Ричард Старк - Flashfire [= Parker]

“He sent the wrong fuckheads,” Parker said.

“So now I gotta take them down,” Norte said with a disgusted gesture at the men on the floor, “and I gotta take their boss down, because I don’t need this shit.”

“It’s not my fight,” Parker said. “Just give me the papers and I’ll go.”

“I wish I could,” Norte said, and he sounded as though he meant it. “But you’re a witness here, no?”

“I don’t witness things,” Parker told him.

Norte didn’t like it. He chewed the inside of his cheek, and then he said, “I tell you what. When I get this shit straightened out here, I’ll call Ed Mackey, tell him the situation, see what he thinks I should do.”

Parker watched him.

Norte tried a smile while still chewing his cheek. He said, “That’ll work, no? Ed Mackey knows you.”

“He knows me.”

“In the meantime,” Norte said, “just lie down on the floor here.”

“Sure,” Parker said, and as he bent forward he reached inside his shirt. He pivoted the holster down, lifted his left arm, and fired through his shirt.

The bullet hit Bobby somewhere, it didn’t matter where. It wouldn’t stop him, only confuse him for a second; long enough, maybe, for Parker to drop to his knees, turning, pulling the Sentinel out, hearing the big boom of the automatic bounce in this enclosed room, knowing the bullet had gone over his head. He thrust his arm out as Bobby adjusted his aim, and shot the guard dog in the face.

That still didn’t finish him, but it made him drop the automatic as he whipped both hands up to his ruined face. He tottered there as Parker dropped the Sentinel, grabbed the automatic, and lunged to his feet.

Norte was pulling a blunt revolver out of a desk drawer, ducking down low behind his desk, calling, “Drop that!”

“Fuck you,” Parker said, and pulled Bobby in front of himself to take Norte’s first three shots. Now he held the dead Bobby up in front of himself and moved forward toward the desk as Norte, still hidden behind it, called, “All right! I’m done!”

“Put the gun on the desk,” Parker told him.

Norte stayed out of sight behind the desk. “We don’t have to kill each other,” he said.

“We’re not gonna kill each other.”

“I was worried, I was upset, I was too hasty. Ed Mackey said you were okay, I should’ve remembered that.”

“Put the gun on the desk.”

Still he remained out of sight. “People need me,” he said. “They won’t like it if you take me down. Ed Mackey won’t like it.”

Parker waited.

“I was wrong,” Norte said. “I was too hasty.”

Parker waited.

“There’s no reason to do anything anymore.”

Parker waited.

Norte’s hand appeared, with the revolver. He put it on the green blotter and pushed it a little forward.

Parker let Bobby fall, on top of the men on the floor. He went forward and walked around the side of the desk to where Norte crouched there, looking up. Norte, voice shaking a little, said, “You don’t need to do a thing. I got your documents, middle drawer. You’ll see, they’re beautiful.”

“Let’s see them.”

Norte hesitantly rose, then looked at his revolver still on the desk. “Aren’t you gonna take that?”

“You intend to reach for it?”

“No!”

“Let’s see this ID.”

Norte opened the middle drawer, took out a manila envelope, shook two official papers out onto the green blotter. He was careful to keep as far as possible from the revolver. He stepped back to the wall, holding the manila envelope, and gestured for Parker to look them over.

His name was Daniel Parmitt. He’d been born in Quito, Ecuador, of American parents, and the birth certificate was in Spanish. His Texas driver’s license showed he lived at an address in San Antonio. The photo on the driver’s license, with the glasses and the mustache, made him look less hard.

He pocketed both documents, looked around the room. What had he touched? The carpet, Bobby; nothing that would leave prints. “Come here,” he said.

Norte didn’t move. His hands fidgeted with the manila envelope the documents had been in as he said, “It’s a misunderstanding, it’s all over. Bobby and me, we were gonna take these shits away, not mess up the office, then all of a sudden we got you here — it was too much goin on, I got too hasty.”

“Come here,” Parker said.

It finally occurred to Norte that he was still alive and that he needn’t be. With small steps, he came forward to the desk and Parker took the manila envelope out of his hands. “Pick up the gun,” he said.

“No!”

Parker held the automatic leveled at Norte’s forehead. “You aren’t gonna point it at me,” he said. “You’re gonna finish those three.”

“Here? We didn’t want to—”

“Bobby’s messing your rug already. The other way is, I do you and I do them and I go.”

“But what—”

“Ed says you’re useful. I say you’re too jumpy to be reliable, but you do good work. If you make it possible, I’ll help you stay alive. Pick up the gun.”

“And, and kill them?”

“That’s what it’s for,” Parker said.

Norte stared down at the three men. The driver was still stoic, but the other two were now staring up at Norte, hoping something different was going to happen now.

No. Abruptly, as though to get it over before he had to think about it, Norte grabbed up the revolver, bent over them, and shot each one in the head. The carpet would have to be replaced for sure.

“Keep shooting,” Parker said.

Norte grimaced at him. “They’re dead. Believe me, they’re dead.”

“Keep shooting.”

Norte looked down at the bodies and fired at random into their backs. One, two, click; the revolver was empty.

Parker held out the manila envelope. “Put it in here.”

Norte frowned, studying Parker’s face. “You want a hold over me.”

“You make all this go away, what hold? All I need is, I was never here.”

Norte managed a twisted smile. “Oh, if only that could be true, no?”

“We can make it true. Put the gun in here.”

Norte shrugged and reached forward to slide the revolver into the envelope.

Parker said, “Stand back over there by the wall.”

Obediently, Norte moved back to where he’d stood before. He kept his arms at his sides, palms forward, to show he wasn’t going to try anything, but Parker already knew that.

Parker put the envelope, bulging and heavy with the revolver, on the green blotter. He went around the desk, found his Sentinel near Bobby’s feet, and put it back in its holster. Then he picked up the envelope. Automatic in his right hand, envelope in his left, he backed to the door, as Norte looked around at the mess he had to clean up. His face had gone through too much surgery to permit it to show his emotions, but they were there in his eyes.

With a little trouble, Parker turned the doorknob with the hand holding the envelope. He stepped outside, let the door snick shut, and put the automatic under his shirt, keeping his hand on it in there, like Napoleon. But, as he walked away, Norte did not come outside. He had enough to think about.

Daniel Parmitt’s address in San Antonio, according to his driver’s license, was an office building downtown; nobody lived there.

Parker stayed in three motels off Interstate 10 for three nights while setting himself up in town. A real estate agent showed him rental houses, and the second day he found what he needed in Alamo Heights, between McNay Art Museum and Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. It was a three-bedroom two-story fake-Gothic yellow clapboard house with a turret, set back from a winding, hilly street among modestly upscale houses. Parker knew it was right, but didn’t tell the real estate agent; they looked at another four places before he suggested they try again tomorrow.