Ричард Старк - Flashfire [= Parker]

“I certainly will,” she said. The awe was being replaced by a broad grin. “This sure worked out, didn’t it?”

“For some of us. Can you come back tonight around eight? With my new clothes.”

“Sure.”

“And drive me down to Miami.”

“Okay. Is that where Claire is?”

He said, “You don’t want to know about Claire, Leslie.”

“Of course I do,” she said.

He looked at her, and decided to finish that part once and for all. “Claire is the only house I ever want to be in,” he said. “All her doors and windows are open, but only for me.”

A blush climbed Leslie’s cheeks, and she stepped back, looking confused, as though a door had just slammed in her face. “You’re probably anxious to see her again,” she said, mumbling, going through the motions. “I’ll see you at eight.”

Except, no. Not ten minutes after Leslie left, with Parker once more seated on the upstairs terrace floor, back against the wall of the house, he heard the sound of the front door, and when he stood up to look, it was Farley. The Snake River sheriff, in uniform, right hand on his holstered firearm, creeping cautiously into the house, looking every which way at once.

Followed Leslie. Thought she’d lead him to Parmitt, or to somebody else connected with the jewelry robbery. But giving Parker an opportunity to deal with some of the problems he still had.

It wasn’t possible to go through the house, Farley was too alert for that. Parker went down the corner of the wall from the terrace, the way he’d come up from the lower terrace the first time he’d entered this house, and moved as fast as he could around to the front, where he saw Farley’s official sheriff s car parked by the front door.

It wasn’t locked, and the driver’s window was open so it wouldn’t get too hot and stuffy while Farley was away. Parker got into the passenger seat in front, read the owner’s manual for a while, and twenty minutes later Farley came out of the house, grimacing in frustration. When he saw Parker seated in his car he at first looked enraged, then triumphant, as though he’d been proved right about something.

He came around and got behind the wheel and said, “You were in there.”

“In where? In that house? No, I’ve been out here. I followed you. I wanted to talk to you.”

Farley’s glare meant no-nonsense-pal. He said, “You were in there, and the Mackenzie woman came to see you there.”

“Who? Oh, Leslie. No, I haven’t seen Leslie since she came to visit me at the hospital.” Parker made a crooked-face grin and said, “I think I scared her that time.”

“She helped you escape from the hospital.”

“What, that woman ? Don’t be stupid.”

Farley didn’t like being called stupid, but he knew he wasn’t on secure ground here, so he said, “Have it your own way,” and turned to start the engine.

Mild, Parker said, “Where we going?”

“Snake River, of course,” Farley said as he thumbed his window shut. “I’m arresting you.”

“For what?”

“For running away from the hospital.”

“That’s no crime,” Parker told him. “Ask the hospital if there’s any charges they want to press against me.”

The engine was running, the air conditioner blowing its cold breeze into the car, but Farley hadn’t put it in gear. He glowered at Parker, thinking it over, and then said, “You’re mixed up in that big jewel robbery.”

“Wrong again.”

“Don’t tell me. I know .”

“In the first place,” Parker said, “that isn’t your case, and in the second place, nobody who is working on that case thinks I had anything to do with it, and you know it.”

“They’re wrong,” Farley said.

“Everybody’s wrong but you.”

“It happens,” Farley said.

Parker nodded, looking at him. “Happen often?”

“Oh, fuck you, Parmitt,” Farley snapped, and pointed an angry finger at him. “And that’s another thing. You aren’t any Daniel Parmitt.”

“Everybody knows that,” Parker said. As Farley gaped at him, he gestured at the house. “Why don’t we go sit in there and get comfortable? There’s nobody home, is there?”

“It’s empty, it’s got no furniture in it, as you damn well know.”

“Oh, really?” Parker looked at the house, shrugged and said, “Then we might as well stay here. For a cop, you’re goddam incurious.”

“About what?” Farley demanded. He was ready at this point to take offense at just about anything.

“At why I’m sitting in your car,” Parker told him.

That took Farley aback. He thought about it and said, “You didn’t want me following you.”

“You weren’t following me, I was following you.”

“Oh, goddammit, Parmitt, John Doe, whoever the hell you are, all right. Why are you in my car, if not to get arrested for a dozen different things I can think of?”

“Don’t embarrass yourself, Farley,” Parker advised him. “If you had any case at all, I’d be in cuffs right now.”

Farley sat back against his door to look Parker up and down. “You’ve been getting me riled up on purpose,” he decided.

“You started it on your own.”

“I did. So you did it like a firebreak, I guess, to calm me down. Okay, I’m calm. Why are you in my car?”

“Because I want to know how you’re doing with the guy who’s hiring people to kill me.”

Farley nodded. “All right,” he said. “It’s a good reason.”

“I know it is. How are you doing?”

“Well, the Chicago police—” At Parker’s look, he made a sour face and said, “Yeah, Chicago’s taken over now. Bernson, the guy we caught in the hospital—”

“That his name? I only heard you got somebody.”

“Edward Bernson. A professional killer, according to the Chicago people. One of the guns on him tied him to two other murders over the last couple years. When he saw we had him cold, he flipped.”

“And gave you the name of the guy that hired him.”

“No, the go-between. It’s a lawyer in Chicago named Gilma Yard, and now the Chicago police are looking into it. They think she’s like a clearinghouse or an agency for killers, for hit men. They’re not even sure that’s her name, but her files are full of stuff that’s gonna clear up a lot of murders around the country.”

Parker said, “This Gilma Yard, she isn’t the principal? She’s just the one that runs the string of killers?”

“That’s how it looks.”

“And they haven’t flipped her.”

“Not yet. She’s stonewalling, and she’s a lawyer, and she seems to think she can skate out of it. I don’t know if she can, but right now they’ve got her in protective custody in case there’s any customers out there that wouldn’t like to be mentioned.”

“So it’s still that nobody knows who’s hiring these people that are trying to gun me down.”

“Well, you must know,” Farley told him.

“I don’t.”

Farley shook his head. “That isn’t possible. You must have some idea why you—”

“No. We’ll get to that,” Parker promised, “but what’s happening with this lawyer and her files? Don’t they at least have somebody who could be the guy?”

Reluctantly, Farley said, “Yes.”

“In Chicago?”

“No, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.”

“We do get around,” Parker said. “Who is this guy?”

Farley gave him an exasperated look. “Just given the wild chance that you don’t know who’s gunning for you,” he said, “why should I give you a name? So you can go out to Oklahoma and deal with him yourself? Level with me and let the law deal with him.”