Ричард Старк - Flashfire [= Parker]

Corpus Christi International Airport is just west of town, down Corn Products Road from Interstate 37, and near there he found tonight’s motel. A Southern Bell phone book for the area was in the bottom drawer of the bedside table, and Julius Norte was listed. Parker dialed the number and got an answering machine: “You’ve reached Poco Repro, nobody in the office right now. Please leave your name and number and we’ll get back to you.” Then it repeated the same thing in Spanish.

“Edward Lynch,” Parker said, and reeled off the phone and room numbers here. Then he went back to the phone book and a local map for restaurants, but hadn’t made his decision yet when the phone rang. So Julius Norte was home after all, and screening his calls.

“Yes.”

“Mr. Lynch?”

“Yes.”

“A friend of yours said you might call.”

“Ed Mackey.”

“That’s the fellow. Where are you?”

“Near the airport.”

“You want to come down now?”

“Yes.”

“Know where Padre Island Drive is?”

“I can find it.”

“Okay,” he said, and gave quick precise instructions, and Parker followed them and found himself in a neighborhood that could have been anywhere in the south or west of the United States, from Mobile to Los Angeles: small one-story pastel stucco houses without garages or porches, a little shabby, on small weedy plots of land, with not a tree or a tall bush within miles.

The address Parker wanted was on a corner, with a carport added on the side away from the intersection, and the first surprise was the car in the carport: a gleaming black Infiniti with the vanity plate 1NORTE1. This car cost more than all the other vehicles up and down the block, all combined together.

Parker left the Taurus at the curb and walked up the cracked concrete walk to the small stoop at the front door. Beside the door was a bell button, and above the button on a small hook hung a sign that read “Ring And Walk In.”

So now Parker knew a number of things. This was not where Norte lived. He wasn’t worried about who might walk through his door. And he was richer than this neighborhood.

He rang the bell, as instructed, and pushed open the door, and stepped directly into what had once been the living room but was now an office, with two desks. The desk to the left rear, facing this way with its side against the wall under the carport window, was a simple gray metal rectangle, and seated at it, just putting down a fotonovela to give Parker the double-O, was a guy who looked like a headliner in TV wrestling: long greasy wavy black hair, a neck wider than his forehead, and a black T-shirt form-fitting over a body pumped up with weights. His nose was mashed in, mouth heavy, eyes small and dark under forward-thrusting eyebrows. The look he gave Parker was flat but expectant, like a guard dog’s.

The other desk, nearer the door and off to the right, was a much bigger affair, more elaborate, a warm mahogany that took the light just so. A green felt blotting pad, brass desk lamp and gleaming desk set, family photos in leather frames; it had everything.

And the guy seated at the desk had everything, too. He wore a white guayabera shirt that showed off his tan, and his head was topped by a good rug, tannish brown, medium long, nicely waved. Below, his bland nice face had the smooth noncommittal look of much plastic surgery, and when he rose to smile at his visitor it was as though he were holding the smile for somebody else. “Mr. Lynch,’ he said.

“Mr. Norte,” Parker said, and shut the door behind himself.

Norte came around the desk to offer a strong workingman’s hand that had not had plastic surgery and so was more truthful about where he came from. Parker shook it, and Norte gestured with it at the brown leather armchair facing the desk. “Sit down, Mr. Lynch,” he offered. ‘Tell me about it. Our friend Ed is well?”

“He didn’t say,” Parker said.

Norte gave him a quick smile as they both sat, on opposite sides of the desk. The guard dog had gone back to his fotonovela . “Down to business, eh?”

“Might as well,” Parker said, but took a second to look around. Gray industrial carpeting, a few beige filing cabinets, a closed interior door opposite the entrance. A paper company calendar and a few diplomas on the wall. “You call this place Poco Repro,” he said. “What’s that?”

“Printing,” Norte explained. “Mostly yearbooks, annual reports, banquet programs. More Hispanic than Anglo. But that’s not what you want.”

“No,” Parker agreed. “What I want is ID.”

“How good?”

“Real. Good enough to buy a car, take out a loan. I don’t need it forever.”

Norte nodded. A fat gold pen lay on the green blotter in front of him. He rolled it in his fingers and said, “You must know, real is the most expensive.”

“Yes, I know.”

“It doesn’t matter how long you want it for, you can’t sell it back, or even give it back. Once you’ve got it, it’s yours.”

Parker shrugged. “Fine.”

“Do you care about the backstory?”

“Just so there’s no paper out on the name.”

“No, of course.” Norte considered, looking past Parker at the front window. “The Social Security won’t be real,” he said. “I can’t get a legitimate number that works in their system.”

“That should be okay,” Parker said.

“I’m thinking of some friends of mine,” Norte said, “naturalized citizens. Is that okay?”

“I gotta have a name that looks like me.”

“Oh, yes, sure, I know that. You could be Irish, no?”

“I could be.”

“Many Irish went to South America,” Norte told him, “in the nineteenth century, did well, the names survive. In Bolivia, other countries, you’ve got your José Harrigan, your Juan O’Reilly.”

“I can’t use Juan,‘” Parker said.

“There are names that cross over,” Norte said. “Oscar. Gabriel. Leon. Victor.”

“Fine.”

“And when would you like this?” Norte asked, but laughed before Parker could say anything and said, “Never mind, that was not a smart question. You want it as soon as you can get it, no?”

“Yes.”

“Texas resident?”

“That would be best,” Parker said.

“And easiest for me. So you want a driver’s license and a birth certificate. Do you need a passport?”

“No.”

“Now you surprise me,” Norte admitted. “Most people, that’s the first thing they want.”

“My troubles are domestic,” Parker told him.

Norte laughed. “All right, Mr. Lynch,” he said, “you can stop being Mr. Lynch, I think, in three days’ time. Is that all right?”

“That’s fine,” Parker said.

Norte said, “But then again, you haven’t been Mr. Lynch all that long, have you? Never mind, that wasn’t a question. You didn’t bring a photo, did you?”

“No.”

“We can do that here,” Norte assured him. “The other thing is money.”

“I know.”

“Driver’s license, birth certificate, both with legitimate sources. Ten thousand. Cash, of course.”

“I like cash,” Parker said.

“There’s so little of it around these days,” Norte said. “That would be in advance. Sorry, but it’s best that way.”

Parker said, “Will you be here in half an hour?”

“If you intend to be,” Norte told him.

Parker got to his feet. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Norte,” he said.

“And you, Mr. Lynch.”

When Parker went back to Norte’s office half an hour later, he’d made two stops, the first at a drugstore where he’d bought reading glasses of the lowest possible magnification, 1.25, and a dark brown eyebrow pencil. The glasses were squarish and black-framed, and the eyebrow pencil would work to emphasize his new mustache. And the second stop he’d made, in the far corner of a supermarket parking lot, had been to open a door panel and remove from inside it ten thousand in cash.