Ричард Старк - Flashfire [= Parker]

Ross reeled into the doorway space to the living room, clutching the shotgun, and was brought up short by a sudden squadron of bullets that knocked him backward, knocked the shotgun from his hands, knocked him to the ground.

Leslie had emptied the Sentinel, two-handed, into Carlson, who sprawled in a seated position on the floor against the wall, gaping at her, stupefied.

Parker clapped once, to get her attention. When she stared at him, glassy-eyed, he pointed to himself, fast, urgent, then violently shook his head. I’m not here, I don’t exist, I’m not part of it. She managed an open-mouthed nod, and he turned, grabbed the three pouches full of jewelry, and ran.

But he couldn’t run. His body wasn’t up to it; he was reeling from what he’d already done. He was one room ahead of them and couldn’t go much farther.

He made it to the terrace. The morning sun glared dead ahead, breathing its humidity on him, sapping the rest of his strength.

They weren’t pursuing anybody; they didn’t know there was anybody else to pursue. They were staying with the mess they already had. But he couldn’t just wander the beach, physically battered, carrying the loot from the robbery.

To the left was the chain-link fence he’d climbed the first time he’d come here, with the neighbor’s sea grape crowding against it on the inside. Parker went to the corner of the terrace, looped the three pouch belts through his own belt, and went down the neighbor’s side of the fence.

It was slow going, for many reasons. He didn’t want to break a lot of branches, leave a trail straight to himself. He was bulky and cumbersome and the jewelry pouches kept snagging on branches and leaves. And his body kept trying to pass out.

At the bottom, the tangled stringy trunks were a failed Boy Scout knot. Years of dead leaves had made a mush of the ground. The air was cooler, but just as wet. A foot from the fence, you couldn’t see the fence or the ocean beyond it.

Parker, feeling darkness iris in around his eyes, sank slowly into crotches and curves of branch until he’d given over his entire weight to the tree, as though he’d been hanging there forever and it had grown around him. He’d done what he could do. Arms around a trunk, cheek against a branch, he let the iris close.

Darkness and cramping, forcing him to be conscious. He tried to move, to ease the cramps, but he was all tangled in branches and leaves. Too dark to see where he was or what he could do.

He stopped the useless moving about. He ignored the cramps, in his ribs, in his legs, and took a slow deep breath while he oriented himself. Where he was. What had happened.

He’d slept the day away, laced into a sea grape. They hadn’t found him, so they hadn’t looked for him or they would have found him, so Leslie’s story — whatever it had been — had not included him.

Could he get up out of here? The first thing was to try to stand, untie himself from this tree. Reaching this way and that for handholds, his knuckles brushed the chain-link fence, and he grabbed onto it, used it to pull himself forward and then upward until he was vertical and could try to do something about the cramps.

For the torso, just slow breathing, slow and regular breathing, holding it in. For the legs, flexing them and flexing them and flexing them, waiting it out. Until finally only the familiar pains in his chest were left, a little worse than before, but not crippling.

He could see nothing, but he could feel the three jewelry pouches, still looped onto his belt in front and on the left side. He still had hold of the fence, and now he began to climb it, slowly, with long pauses. The legs threatened to bind up on him again, and the breathing was very thick and soupy, but he kept moving upward, a bit at a time, and finally came out onto the terrace behind the late Mr. Roderick’s house. He sprawled there, on his back.

Light. A quarter-moon and many stars. The hushing sound of the ocean, rising and falling. No other sound and no other light.

Finally, when he felt he had the strength for it, he gathered his arms and legs under himself, and levered himself upward, and used the protective wrought-iron fence for support, and then he was on his feet.

The house was dark, its many glass doors dully reflecting the bright night sky. Something ribbonlike fluttered over there, horizontal, at waist height, and when he moved slowly closer to the building it was a yellow police crime-scene tape. They’d sealed the house.

How sealed was it? He needed this house. In slow stages, with many pauses, he worked his way around to the front, where the Dumpster still loomed in the moonlight and more crime-scene tape semaphored in the night breeze. But there were no vehicles, no guards. The crime at the crime scene, as far as the law was concerned, was over.

It took longer this time to find the suction-cup handles, but eventually he did, and got into the house the same way as before, but feeling the damage to his body even worse. He did pass out, for a while, lying on the floor inside the house, the window open beside him, but then he came out of it and stood and finished the job, tossing the suction-cup handles outside again, hoping to never need those anymore. He reinserted the loose pane of glass, and then he was inside.

The alarm pad by the front door gleamed its red warning, but had the police checked to be certain the alarm hadn’t been tampered with? No, they hadn’t. If the alarm was doing its job, his opening the window would have set it off.

And if he were his usual self, he’d have been much more cautious about coming in here. He could see that the physical toll was beginning to make him careless, sloppy in his thinking. He couldn’t let that happen.

It wasn’t really possible to search the place in this darkness, even if he had the strength. But the air had the flat silence of an empty house, and he was sure he was alone.

The same furniture was still in the dining room, though disarranged; nobody had bothered to pick up the chair Parker had knocked over. In the kitchen, the refrigerator was still full of food. There was cold fried chicken in there, and there was beer. He ate and drank, and then curled up on the floor and slept.

On Monday they came to clean out the house, where he’d been trying to recuperate since Saturday night. They didn’t expect to find anybody inside the place, so Parker had no trouble keeping out of their way. They were two plainclothes detectives, one bored uniform, and a crew of movers. The detectives would check each room, okay it, and the movers would label everything and take it all out.

Having expected something like this, Parker had already made a stash of provisions, hidden in the unfinished part of the attic. In there were a razor and shaving cream and comb and some clothing, all things the dead heisters had left behind, plus an unopened box of cereal, a plastic bag of rolls, two cans of tuna, and half a dozen bottles of beer. But if they were going to shut this house down completely he wouldn’t be able to stay much longer.

After they left, he came down to see what they’d taken, which was all the furniture, all the personal possessions, all the leftover food. The refrigerator was there, but had been switched off and the door propped open. There was still water and still electricity, so he started the refrigerator and put the beer and rolls in it.

What he was waiting for was Leslie. She’d come back, he knew she would. She’d figure some way to get back to this house, if only out of curiosity. Or, more likely, to try to find his trail. One way or another, she would show up here, and that’s what he had to count on, because he needed her assistance just one more time. He knew he couldn’t just walk out of here and down the road, looking the way he did. He wouldn’t get half a mile before some cop would stop to ask questions. Any question at all.