Richard Stark - The Hunter

Mal was in no mood to argue. “All right,” he said abruptly. “All right, all right. I’ll pay a hundred cents on the dollar. Satisfied?”

“Rarely, honey. Now I asked you, what price range?”

“I told you what I wanted. A blonde, something really good. Young, Irma, young and stacked.”

“You are talking about a hundred dollars, honey.”

Mal frowned and gnawed his lip, then nodded convulsively. “All right,” he said. “A hundred. For the night.”

“What else? You’re at the Outfit, aren’t you?”

“No, I moved. The St. David on 57th Street. Room 516.”

“You want to take her out to dinner, a show, anything like that?”

“I want her here , Irma. In the rack, you follow me?”

Irma laughed throatily. “An athletic blonde,” she said. “She’ll be there by eight o’clock.”

“Fine.”

Mal hung up, and turned around to face the room, but there wasn’t any bar in it. Thirty-two dollars a day, and no bar. He turned back and called room service. Two bottles, glasses, ice. They’d be right up.

It was barely seven o’clock. He had an hour to kill. He paced the room, disgusted. A hundred dollars for a lay: that was disgusting. Parker coming back from the dead: that was disgusting. Getting screwed up this way with the Outfit: that was disgusting. Even the room was disgusting.

The room was one of four. He wasn’t sure what had made him do that, splurge on a four-room suite costing thirty-two dollars a day, any more than he was sure why he was throwing away a hundred dollars on a broad who couldn’t possibly do any more for him than Pearl would. And who would, probably, since they would be strangers, do even less.

But he had splurged, reason or no reason he had splurged, on the girl and on the suite. Knowing that neither could be worth it.

The suite, for instance. This living room. It was old. The paint was new, the furnishings and fixtures were new, the prints on the walls were new, but beneath it all the room was old, and in the way of hotel rooms the oldness managed to gleam dirtily through the new overlay. And besides being old, it was impersonal. The suite at the Outfit hotel was his , it was where he lived. This suite wasn’t lived in by anybody, now or ever, any more than a compartment in a Pullman car was lived in. It could be occupied, but it couldn’t be lived in.

The girl would be the same way.

He was doing things wrong, he was making stupid mistakes, and what made it worse was the fact that he knew it. The knowledge that Parker was alive had rattled him more than he liked to admit. Going to Mr. Carter, for instance. He’d gained nothing, and maybe he’d lost.

Now Mr. Carter was watching him. Now he had to get Parker, not just avoid him but get him. This was a test and the Outfit was watching, and if he failed now he was through forever. This time he was too far up the chain of command to just be put out in the street. This time they would have to kill him.

He had to work alone. If he hadn’t gone to Mr. Carter, he could have used some of the boys in his group, even given one of them the assignment of finishing Parker. Now he’d screwed up that chance, too. He had to work alone.

Stegman wouldn’t find Parker, he knew that. Stegman couldn’t possibly find Parker. It was up to him, completely up to him.

Suddenly he stopped his pacing, struck with an idea. There was a way to use the Outfit. It was dangerous as hell, but he could do it. He’d have to do it. There wasn’t any other way.

He hurried across the room to the telephone and quickly dialed a number. When Fred Haskell answered, he said, “Fred, I want you to pass a word around for me.”

“Sure, Mal. Anything you say. How’d it go with Stegman?”

“Fine, fine. It’s about that. This guy who’s looking for me, his name is Parker. Now I’ve moved out of the Outfit for a while, I’m staying at the St. David on 57th, room 516. You spread the word around. If anybody asks for me, asks any of the guys, this Parker shows up, tell him where I am. You got that?”

“You want us to tell him?”

“Right. Not easy, not right off the bat, or he’ll smell something fishy. But let him know where I am. Then call me right away. You got that? They don’t call you, they call me.”

“Okay, Mal. Whatever you say.”

“Make sure they call me right away.”

“I’ll tell them, Mal.”

“Okay.”

Mal hung up and took a deep breath. All right. When the time came, he knew a couple of guys he could hire to hang around with him. They worked for the Outfit sometimes, sometimes not — they were like free-lancers. It wouldn’t be the same as using Outfit people.

There was a knock at the door. Mal started, eyes jerking involuntarily to the phone. He called, “Who is it?”

“Room service.”

“Hold it. Hold on a second.”

The gun was in the bedroom, on the bed, next to the suitcase. He hurried in, picked it up, brought it back to the living room with him. The pocket of the dressing gown was large; the gun was a smallish.32, an English make. He held tightly to the gun in his pocket and opened the door.

A kid in a red and black bellboy uniform wheeled in a chrome cart with the liquor and mix and glasses and ice. Mal closed the door after him, and only then relaxed his grip on the gun. He fumbled in the bottom of his pocket, past the gun, and his fingers found two quarters. They went into the bellboy’s open hand, and Mal clutched the gun again as he opened the door for the bellboy to go out. There was no one else in the hall.

Alone again, he made himself a drink, glancing at the phone. He looked at his watch and it was only quarter after seven. Forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes. If she was early, she’d get an extra ten.

He went into the bedroom and cleared the suitcase off the bed and pulled the spread down. He kept standing looking at the bed. His right hand clutched the gun in his pocket.

She was only five minutes early, so he decided the hell with the extra ten. When she knocked at the door, he went through the same routine as with the bellboy, holding hard to the gun in his pocket, calling through the door. He didn’t hear what she answered, but it was a female voice so he opened the door, and she smiled at him and came in.

She was a knockout. Better than Phil’s, a million times better. She looked like Vassar maybe, or some hotshot’s private secretary on Madison Avenue, or a starlet on the Grace Kelly line.

She was a blonde, like he’d asked for, with medium-short pale hair in one of those television hairdos. Perched atop the hairdo was a black box hat with a little veil. She wore a gray suit and a green silk scarf, like a photo in Vogue.

Her legs were long and slender, sheathed in sheer nylon, shod in green high heels. She walked like a model, one foot directly in front of the other, the pelvis rotating back and forth, her left arm and green-gloved hand swinging straight at her side in short arcs, her right hand, bare, holding her tiny black purse and other green glove to her body, just below her breast.

Her face had been chiseled with care, honed and smoothed to creamy perfection, slender brows arched over green eyes, aquiline nose, soft-lipped mouth with just a trace of lipstick, long slender throat and cameo shoulders.

He looked at her and he knew he would never have better. If he lived a hundred years, he’d never have anything again as good as this. Better in the rack, maybe, he didn’t know about that, but not better looking, not more desirable or more perfect than this.

She smiled, stepping across the threshold with her model’s walk, saying, “Hello, Mal. I’m Linda,” extending her gloved left hand to him, palm down, fingers curved slightly. Her voice was warm velvet, her diction clear and perfect.