” he said. “We have a nice talk about old times. And old friends.”

So it was about Joe. Parker stepped back and motioned for Tiftus to come in. Smug as a peacock, Tiftus stepped over the threshold and into Parker’s right hand. Parker chopped him midway between belt buckle and automatic, and Tiftus’ face turned from tan leather to grey elephant skin. Parker plucked the automatic from his hand, yanked him farther into the room, and shut the door.

Tiftus was making a sound in his throat like an air-raid siren heard from far away. Parker pushed him into the room’s one armchair, and went over to the window to look out. Captain Younger was still down there under his cowboy hat, leaning against the fender of his black Ford in the September sunlight. Across the way was the railroad station. Sagamore, Nebraska. The few cars going by on the main street were dusty in the sunlight.

No one else seemed to be hanging around, not outside. If Tiftus had anyone with him, they were either in the lobby downstairs or waiting for him out of sight somewhere.

Parker put the little automatic in the drawer of the writing table and looked over at Tiftus, but he was still sitting ramrod-straight in the chair, forearms clamped to his belly, the air-raid siren still keening far away in the back of his throat.

Parker took the time to finish looking at the paper. He’d already opened it to the obituaries. He looked down the list, and found it, under Joe’s alias:

SHARDIN — Joseph T., Sept. 17, no living relations. Funeral Wednesday 10 a.m. Bernard Gliffe Funeral Chapel, Interment Greenlawn Cemetery.

Wednesday; today. Ten a.m. He looked at his watch, and it was after eleven now, so the funeral was probably over. It wouldn’t have taken long, with nobody there who knew Joe.

He turned back to the first page and went through the paper completely, reading all the headlines, looking for some reference to the way Joe died, but there was no mention of Joe at all except the obituary notice. The notice didn’t say what Joe died of.

There was a photo on page seven of Captain Abner L. Younger and three other stocky types at a Safety First Conference, figuring out how to keep the schoolchildren from being killed by bad drivers. The cowboy hat made it tough to see Younger’s eyes.

Parker closed the paper finally and went over to stand in front of Tiftus, who was now breathing again. Tiftus’ face had changed color one more time, now being flat white all over except for pained brown eyes and two round red spots of color on leathery cheeks, looking like rouge painted on there to make him look like a clown. He was breathing with his mouth open, and watching Parker with his pained eyes, but he didn’t say anything. The bright clothing looked even more out of place than it had before.

Parker said, “You want to talk. Talk.”

Tiftus moved his lips, but he didn’t say anything. Then he closed his mouth, and swallowed noisily, and licked his tongue across his dry lips, and finally he did talk, saying, “You didn’t have to do that.” His voice sounded rusty. “I almost threw up,” he said. He sounded offended.

Parker said, “How old are you, Tiftus? A hundred? You don’t know about guns, at your age? Don’t ever show a gun to a man you don’t want to kill. You’re a moron, Tiftus. Now, what did you want to talk about?”

“Not with you, you bastard.” Parker had hurt his feelings, and he was going to pout.

Parker said, “What did Joe die of?”

Tiftus seemed honestly surprised; so surprised, anyway, he forgot about pouting. He said, “What the hell? How should I know?”

“Weren’t you here?”

“Who, me?”

Parker shook his head, irritated. He rapped Tiftus’ chest with a knuckle, and Tiftus winced. He rapped again and said, “Don’t ask questions. I ask you a question, what you do next you answer it, you don’t ask another question. You ready to try again?”

“You don’t have to do like this, Parker. I just come around here friendly, so I figure we...”

“With a toy gun.”

“All right. All right, you’re right, I apologize about that.” He was recovering at last, coming back up to be the chipper bantam again. “I shouldn’t have flashed the gun on you that way.”

“I already knew that. Tell me something I don’t know.”

Tiftus spread his hands in a gesture of peace. “We’ve got no reason to fight each other, Parker,” he said. “We’ve never been enemies, never in our lives. There’s never been any bad blood between us at all.”

“There’s never been anything between us. When did you get to town here?”

“Just now. What do you think, for Christ’s sake? Parker, I haven’t even unpacked yet. I got off the train, I came across the street, I saw you coming into the hotel, I got your room number from the desk clerk, that’s all. I got a room, one floor up, left my suitcase there and came right down to see you. Why should we work against each other?”

“Why should we work with each other?”

Tiftus was getting sure of himself again, smug again. “Because we’re both here,” he said. “We’re both after the same thing.”

“We are? What’s that?”

But Tiftus smirked and waggled a finger and got coy. “You know as well as I do, Parker. You want to find out how much I know, is that it?”

What Parker wanted to find out was what the hell Tiftus thought he was talking about. But he couldn’t let Tiftus guess he didn’t know, so he’d have to fake it and wait for Tiftus to let something slip.

He said, “I don’t give a damn what you know. I still don’t see any reason to put in with you. I’d never work with you before this because you can’t be counted on, and I’m not going to work with you now.”

“Ah, but this is different,” Tiftus said. “This time you can count on me. You can count on me to be right here in this monotonous little town right down to the finish. You’re here, and I’m here, and neither one of us is leaving. If we fight each other, we’ll just draw attention to ourselves. If we work together, we’ll be done that much sooner.”