Richard Stark - The Hunter

“No problem at all,” said the man, with a professional smile. “If you’ll just give me your name...”

“Edward Johnson,” said Parker, giving him the name he’d put on the license. He hauled his wallet out. “I’ve got identification. Here.” He handed over the license.

The man looked at it, nodded, handed it back. “Fine,” he said. “That was a special account?”

“That’s right.”

“One minute, please.” He picked up his phone, talked into it for a minute, and waited, smiling reassurance at Parker. Then he talked a few seconds more and looked puzzled. He capped the phone mouthpiece with his hand and said to Parker, ”There’s no record of your account here. Are you sure it’s a special account? No minimum balance?”

“Try the other kind,” said Parker.

The man continued to look puzzled. He talked into the phone a while longer, then hung up, frowning. “There’s no record of any account at all under that name.”

Parker got to his feet. He grinned and shrugged. “Easy come, easy go,” he said.

He walked out, and the man at the desk kept staring after him, frowning.

In the fourth bank he tried, Edward Johnson had a special checking account. Parker got the account number and the present balance, and a new checkbook to replace the one he’d lost. Edward Johnson only had six hundred dollars and change in his account. Parker felt sorry for him.

He left the bank, went into a men’s clothing store, and bought a suit and a shirt and a tie and socks and shoes. He paid by check. The clerk compared the signature with the one on his driver’s license, and called the bank to see if he had enough cash in his account to cover the check. He did.

He carried the packages up to the bus terminal on 40th Street, and went up to the men’s room. He didn’t have a dime to open a stall door, so he crawled under it, pushing his packages ahead of him. He changed into the new clothes, transferred his wallet and checkbook, and left all the old clothes in the stall.

He walked north till he came to a leather goods shop. He bought a hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of good luggage, a matched set of four pieces. He showed the driver’s license for identification, and they didn’t even call the bank. Two blocks he carried the luggage, and then he got thirty-five dollars for it at a pawn shop. He went crosstown, and did it twice more — luggage to pawn shop — and got another eighty dollars.

He took a cab up to 96th Street and Broadway, and worked up and down Broadway for a while, this time buying watches and pawning them. Then he went to Lexington Avenue, midtown, and did it some more. Four times all told, somebody called the bank to see if he had enough money in his account. Not once was his driver’s license questioned as valid identification.

By three o’clock, he had a little over eight hundred dollars. He used one more check, to buy a medium-sized suitcase of excellent quality, and then he spent half an hour shopping, paying cash for his purchases. He bought a razor and lather and lotion, a toothbrush and paste, socks and underwear, two white shirts, three ties, a carton of cigarettes, a pint of hundred-proof vodka, a comb and brush set, and a new wallet. Everything except the wallet went into the suitcase.

When the suitcase was full, he quit shopping and went to a good restaurant for a steak. He undertipped, and ignored the waiter’s dirty look as he went out, still carrying the suitcase. He took a cab to a medium-priced hotel, where they believed his driver’s license and didn’t make him pay in advance. He got a room and bath, and overtipped the bellboy.

He stripped out of the new clothes and took a bath. His body was hard and rangy and scarred. After the bath, he sat up naked in bed and slowly drank the pint of vodka straight from the bottle, grinning at the far wall. When the bottle was empty, he threw it at the wastebasket and fell asleep.

Parker closed the door behind him, and waited for the girl to get up off the floor. She looked up at him and her face went very white, and against the whiteness flared the ugly red mark where he had hit her.

She breathed his name and he said, “Get up. Cover yourself.” He sounded disgusted. She didn’t have anything on under the blue robe, and when she’d fallen the robe had dropped open below the waist. Her belly was white, but her legs were golden brown.

“You’ll kill me,” she said. There was no strength in her voice at all. It had the dull echoless quality of hopeless fear.

“Maybe not,” he said. “Get up. Make coffee.” He kicked her ankle gently. “Move it.”

She slid backward along the floor, then rolled half over, her blond hair falling into her face, and struggled shakily to her feet.

At one point, she was bent far over, her back to him, palms and knees on the floor. He looked at her, and felt a sudden physical desire, like a knife twisting low in his abdomen. He leaned forward and smacked her backside instead. It didn’t help.

He watched her. She straightened, keeping her back to him, and adjusted the robe, then walked through the apartment to the kitchen. He followed her.

It was an expensive apartment in an expensive building on an expensive block in the East Sixties. Inside the front door was a foyer, with a mirror and a table and a closet and an oriental rug. To the left, two steps led down between potted plants to the living room. More plants were spotted along the walls. There was other furniture, but the room was dominated by a long black coffee table and a longer white sofa.

In the right-hand wall, glass-paned double doors led to a dining room. Of the very few dining rooms left in Manhattan, this was one of the last. It was done like a traditional dining room, with the warm, wood table and chairs, the side tables, the glass-doored shelving lined with tumblers and brandy snifters and pilsner glasses, even the yellow-bulbed chandelier hanging over the table.

Another right turn from the dining room led to the kitchen. There was a swinging door. The girl pushed through it, and Parker followed her. He sat down at the table and looked up at the white-faced black-fingered clock on the white wall. Nearly five-thirty. The kitchen window showed black, but dawn wasn’t too far away.

The girl opened a cupboard door and took down an electric coffee maker. She had to hunt around for the cord. Her face was expressionless, her movements neither slow nor fast, but she carefully kept from looking at him, and when she found the cord she dropped it on the floor.

Stooping to pick it up, she exposed her breasts to him. They were pale, like her belly, full, red tipped, soft looking. She didn’t even know she’d done it. She was afraid for her life. She wasn’t thinking about her body at all.

While the coffee was making, she stood gazing unseeing at the pot. He had to tell her when it was ready.

She got him a cup. He said, “Get two.” She did, and poured them coffee, and sat down across from him not looking at him.

“Lynn,” he said. His voice was harsh, but soft.

She raised her eyes, as though they were being hauled up by pulleys. She looked at him. “I had to,” she whispered.

He said, “Where’s Mal?”

She shook her head. “Gone. Moved out.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Honest to God.”

“When?”

“Three months ago.”

He sipped at the coffee. It was stronger than he liked, but that was all right. He shouldn’t have come here.

Four in the morning, at the hotel, all of a sudden he’d been awake. And with the vodka still strong in him. So he’d come straight here.

It was just as well Mal was gone. When he met up with Mal, he didn’t want any vodka in him.

He lit a cigarette, drank more coffee. He said, “Who pays the rent?”